Kitchen Aid Ain't Sisyphus

In a Sociology course lecture (many years ago when I was an undergraduate) a professor argued that all of the so-called labour saving devices marketed at the American housewife only created more work for her. The Sisyphus model seems to make sense when put in context with all the products unveiled in the 1950s, when modern kitchens were presented as some nirvana temple for women to cloister themselves making unholy aspics with spam and gelatine. Men wanted women to vacate the positions they took during the war effort, so dudes advertised housewivery as though it were some light and fun respite from paid labour. Yeah, because paychecks are unladylike.

The idea that patriarchy realises its true design by subjugating women with appliances to extend drudge work looks good on paper, but in real life, women can recognise a time saver when we see one. Did you know that one of the leading causes of death for women in the 19th century was complications from doing laundry? Yep, try washing and wringing your sheets and undies in the winter and say hello to pneumonia. Women spent endless hours doing laundry, even if they only washed clothes a few times a year. I barely notice it as a chore now with the stacked Maytags in the hallway.

Or, for another example, how about the Kitchen Aid Mixer? Yesterday I made a batch of cookies and a cheese souffle in a fraction of the time and without the physical expenditure of whisking all those eggs and batter. Turn a switch and two minutes later you have perfect stiff peaks.

Blame patriarchy all you want. These nifty gadgets are a boon of modernity, not a boulder up the hill.

Greenface Horror Show

Slated for a mid-March release, Kill the Irishman features a cast of big name actors sleepwalking for a paycheck amidst a whole lotta stereotypes.
The car bombs induced a full body cringe.
This picture looks like a cheap mash up of Goodfellas and Leprechaun.
Cue the tin whistle.

Jewel of the Xmas Genre

Among the many delights in Scrooged is Bill Murray's impression of Richard Burton.
Love it.

Rubberbandits Mania

I'm late to watching the video, although the sanitised version was all over Irish radio when we were there last week.

Infectious tune with smooth moves to boot.

Vomit-Inducing Book Review

Paul Auster has always seemed like one of those antiseptic, bloodless postmodern dudes.

After reading the NYT review for Sunset Park he appears to be the literary equivalent of a Member's Only jacket, and not even in the cool winking version James Caan wore in The Way of the Gun. This stuff looks old-fashioned and embarrassing, the prose that stems from nostalgia for the days of unchecked male privilege and a wanton Lolita fetish.

The chunks started to rise in my throat when the reviewer refers to Auster's protagonist Miles meeting Pilar, an underage girl, one who has deep insights into The Great Gatsby. (The few regular readers I have will note my long standing distaste for Fitzgerald's vastly over rated novel). Auster acts like finding a smart 17 year-old girl is a rare and miraculous find amidst scores of empty-headed dingbats. There are in fact legions of bookish and well read teenage girls in the U.S. To suggest otherwise reflects a serious strain of cluelessness. Also, Auster expects his reader to accept that since this brilliant teenage girl experiences a fear of pregnancy, she prohibits vaginal intercourse, which she describes as "the mommy hole was off limits."

Mommy hole

I doubt even a 5 year-old girl would use such an expression.

There's so much blatant arrogance underneath his poor characterisation of a girl he just uses as a mechanism for spank-bank fantasy projection that I am struck dumb.

Count the Female Stereotypes Called 'Craft'

The NYT's video montage 14 Actors Acting assembles the Hollywood classic stereotype formula for women which traffics in the 'ol hooker, victim, doormat onscreen.

I didn't see any of the men asked to strip down for the cameras to show sexy underwear.

Natalie Portman's dead-eyed femme fatale; Noomi Rapace's dissolute smoky-voiced chanteuse; Jennifer Lawrence's horror scream queen; Leslie Manville as the doormat; Tilda Swinton another weepy victim. Even Chloe Moretz's portrayal of anger makes her look more unhinged with crimson lips rather than a subject with agency.

The acting craft should ask more from women than simply channeling boilerplate roles from the Women are from Venus playbook.

Hello, Gorgeous

This Carolina Herrera dress up for sale at Neiman's is to gouge eyes for.

Normally I find the tulip skirting overwrought.

Here there's just the right degree of drape to keep the frock from adding bulk to your hips.

The canary yellow is sublime.

The hose and shoes seem all wrong though.

Entertainment Weekly Says a Size 4 is Fat

My first magazine subscription to the liberal stalwart Mother Jones must have been in 1986 or thereabouts. The real reason I signed up for the monthly was because they had advertised a free doormat featuring Ronald Reagan’s picture with some rude caption as part of a paid subscription. My spiky-haired anarchist self thrilled at the idea of a daily opportunity to smash my feet on Grandpa Caligula’s cabeza. Unfortunately the hippies who ran the publication never sent the doormat, as I was to learn they promise lots of things they never deliver, maybe from all the privilege they hold. I even wrote a letter to complain and call them out on their oh-so-shady conduct. Don’t promise a girl she can stick it to the man and then fail to have it materialise.

