beauty

Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil

mandy — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

In this well-crafted ethnography, anthropologist Alexander Edmonds explores narratives and practices surrounding plastic surgery in contemporary Brazil. Cosmetic procedures, or estetica, have been increasing rapidly among the urban populations. Rather than simply lamenting the increase of plastic surgeries in a country famous for embracing the sensual, Edmonds instead explores the reasons why estetica has become so popular across race, class, and gender lines. Examining beauty culture in Brazil from an ethnographic perspective, he suggests in Pretty Modern that it is essential to understand what beauty means and does for differently located social actors.

Arguing that anthropologists have typically ignored the aesthetics and erotic allure of beauty, he instead takes practices such as plastic surgery seriously for what they can reveal about the fears and aspirations of urban Brazilians. He begins from the premise that perceptions and acts of beautification can only be understood within specific moments and relationships, and he set out to explore the locations where definitions of beauty are defined and negotiated: cosmetic surgery clinics, public hospitals, TV studios, favelas, cafes, and homes.

Edmonds interviewed and observed plastic surgeons, celebrities, fashion models, low-income domestic workers, media producers, and housewives in order to make sense of the increasing popularity of plastic surgery. He shadowed doctors, students, and patients in hospitals and clinics to observe consultations, surgeries, and trainings. Additionally, he engaged with images and stories of plastic surgery in popular culture through ethnographic observations of media production sites and textual analysis of magazines dedicated to estetica.

Throughout Pretty Modern, Edmonds follows two simultaneous lines of analysis. First, he uses the specific socio-historical circumstances of contemporary Brazil to shed light on the significance of beauty and cosmetic surgery. At the same time, he uses the desire for beauty as a point of entry to examine the larger tensions and anxieties of modernizing Brazil, specifically the effects of the global capitalist economy, market inequalities, and consumer culture.

The book is organized into three interrelated sections, which each focus on plastic surgery in relation to a particular domain of modern experience: medicine and psychology, race and nation, and gender and sexuality. First, Edmonds provides a genealogy of self-esteem and shows how this concept has allowed plastic surgery to be mobilized as treatment for mental suffering. He situates this analysis in the longer history of medical and therapeutic techniques of self-governance in Brazil and examines how the redefinition of cosmetic surgery as a method of “aesthetic health” has produced a language of rights around these practices.

Next, Edmonds contextualizes current beauty practices through Brazilian nationalism and local racial politics, and explores the historically specific ways that color, beauty, and power intersect. He unpacks the aesthetics of race and the scientific racism that imbues discussions of beauty and appearance in past and present Brazil.

Finally, Edmonds examines the role of cosmetic surgery in relation to the larger political economy of female reproduction. Specifically, he shows the ways that plastic surgery highlights the tensions between women’s roles as sexual and maternal subjects and argues that plastic surgeries have become naturalized as part of women’s health along with cesareans and tubal litigations.

Edmond’s thorough analysis is shaped by his engagement with broader literatures on Brazilian history and anthropology, capitalist modernity, neoliberal subjectivity, and the political economy of desire. However, Pretty Modern also reflects the best aspects of ethnographic research and writing: thick descriptions of personalities, spaces, and encounters; detailed accounts of conversations with a wide array of people; and a refusal to ignore or explain away the contradictions that shape people’s perceptions and practices in everyday life.

Written by: Traci Yoder, April 5th 2011

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:28:00 +0000

Directed by Anne Sundberg, Ricki Stern

In the previous millennium when I was an idealistic young thing attending Barnard College, the women’s college affiliated with Columbia University, there was a lot of talk about who before us had walked the hallowed halls: anthropologist Margaret Mead; writers Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zora Neale Thurston, Francine du Plessix Gray, Patricia Highsmith and Ntozake Shange; recent United States ambassador to the U.N. Jeanne Kirkpatrick; musicians Laurie Anderson and Suzanne Vega (whose song “Luka” was then on all the airwaves); NPR’s Susan Stamberg; nationally syndicated columnist Anna Quindlen; choreographer Twyla Tharp; and a pre-Omnimedia Martha Stewart, whose daughter had also recently attended.

We students looked up to these women, our heroes. No trivia about them was too slight to swap and discuss. But I can only remember a couple of times when the name Joan Rivers was mentioned, and then only with a smirk. It seemed unbelievable that someone like her—brash, crass, undignified, disfigured by plastic surgery even then—could have once been part of our very serious undertakings in academia and feminism. Above all, we were earnest, and serious, and she was not.

