what i wore today: sugar shack style

on sunday, march 14th, simon invited myself, georgina, cristobal and karina to his uncle's sugar shack in bellechasse, québec. i was so excited, since it had been years since i'd been to one and my first time going to one in québec. so i grabbed my pentax and we ran to catch the ferry to lévis. after a short drive and a little stroll through the woods, we arrived to the lovely cabin and were greeted by simon's aunt and uncle. they were very enthused to have guests, especially mexican guests who had never seen so much snow aside from never having been to a sugar shack.

here are some of my favourite photos:















you can see more film photos on my flickr. here are a few digital ones that give you a better idea of my outfit since i suppose that's what we do here on fashion blogs:











happy monday! now back to job applications.

words of wisdom: embodied resistance/oppression

photo by anja, cross-stitching by amelia (who both have awesome blogs you should read)

march has been a whirlwind and i've been trying to think up ways to update this blog on a more regular basis without getting caught up in not having the time to edit my 3,000 word essays every time i try to write about something. so here is a new little feature that i'll try to do from time to time, sort of like feministing's weekly feminist reader where i suggest some links and you can comment with your own favourite things you've read as of late. i'll start with some quotes that have really caught my attention lately.

The theme of rescue through benevolence underpins power relations and gives expression to those relations in a way that "makes sense." Thus difference, which is threatening, can similarly be recuperated through its conversion into exotica, or its neutralization through containment. In speaking of the exotic, it is apparent that imperial literature was replete with representations constructing women from the East and other parts of the wolrd as exotic Others who need to be unveiled so that their hidden natures could be consumed by the colonizers.

- Mapping Race in the Media by Yasmin Jiwani in Discourses of Denial, entire book available for download in pdf form here.

Sympathy or even empathy that is not coupled with power-sharing is meaningless. Any story that purports to show solidarity or uplift marginalised groups, but is not willing to let us tell our own stories in our own way, is not a friend.

- Stories that Ally versus Stories that Appropriate by Thea Lim, via Racialicious

I am a woman, and present myself as such. This does not mean I am anybody else’s expectation of what a woman is, but my own. I’m always reinventing the meaning of womanhood by just being myself, and knowing that whatever the result of being myself is, it is being a woman. I think that goes for everybody and any gender identity they may have.

- Anonymous, via Genderfork

There is no automatic or axiomatic relationship between a particular sexual act and the identity of the person performing it.

- Anonymous, via fuckyeahfemmes

...When we appeal to some notion of an unmodified or undecorated body, we participate in the adoption of a false neutrality. We pretend, in those moments, that there is a natural body or fashion, a way of dressing or wearing yourself that is not a product of culture. Norms always masquerade as non-choices, and when we suggest that for example, resisting sexism means everyone should look androgynous, or resisting racism means no one should modify the texture of their hair, we foreclose people’s abilities to expose the workings of fucked up systems on their bodies as they see fit.

- Dress to Kill, Fight to Win by Dean Spade (you really need to read the whole thing)

and last but not least, a little less about fashion and more about decor (which has been on my mind a lot these days), a quote from the Globe and Mail: Russell Smith's A lament for the bookshelf:

Bric-a-brac is generally unfashionable now. Designers see apartments full of amusing memorabilia – the matchboxes from Berlin, the Soweto tin car, all the stuff that children love – as dust-gathering and space-consuming. We no longer respect the Cabinet of Wonders as a guiding principle of decoration. So we lose forever the pleasure known to humanity for 500 years of taking a stroll up and down the aisles of someone else’s brain by perusing their bookshelves. Gone will be the guilty joy of spending a rainy afternoon at a cottage with the remnants of someone else’s childhood: their Nancy Drews, their 1970s National Geographics. Without bookshelves, you will never know the warning signs contained in the e-reader of your handsome date – you will not know for months that he is reading The Secret and Feng Shui for Dummies, even if you stay over. You will never be able to ask, as casually as you can, “Did you like this?” as you pull down, as if fascinated, Patrick Swayze’s autobiography.

hopefully that gives you some food for thought! share any great quotes you've stumbled upon lately in the comments.

