zombie walk 2009

zombie silent film stars

i am a big fan of zombie walks, even though i've only participated in them twice. my first venture into the world of zombie walks was last year in toronto, when i went with my friend morgan. as you can see above, we had a lot of fun getting dressed up and walking the streets scaring small children.

recently, i was complaining to my friends in québec city that it is too bad there isn't an annual zombie walk here... and then a week later i discovered there was! this past friday, i failed in convincing 99% of my friends to come with me, but successfully got my good friend ashlee to come. and boy were we the happiest zombies you've ever seen. most everyone else had tons of blood or dirt or other various things but ashlee and i were limited to white face paint and eyeliner. i think we did well with what we had!



yes, you are seeing things properly: there is snow on the ground. in october. it snowed all day on thursday and made for some great eerie photos. here are some of my favourites. i wish i had taken some of the group but it would be out of character for a zombie to be taking group photos! braaaaaaaaaainssss!!!






pre-zombie, post-zombie


zombie team! zombie widows







edited to add: just found some group photos! some are great, this is my favourite



can you find me among the happy zombies? it's like where's waldo... but with zombies!

i am somebody

i found this far too beautiful not to share with you guys. watch it! you won't regret it.

halloween is just around the corner.

to be perfectly honest, i am feeling a little disenchanted about halloween this year. i've put off posting this because i was hoping i could decide on something for myself before encouraging others to pick their halloween costumes. also, it doesn't help matters that none of the people around me are very excited for it. in fact, i had planned to have a halloween party at my house but then everyone said they wouldn't be able to come or had other plans, so i cancelled it. i still haven't decided what i'm going to be, but know i would regret it if i didn't dress up! so i am digging up old inspiration. here is a list i posted on livejournal last year slightly modified/updated for you guys!

1. remember that halloween is supposed to be scary. yeah, it might be fun to dress up as kitty or a doggie or a deer or joan holloway or edie sedgwick or whoever, but at the end of the day, there should be a touch of morbid dark humour to your costume. a friend of mine suggested going as sylvia plath with an oven over my head, and i thought it was hilarious! it could be stylish, and morbid at the same time! zombie overdosed edie sedgwick? now we're talking. i'm not denying that it's fun to have an excuse to dress in a way you wouldn't normally, but it is not just any costume party. it is halloween! the point is to be scary. it makes it more fun to dress over the top that way if you remember that it is HALLOWEEN.

2. CHOOSE SOMETHING. stick to an idea. don't wait until the day of to try and whip up a super great costume. (i really need to take my own advice here...) but try and be witty! do you want to be classic, like a witch, or a zombie, or a ghost? do it up! do you want to go as someone you admire but who still kind of freaks you out? that's fun too! (for the record that is kind of what i do every year; go as someone i admire a lot, who i think i could emulate well, but who still kind of freaks me out. it was so much fun to go as frida from las dos fridas, because that piece is heartbreaking but really morbid; she's cutting her heartstrings!)

3. recognizeability. think about how recognizable your costume will be, and hell, if you care whether or not people recognize you and your costume. last year i was the whore of babylon, and no one knew what i was supposed to be but i still got lots of compliments. i did prefer when i was frida kahlo and people came up to me and talked to me as if they knew me because of who i chose to be dressed as for halloween, so i think it is just a matter of preference.

4. dress weather appropriate. there are a million costumes i want to do but just can't because on oct 31st, it's usually pretty effing cold, especially at night. sometimes even snow! think about where you will be, how much you will be outdoors, etc and try and work some warm (or cooler) stuff into your costume

5. don't underestimate thrift stores, or online stores. etsy has some great resources for costumes, and ebay is always a treasure trove. i'm a huge advocate of thrifting; all three of my costumes above were results from thrifting for most of october. combine it with pieces you already have, borrow from friends, instead of spending a bunch of money on something you'll probably only wear once.

6. stumped for ideas? think of your favourite movie characters! a david lynch heroine, like laura palmer, has such potential for a great halloween costume. those are always fun. ask your parents what they went as, if they have any old costumes laying around. brainstorm!
7. dude, don't be racist. are "indian princesses" really a good halloween costume? or do you just want an excuse to wear your trendy minnetokas and wear your hair in braids? is blackface really a good idea in 2008? be creative, and don't fall back on outdated stereotypes.

8. have fun!

here are my ghosts of halloween past...

Halloween 2005: Sylvia Plath







Halloween 2006: silent film star Louise Brooks (complete with intertitles!)








oh how i love her.