The truth is that we failed to recognize Rivers for the pioneer she was. Those were the early days of Seinfeld. The backstage world of stand up comedy was still a mystery. There was no Comedy Central. We had no idea how brutal the world was in which she had risen. What a boy’s club. We were feminists, but we still thought we had to be ladies, or at least decorous. We disapproved of Joan Rivers.

Well, what did we know? Martha would go on to rule over all things female: weddings, entertaining, flowers, crafts, cooking. But the surprise is that Joan Rivers, now seventy-five years old, who seemed even then to be on the wane, continues. And the entertaining new documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work shows the incredible scrappiness and determination it has taken her to survive.

Born in 1933, Joan Rivers grew up Joan Molinsky in affluent Larchmont, NY, a dark-haired girl with a big nose. Her mother, as she relates, continually assured her that “looks don’t matter.” Meaning that she was ugly and they all knew it. “No man,” Joan says, at one particularly poignant moment, “has ever told me I looked beautiful. Oh, they say, ‘You look great!’ But never beautiful.” And so the plastic surgeries began—very early, from all appearances. By the time of her first TV appearances, in the mid-1960s, her nose had been transformed into a ski slope, although not yet the snub it is today.

Part of the fascination of the film is the grotesque state of her present face, with eyes slanted to cat-like angles from numerous lifts and lips and cheeks so swollen she can sometimes barely speak. But despite her obsession with her looks, Joan is, in an interesting way, completely without vanity. The film opens with her bare face, shot closer-up than any of us would allow for ourselves. One can see the veins in her eyelids and hints of scar tissue around her eyes and nose. She looks old, unhealthy, fragile, almost dead. Gradually, thick stage makeup is slapped on, in a healthy golden shade that gives no hint of the ashen, ruddy skin beneath. Heavy eye shadows and liners, lip liners and lipstick, until the Joan we know from photos finally emerges. It is a complete transformation. Joan has really let us see the real her underneath.

She even allows the camera to run right after she returns from a session at the dermatologist, where she’s been all “shot up.” Her face is splotchy from the needle, her cheeks puffed up so high it looks as though she’s suffering a horrible allergic reaction. But what Joan needs more than anything, far more than dignity, is attention. If the camera wants to roll, she’s game.

In the same way she is completely open about the ups and downs of her career, her relationships with her husband and daughter, the humiliations, anger, fears and needs that drive her. She even agrees, for the money, to a celebrity roast she finds mean and hurtful. She needs the money to fund her unbelievably lavish lifestyle. She has ridden in only limousines “since 1986.” And she lives in insane palatial comfort. Her manager says it’s like “the Queen of England.” Joan says it’s like “Maria (sic) Antoinette.” Let’s just say poor Bernie Madoff lived like a pauper compared to Joan. But she is also generous to her numerous staff. They are paid well, and Joan takes care of their children’s private school tuitions too. No wonder they are devoted. Good thing. It looks as though her staff are the only ones celebrating her 75th birthday. And one of the saddest moments in the film is when she says she has probably only three friends whom she can call to share a piece of good news.

And so it’s work, work and more work for Joan, who is perhaps just as driven as the legendary Martha. From Florida to Connecticut to the backwoods of Wisconsin, from plane to plane, convention hall to casino to QVC to shill the jewelry that makes her millions, despite the indignities, humiliation and exhaustion, Joan soldiers on.

Joan is all the things we young Barnard women abhorred back in the day: rude, obnoxious, offensive, freakish. But she is also a woman who recognized what she needed and went out to get it. Self-made, self-perpetuating, hard-working and indefatigable, Joan Rivers is a force to be reckoned with, indeed a piece of work.