to end off, a lot of people ask me how i find all of these awesome things on the internet, and wonder if i spend every waking minute of the day online simply googling "awesome things." sadly, it is not that simple and i really don't spend that much time in front of my computer. thanks to people i know both in real life and online, we share our favourite things with each other via emails, our livejournals, our tumblrs and our blogs. (unimportant sidenote: i know lots of people would argue that lj, tumblr and blogs are all "blogs" but i always feel the need to differentiate) and since most of these quotes came to my attention via some of these wonderful people i will give you some links so you can cut out the middle (wo)man! i'm posting their tumblrs because those are their most public places and where they most often share awesome quotes like the aforementioned ones.

bookselves.tumblr.com
sweaterves.tumblr.com/emptystomachs.tumblr.com
definatalie.tumblr.com
transartorialism.tumblr.com
fuckyeahfemmes.tumblr.com

enjoy!

my favourite thrifts: new feature!

today is the first in what i hope will become a regular feature here: my favourite thrifts. i've been posting my finds for years on thriftwhore but here i will highlight one item per post and tell you where i found it, what i paid for it, and why i think it's awesome. pretty straightforward. so here is the innaugural post of my favourite thrifts.



found: march 2010
where: emmaus
how much: 3$

why it's awesome:

i promised myself years ago i would stop thrifting things for other people; i would only purchase things that i could fit into and that i would wear. i wouldn't simply take anything that i thought was beautiful or interesting or cool home with me just to have it, or to give to a friend, or to maybe one day sell. this, of course, has failed miserably, namely since i started my etsy store in november 2008 and when i stumble upon things like... this dress.

this dress. this dress is made for a child, but it is by and large one of the world's most wonderful dresses i have ever found. i'm sure you're looking at said dress, thinking, "why, yes, julia that is a cute dress, but one of the world's most wonderful dresses? that's quite a statement to make about a simple little 1970s children's garment."

sure, there's no fancy embroidery, or embellishment, or designer tags. it, by all accounts, looks like any old dress a young girl in the 1970s would scamper around the yard in, spill ice cream on, get dirty in. but let us look a little bit closer.


upon inspecting the perfectly sweet peter pan collar, the awesomeness of this garment should become apparent. no? need more convincing? look closer still...


look at the print of the sleeves! there are little children holding placards; they are all protesting for women's liberation, a permissive society and worker's rights! how amazing is that! i can't stop using exclamation marks!


and to top it off, they are the most stylish adorable freckled little protestors you've ever seen.


this one, who holds the sign saying "up with permissive society," reminds me of a turn of the century suffragette. think of the mother in mary poppins.

and there you have it. one of the world's most wonderful dresses i have ever seen.

check out my flickr for a few more photos and for higher resolution versions.

mexico

for the past few months (oh who am i kidding, years) i've been trying to flesh out my ideas about self-portraits. why i take them, why they are interesting, why i find them so thought-provoking. but since every time i sit down to write about them, i end up writing a novel, i decided to simply share some self-portraits with you guys while i work out some actually writing. i realized i still had yet to share my favourite self-portraits i took while i was in mexico back in december. it's about time i shared them with you.

(view this one larger, it's much better that way)


this one, i love because it's all about the mistakes; i had no idea there would be the shadows of the clothesline and powerlines cast on me. i didn't know i would hear a noise crashing in the kitchen that distracted me so that i wasn't looking (posing) at the camera. my favourite self-portraits are always the mistakes, the surprises.

also, in these photos, we see my uniform from my time in mexico. i bought that dress the first time i went to a tiny thrift store in ste. foy for a whole dollar, and only get to wear it when it's really really hot. so far it was worn for one day in québec city, three days in brooklyn in august, and five days in mexico.

(i tried to recreate the mistakes from the first photo i took in that spot but to no avail)

i might share a few more later, but these are my absolute favourites. to see more or comment on them, you can see them on my flickr.

a short film inspired by literature, set to music

The Women from jamieson on Vimeo.

a friend of mine shared this with me and i am simply blown away. it is incredibly beautiful and i thought my readers might enjoy it as well.

aside from the staggering beauty of this short film, i'm very intrigued by the marriage of mediums going on here. think about it: a filmmaker makes a short film to promote a book, and uses a song as the soundtrack. if it works well, you want to know more about all three at the end of the three minutes and thirteen seconds.

after watching this (three times now) i want to read the book, listen to the album, and see what other work the filmmaker has done. i wouldn't be surprised to see more people doing these sorts of things, a very creative promoting machine.

feminist fashion show: TOMORROW

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