spinach is a crutch

In trying to transition into dressing more like an adult, I’ve been attempting to edit/define my style. That, combined with a newfound outrage at everything (thus rereading In a Different Voice, Sisterhood is Powerful, Woman Hating et al), and new compulsion to buy lesbian folk records has made mid-70s feminist fashion a main touchpoint. I mean, retail shit in the past couple of years has given a lot of options for this, and I’m certainly not the only adopter. Second-wave fashion has a really long legacy, too- who didn’t have a piano teacher who wore wire rims and tasteful batik into the 90s? So you can totally do inventive things with it, including adding some really bourgie details (see the photos in Jane Fonda’s autobio). I’ve found that it’s a good way to put together sort of disparate yet classic things- take a dress with a bold earth-tone print, put a mustard turtleneck under it, and you can wear totally prissy footwear such as Ferragamos.

A few weeks ago, I saw a friend who brought up the lengthy, indulgent and incomprehensible DVF woman New Yorker article from last summer, and its tangent on enjoying one’s body, but staying toned by exercising in a scented room. I had been laughing to myself about it, until I realized yesterday that nothing exemplifies the second-wave aesthetic better than MARTIAL ARTS! In all seriousness, there is a really interesting history of American women’s involvement in marital arts/self defense, and it’s not often that we really think about how self-defense became a feminist mainstay, or even the culture of exercise in the 70’s. Check out the 75-76 run of Black Belt Woman magazine, as I plan to do. Those white uniforms are so chic!

UPDATE: More must-reading on this page on the history of Ja Shin Do, a martial arts practice developed by and for womyn in 1971.

West and Densmore not only used “the scientific method of Tae Kwon Do” as West had analyzed it, and as she and Densmore continued to refine it, but they developed the pedagogy for efficiency and mastery, with a view to an art that would be powerful and effective for women, for whom self defense was not sport or macho posturing, but a matter of life and death.

sometimes life is awesome

perhaps the most worthwhile internet video viewing in the history of such.

Marissa travels to a high school band competition in Atlanta:
pearl cohn

Brittany travels back in time:
TROLL PATROLL

trust, social sites, and real sex workers

A childhood friend of mine is a stripper turned hairstylist turned fetish model (but isn’t everyone who grew up in east dallas?), we see each other every couple of years, and we sort of keep up. The whole situation is disconcerting and weird- our sets of parents urge us to keep in touch because I’m the ostensibly a good influence, and I always feel like a complete asshole because I want to talk to her about her life and what she does without being judgemental (rather, overcome by the corniness and problematic nature of post-suicide girls “alternative” porn), asking questions that are too prurient (really, what is it like to work at the Clubhouse?), or just having this blase college third wave preconcieved rhetoric about “sex work”, when really, there’s nothing on Salon or in theory that can really document, deconstruct, or explain Dallas strip clubs.

On her myspace page, she links to a profile on retrokitten, which is a social networking source for the loosely defined “alternative erotica” community. Models  can put up profiles, as can photographers, as can devotees. What’s interesting about this is that members can label their contacts ( facebook has a similar feature)- as “friends”, “friends(online)”, “want to work with”, “have worked with”(look at this model’s profile).  It seems like these are indications of trust in a community where trust matters- this person has helped me, this person paid me on time and wasn’t a jerk, this person has reputation of not being a jerk.  I want to know more about how this works- if models feel safer using a public forum and endorsements from it to choose who they work with, if they feel like they can connect with others and work better, or if it’s a superficial feature on an interactive-porno platform. Hopefully, by the next time I see my friend, I’ll have figured out how ask her this respectfully.

archives as consumer product and the sanctity of research

I’ve been mulling over More on What is Going on at the Library of Congress and the NARA/Footnote deal for the past couple of days. Plenty of smart folks have sounded off on this, both on listervs and in the blogworld: librarian.net has insightful posts about both- on the Footnote tip, Dan Cohen’s post which started a lot of these discussions is really insightful, and spellboundblog has an optimistic and smart post as well. What I haven’t heard anyone say is that it’s the same thing on many levels- a double edged sword, poking at the need for direction on a national level for both libraries and archives. Tom Mann calls for context and upholding respect for scholarly research in the bibliographic model, and the National Archives takes an opportunity to wash their hands of meeting user demands and controlling the life of documents online.

dear yoga dude

What defines a women’s space, and at what point do dudes become at least repectful in them? A few months ago, I ran into a dude from my yoga class at an art opening, and in the context of sort of inane yoga gossip, he tells me that he prefers to sit in the front of the class because “there are some really attractive women there, and I get distracted”. groo-ooss. Implying that in a space where he’s usually the only dude, he’s checking out everyone , and since he’s telling me, that I probably don’t pass his muster as “really attractive”. (I’m totally hot, btw, but definitely not HOT IN A YOGA OUTFIT HOT.) Thus, making me totally uncomfortable whenever he’s around.

It’s not just the whole only dude in the class who talks more than anyone else thing, but interactions like this make me really dread that no amount of subtlety can bring about respect for and solidarity with women’s culture and women’s spaces. I’ve been sexually harassed to varying degrees at nearly every job I’ve had, and mind you, I’ve worked at libraries for the past six years, overwhelmingly  staffed and run by women.  There’s a lot of college-y stuff to say about this,  and I’m not sure what applies and what I’d like to admit to applying.

scenes from a library

So, I totally do not condone glamorizing and fetishizing librarians without first talking frankly about the working conditions of so-called women’s professions, crumbling public role of libraries as social institutions, etc. I also don’t condone (or really care to admit that I even still think about, in the year 2007, ) Vice magazine. So, when last week when I somehow looked at last month’s Vice on the internet (like somehow looking at a gross dude whom you hooked up with in 2001 on myspace, or worse, friendster), I found their Swedish Librarians spread to be both repulsive and compelling. It made me think for a second that what’s really wrong with American libraries is America, that if libraries are allowed to reflect a just society instead of a collapsing capitalist nightmare, that if we as citizens are granted decent standards of living and given by law the means to live as women with autonomy and dignity, that perhaps librarians can thrive as explicitly feminine public servants (who actually live intellectual lives!) and that libraries can prove themselves as essential functioning spaces instead of bad-smelling Barnes and Noble. But I can’t really justify thinking about these photos at all- as anything different than overtly exploitative well-styled gazing at goofy Swedish ladies.

nobody watching matlock

I’ve heard the new Lil Flip single a dozen or so times on the radio, and every single time I thought it was called “Ghetto Myspace”, like talking about the digital divide, how when he was coming up there was no myspace! I was wrong, tis “Ghetto Mindstate”. I learned this when they premiered the video on 106th and Park yesterday (because a search of “ghetto myspace” suprisingly  yields nothing on youtube).  It’s shot in the Third Ward, and stars Tristan Wilds- Michael from the Wire. Is it justifiably disorienting that this video, which basically follows the Wire narrative which I thought about constantly for two months, is basically shot on my bus route?

“the pizza revolution has begun”

 I am a bit shocked to see my buddy Pizza Patron in the national news, but it is also a little surreal that the Patron has locations in five states and is the setting for a news story that uses currency exchange and pizza with chorizo (recommended) as a metaphor for the stake of latinos in the U.S. now. I still think of him as a part of early adolescent friday nights in Oak Cliff and Pleasant Grove, so I am glad that the NYT sent a reporter to do some fieldwork at the Ross Avenue location in Dallas, the one next to the Fiesta that was at the center of a story of suspected “bioterrorism” (i.e. actual shit) in the pastry case.

NYT: Pizza Chain Takes Pesos, and Complaints