Cross-posted at Frothygirlz.com

Written by: Grace @ Frothygirlz.com, August 3rd 2010

It's Not That I'm Bitter...: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 16:02:00 +0000

By Gina Barreca

St. Martin’s Griffin

Challenging the norms of our modern society and how the feminist movement has evolved into a misfire of sorts (a mix of improvements with unexpected setbacks), Gina Barreca wrote her book It’s Not that I’m Bitter... to share her perspective. She covers a wide range of topics, from the beauty-obsessed culture women live in to how the holidays are unnecessarily stressful for women due to misguided expectations to our tendency toward behavior dictated by guilt and fear. Yet, she addresses these topics with a snarky sense of humor, regularly citing, “Not that I’m bitter…”

Immediately tackling being a woman in her fifties surviving in this world defined by body image, despite being a feminist and an intellectual, Gina admits that even she suffers from common women-only setbacks of bathing suit season-induced low self-esteem, and the like. The truth is that men and women are very different, and there are many aspects of being a woman that only other women can understand. Reading It’s Not that I’m Bitter... is like having a long chat with a close girlfriend, where she vents about the pressures and expectations of society, questions her own neurotic behavior in hopes of finding validation, proudly defines her stance, and proclaims judgments while admitting to some self-deprecation in the process. It’s amusing, a bit confusing, but ultimately relatable in a way only a woman would understand.

The title of this book made it sound as if this author had found personal peace with all that ails womankind in our modern world. Apparently not, and I was very disappointed with the ending. It abruptly stops on a note of Gina’s advice and curious questions for the main female figures of the previous presidential election (i.e., Hilary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, and Cindy McCain). Yes, it was amusing, but I was expecting some grand conclusion, not another random capsule of thought. Conquering the world is apparently still a work in progress for Gina, as it is for the rest of us too. And this helps the author to come off as a pal rather than a patronizing professor.

A mix of feminist perspective, humorous angst about our beauty-obsessed culture, and random (albeit amusing) ramblings make up It’s Not that I’m Bitter.... You won’t find any solutions to the problems you face as a woman (though a man would surely gain insight into women… and probably run screaming), but you will find a comedic look at today’s society, and where women need to stop holding themselves back.

Written by: Sarah Eve Nichols-Fulghum, July 25th 2010

Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism

admin — Fri, 07 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Natasha Walter

Virago Press

Shhh, stop and listen for a moment. Listen to the radio, to TV ads, to government policy, to toy stores, to popular magazines, and (OMG) to "science." If you are a fan of equality and freedom of choice, you may want to listen up. And when you’ve had your fill of propaganda it may just be time to shout, "Sexual discrimination never died!"

Natasha Walter’s latest book, Living Dolls, uses an array of examples to outline perfectly how un-free "liberated" women really are. There is a momentum building in the men vs. women camp again, and this isn’t just old fashioned sexism where women are fine so long as they knew their place. This is super sexism, where women are best not looking too real (for fear of causing offense), and where being like Barbie is the ideal. Living Dolls strengthens this premise at every turn.

The book starts with a trip to a multilevel toy shop in London where one can take the elevator to a floor "for girls" that is all decked out in that colour that we females find irresistible: pink. If it wasn’t clear before this floor spelled it out, little girls like to play dress-up as princesses, homemakers, nurses, and brides, and play with baby dolls and other soft, squishy games. Of course, girls do like all of this. (Being the mother of two daughters, I have waded through my fair share of pink landscapes and lamented the fact that one of my daughters wore nothing but pink for two years of her pre-school life before going to real school turned her into a goth. Black is now her favourite); however, girls also like doing other things. They like getting dirty and exploring, climbing trees, inventing stuff, solving puzzles, and smashing things up. In my experience, when free to choose girls and boys end up playing pretty similar games until gender is made an issue—and that’s the problem. Sexism starts early and it seems that in today’s world you are either all boy or all girl; blurring that line can spell social and emotional disaster.

Sound a bit dramatic? Well this is only the beginning of the book, but I can attest to the jeering that happens when a girl admits to preferring Legos over Barbies or tree climbing over playing house. Is it any wonder that when we create planet boy and planet girl in kindergarten that we need a manual to help us decode those beings from Mars or Venus once when we hit puberty?

I was fascinated by the part of the book that reviewed a series of research projects that claim to have found differences between the male and female brains. Walter shows how these experiments are rife with bias. This section makes for fascinating, and somewhat challenging, reading. I have often fallen into the ‘gender brain’ trap when describing people I know or situations that I’ve observed. It may be natural, but that doesn’t mean it’s only biological! Our brains may or may not have the same capabilities, but we wouldn't know because our society and social interactions thrive on nurturing difference. It’s a crazy dichotomy that we are creating.

I always enjoy reading books that make me want to go out and change the world, and Living Dolls certainly does that. It makes many valid and scientifically rigorous points. Read the book and challenge stereotypes. I didn’t come out of a box, and I’m not going to make one my home now. So there!

