Sociological Images blog - take a look

Sociological Images is a good blog that deconstructs images in ads, magazines, tv etc etc. Because they're just looking at images in general, they touch on everything from feminism to race, and of course they often post about beauty issues. Here are a few examples...

* "Derelicte" fashion à la Ben Stiller has finally become a reality.

* A dye for returning your vagina to its "natural" pink hue!

* Being photographed "naturally" has come to mean not-photoshopped, rather than non-made-up.

* The role of photography in fat acceptance.

* A plus-sized model used in a regular fashion shoot (rather than an Accent Your Body! shoot).

* And the best one: " Love magazine ... posed eight women “generally acknowledged as the most beautiful in the world” in identical poses. The effect, editor-in-chief Katie Grand asserts, is to demonstrate “how much they differed physically from one another, which is why we also printed their measurements…”" ...And their bodies look almost exactly alike. Baaaah ha ha haaa.

[Photo from fashionista]

Just love him for who he is (Nick Jonas and The Administration)

I like Nick Jonas--he's a cute little gaffer, and I am bound to admire anyone with Type 1 diabetes who can keep up a pop star lifestyle, and a side project too. And this is a cute little song.

And I like the name of his band, it's very funk (Prince and the Revolution, Parliament Funkadelic.) Can you believe the drummer's last name is Bland? He was in Prince's band for a long time (as were two others of Nick's new band). And even his website is cool.

But about the video: I'm all for these "let's accept people" songs and videos, but this particular style of video is getting OLD. And the prisoner who holds up the "changed" sign and then sheds a tear... gag me with a smurf. His sign should say "Manipulator." Or "con man."



Bah. I say skip this video and watch "Burnin' Up" instead. ("...I can't grow a mustache.")

Screen Adaptations: The Truth About Cats and Dogs

So this is basically a modernization of Cyrano de Bergerac, and I remember when Cats and Dogs came out, my roommate had trouble getting into the premise of the movie because Janeane Garofalo was Hollywood's idea of ugly. (The basic plot is that Garofalo uses her "cuter" friend as a front with a guy she has a great phone relationship with.)

I have to agree. (Myself, I hated the scene where the two women try to all-out compete for the guy. It just seemed demeaning. I would never, in a million years, do that.) According to wiki Garofalo later called the movie sexist and distanced herself from it.


Here is Australian Baz Luhrman's take on the ugly duckling: Fran in Strictly Ballroom. Plot: Only the dumpy girl in the dance studio is brave enough to partner Scott so he can dance his un-strictly ballroom style of dance. One of my favourite comedies.

And a woman/semi-independent filmmaker's version: Rose in Dogfight. Plot: Marines about to ship off to Viet-Nam play a cruel game of who can find the ugliest date. Rose finds out, and Eddie spends the rest of the night making it up to her. I think it's one of the sweetest romance movies of all time.

Iris Apfel: As Billy Ocean would sing, she's simply awesome

Here's a pretty fantastic style icon I came across this week. Her wardrobe was made into an exhibit--I wish it would come to town, but at some point I assume she needed her clothes back!

From the Peabody Essex Museum video:

[paraphrased] Style is part of your psyche - you have to study yourself, learn who you really are, what you're comfortable wearing, how comfortable you are with how people react to what you wear. "Expressing yourself is the most important thing because if you don't you're all bottled up, and you're just choking. Free! Free!"

From the Guardian article:

the next time someone said she'd changed her life, the fan was a 70-year-old lady in Florida. Apfel thanked her, then took her aside and said: "Would you mind very much explaining that to me?" So the woman did. She said that she'd never wanted to look just like everybody else, but she wasn't sure how to do that without looking silly. Once she saw Apfel's show, she knew, and what's more, she said, "now that I've learned I don't have to look like everybody else, I don't have to think like everybody else".

From a lookonline.com interview:

M.K.: But don’t you think most older women are urged to wear boring beige from head to toe and to sort of fade into the background?

I.A.: Not only older women, younger women too.

M.K.: There’s too much good taste around, don’t you agree?

I.A.: Absolutely.

More clothing pics:

- the museum display
- random pics of Iris

iSurgeon: Fixing your nose on the go!

Woopee! Now there's an application for your phone, so you can see what you'd look like with plastic surgery. Oh iSurgeon, where have you been all my life? Now all I need is to get myself a cell phone...

You're weird and your mother dresses you funny

Sarah Kramer was one of the first hit vegan cookbook writers (How It All Vegan co-written with Tanya Barnard), and as you can see from her pics she is super cute and stylish and appears to be a lot of fun. Here is a recent blog posting she did:

My niece said to me once “Auntie, did you know that everyone thinks you’re weird. Like, not ‘weird weird’ but super weird?”

I said “So?”

And then she gave me this funny look like a light bulb went off in her head … I am so hoping that what I witnessed was the moment she realized it was ok to be different, unique and to forge your own path. :)

o

Everyone can be interesting

As I mentioned yesterday, I just read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares.

A lot of the book deals with beauty, individuality, judging appearances and such. I liked the angle in the Tibby storyline. She's the cynical funky girl, and she's making a documentary about people she considers lame, who she think lead lame lives. Like the guy who plays video games all day long, and the woman with the creepily super long nails, and her hyper manager at her retail job.


Tibby meets an equally cynical girl, a few years younger and with leukemia, who helps her with her movie. But this girl sees what's interesting about these people, and helps Tibby see people a bit more compassionately. It's well done, not maudlin. And in later books she even dates the video game guy.

Screen Adaptations: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

I just finished reading this book, so I thought I should watch the movie. It's a pretty good adaptation, I only felt indifferent about the Lena storyline (bottom right corner, played by Alexis Bledel.)

In the book Lena is REALLY beautiful, but she's extremely quiet and private, and she's very mistrustful of guys because they're always trying to get in her pants. So when she goes to Greece to visit family, she almost misses out on a nice guy because of her suspicions.

But in the movie they make the romance (rather than her inner struggle) more prominent, and the obstacle to their romance is that he's a Bad Boy and her family doesn't want her to date him. Which is completely opposite from the book (where everyone loves him.)

From a movie point of view I don't really blame them for the change--I guess it's more Dramatic! and it gives the movie a strong romance storyline. But they do lose the complexity of the character, and of being a really pretty girl.

(I watched Sisterhood 2, but haven't read the other books so I can't review it. It's a good romance movie though!)

Another day in the suburbs

My dad mentioned Rush's song "Subdivisions" on my comments recently. Not being a Rush fan (other than "Take Off to the Great White North") I'd never listened to the lyrics. So I have two reactions.

First -- great song and I'm sure it's provided comfort to many a teenager over the past couple decades.

Second -- I always have sort of mixed feelings when people express disdain for the suburbs. [The following is not a critique of the Rush song.] I dislike the way some people judge suburb dwellers, as though they're all the same. As though living in a certain type of neighborhood turns you into a zombie. As if originality, creativity and authenticity only exist in cities. It's just another way of stereotyping, and shows that those doing the judging are as into conformity as the people they're dissing. They just have their own idea of what we all should conform to.





Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown

Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone
Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone

[Chorus:]
(Subdivisions)
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
(Subdivisions)
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth the unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth

Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights...

Where is my pirate shirt? I want a pirate shirt!

In case anyone gets the wrong impression from this blog that I'm against makeup, fashion etc. I should share with you the fact that:

- if there were no starving peoples in the world (that is, if I felt guilt-free about spending wild amounts of money on clothes)

...I would dress like a drag queen. And on my casual days, like Prince. When I was in high school I LOVED these ads from Shiseido and Revlon. That's exactly how I would have loved to dress every day for school.