Books: Annabel by Kathleen Winter - sex reassignment

Just checking out the longlist for the Giller Prize. This book sounds interesting:

In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people are privy to the secret -- the baby's parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to raise the child as a boy named Wayne. But as Wayne grows to adulthood within the hyper-masculine hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self -- a girl he thinks of as Annabel -- is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life. Haunting, sweeping in scope, and stylistically reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, Annabel is a compelling debut novel about one person's struggle to discover the truth in a culture that shuns contradiction.

One of the biggest dichotomies in western society (and probably most societies) is the male-female one, and it's hard to wrap your mind around someone being both. We barely have the language for it. I think that's a kind of difference that's going to take a long time for us to accept and not treat as weird or abnormal so I'm glad someone seems to have written a good book about it. :-)

Sex and the City 2 - Wandering around Abu Dhabi trying to get laid

I'm on vacation right now, and I watched Sex and the City 2 on the plane ride from Ottawa to Vancouver. It was all they said it was, so I don't have anything to add re. the Orientalism, or the spoiled-nannified-mothers-whining storyline.

The main Carrie Theme of the movie was: What is marriage, what can you expect from it, etc. Carrie's husband thinks marriage should be whatever they want it to be; and Carrie agrees intellectually, but is having trouble jumping on board. Until she kisses an old boyfriend, feels guilty, and ends up agreeing with him.

I'm glad Carrie broadened her horizons a bit, even if stupidly, because I find her to be a really narrow character. Possibly this opinion is based on the fact that in the finale of the series she finally visited her favourite city in the whole wide world, that she'd allllways wanted to go to, and ended up moping around like a big baby the whole time because her mega-rich Russian artiste boyfriend wasn't paying attention to her. Proof enough, non? (Didn't she spend the last movie running around planning The Perfect Wedding and had to learn to Do the Wedding Her Own Way?)

As proof of how conventional she is, the writers had to keep reminding us of how original she was, by having both her ex and her husband repeat it to her. Ooh you're the most original woman I've ever known. Ooh ooh.

Look: Just as you are not an intellectual because you wander around Italy in a big shirt trying to get laid*, you are not An Original because you wander around New York in a big flower trying to get laid. Or Abu Dabhi.

* [Blackadder series 3 - "Ink and Incapability"]

I'm OK You're Not OK

Nicki Minaj on what's shocked her most about fame, as quoted in Ebony magazine:

How judgmental people can be. That’s the biggest thing. It’s almost like people act like they’re perfect and it makes them feel better to put you down. That’s the only shocking part. I always knew there’d be jealousy and envy. I guess that doesn’t change, even in the real world, so to speak. There’s jealousy and envy when you’re doing better than people. But I was taken aback by it. It was very shocking in the beginning.



Which makes me think of a passage in Oscar Wilde's play An Ideal Husband, which I just saw. One character is advising another that he shouldn't reveal something immoral he did in his youth:

...if you did make a clean breast of the whole affair, you would never be able to talk morality again. And in England a man who can’t talk morality twice a week to a large, popular, immoral audience is quite over as a serious politician.

It's still so true--we're all faulty people, so why do we expect perfection from public figures?

Just because it's beautiful: Li Ziaofeng

Random posting just because it's beautiful.

Clothing made from broken ceramics.

Li Xiaofeng

It looks like what Oscar Wilde would have worn to go into battle!

Need Waking Up? - Mos Def "Quiet Dog"

Plus-sized fashion week

New York fashion week apparently had its first ever plus-sized show. Nothing to write home about, though.

Extra post: It's preeeeeetty

Friend Maewitch's online store is now up and running. She loves beautiful handcrafted soaps and perfumes and jewelery and shiny nail polishi, but it can be expensive for Canadians to import. Now we can use her store instead! Check it out, if only because the site is preeeeetty. (Oh and I believe most of it is vegan or cruelty free.)

Real people? Say it ain't so! (Mike and Molly)

I'm not a fan of the sitcom, so I doubt I'll watch this, but nice to see a big couple on TV for once, instead of a large (and usually stupid and idiotic) man with a thin woman. Haven't seen this since Roseanne.