Excerpted from Realize Beauty

Written by: Amanda Foxon-Hill, May 6th 2010

New Moon Girls (The Beauty Issue)

admin — Sat, 01 May 2010 12:00:00 +0000

New Moon Girls

If you’re a parent or a person who interacts with and cares about children, you might have noticed some worrisome trends, especially among girls. I have seen girls as young as seven show concerns over “getting fat” or being unpopular. Bullying, body image conflict, and other issues seem to be plaguing young women earlier and earlier.

Most women who call themselves feminists would agree that enriching the younger generation is crucial. The statistics on young girls today are disturbing: according to the National Institute on Media and the Family, forty percent of girls between nine and ten surveyed had tried to lose weight. The NIMF also published study results that stated the following: “One in every three articles in leading teen girl magazines also included a focus on appearance, and most of the advertisements (fifty percent) used an appeal to beauty to sell their products.” This is getting serious, folks. We cannot continue to feed our daughters this kind of messaging and then wonder why rates for eating disorders and low self-esteem are so high. That said, I think it can sometimes be hard to give these girls positive messages that are digestible and make sense at their level. Who wants to listen to boring old parents anyway?

Thankfully there are forms of media to help. If your daughter, sister, or friend is drawn to magazines, hide their latest issue of Teen Beat and replace it with New Moon Girls. The magazine has so many fun sections that she will hardly miss it. New Moon puts a spin on traditional magazine sections to make them even more relevant for girls. Instead of a Letter from the Editor being written by an adult, girls who helped work on the magazine write it. The advice column provides advice from—you guessed it—girls. The entire magazine focuses not only on giving girl readers good content but also in making sure that it is credible and relevant by getting it from the very girls New Moon targets. Simply put, this magazine is genius.

The Beauty Issue (May-June 2010) is full of positive messaging and reinforcement, something girls today often lack from the media. The issue contains features on beauty including how to boost your body confidence, your favorite body part, and a piece on inner beauty, as well as short fiction. The idea of beauty is tackled from every possible angle, giving girls an opportunity to discover what they like most about themselves rather than showing them yet another picture of female celebrities and models.

I am encouraged and thrilled about magazines like New Moon Girls and my hope is that they will continue to compete with more mainstream magazines for the attention of young girls. (Hint: They can’t do so without our support!) This magazine is for anyone who wants a girl in his or her life to know just how special she is.

Written by: April D. Boland, May 1st 2010

Face It: What Women Really Feel as Their Looks Change

admin — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Vivian Diller, Jill Muir-Sukenick

Hay House

As the authors of Face It explain in the preface to their book, women who came of age during and after feminism's second wave were brought up to believe our looks don’t have to define who we are or determine our possibilities. What mattered more in this 'enlightened' new age were our brains, our talents, our degrees, our abilities, and our ambition. The paradox is that women continue to receive conflicting messages from the media and our culture about the role appearance plays in our lives. Because many of us have never attempted to unravel our ambivalent feelings about our appearance, the way it impacts our self-esteem, and how we relate to our family and friends, we deny these feelings when we see the first signs of aging—or react with a vengeance to try to arrest the aging process.

Face It is all about guiding women through this potentially treacherous time, during which many of us feel the very ground shifting beneath us. Like many adolescent girls, aging women cling to what the authors describe as “masks” that take the form of "workaholism," addiction to cosmetic surgery, excessive exercise, and dieting to protect ourselves from the sadness and loss we feel at the change in our appearance. In this thoughtful and engaging book, the authors, both psychotherapists and former models, present the stories of how different women approached the aging process. Runway models, nurses, homemakers, and businesswomen, who range in age from early thirties to mid-sixties, tell us their stories.

Some women never felt their appearance played much of a role in their lives, and were taken by surprise when they felt a sense of loss, or even panic, about their changing looks. In contrast, the models interviewed for the book were aware of aging, given that it pushes them out of their profession at the youthful age of twenty-five, and experienced a range of feelings and emotions similar to what many women face when they enter midlife. For women who believed that their intelligence and ambition were their ticket to success, it was often embarrassing to admit to friends and family how their changing looks were impacting them, because it seemed frivolous or superficial.

The authors use the experiences of these different women successfully navigating this challenging time with the use of an innovative six-step program that forms a pathway to a new acceptance and understanding of the aging process. This program involves taking an honest inventory of one's experiences with beauty and acknowledging how family and culture shapes one's identity as a woman. While the authors stress that they aren’t against using plastic surgery to enhance one's appearance, they want to give women the tools to make decisions about it from a place of strength and appreciation for their unique attributes, not out of a panic to "stay in the game."

