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Hope this isn't TL;DR! I came across a really interesting post on Tumblr today and thought i would share/put its subject matter up for discussion. The post talks about a recent interview with Lady Gaga in the LA Times. Here's a couple of extracts from the story:

Her new songs address serious themes like women's shame about their bodies and the need for open communication in relationships; her often physically distorting costumes show that the pursuit of the feminine ideal is far from natural. Her commitment to confront the changing notion of what's "natural" puts Gaga on the same road traveled by artists she admires, such as the photographer Cindy Sherman. Her frank talk about how female artists aren't expected to write their own songs or about how young women are afraid to ask for what they need from their sexual partners inches her toward a new articulation of feminism.

..."The great thing about Gaga is she always want to push for the most extreme option," Card said. "She's brave enough to let herself be a canvas for a designer to go and really express themselves. Nothing is off limits! With Rihanna and Beyoncé there is an end result of desirability and unattainable sexiness, whereas Gaga is a really interesting bridge between the desirable and the grotesque. She's not at all worried about looking ridiculous or hideous; actually, I think she thrives off it."

And here's a couple of extracts from the brilliant post on Tumblr:

i feel like there are limits, maybe, to how “hideous” an extremely skinny blonde white girl can be considered...to put it another way: picture a fat woman, or a black woman, or a Latina woman, or a fat black Latina woman, doing ANYTHING that lady gaga has ever done, and tell me people would still be talking about her as some kind of subversive artiste...tell me 95% of the commentary about her outside maybe the feminist blogosphere wouldn’t be ridicule or disgust.

...or to put it another way: white skinny bodies are allowed to be art. you see this all the fucking time in the twee/hipster zones of the world/internet, soft-focus photos in sepia tones with size 2 AT MOST people standing in for melancholy, or wistfulness, or love, or whatever. you don’t see fat girls lying in a field of daisies wearing fishnets and reading haruki murakami next to a picnic spread under a parasol. because then the viewer, it’s assumed, would get distracted by their fatness. skinny bodies (& white bodies) are allowed to turn themselves into things because they are presumed to be blank slates. they’re neutral. fatness already symbolizes things in our culture - laziness, sloth, greed - so it’s not allowed to symbolize other things.

or another way: lady gaga is allowed to play at being grotesque because it’s understood that she is making a choice to be grotesque; fat, non-white, or otherwise atypical bodies already belong to the realm of the grotesque. the choice is made for them. whether it’s as unfuckable (fat women, women with visible disabilities) or inherently sexualized (black and Latina women) or some weird combination of fuckable but not sexual (asian women) or just grotesque and unworthy (trans women).

I think the critique on Tumblr brings up some really interesting and valid points with particular reference to the way we see things on the internet in terms of body types/ethnicities represented in the art and photography we post on our journals, or write about in our blogs, or favourite on Tumblr.

So discuss if you wish: Lady Gaga and her image, representations of 'controversial' women in pop culture, white/thin bodies v everyone else.

hi, hello, my name is Lauren,
these are a few things I've found in my attic, and some things about me.





"Tattooed Family" 1955 Todd Walker
it was folded up in a box, so that's where the lines came from



( this post is full of pictures! )

not that i've really exerted a considerable amount of energy towards finding them. i like my lucky strike blues just fine anyway.

'home' has been playin' on my mind in recent history, not because i'm sick for it but because the word doesn't really exist in french.

the concept, therefore, is not exactly universal, which is a peculiar notion.

this is my hometown ["Madtown, Dairyland"]:


this is where i'm crashing currently [Paris]:


and i like to think i nurse some sort of spiritual connection with this place [Berlin]:


where are you from (originally, currently and spiritually)?

I was recently remembering my friend Sarah, who used to put stickers on practically *everything*. She had one of those huge see-through tabletop Mac's and it was *decked out* in awesome stickers she got at gigs, random New York stores, and what not (cool Azn friends...etc)

So show me your laptops (or cellys). (Hey, a nerd has to get her kicks! And I don't mean Nike's!)



PIC#1: I'm a minimalist, and this Rough Trade sticker, that I got from some cool lesbians in London ('cause I bought Crass's album "Penis Envy") is on my Burberryesque Nokia E63. Sadly, my laptop [a Toshiba sattelite series] is bare (but used to have a ninja turles -specifically Rafael- sticker).

PIC#2: random laptop that I googled

This January, I'm travelling to Stockholm, Oslo, Brussels and Bruges with a friend. In hindsight, it might've been a smarter move to book a trip to Scandinavia during warmer months, but you know what happens when opportunity knocks!

If you live in/have visited the aforementioned cities: Do you have any tips as to what types of clothing/accessories I must pack, amazing(ly cheap) places to eat and drink and other can't-miss things to do and see? This will be my, and my friend's, first time to these cities so our game plan is to arrive and just fly by the seat of our pants!

And so this post isn't simply a travel question, I leave you with a gift I mailed to a friend who is spending the year teaching in Korea:

( Shake it like you mean it )

Thanks for your help!