(Reuters)

McCarthy, who spent 10 years on "Gilmore Girls," said she signed on for "Mike & Molly" because she was intrigued by the script's humor and its realism. "It flips it back to the shows I grew up with like 'All in the Family' and 'Barney Miller' that all had people that looked like you," she said. "Everything wasn't so bionic. ...

Mark Roberts, who executive produces "Mike & Molly" with Lorre, said: "I wanted to do something with real people," he said. "People in most sitcoms live very unrealistic lives. Back in the days of Norman Lear, you had real people on television. We're hoping that real people with real issues are going to come back in style."

Pretty in Funny Clothes

Pretty in Pink is on TV. I only eventually saw it in my late teens, when the woman I babysat for rented it for me because she insisted I see it. I think because the thought the quirky-dressing-ness of the Molly Ringwald character reminded her of me. But I haven't seen it since. Jon Cryer's pretty funny.

Here is the advice that the principal gives our heroine: "If you put out signals saying that you don't want to belong, people will make sure that you don't."

I'm thinking about whether that's true, in regards to how you dress. Hmm. In high school, yes, for sure. Not sure about adult life, though. I think you can dress pretty eccentrically and you'll meet plenty of people still interested in you. Even by the end of high school, people have grown up quite a bit. The real danger zone is ages 13-16. If you can last that long, by 17 you're home free.

Bridalplastilicious

Umm I don't think any commentary is necessary for this one.

E! has announced a new show "Bridalplasty" in which 12 engaged women live in a mansion together and compete in "wedding-themed" challenges to win plastic surgery procedures from each bride's wish list.

Each week one bride-to-be will be voted off until the winning bride reveals her post-op body to her groom at the altar in the finale of the 10-episode series hosted by former Playboy model Shanna Moakler.

"Viewers will witness his emotional and possibly shocked reaction as they stand at the altar and he lifts her veil to see her for the first time following her extreme plastic surgery," the network said of the series that premieres on Nov 28. (Reuters)

Don't it make you wanna dance? - Abba Style

Will have you singing "chica chance-chance" and seeing the world through a Vaseline lens, all day long.

Maybe less bitching over Skinny Bitches

Well looks like now when someone comes to my store asking for Skinny Bitch, I might have an alternative to show them by the same author.


The series is diet oriented, but it's really animal-welfare-veganism hidden in *sexay* packaging, and made popular when Posh Spice was seen with it years ago. I read the book and thought it was terrible. The recipes were full of processed foods, the diet advice went against all normal advice (like "skip breakfast!") and one customer compared the narrative to that of people with anorexia.

It's the one series of books I will actively try to talk customers out of when they come in. At the very least I make sure they know it's a vegan diet, because they never do. How many people do you know who are ready to give up meat, eggs AND milk? Not many. These customers never are either.

I direct them to better fitness/diet books, and better vegan books. And if they want to Skinny Bitch pregnancy book, I direct them to the pregnancy nutrition section.

Buuut one of the authors has finally put out a normal vegan cookbook, apparently with non-processed ingredients. I'll see what I think of it when it comes out.

Getting romantic with Queen Latifah

Not-supa-skinny star of a romance movie. I will definitely rent it, if only to support the concept. (Not to mention Common isn't hard on the old viewing apparatus.)

Yay for Queen Latifah! They even left her a body in the film poster!

The Unexplained Sexification of a Character: Dana in Sports Night

I just spent the past week watching Aaron Sorkin's pre-West-Wing show, Sports Night. There are many women characters, and they're pretty good. They may not always pass the Bechdel Test, but that's because romantic entanglements play a pretty big part of most plots.

The main producer is a funny-quirky, but brisk-businessey woman named Dana, and sometime just before season 2 someone must have thought she needed sexing up.

She was always a sexy character, but in season 2 her hair looks so different I had trouble recognizing her sometimes. It's longer, the cut is softer, and I think it's blonder. She always wears less collared shirts, and more no-sleeved close-fitting dresses or tops. Now, they make it clear that 90 days has passed since season 1, and while that can explain the longer hair, it wouldn't explain why a woman would go from wearing a sharp haircut to hair-messy-pulled-back-barrette-post-sex-bed-hair.

And they could have explained it plotfully, since she's transitioning from one romance storyline to another, and with Sorkin writing you could totally get away with it. Eg. Every person in the office asking her if she's started dying her hair, or something. In season 3 a character from season 1 turns up, and someone comments on her having changed her hair.

