halloween 2010: i am not your halloween costume

feminist hulk's costume sounds pretty awesome.

i'm sick in bed, catching up some reading, in books and online. i've been fighting a cold for about a week now, but decided to get dressed up for halloween simply because i knew i would have regretted it had i stayed in bed. i'll share more pictures of my other costume plus some more ones i took of being the shining twins, but in the meantime i wanted to talk a bit about halloween some more.

i went out to two or three parties over the course of the weekend, and yes, of course, i encountered some truly problematic costumes. i counted a good four white girls in bastardized headdresses and warpaint, and had to share the same space as a stranger dressed as a blackface. to top it off, a party i attended awarded a man wearing a turban as "best costume," and was yelling obnoxiously about being a terrorist the entire time i was there. i felt uncomfortable the entire time, but was too sick and tired to engage with him. so, i left.

and that's what most of us do, i think. we leave. if we feel up to it, we try to challenge these people and at the very least ask them why they chose their costume. if they even notice that they are engaging in race-drag, blackface, etc.

I am a human being.

I am not your Halloween costume.

I am not your party theme.

I am not your mascot.

I am not your costume.

this has been making the rounds on tumblr, originally posted by kkeilhauer. i wish there was more information out there about the context, the people in the photo, where it was taken, etc. but the message behind it is pretty simple and great: other people's cultures are not fair game for halloween costumes, theme parties, etc. the dehumanizing effect these kinds of actions have on actual human beings is something we all too often lose sight of.

sheresists is a really intelligent and amazing activist based in guelph, and she shared her thoughts on racist costumes. on the note of halloween costumes, she argues that these costumes can be worse than culturally appropriative acts.

You’re not just taking one thing (for example, a war bonnet) from another culture, you’re trying to mimic an entire group’s racial identity when you ‘dress up’ as them. These costumes are often borrowed from pre-set stereotypes about what another culture “looks like,” how they dress, and how they act. What people fail to understand is that these stereotypes are not benign. They have real, material effects on people's lives and their ability to move throughout the world. They both reinforce and are embedded in relationships and histories of power.

...When you put on a racist costume (especially sexy ‘ethnic’ costumes like the sexy Asian girl costume), you’re speaking back to histories of colonization and exploitation and you’re reinforcing the ideologies that legitimize violent institutions that abuse and sexually exploit women of colour (though, racist costumes speak to a history of colonizing and othering people of colour in general). Whatever your intentions, by sexualizing a different ethnic group, you are saying that it’s okay to fetishize certain groups of people and you’re reaffirming that they are, in fact sexualized and consumable beings. You may think it’s fun, funny, or even ironic, but you probably haven’t experienced the effects of these stereotypes.

she goes on to describe her experiences with these stereotypes, and it's difficult (but important) to read. unfortunately it's not the first time i've heard stories like hers... and i love that she challenges these actions, wants to move forward, and foster change.

now, i thought long and hard before sharing these thoughts and links. did i really want to hold a magnifying glass to racist halloween costumes? is it even worth my time, or my readers time for that matter, to point out that paris hilton - privilege personified - is wearing a racist costume? and i'm not alone in feeling this way. this year, angry asian man asked his readers to share good costumes, instead of railing about the terrible ones:

every year, I write about all the obnoxious, awful racist Asian-themed costumes that are out there. I'm tired of that. I'd like to write about some of the cool ones.

i'm going to take a page from his book. to end on a happy note, i want to share some costumes that made me smile really big. share your favourites in the comments, too!

seriously baby yoda, you are KILLING me!


janelle monae

Natalie as an Inappropriate Unicorn and her friend Heather as Rosie Ritcher from Scott Pilgrim


Pixel Girl wins points for massive creativity and amazing execution


bra-burning second wavers! radical lesbian separatists

ingrid, a friend of a friend of mine, had the most amazing ursula costume!

so, what did you get dressed up as this year for halloween? what are the best costumes you've seen, in person and online? share links in the comments!

