Too Thin for TV?

Just wanted to remind you of this issue of US Weekly that came out a little bit ago, given this week's topic...

MakeoverGate Part 23448859

Apparently, the Out of the Closet thrift store that gives its proceeds to the AIDS Healthcare foundation didn't take too kindly to Anchorage, Alaska's identically-named consignment shop - the shop of choice for one Gov. Sarah Palin.

Follow-up on Palin's Makover

I saw this today after reading Tara's post from Maureen Dowd the other day. I thought I would share.

Dame Hotness: Mirren at 63

I remembered hearing about this a while ago and thought it was particularly appropriate for this week, considering the prohibitive nature of female aging that Mellencamp discusses. Here Helen Mirren is touted as the sexy 63 year old, the tone of the article is at times hard to decipher, seeming to state that we(meaning heterosexual younger men) should be able to desire older women, but the unspoken contingencies of that assertion are somewhat clear (if she is a hot older woman, etc.). Mellencamp's "chronology disavowl" seems to be at work here. Mirren can be 63 years of age, as long as she does not look the part according to patriarchal sexual standards (note the panoply of anti-aging advertisements surrounding the article, hmmm). Mirren's iconicity does seem to stem in part from the visual construction of her often uninhibited sexuality (Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; Calendar Girls; and especially her role as DCI Jane Tennison in the BBC's Prime Suspect).

I think Dame Helen will be hot no matter what she does (personal bias perhaps but hey, I dare you to prove me wrong)

More on the Palin "Makeover"

Maybe I'll run for VP and finally get that pricey makeover....

Carnival and Desiring Bodies (Reading Response)

Discussions of dangerously unruly bodies, the carnivalesque and the body’s simultaneous bearing of both transgression and regulation seemed to me a logical extension of Jackie Stacey’s piece Star Gazing. Specifically, Bordo’s sometimes over-determined and dogmatic examination of eating disorders and women’s near compulsory disciplining of the body has everything to do with the activation of desire that Stacey was so concerned with. Considering the traditional construction of woman as forever tied to the body (I’m thinking of Bordo’s “heavy bear” here) and the almost logical sexual objectification this invites, suppression or disciplining of the body is suppression of desire. For Stacey, the denial of desire is of course a strategy of larger frameworks of subordination, crippling further resistance. The solution seems to be a reclaiming of the female body. Rather than distancing itself from the oppressive sexual labor traditionally associated with the female body, this discourse takes measures to own it instead. Speaking of the rationalizations deployed in slenderness practices, Bordo uses terms like “newfound freedom” and “empowerment,” which seem to resonate with liberal feminist discourses. I’m wondering to what an extent the liberal feminist principles of “agency” and “personal empowerment” can be seen as (distorted) catalysts of the disciplining practices Bordo analyzes.
To return to desire though, for Stacey, that temporary activation was possible in the fashion show. Mary Russo’s discussion of “female grotesques” and carnivalesque bodies can be seen as an extension of the same theory. The obvious reference here is to the productive spectacle laden in carnival. It is the privileging of play and performativity for their transgressive potential, as opposed to traditional struggle. Now, I have no intention of resurrecting Bakhtin’s nostalgic celebration of carnival and the “festive critique” (although, admittedly, his giddy excitement about the matter can be happily contagious), but it seems that despite carnival’s temporal inconsequence, its status as licensed event, as sanctioned transgression, the very fact that a woman’s body is “dangerous” inside the space of carnival can offer some subversive redemption. Russo says that women’s bodies “in certain public spaces, are always already transgressive – dangerous, and in danger” (217). The notion that woman’s position outside of carnival informs her “dangerous” subjectivity inside seems to be the very thing that redeems the otherwise purely escapist and rather conservative practice. Here, spectacle can be overtly political and transformative.

Well, why can't I be a French Maid?

I saw this and just had to post it up, seeing as how we are less than a week from Halloween. Y'all can be the judge about how this fits into our continual discussions of the masquerade, now in its most literal (and perhaps insidious?) form. Here masquerade is precisely the "playful" (multiple formations of the term possible here) engagement with certain codes of fantasy and femininity, whether they are naturalized or not remains to be seen. The writer(s) just barely manage to squeeze in a slight nod to the gendered hypocrisy of policing Halloween costumes near the end (hope they don't break their arms patting themselves on the back).

As a side note though, some part of me cringes at the thought of 8-10 year old girls in french maid outfits.