But they didn't. Which just leaves us with... someone decided she needed to be Sexed Up Softened. Oh, and, there's an episode where she's going to a biker-chick-themed bridesmaid party after work, so she spends the episode in low cut tight black leather. And there is absolutely no reason, plotwise, why this had to be the party's theme. And no good reason why a serious professional woman would change into her costume halfway through her work day rather than at the end.

Then in season 3 her hair colour goes back to what it was, and her collared shirts suddenly reappear. It's interesting.

BEFORE: Sexy but groomed

AFTER: blonder and sweater-er

(Usually there's a barrette involved and hair falling all over her face. And no sleeves at all.)
And in promo ads she's in a sparkly gown or has her bellybutton showing and pigtails. (Two looks we've never seen on the show.)



I don't know if this is a shot from season 3, but it's what she looks like--still the long hair, but the collars have returned.

Art Hair

I've said before (somewhere, to someone) that I'm often hip to the latest trends simply because I work with about fifty boys and women aged 16 to 20something. When ginormous-bags-wherein-you-cannot-find-anything came back in fashion, I knew because doing bag checks at end of shift required a flashlight and excavation tools. I also knew the moment big earrings, nail polish, and skinny trousers were back in fashion.

When you have the occasional fashion-forward coworker, then you know when something like gray hair becomes trendy, even before your brother sends you an article about celebrities who've dyed their hair gray.


I hesitate to call it a trend, because I doubt it's going to break wide beyond the Kelly Osbournes, Gagas, and Kelis of this world, who are fashion-bold. But the trend was apparently started by model Kristen McMenamy, whose 45 and let her natural gray come through several years ago.




Some comment that this look (old hair on young women) isn't pretty, but looking pretty really isn't the point of an edgy hairdo. It's Dali, not Monet.

Don't it make you wanna dance? - Columbian Edition

Your Monday wake-up call.

Bomba Estereo: Fuego

small cup pride

A new pattern is emerging. Sometime in the middle of the week my work life takes over, I forget I have a blog, and I don't post! Huff!

A week or so ago the New York Times published a story that--surprise!--most women with small chests aren't upset about the fact. They quote the owner of a store that specializes in small bra sizes:

while a small number of her customers come in looking for padded bras and tell her, “Make me as big as you can,” the majority “don’t want to supersize themselves.” Those customers, including ones who are nearly ironing-board flat, “are happy with their bodies,” said Ms. Shing, 42, who wears a 36AA. “It’s a misconception still that you want to be bigger if you’re smaller.”

I don't have anything heavy-deep to say on this topic. Before gaining weight, I used to be small chested, and it never bothered me. So I'm not really surprised to hear that it bothers less women than was supposed. And I'm sure the article won't stop anyone from writing more "do's and don'ts" articles about What Not to Wear.

Peaches Geldof: Repent! Repent while there's still time!

Been saving this one for awhile:

"Just one day after she appeared to have redeemed herself by showing off her curves in a pretty floral bikini, Peaches Geldof has made yet another fashion blunder.

The 21-year-old star went for lunch with a friend in Los Angeles yesterday wearing a highly unflattering outfit of high-waisted polka dot shorts and an orange bandeau bikini top." (Daily Mail June 2010)

Redeemed herself with who? So there isn't a fashion police, but there is a fashion church? A fashion saviour? Fashion confession? Fashion priests? Fashion shall nots? Fashion sins? Fashion commandments?

Come to think of it, we use all those terms when talking about fashion, with the possible exception of saviour. Oh my de la Renta.

Kitty Beauty

Since kitties are beautiful, and so is jewelry, today's post will simply be this (also posted on my personal blog)...

Friend Maewitch has a friend who makes beautiful jewelry, and she'd desperately like to sell a little more of it because her kitty is sick and will need a lot of money to treat. Kitty Olive recently had an expensive eye infection, and now she has fused vertebrae and needs an MRI and/or surgery.

Here's Olive--can you resist this beautiful face??
<-- Here's her story.

Here's the etsy site.

And after is some of the jewelry! I might get the black acorns. If Haley were an oak tree, this is what her acorns would look like.