LINKS:
One Woman's Costume is another woman's nightmare by Whitney Teal at Change.org
My thoughts on racist costumes by sheresists
The Halloween fallout begins by Native Appropriations
Offensive or Awesome Halloween costumes? at I Am KoreAm
Why you (or your dog) shouldn't dress up as Antoine Dodson for Halloween at Shameless
Great costumes from angry asian man readers

halloween 2010: the shining

from the shining (kubrick, 1980)

come play with us

forever

dresses: handmade by annemarie,
made with fabric we got at a flea market for 8$
hair clips: 99 cents
white knee socks: 2/5$
ribbons: from my closet
shoes: ours, changed laces to match

total cost: 14$, 7$ each! pretty sweet.

some other fun costumes from last night:

1980s wrestling champion

cute flapper

homemade! from scratch! stormtrooper costume

also, i wrote a little article over at shameless about problematic halloween costumes. read it here.
i'm going to try out another costume tonight, hopefully it will go over as well as this one did.

happy halloween!

women with glasses: usurping the gaze

check out my new specs! my mother gave me an early birthday/christmas present: a lovely oxblood pair of burberry glasses. thank goodness, because my last pair were beyond scratched up and my prescription had changed a wee bit. i really enjoyed them but you know how it goes, even the best of glasses don't really last more than two or three years. especially when you are too broke to afford contacts and you have no choice but to wear them day in, day out.

here they are for reference:



in a perfect world, i would be able to find a pair of vintage cateye glasses that comfortable fit me, or would have enough money to splurge on a pair from urban spectacles. i think these would suit me quite nicely:

i do have a pair of vintage frames but with clear lenses, but they are a little broken and a little too small for me. here's a picture from when i first got them in winter 2009:

but this post isn't about me! it's about women who wear glasses in general. it's only recently that i've really started to enjoy wearing glasses 24/7 (well, aside from the time spent sleeping, of course). i have a lot more theoretical ideas about women and glasses but those are thoughts we can flesh out another time. here are some photos of women who wear glasses exquisitely well:

Anaïs Escobar


fashion forestry

The woman who wears glasses constitutes one of the most intense visual clichés of the cinema. The image is a heavily marked condesation of motifs concerned with repressed sexuality, knowledge, visibility and vision, intellectuality, and desire.
The woman with glasses signifies simultaneously intellectuality and undesirability; but the moment the removes her glasses (a moment which, it seems, must almost always be shown and which is itself linked with a certain sensual quality), she is transformed into spectacle, the very picture of desire. Now, it must be remembered that the cliché is a heavily loaded moment of signification, a social knot of meaning. It is characterized by an effect of ease and naturalness. Yet, the cliché has a binding power so strong that it indicates a precise moment of ideological danger or threat — in this case, the woman’s appropriation of the gaze. Glasses worn by a woman in the cinema do not generally signify a deficiency in seeing but an active looking, or even simply the fact of seeing as opposed to being seen. The intellectual woman looks and analyses, and in usurping the gaze she poses a threat to an entire system of representation.

from Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator”

roxanne aka persephassa. aren't these just wonderful? flashy but understated, i think they go so well with her complexion. you can even get the same pair on ebay! roxanne has pretty much the best taste of anyone ever in the history of the world, so it is unsurprising all of her glasses are magnificent.

the girl from hk, ldn & sf
it was so hard to just pick one picture of her, she has so many lovely frames!

one day you will be mine, perfect cat eye frames that are in my price range.
from framesbaby

glasses porn:
vintage eyeglasses
tiraslee and here
persephassa
retrospecs
urban spectacles
frames baby

inspiration: claude cahun

happy birthday, claude cahun. cahun was born on this day in 1894.