As a forty-something woman, I found this book intriguing and was pleased to discover that it lived up to its billing of helping women navigate such a challenging time in our lives. Face It helps women of any age to gain an understanding of how to fully own the aging process and not react out of fear to our changing looks and bodies, but to, instead, appreciate and learn from the journey.

Written by: Gita Tewari, April 23rd 2010

Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By William T. Vollmann

Ecco

Full disclosure: I am an avid fan of William T. Vollmann's work and was excited to read this book. Vollmann often has strange and interesting things to say about women and gender relations, and his notorious interest in prostitutes (who feature prominently in both his fiction and non-fiction) may almost be labeled as an obsession. In his latest book, Kissing The Mask, Vollmann concentrates on the nature of femininity by viewing it primarily through the lens of the ancient, gorgeous masks of Japanese Noh theater. It is also a meditation on the idea of femininity as a staged performance.

Noh theater is far too complex to encapsulate in just a few sentences, and Vollmann himself often professes trouble in defining it thoroughly. At first glance, Noh seems a bizarre choice of medium through which to focus on femininity, as most Noh actors are male and men traditionally play the roles of women with the aid of costuming and masks. However, Vollmann directs his attention, and the readers', to the beautifully rendered Noh masks representing female characters. These become a metaphor for the “mask” of femininity that many women wear: makeup, jewelry, clothing, and other adornments that are more or less socially mandated.

Similarly, the elaborate and carefully orchestrated movements on the Noh stage are analogous to the “staged” femininity also involving complex, time-consuming, and money-burning ornamentation that often results in constricted and painful mobility. Vollmann is concerned with what “manifests” a woman as opposed to what a woman “is,” and in this endeavor he visits Japanese geishas and transvestites, both of whom could be said to wear the feminine mask. He digresses into history of what other cultures have traditionally considered “beautiful,” and manages to weave in thoughts about porn stars and artists' muses.

Vollmann readily admits that he perceives women as “the other,” and is fully aware of the fact that he is viewing women through the privilege of a male gaze. He waxes rhapsodic about female beauty throughout the text, basically elevating women on a very high and poetic pedestal, which made me slightly uncomfortable; when a person (or entire gender) is put up on a pedestal, it's a long way to fall. Vollmann appears to genuinely like and respect women, however, and my discomfort was minor and temporary. He also, as in his other nonfiction books, makes no pretense about being an objective observer; he is fully immersed as a character in his own true story.

Kissing The Mask is highly valuable as a look into the secretive, baroque, and intricate Japanese subcultures of Noh theater and geisha teahouses, with the author's personal study of staged femininity mostly as a bonus. Furthermore, it's enriched with William Vollmann's gorgeous and almost lyrical prose, plenty of photographs and drawings, several appendices with notes and chronologies, and a glossary for the many Japanese words and phrases liberally sprinkled through the material.

Written by: Natalie Ballard, April 6th 2010

Mutluluk

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Directed by Abdullah Oguz

First Run Features

In his first few shots, all very wide angles and washed-out greens, Abdullah Oguz shows his cards as an ambitious, technically brilliant filmmaker. In the Anatolian countryside, a flock of sheep turns a slow circle as the camera, peering down on a girl’s body, does the same. A melody—composed by Zülfü Livaneli, who also wrote the book on which this film was based—hums through the valley. A shepherd picks up the girl, and so begins Mutluluk.

The characters in a village drama are executing by rote what, as a character glibly explains later, circumstances demanded: Young Meryem (Özgü Namal) has been raped. Her father reluctantly submits to cousin Ali Riza Amen (Mustafa Avkiran) insistence she be killed to mitigate the family’s shame. When Ali Riza’s son Cemal (Murat Han) returns from military service, he begrudgingly takes the girl to Istanbul in order to carry out his father’s sentence. But he can't carry it out, and after his last-minute change of heart, Cemal and Meryem flee Istanbul and Ali Riza’s henchmen. Aimless after a stint at a remote fishery on the Mediterranean, on a whim the young cousins join a stranger named Irfan (Talat Belet), who has fled his wife and professorship for a yachting joy-ride around the Aegean.