Halloween 2007: Frida Kahlo in Las Dos Fridas









Halloween 2008: The Whore of Babylon (inspired by Metropolis and the Bible)





what is the best costume you ever came up with? what are some of the best costumes you've ever seen? do you think there are other suggestions that could be added to the list of halloween advice for feminists?

the new cackle sisters

the new cackle sisters are a great musical/theatrical performance group based in québec city who revist the music made famous by the cackle sisters in the 1930s. they are really amazing and incorporate all different kinds of creative musical and theatrical tricks. like nothing i've ever seen! it combines so many of my loves, using old radios, clocks, speakers, gramophones, bicycles, and good old fashioned creativity to put on one of the best shows i've ever seen. and lucky for me, they play relatively often in québec city! this past thursday, they put on a lovely show at le cercle and i took a few videos and pictures to show you.






this was probably my favourite number of the night! should have recorded it as well.






the whole gang in action, and here we see the wonderful combination of new and old technologies to make a really fucking good show!



there are a few more videos posted on my youtube channel if you would like to hear more.


what i wore to go see them
dress: jacob dress i bought for my sister two years ago but she never wears it so i borrowed it, you know how that goes with siblings
tweed "jules" jacket: one of my all-time best thrifts! 6 years and going strong. can't remember where i bought it or how much i paid, though.
wool thigh high socks: i see france, 15$
brogue heels: naturalizer, birthday present 2008
jewelry: antique key, from a flea market, worn as a necklace and little fleur de lys earrings, thrifted. and to top it off i wore my fancy schmancy feather hat that i didn't get a good picture of.


outfit + trusty trenchcoat, feather hat, scarf and purse to enjoy the cold walk there.


also, a super creepy photo i took of a girl whose style i really, really enjoyed. in fact, i tried that dress on at the (only) vintage store in québec city but it did not fit, nor do i currently have the funds, or the need, for another dress. anyway, she paired it with great 80s patterned tights, an alice dellal style haircut and i wish i had gotten a better picture... or perhaps even less creepier had asked her for a photo. anyway, i really love the idea of pairing classy vintage dresses with things with a more punk edge and i think her outfit is a great example of it done justice!

but back to the music! here is a photo of the original cackle sisters:



here is a great radio broadcast about the cackle sisters (also known as the dezurik sisters) and of course you can read about them on wikipedia if you want to know more.

work, all the way in the wilderness

i started a new teaching contract last week, which is nice and all, but it is unfortunately very, very far from home. saying it's in "québec city" is a bit of a stretch... a good two hour commute taking into consideration waiting for the buses and the transfers and all that jazz. but! the students are great, and the walk to work from the bus station is beautiful. there is a gorgeous bike path along the river and amazing foliage this time of year. it won't be as nice to have this commute in december, but for now it is enjoyable. while waiting (an hour) for the bus i took some pictures to pass the time, so here you have them!

i always end up overthinking what to wear to a first day of work... i usually don't dress much differently than normally for work, but now that i am teaching people much older than myself, i tend to always wear my glasses, my hair up, and something a bit more formal. i think this is something i'm really comfortable in because it is something i love, kinda gives you an idea of what i'm like, but is still professional without being stiff, vintage without being costumey. how do you guys feel about first day of work outfits? do you have a go-to outfit every time, or do you just kind of go with the flow depending on what kind of work it is? good luck charms?

dress: vintage 1940s with lovely fake diamond detailing, 20$ on queen street east (highly underrated vintage shopping in toronto)
coat: h&m circa 2006
tights: simons, best place for thick winter ones! 8$ on sale
earrings: naked lady party exchange
scarf: h&m, gift
boots: le vestiaire (thrift store where i volunteer... so they were free!)

why we need feminist fashion blogs.

There is an abundance of intelligent (and stylish) young women out there starting fashion blogs for all sorts of reasons; to show off their pretty clothes, to have one place to post all of their high fashion haute couture desires, to increase their sales on ebay or etsy, or, of course, in the hopes of finding fame and fortune. With magazines like Vogue and Glamour increasingly losing ad revenue and audiences to the Internet, more and more young women are being profiled and reverred in the mainstream media. To top it off, artists like Kanye West and Justin Timberlake, known for their cutting edge taste in fashion, have been plugging bloggers like Sea of Shoes' Jane Aldridge and Hannah + Landon.

So,why am I following the influx of bloggers myself? Am I striving for fame and fortune, or do I just want to brag about how stylish I can be? Well, let's start with a little history of my relationship with the Internet and fashion. I've been keeping a personal blog since I was 16 years old [which, for the record, is terribly embarrassing to read but I can't quite bring myself to delete it]. I soon ventured to greener, slightly more mature pastures when livejournal became available for free, starting with ocean_child and its most current incarnation, garconniere. I am quite active in a number of livejournal communities, varying from film_stills, thrfitwhore, to the more exclusively fashion based networks of newestwrinkle [first post in 2005], vintage_look, daughterofether and others. Sometimes I simply watch and read the comments, other times I post what I wear and ask for opinions.