In many ways, Cahun's life was marked by a sense of role reversal, and her public identity became a commentary upon not only her own, but the public's notions of sexuality, gender, beauty, and logic. Her adoption of a sexually ambiguous name, and her androgynous self-portraits display a revolutionary way of thinking and creating, experimenting with her audience's understanding of photography as a documentation of reality. Her poetry challenged gender roles and attacked the increasingly modern world's social and economic boundaries. Also Cahun's participation in the Parisian Surrealist movement diversified the group's artwork and ushered in new representations. Where most Surrealist artists were men, and their primary images were of women as isolated symbols of eroticism, Cahun epitomized the chameleonic and multiple possibilities of the female identity. Her photographs, writings, and general life as an artistic and political revolutionary continue to influence countless artists, namely Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin.

i think it's unsurprising that i have a very special place in my heart for claude cahun and their art. the 1920s are definitely one of my favourite eras in terms of film, art, fashion, architecture... pretty much all around aesthetically i find it most dear to me. one of my favourite artists working in that era was claude cahun. the playing with identity, the use of photography, art, and clothing to express those different identities... it always stuck with me.

que me veux-tu? (autoportrait double); claude cahun, 1929.

auto-portrait; claude cahun, 1925

i.o.u. (self-pride); claude cahun, 1929-30

"sous se masque, un autre masque. je n'en finirai pas de soulever tous ses visages."

"under this mask, another. i will never succeed in unearthing all of these faces."

LINKS:
claude cahun on wikipedia
thoughts about bahaus + gender
Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman edited by Shelley Rice
(someone, please buy me this book. three of my favourite people, artists, icons combined in one book!)

LINKS IN FRENCH:
De l'Éros des femmes surréalistes et de Claude Cahun en particulier par Georgiana M. M. Colville
Une héroïne impossible: Claude Cahun par Agnès Lhermitte

currently ooing and awing over: sassyfrass

while procrastinating on the internet during my lunch break, i stumbled upon a most wonderful thing... how to wear a fanny pack and other gay information: a fashion blog

not only is it a great homo fashion post, i am cited as inspiration/instigation for the post itself! a while back i commented that if i could be anyone's internet sugar mama, i would be jb's. we need to queer up the fashion blogging world!

if you are unaware of the awesomeness that is sassyfrass circus (aka jb) in general, i strongly recommend browsing their official website and/or tumblr. she makes awesome zines and posts about epic bike rides and all around happy times.

here are some of my favourite comics of jb's:

ah, the misguided "fat talk" discussions.


unfortunately this resounded with hundreds of people in the tumblr-sphere. it needs to be said. (for a definition of manarchists, click here)

and other awesome stuff jb makes, like zines and patches and posters for shows:

you can buy some of jb's zines here, if you're interested.

please excuse the brevity of this post seeing as my lunch hour ended... five minutes ago.

sharing the love,

exes and ohs - garconniere

vag magazine: laughing with or at feminists?

a question i get asked a lot when i mention this blog in conversations with friends and strangers is, "well, what is feminist fashion anyway?" and in some ways, that question is an unanswerable one. i like to think that my take on "feminist fashion" is an analysis of fashion from a critical perspective, trying to see ways in which the fashion industry impacts women involved in all levels, from the people who work in sweatshops to the anna wintour's of the world. but i'll stop myself there: while i'm not quite ready to put down a lot of my ideas in writing, this video piqued my interest and reminded me of why the idea of "feminist fashion" is so interesting:

Vag Magazine Teaser 1 from Vag Magazine on Vimeo.

Vag Magazine Teaser 2 from Vag Magazine on Vimeo.

those are the two teasers for a new web series:

VAG MAGAZINE is not your grandma's feminist magazine, though we support her as a woman. Go behind the scenes at this hipster third-wave feminist magazine with founders FENNEL, SYLVIE, and BETHANY, staffers HEAVY FLO (a hero on the roller derby circuit), REBA (truly a legend of gonzo feminist pop culture journalism), and MEGHAN (the lone holdover from fashion magazine Gemma, which the Vag founders bought out with the proceeds from their Etsy shop), as well as enthusiastic intern KIT, as they teach you how to be a better woman.