From there, the film devolves into maudlin lectures on beauty, purity, and love, giving its stars little room to develop their broadly drawn characters; Cemal swings between stoically surly and jealously unhinged, Irfan acts predictably free-spirited, and for the most part Meryem hangs back meekly. Fortunately, the lectures are lent some credence by the wide-angle attention that cinematographer Mirsad Herovic pays the seascapes and craggy shores and by the adaptable actors’ still game performances.

However, some of Mutluluk most powerful scenes become its most disappointing because the dramatic confrontations they stage prove neither earned nor transformative. Oguz saves the identity of Meryem’s rapist as a minor and unnecessary shocker for the end, and he pulls too many tricks to convey intensity: sped up tracking shots, sudden switches to black and white, barrages of extreme facial close-ups.

Such clutter is doubly frustrating because Oguz is a gifted storyteller with a knack for expansive imagery—fenced-in fishes, an elevated expressway—and an affection for his characters. Thanks to the tenderness with which he imbues even mundane exchanges, Mutluluk develops almost imperceptibly from a tale of sheltered villagers struggling with imposed moral codes into one of dear friends negotiating their personal senses of duty. While Meryem stumbles headlong past the sites of her rape and would-be murder, the film moves gorgeous and delicately alongside toward some seafaring redemption.

Written by: Sam Schulz, December 7th 2009

Sins Invalid (10/04/2009)

admin — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:21:00 +0000

Brava Theater

San Francisco, California

As a dancer, I feel most alive when I'm present in my body; when I breathe hard, feel the power of my feet on the ground, and sense the weight in my head and arms. To feel embodied is an exhilarating experience, and after seeing Sins Invalid's fourth annual performance, "An Unashamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility," I was struck by the complexities of being present and proud in a body that can make others feel deeply uncomfortable.

The show opens on Matt Fraser, a disabled performer, dancing naked, unashamedly, and beautifully as an audio recording berates him. Instead of music that reflects the grace and power of Frasier's movement, the audience (and Frasier) is bombarded with voices that echo the internal reactions many have to seeing a body different from what they perceive as normal. As I watched Frasier throw himself across the stage, it became clear that for him to feel embodied takes more strength and courage than most people are asked to summon in a lifetime.

Sins Invalid is a performance project that celebrates artist with disabilities, centralizing those who are queer and gender-variant. The project itself was conceived of, and is run by, disabled artists of color whose mission is to redefine beauty, sexiness, and normality to include people of all marginalized communities. From the cheers, whoops, and applause I heard during the show, it was clear the audience was overwhelmingly supportive of and inspired by Sins Invalid's mission. When confronted with the bodies of the performers, the audience became audibly excited rather than uncomfortable. They embraced the idea that resonates throughout the show: every body is beautiful.

I braced myself as the narrator announced we were about to witness a piece that contained S&M. I wasn't sure if, in addition to wrapping my head around the difficulties that disabled men and women face, I could watch human beings inflict pain onto one another only twenty feet in front of me. As it turns out, the humor and wit that Ralph Dickinson, Leroy Franklin Moore Jr., and Seeley Quest brought to the stage was a delightful celebration of sexuality and seduction. Watching the dominatrix role-play with her client validated the disabled client's sexuality in a refreshing and empowering way.

As the show progressed, I kept thinking to myself, "any discomfort the audience feels is not even a fraction of the discomfort that some of the individuals on stage or those they represent feel daily." While it was wonderful to see an audience seeking out and finding empowerment in Sins Invalid's show, I believe it is equally important for those who wouldn't seek it out to experience it as well. I can imagine a different audience—perhaps less open to or familiar with the ideas brought up during the performance—that might have felt troubled by certain moments of the evening. To face the pain and suffering of others takes will power.

Sins Invalid speaks to those who are rendered invisible, as well as to those who render others invisible; we're all on both sides of the equation at some point in our lives. To watch the beauty and struggle of embodiment is an important experience for both the body and mind.

Written by: Rachel Costello, October 27th 2009

Going Gray: How to Embrace Your Authentic Self With Grace and Style

admin — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:28:00 +0000

By Anne Kreamer

Little, Brown & Company

With predominant silver streaks cropping up in the underside of my dark hair, I have to admit that I was excited to see what this book was all about. I wasn’t disappointed. Kreamer put a lot of effort and research into the work.

Bravely, she takes the plunge into letting her natural hair color grow out from the dyed. It takes courage, determination, and much soul reflection along the way.