On more than one occassion, I thought of boycotting fashion communities simply because the cons outweighed the pros; the privilege of white girls dressing up as indian princesses for halloween and accusing those who criticize them as being too serious, the "those pants/that dress/that style only looks good on skinny girls" comments (eating disorder trigger warning for that last link) on people's bodies who dared to venture outside of the conventional box. I briefly tried creating my own fashion community for those who were sick of the racist, fatphobic, and heteronormative conjecture being spouted in newestwrinkle and hot_fashion by creating stylishandsassy; it was quite a fruitless experiment (i was pretty much the only one who posted, and membership peaked at 50 members, compared to newestwrinkle's 7755) and it is now populated with gaudy ads for ebay and other internet sales. It was good while it lasted, but it proves that it is quite difficult to establish an online community to discuss this issues at length with engaging people, and then to maintain that community.

With all of these complaints, you may be wondering, why the fuck did you keep reading if it just made you angry? Well, the few positive aspects sometimes outweighed the many negative ones. Getting comments from people saying "you really know how to dress," or "nice armpits, friend!" when the people I was interacting with in reality would often mock my style or be repulsed by my distaste for razors. But moreso, it was seeing women like zana, [link from a post in 2005, ] who now has a great blog called garbagedress, witty commentors like hahawhat, creativetypes, etc. who never seemed to post enough compared to the sea of (mostly) teenaged white girls who bought clothes with daddy's credit card. What kept pulling me to check and engage with these communities regularly were the interactions between the members of the community: girls who liked fashion, were unapologetic about it even though it is often dismissed as superficial, and were never necessarily the people that fashion was marketed towards. Punk diy haircuts, skirts they made themselves out of old thrifted pillowcases, creative ways of pairing modern and vintage pieces, bodies that were outside of the size 0-12 size spectrum, people who mixed patterns i would have never thought could work together, but, surprisingly did. It was a combination of my admiration for these people based on their style and what they had to say. Their positive or witty responses towards negative dismissive comments usually won my heart. Simply by seeing someone post their outfits once every 4 or 5 months on a livejournal community made me feel as if I knew that person, and sometimes, they me.

It was comforting, especially in my late teens when I started posting, to find that I was not alone in my desire to be stylish without having the means to buy designer shoes or all of the things I wanted, even if it was virtually. Comforting to know that one could be politicized about capitalism, consumerism but still like fashion. To see the potential revolutionary aspects of fashion, to unpack the historical meanings behind garments, and to learn from each other's successes and mistakes. To see other queer girls who liked wearing dresses.

When I ventured back into the world of blogger and discovered fashion blogs a year or two ago, I was frankly shocked by the homogeneity. The themes and content become astoundingly redundant: here's "what i wore today," I'm not going to buy anything new for a year, here are cute vintage dresses I'm selling on etsy, etc. But where was the commentary? Where was that personal, political touch I love? Are these blogs really a new place for young women to develop their opinions and ideas about fashion? Or is it just another place to reproduce the ideals long spouted by runways and fashion magazines around the world for decades?

Instead of just bitching and complaining about the prevalence of pretty and lack of savvy substance, I decided to borrow the idea from activism communities: if you want something to exist or change and it doesn't, do it yourself. I want this blog to be a place where I can explore political notions of fashion (without using too much inaccessible jargon) and have other people give me feedback, and maybe even encourage other feminists interested in fashion to start their own blogs to start even more conversations. I have a million ideas I want to unpack, or that I have tried to explore in the past, and it is so much more exciting to have a facet where I can really develop these ideas in more detail.

That is not to say this will be a text-only blog writing about the politics of cultural appropriation, the theoretical underpinnings of self-portraits, and so on: I will engage with some of the staples of fashion blogs as a way of exploring the reasons why so many people do them as well. But! I wrote these ideas out as some kind of a manifesto, as something to stay true to while I blog. To remind myself of my original intentions as this progresses.

