“I’d like to submit our wedding photo for your Museum of Fat Love. We’ve been married almost three years and the fact that we’re fat doesn’t matter. What matters is that we managed to find each other in the vast sea of strangers out there, fat and thin. We have three kids now and we’re enjoying life to its fullest.”
Who could ask for more?
Tonight I can truthfully say that I’m sick of everything. Or rather, the same old everything.
I need something new to look at and fixate on.
I can’t take any more dumb idiots, dumb whores or dumb dummies. No more It girls or would-be It Girls. I need images and I need things to stimulate my imagination. I need things to hlep my brain work. I need things to hate but different things.
Here’s Martin Cohn, a boy who looks like a girl.
Here’s Gemma Banks, a girl who looks like a boy.
I realize that pictures of androgenous people are the only things I can stand to look at right now. I can’t figure out why, but I find them very relaxing. Male models and homo’s. too. I’m deliberately using the word homo because a blog called Homo-something is about homo’s and the word “gay” now sounds condescending to me. If you’re a homo and you object, let me know.
Here’s another girl who looks like a boy.
See? Isn’t that more relaxing than looking at what some moron wore today? I found it at a blog with lots of nice images, whose author is either a boy or girl, I can’t tell from looking at him/her. You go, girl, or boy!
Oops, I found this there, too, so it’s not all androgeny there but also weirdness and some pervy stuff. That blog sent me to this one... where I liked this beautiful Asian-looking girl, or at least I assume it’s a girl.
There are some great images there and no one bothering you with their outfits or their Mom.
Okay, that’s it. Who has some recommendations for me? Websites, books, music, anything to break the frozen sea within?
When we look for Houseboys, we are demanding, even though it’s hard to find good help and vice versa.
We look for a certain attitude first. Dominant but servile. Masculine but sensitive. Then we make sure he has strong legs, because he’ll be scurrying around all day, freshening our drinks and fluffing the pillows.
We ask him if he minds dressing up, because a good Houseboy is obedient but also playful.
Finally, we make sure we can take him out on social occasions. That’s about it. Oh wait, did I forget about cooking and cleaning? Those are good skills to have, but not as important and enthusiasm, multitasking and being a team player!
Just tell me why we need our feet to look like hooves or camel-toes. Is it because the designer is Maison Martin Margiela?
Can I tell you a secret? I don’t care about Martin Margiela! Or even Ann Demeulemeester! I’m over it. And yet, I still get a thrill from Goony Bird. She still needs to pee, evidently. Pee already, Goony Bird!
Since I can’t get too excited over fashion at the moment, I’m spending more time looking at art and photography. Here is a beautiful image by Alberto Rugolotto. I’m calling it “La Pieta.” Click on it for maximum effect.
If I can’t buy clothes, I can at least appreciate it as modeled by good looking men.
The style blog Pipeline asks whether the new spate of erotic magazines “blur the line” between smut and art. I’ve noticed latley that you can’t get away from at least partial nudity in fashion layouts and fashion advertising. While US Vogue is still rather staid, the French, Italian, Australian and Japanese versions all feature racy editorial photos of semi-naked models engaged in bondage-like situations or pseudo lesbian embrace.
The magazines listed by Pipeline are mostly aimed at men, and I would just call it Arty Smut, which isn’t one of my interests but I guess I prefer it to Artless Smut.
What I’m wondering is, how would men be affected if they were bombarded all the time with images of young semi-nude guys with perfect bodies?
Here’s one right now! Maybe he’s selling that red thing, but who cares? He’s young, he’s perfect, and most men will never, ever come close to looking like this. If men had to see images like this all the time, I think it might wreak havoc with their self-confidence. Maybe we’d see more anorexic men. Maybe they’d ask each other, Do my abs look too flabby? What about my pecs?
I’m not bothered by images of beautiful nude women. I’d just like to have a choice whether or not to see them. If Vogue isn’t safe any more, there will be no respite anywhere unless we keep our eyes shut.
It would be nice once in a while to get to forget about tits and ass and how ours measure up. Men, don’t snicker! You could be next. Meanwhile, try spending some time here.
“Loss” is an occasional nightclub in London that promises its patrons an evening of exquisite misery. Apparently, it’s based on the popular crying clubs in Tokyo, where stressed Japanese businessmen can rent rooms by the hour to watch weepy movies or pay $10 to attend a group cryathon.
Hahaha! I mean, Waaaa. I think this could be a great idea. My friend Ann suggested a couple of years ago that people opposed to President Bush get together for massive public cry-ins. Since we felt there was little we could do to get rid of him, at least we could express our grief over the destruction he has wreaked.
It’s not too late to have a good cry about the Bush Administration. If you think you’re over it, try watching news footage of Hurricane Katrina.
Back to Loss, a project of “The Last Tuesday Society:” It is the work of a Romantically gloomy young man who calls himself Viktor Wynd. His pose of exhausted misery is pretty funny, once you read the stuff at his website. He describes Loss as a place for “the miserable, the pathetic, the beautiful, the dying and the divorced” to “sit around the dying flowers, crushed velvet, mouldy taxidermy, old broken children’s toys and dead butterflies…” He will even provide chopped onions for those who need help getting their cry on.
Viktor, I love you! I get your joke! You are so beyond Emo, you’re almost anti-Emo! You are a dedicated performance artist who doesn’t just offer jars of shit at your ‘art’ exhibits; you label them “Realtor Shit” and “Pharmacist Shit.”
If you need more crying, here’s a photo of Robert Downy Jr. from a collection of photos by British artist Sam Taylor-Wood called “Crying Men.”
Go here to see some amazing photographs of obscure but powerful tribal monarchs who still rule in Africa. This is Nyimi Kok Mabiintsh III, whose royal apparel weighs 160 pounds.
I watched “Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project” on Sundance last night, unprepared for its intensity. It was described as a documentary about a model-turned-photographer who takes pictures of her schizophrenic mother.
Like “Tarnation,” it sucked me in from the very beginning. It only took a few minutes for me to form the opinion that Tierney Gearon is just as crazy as her 64 year old mother, if not more so. She gets her mother to stand outside in the freezing snow, wildly taking snapshots as the older woman pleads to go back inside.
Watching this documentary is excruciating but endlessly fascinating. It forces one to confront ideas about motherhood, family, mental illness, and exploitation.
Tierney wants to be a good mother, but when her child sobs, her instinct is to photograph him rather than comfort him. She literally uses her new baby as a prop. But she clearly enjoys an intimacy with her children that is really extraordinary. She speaks to them honestly, and joyously takes part in their games, even when it means letting them jump over her as she lays on the grass, hugely pregnant.
Tierney’s mother is a vibrant old lady who lives alone in a ramshackle house and occasionally lashes out at her manipulative daughter. At one point she screams at Tierney, “I gave you everything! All my love and my beauty! But you won’t help me, you bitch!” It’s a moment of bitter raw emotion, which cuts to the heart of the matter, I think.
Mothers who do their best are still not good enough, and crazy mothers leave their mark. Craziness runs through Tierney Gearon’s family like a virus, but she doesn’t see it. I worry for her three kids, who will undoubtedly struggle with her craziness and their own, in the end. They will probably become parents of crazy children. Nature loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger. In this family, like so many, the trigger is pulled over and over.
The photos that made Tierney a figure of controversy are beautiful and disturbing. It’s hard to see how they could have been considered pornographic. But she does manage to imbue her pictures with an ineffable weirdness that makes a family picnic look like a satanic ritual. She seems like a courageous survivor who would eat her own kids if they got stranded on a desert island.
Watch this movie if you’re up to it. You can buy it on Amazon.com.