This six-part web series stars and was created, written, directed, and produced by comedians from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.

even after watching the teasers, and reading this description, the anticipation is killing me. i can't help but wonder... will it be my new favourite thing in the pop culture universe? or just another way of laughing at feminists, another reason why i'll have to defend why i choose to identify as feminist? if you couldn't tell, i feel conflicted. part of me is like "yeah! awesome! great! discussions about feminism's relationship to fashion! and hilarity!" and then another part is like "will this be another liz lemon brand of feminism, about thin able-bodied middle class straight white women who make jokes about how fat they are when in reality they are probably a size 6?" (for the record i do not completely loathe 30 rock, even though based on that statement you may be lead to believe otherwise)

i really like the jokes about what makes something a "feminist" garment, and it's hilarious for me to hear jokes friends of mine have definitely made before, about ourselves, and about other feminist-identified folks. what third-waver hasn't made jokes about hippies playing with moonblood and mocking "sisterhood" and universally supporting other women simply based solely the fact that they are women (insert debates about sarah palin here)? part of the humour fellow feminists and i have shared about this has definitely been a defense mechanism, and as a way of blowing off steam when confronted with shitty attitudes and politics. there is a lot of infighting within any anti-oppressive community, feminism included, but how can we address those problems in effective and healthy ways? one of my favourite ways of addressing fucked up and problematic things in pop culture is with humour.

lately it seems like there is a dearth in feminist humour; sarah haskins' hugely popular target women is now sadly defunct, and its replacement, modern lady, is just not up to snuff. could it be that vag magazine will be a place for feminists to get their laughs? i hope so. that said, there are already some things irking me about it; namely, the fact that the cast is mostly white and pretty high-femme, and that most of the jokes seem to be at the expense of these very "extreme" hyper critical feminists... but! i'll stop myself there. really, i can't judge the entire series after only having seen a whole minute of footage. and maybe i'm just feeling a wee bit hypercritical about the whole thing in general. i'll save my thoughts until i've watched the webisodes, which launch tomorrow, october 18th.

edited to add: twitter informs me that both myself and vag magazine follow feminist hulk, so my hopes are now indeed higher for this interesting looking series.

links:
vag magazine
vag magazine on vimeo
vag magazine on twitter
vag magazine wants to put the funny in feminism

13 ways of looking at liz lemon at tiger beatdown
ableism in 30 rock at deeply problematic

what i wore: apple picking

one of my absolute favourite things to do when fall rolls around is to go apple picking. so earlier this month when my friends ben and april invited us to head up to l'île d'orléans, a twenty minute drive from québec city, i jumped at the chance! here are a few photos.

the bridge to l'île d'orléans. magnificent to visit in the fall!

the island is full of farms and orchards, and it is a great place for me to get local produce and enjoy the wonderful weather we have around this time of year. this was really wonderful, this orchard was right next to a beautiful old barn. i wish i had snapped some better pictures of the inside, but with the sun so bright and only my little point and shoot, this is all you get.







dress: vintage, thrifted in peterborough, 2007
belt: from le vestiaire, free
shoes: gift from simon, mexico city
socks: deadstock menswear! love 'em.
crinoline underskirt: thrifted



all of these were taken on september 19th, and we just finished our gigantic bag. it took us three weeks to finish our 20 pound bag of apples! we clearly overshot and should have gotten a 10 pound bag. instead we tried lots of new recipes, made apple juices and ciders, adding apples to salads, and of course making lots and lots of desserts like apple crumbles et bien sûr! des tartes tatins. i just simply cannot resist wonderful local fruit at such a good price.



also i don't think i've mentioned it before, but i started a food blog a little while ago. it's called "food i want to eat" and it mostly features recipes i want to try. expect mostly vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, and/or raw recipes. check it out if you're interested in recipes.