As she grays, she investigates many avenues that relate to the cosmetic industry, including hair coloring, plastic surgery, and advertising. No stone is left unturned, not even advertising geared towards men.

It is very interesting that the media presents dyes, makeup, and surgery as gimmicks that make men and women look more "natural," instead of what they really appear to be without any "enhancement."

Kramer works with professionals to come up with surveys that poll the general public, and even goes so far as to create fake online dating identities to gain feedback on preferences. Turns out, gray hair is hot—if the person wearing it has confidence.

Attitude is more important than artificially trying to look younger. Besides, after studying examples, people can generally tell how old you are, even if you’ve dyed all the gray/silver out of your hair and have faithfully Botoxed the wrinkles out of your face.

She makes a very good point about tackling self-perception; it’s about lifestyle, not just throwing dye on the hair. Wear the clothes that suit your personality, exercise, examine how you feel about yourself and why.

The only drawback to the book was that she didn’t really pay attention to people who don’t have the money or interest to attend gyms or go to salons in the first place. Her study focuses on people who spend money at the gym and the salon, not on people who exercise at home or out in nature and aren’t materialistic. Otherwise, the book was very inspirational on many levels.

Written by: Nicolette Westfall, April 2nd 2009

Margaret Cho’s Beautiful Tour

admin — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:32:00 +0000

Organized by Margaret Cho

Margaret Cho’s Beautiful Tour, which began in February 2008, is still scheduled to visit a number of lucky locations throughout the United States. As usual, Cho’s brand of feminist, LGBTQ, activist, and politicized humor was hilarious, raunchy, and thought-provoking. Unlike so much of the comedy gracing television screens lately, Cho continues to infuse her comedy with cutting edge analysis of race, gender, body image, and sexuality. From uproarious imitations of Paris Hilton to advice prompted by Britney Spears lack-of-underwear-in-public fiasco (Cho warned “don’t let people take pictures of your pussy”), to a narrative about the difficulties of travelling with one’s Hitachi Magic Wand in tow, to the wonderful “Eat Me Out” song that closed the show, Cho’s humor engaged not only with contemporary popular culture, but also with pressing issues of feminist concern.

The sustained focus on the female body and body image was hardly surprising given the name of the tour. However, Cho went beyond her common refrain of “I’m so fucking beautiful,” in order to offer comedic analysis of everything from anal bleaching to tattoos. Cho often relates the story of the deejay who asked her in an on-air interview what she would do if she woke up one day and she were beautiful. Her take on this insulting question never fails to pack a punch. This time around, Cho countered the paradigm upheld by the deejay’s question, and by wider American culture, as an insidious narrative prompting not only body hatred, but also hatred of non-white bodies, non-hetero bodies, and non-normative bodies of all types.

Cho’s message about beauty is ultimately about feeling beautiful about oneself not because one is able to fit cultural norms or play to the normative gaze, but rather, because one should realize that we are all, too put it in her terms, so fucking beautiful.

Written by: Professor What If, October 7th 2008

To Survive

admin — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:27:00 +0000

By Joan as Police Woman

Cheap Lullaby Records

The name Joan Wasser is not well-known to most people, but it should be. Collaborating first with bands like The Dambuilders in the ‘90s and, more recently, Antony and the Johnsons, Joan Wasser first came onto the music scene as Joan as Police Woman in 2006 with her debut album, Real Life. The album was critically acclaimed for its haunting honesty and beauty, and her sophomore release, To Survive, fortunately sticks with that formula.

The ten tracks on To Survive are soulful. Wasser ranges from sounding like Kate Bush to Chan Marshall to Neil Young with a common thread of vulnerability. While Wasser’s lyrics are far from self-assured, their honesty is the most appealing thing about To Survive. She does not convey the voice of a strong woman, but one that life has kicked around quite a few times and is looking to hold on to something or for someone to hold on to her.

The album is hopeful and realistic. In the title track, Wasser conveys that life is not perfect, and in times of depression and loneliness, you must just find “the spark to survive.” For Wasser, that spark appears to be love. The album ends with “To America,” a duet with Rufus Wainwright in which the lyrics warn not to starve yourself of love because it will save you. This realization explains the importance and urgency Wasser places on love throughout To Survive and the beautiful, building duet is the perfect ending to an album about the imperfections and loneliness of life and the things that can rescue you.

Written by: Jill Hindenach, August 19th 2008