Drag Kings in Afghanistan

Interesting article.  I am intrigued looking at how different cultures use cross-dressing, especially when it is to fulfill a societal advantage (i.e. sonless families need son to raise social status) and not in connection with one's sexuality (as we are trained to react in the US). I remember someone telling me that in some part of the world it's not unusual for families without daughters to pick a son to dress up as a girl and help his mother out around the house...but I cannot remember where this happened.  I'm pretty sure Kate was the one telling me this story so she should post an article about that!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/world/asia/21gender.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&emc=eta1

Since we're talking movies...

I am a big fan of Alison Bechdel, and here's a reason why:



(i.e. SATC2 is certainly problematic in its own right, but maybe there are bigger structural problems with modern U.S. Entertainment?)

(Entertainment capitalized as a nod to DFW. All FBC members are entitled to roll their eyes at the usual sight of me gushing about him.)

SHE-mail!

 

A tip from Jezebel, lead me to an article about John Kelly, a Joni Mitchell female-impersonator who has been performing one-woman shows singing (not lip-syncing) Joni Mitchell songs.  Here's a great article in the LA Times with both Joni Mitchell and John Kelly talking about his most recent show ' Paved Paradise: The Art of Joni Mitchell.'  I am a huge Joni Mitchell fan and I find it an enormous accomplishment Kelly is able to pull off her songs and on-stage demeanor.  I'm also intrigued because I have been watching a lot of RuPaul's Drag Race and Eddie Izzard lately, both make-up heavy and shaving enthusiasts, which is at contrast with  Kelly who stays true to Mitchell with very limited make-up and nothing shaved but the face.   I must confess after watching RuPaul's Drag Race and seeing men look WAY more attractive and made-up than I ever will be makes me feel well...homely.  So it's nice to know that there are female impersonators out there that can appreciate and impersonate the femininity of no-make-up low frills women.  The picture on the post shows Kelly as Joni Mitchell and musician Zecca Esquibel in drag as Georgia O'Keefe (Mitchell and O'Keefe were apparently friends in real life).  It makes me happy to know that you don't have to be glitzy or glamorous to be a drag icon, being awesomely talented is enough!

Speaking of Netflix...

Last night I watched 'Broken English'. I had high hopes for it - Parker Posey + directed by Zoe Cassavetes (daughter of John 'What's your take on' Cassavetes - so I figured there was a reasonable chance some of the talent was passed on, right?)

(Spoiler alert.)

No! The premise is that Parker Posey's character is young woman in New York who feels desperately single. So basically it's 2 hours of her being mopey and unpleasant to a variety of men, some of whom are also mopey and/or unpleasant (or unaccountably persist in being interested despite her total lack of a personality - most of her lines are some variation on 'I'm so anxious/tired/lame/doomed to be single forever!') Even the way she walks - a kind of knock-kneed, tripping shuffle - is irritating. In the end, of course, a handsome old Frenchman in a bar tells her that she has to love herself before she can find love w/ anyone else, and then she lights a candle meaningfully in a cathedral, and finds true love on the Metro.

I guess... I just wasn't expecting an earth-tones Sex and the City. A black comedy would have been nice. Or an ending that didn't imply that the point and inevitable reward of being at peace w/ yourself is finding someone to love you. Or some kind of indication that there are bigger questions in the world than any one person's marital status. I'm not unsympathetic to the plight of women who worry about finding someone - but I am totally unsympathetic to movies that use PARKER POSEY - a NATIONAL TREASURE - to drably illustrate something that Sarah Jessica Parker, fer Chrissake, has already demonstrated with a lot more pizazz and some actual humour.

GenderFork

I found this awesome website of beautiful photography and quotes called GenderFork.com.
The theme of the website is gender ambiguity and expressing gender along a spectrum.  It's amazing looking through the pictures and having notions feminine and masculine challenged.  At the jump is one of my favorites...

Male Brain vs. Female Brain or How to take scientific studies and manipulate them into social discourse

In an article posted on CNN today "Love, Sex, and the Male Brain" Dr. Louanne Brizendine discusses her new book The Male Brain.  She claims that the physical make-up of the male brain differs from the female brain (ok....I'm with you on that one) and this difference causes men to to oggle big breasted women (sort of losing me here) want sex ALL the time (hmmmm....ok), but eventually leads him to want a mate for life and become an adoring father (wait...what...contradiction much?).  This book is a follow-up to New York Times Bestselling The Female Brain in which Dr. Brizendine discusses the make-up of the female brain and how that causes us to gab so much (the cover is even a telephone cord shaped to look like a brain).   So when I first read the article, I had no trouble getting on board with the fact that the male and female brains are in general different from one and other.  What I have trouble with is the connection between the differing size of certain nerve centers being the cause of certain social behaviors. Apparently I am not alone: http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/003419.html ; http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003894.html ; http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/books/review/Henig.t.html