I’ve subscribed to many magazines over the years: Gourmet, Bon Appetite, Animal’s Agenda, Elle, Bitch, Bust, The New Yorker, along with what is probably my most cherished guilty pleasure, Entertainment Weekly. Folks get real sniffy about EW for some reason. I clerked in a bookshop with a woman who recoiled at its very sight, a woman who would read People magazine at the counter yet still hunch away from EW. Of all the subscriptions, I’ve never had any one of them send me a promotional gift. That is until yesterday, when a package arrived from EW bearing a stamp T-Shirt Extra Large. Ignoring the husband’s protests over why he can’t keep novelty t-shirts (duh. I won’t wear mine in public), I pulled out a white shirt with a red Magnum P.I. logo, one of those ‘ironic’ shirts the hipsters go for, which is fine and dandy to sleep in, except for the major error in labelling. The tag at the back of the neck also said ‘extra large.’ In what kind of Anna Wintourian alternate universe is a shirt that fits a size 4 ‘extra large’?

Seriously, Entertainment Weekly, the shirt made blood rush to my head. Are you trying to drive women crazy? It’s not bad enough I’ve heard how I have to trade my ass for my face from numerous folks in the past year or so, now that I have to counteract the fun house mirror in my head from reflecting a rear end that verges on Hottentot in an attempt to retain volume on my face. Issues! I have them, just like so many other women over body size and food. And your rag has now sent the body image whirligig into overdrive. Hey, fuckers: keep your shitty t-shirts.

No one needs a size bully.

Fashion Craze Circa 1958: The Chemise

Had you quizzed me on articles of fashion more than a few days ago, I would have described a chemise as one of those filmy undergarments, also known as a camisole. My patchy design knowledge was corrected by scrolling through Life magazine’s archives from 1958, the year when the chemise trend became a sensation that ignited protests as well as a revolution in women’s fashion. Also known as the sack dress, it seems more appropriately referred to as a tube dress, since the garment remained the same width from shoulder to just below the knee. I guess ‘sack’ conveys more of a pejorative than ‘tube,’ however. In an era defined by severe undergarments such as the long line bra and girdle, the chemise offered respite from such constrictive body shapers. As many women snapped up the new style, others organised a rally against them, such as the woman pictured holding the sign ‘Bring Back Curves.’ No doubt she went on to have a prosperous career writing copy for the Daily Mail. One dude, Gerry Granahan even wrote a song about the tube dress titled ‘No Chemise, Please,’ which lamented the impediment it posed to groping dates at the end of an evening. Ladies had a chance to be comfortable and still pulled together, yet folks went apeshit.
How dare they.

No wonder it was a short-lived trend.

Men come together for the common cause, to beat your ass, just because

Russell Brand is STILL bragging about how many women he's had sex with.

He said in Ireland he was with nine women in one evening.

If there's a bigger piece of crap taking breath, who clings to more anxious and retrograde ideas concerning masculinity, I'll eat a dog biscuit.

Real Human Beings Get to Cover Up and Stand Straight

I see how you are, American Apparel.

You don't subject your male models to the bedroom, come-hither, jail-bait, titillate, half nekkid scopophilia treatment reserved for the ladies.

Dudes get to be fully clothed with purpose and reason.

More evidence for me to avoid the clothing chain, just like a bug-infested mattress on the street.

Patriarchy in Tablet Form

Nicholas Ray's 1956 Bigger Than Life features a scenery chewing turn from James Mason as a mid-century patriarch who becomes a monster to his wife and son after taking too much cortisone, prescribed in a last ditch effort to keep the otherwise terminal patient alive. Ray had a knack for unflinching portrayals of toxic masculinity, as in his earlier film In a Lonely Place, a film Bogart could not stomach watching himself in the starring role because he was such a nasty thug to Gloria Grahame.

Check out Mason in the clip above when his shadow eclipses the doorframe until he indeed becomes Bigger Than Life.

You can watch the whole film on YouTube.

Ray concocts a clever hat trick depicting the evils of patriarchy by blaming the whole thing on a cortisone dosage error. We all know no man ever terrorised his family unless a white tablet was involved.

The director needs the bottle of pills to act as safety valve to keep from blowing the lid off culture.

Fantastic.

I *Heart* Billboard Liberation Front

They call bullshit where they see it.