A New Year

jeff buckley, hallelujah

Keep this in mind when you think of Jesus

Collective memory, a term coined by sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in the early twentieth century, is a shared understanding of the past. Unlike history, collective memory can be based on something other than historical fact. And while history reproduces the past, collective memory more often represents it. This is because collective memory is malleable—its understanding of the past shifts not with the revelation of new historical facts, but rather with changing notions in the present. While historians and scholars look to ‘history’ to understand the past, for most of the public, collective memory defines their interpretation of the past.

What it feels like for a girl: Getting old in our image-conscious, gender-stereotyping media crazed world

On this month's cover of GQ magazine, a publication arguably for and by gay men, Jennifer Aniston, a sitcom celebrity, appears naked with a strategically placed necktie (because men wear neckties and you know, like naked chicks). In the article, she says some surely fascinating things about that dog movie she's in and continues to talk about her ex-husband Brad Pitt, and just embarrasses herself in general. However, Ms. Aniston's cover begs the question of why a 30something woman with a successful career ("successful" in media terms, not mine!) and solid stardom feel the need to strip down for a men's magazine?
Jennifer Aniston rose to fame on a stupid yet successful sitcom (Friends) and continued to find roles in mainstream movies (Along Came Polly and You, Me, and Dupree...wait, that was Kate Hudson. Same thing) due to her conventional attractiveness. Ms. Aniston really hit her stride when her more famous husband left her for a hotter woman with whom he proceeded to procreate and populate the earth with. It was the stuff that tabloid dreams are made of. Ms. Aniston then became the everywoman because every woman loves Friends, is getting older, and hates that humanitarian minx, Angelina, too.
Ms. Aniston is 39 and probably has been for the last five years. And thanks to cosmetic surgery, facial injections, a personal trainer, nutritionist, and stylist, she looks great. Some would argue the fact that Ms. Aniston is "Sexy at 40!" is reason enough to pose nude on the cover of a magazine. I argue that it's reason enough not to pose naked as some masturbatory fantasy. Brad Pitt is in his 40s and recently graced the cover of Rolling Stone with a mustache...and clothes. George Clooney is a sex-symbol in his 40s and sadly, has not been naked on the cover of anything.
Alas, the aforementioned are men. Jennifer Aniston is not. Sure, women can age but only if they do so wrinkle and fat-free manner. From her cover, Ms. Aniston shouts, "Hey! Hey! Hey! Look at me! I'm 40 and hot! Older women are hot too! Hey!" Ms. Aniston passed desperate when she started talking to the media about her ex-husband and his current partner. While Ms. Aniston's GQ cover could be understood as her representing the single and aging ladies. However, she is really just representing our obsession with women's looks. The real issue is the fact that women are only relevant in our culture when they are look good. It's okay that women get older, we just better not look it.

Prop 8 the Musical

From "The Bell Jar"

do suicidal artists know something we don't?






"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
Sylvia Plath

What It Feels Like For A Girl*

*Borrowed from a beautiful revolutionary in the West, "What It Feels Like For A Girl" will be a new installation for this sad, neglected blog. W.I.F.L.F.A.G. will explore what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. Don't be shy (to post). We're all girls.

(Excerpts from a paper written by me, E.K. May, about the Madonna/Whore complex)

In sexual politics and cultural standards, female virginity is the ultimate good. A woman’s values are said to be determined by virginity (or the guise of virginity). Aside from her looks, a woman’s purity is to be safeguarded and treasured; by herself and one man. Conversely, female promiscuity is the ultimate bad; she is damaged but desired. Women must be the virgin or the whore and men will marry one and screw the other.
The virgin/whore dichotomy has long existed in sexual politics; from the Virgin Mary and the sinful temptress Eve; to the moral crusaders and the prostitutes of nineteenth century America; to Mary-Ann and Ginger here on Gilligan’s Island.
There is a hierarchal desire to categorize a woman into archetypes, linked almost exclusively to her sexuality. Hillary Clinton is a wench and a ball-buster. Sarah Palin is a mother, but a Mother I’d Like to Fuck (MILF). Lindsay Lohan is a whore. Miley Cyrus is a virgin (or a Madonna). But it is the ladder two stereotypes encapsulate the cultural expectation of female sexuality. The standard of two sexualities allows men to hate or idolize women (Leslie, 2007). Men can have their wife and their fantasy too; have their cake and eat it, too.
The Madonna is the utmost moral woman. She is on a pedestal; pure, chaste, and sacrificial. On the opposite end of the sexual spectrum of womanhood is Eve. Eve is the antithesis of Mary’s morality; she is the image of the whore. According to the book of Genesis, Eve is created by God from the rib of Adam. She is made from Adam’s rib and is therefore positioned as lesser and beneath him. Eve is tempted by the serpent to eat from the tree of knowledge. She complies and lures man (Adam) to eat also. She establishes original sin in humans. She cannot deny herself the fruit; she is lustful and carnal.
The juxtaposition of Mary as the virgin and Eve as the whore is contradictory and seemingly obvious. Yet, the common bond these iconic and immortal women share is less conspicuous. Mary’s selflessness brings forth the son of God, and Eve’s temptations create sin in which man takes part. The virgin/whore archetypes create an adventurous problem for man, “the Madonna as his dutiful helpmate and vision of purity, the whore as symbolic of the dangers and temptations he must overcome.” While women chose whether to be the Madonna or the whore, men choose who they want sexually.
The dichotomy of said virgins and whores is an abstract and culturally constructed concept of female sexuality. The division of women in to categories of virgins and whores is certainly the ideal, but moreover, it is an idea. That is to say, the virgin/whore dichotomy does not actually exist. Mothers and good women are not virgins; they bear children through sexual intercourse. A whore is not actually a whore. Certainly there were prostitutes, but a whore is usually only a woman who overtly takes pleasure from sex. But as sexuality, gender, and time progressed, and sexual standards evolved, curiously, the virgin/whore dichotomy persisted as the expectation for female sexuality: the faithful and the fantasy.