Here are some features I hope to have on my blog regularly (monthly or bimonthly):
- What I wore today posts
- Archives: I hope to share a lot of things I have already written about fashion by digging up old posts and going through my own personal archives.
- Links to interesting articles, radio shows, podcasts, magazines, academic journals, and other blogs that have interesting takes on fashion
- Film Features: if you've read my livejournal, you know I am a huge fan of films. I even hope to eventually do my masters in film studies! But for the time being,I will post anything I write about films here. I tried writing them in my livejournal but I think this will be a better place for them. Additionally, I will highlight stylish films from time to time (talk about superficial!) and post film stills.
- Photodumps: from time to time I will post some of my favourite fashion related images. Etsy favourites, fashion spreads, etc. In the meantime you can follow me on tumblr: garconniere.tumblr.com
- Articles written by me: I really need to get into the habit of writing in English again, so I hope to write at least one article a month that has something directly related to fashion from a feminist perspective. I already have a bunch of ideas (the politics of wearing fur/leather if you are vegetarian or vegan, the social signifiers of fashion, body politics, etc). I will limit myself to 600-800 words for these, simply for my readerships' sake!

What I want from you!
- I want you to comment! Tell me what you think about my ideas, contribute your own, link back to your blog so we can keep engaging.
- Tell me what you think I am doing right and wrong: is it contradictory to be so critical of the sea of privileged white girls posting their outfits when I am doing the same?
- Point me in the direction of blogs that you think have got it right. I know a bunch of fat-positive fashion blogs, some really great feminist ones, some great antiracist ones, but am sorely lacking in the department of fashion focused feminist or poc blogs.
- Share resources with me. If there is a movie you think I need to see, a blog, etc, send me a message and let me know.

So that's that! Welcome to a la garçonnière!

glamourous revolution? i think not.

i feel like such a bitter person, but honestly? this image has been all over the internet and i felt like i needed to address my problems with it. this picture does not seem revolutionary to me. reblogged on tumblr, written about on jezebel, and i even watched the video when it was first revealed on ellen to much praise and adulation. i think my problem with it is that it really strikes me as… well, a new standard body.

why? because it does not look like the women i know. they all look the same, or at least similar... their skin even almost blends together into a fleshy mound. sure, maybe they look a bit more like me than the runway models, but i don’t see myself, i don’t see my friends. the long windswept locks, the perfect skin, the sexy faces. they don’t look like they are saying, “i am happy in my body! and you should be, too!” rather, to me, it seems like they are saying “i will seduce you, white man behind the camera.” it is so obvious they are in a photo studio. it seems so obvious that the magazine put out a call for models sized 10-16, not for fat women who are happy in their bodies and would like to be all sussed up for a glossy photo. not to mention the fact that it looks photoshopped, but that's a whole other can of worms we can unleash another day.

juxtaposing this image with the one that set this firestorm alight, the photo of lizzie miller, really brings out what i think bothers me about this "these bodies are beautiful" photograph. the photo of lizzie miller in the september issue struck such a chord with people particularly because it seemed natural. you can read the responses yourself on the glamour magazine website. when reading some of the letters, the word "normal" and "real" are so dominant, which is something we should really be investigating. but, back to the photograph for a moment: it wasn’t necessarily her body, but the photo itself, that inspired women. not only does she seem natural, but the setting does as well. it's almost as if she had just rolled out of bed and was talking with a friend or a lover outside of the frame of the shot. this "naturalness" really stands out when we look at it in comparison to the image of the seven plus-sized models. her tiny belly roll and fleshy thighs was something that is never seem in mainstream magazines, definitely, but for me it was more the naturalness of the photograph that made it a great photo.

this studio photo, in comparison, sucks. the one woman of colour seems tokenized to me, and they all look prepped for heteronormative consumption. i’m surprised they didn’t have a redhead to balance out the brunettes and blondes. even in the big reveal of the photograph on ellen's talk show, she asks if there will be more ethnic diversity in the magazine as well, because anyone who has seen this photo can see that there ain't much of that going on here. and like i alluded to earlier, they all seem to be primped and preened for the heterosexual male gaze. they all look able-bodied, and really, when you get down to the heart of it, this image is not very different from images of women we've been subjected to countless times before.

for me, the real problem here is that women’s bodies are still being objectified. why was this photo taken? to make "normal" women feel better about their bodies? fuck no! it was made to sell more magazines. change the size, change the standard, but we are still living in a culture where women’s bodies are used to sell products. and that is what the real problem is, and a problem that no one wants to talk about. (well, except maybe for target women.)

the fact of the matter is that yes, it is a small victory that their is a two-page spread in a mainstream magazine showing bodies that they normally don't, but it is hardly revolutionary. i have never read glamour magazine and don't plan on starting now. just look at the cover of this exact same issue: a sexed up, pantsless scarlett johansson. what is in this magazine? talking about sex and love (in a heteronormative way, of course, and remember you're nothing if you're single), how to get great skin (and what products to buy to get it, i assume), and oh! what is that there in tiny font? "the beauty revolution starts on page 198."

198? how many pages are in this magazine? if it were really a revolution, shouldn't it start on page 1? on the cover?

what do you guys think?

am i being too harsh, or not harsh enough?