Music be the food of love ... youtube clips

Britney and JT "What goes around"

Amy Winehouse "Rehab"


and gotta love the Jane Fonda

and a genuine stone cold classic by Kon Kan

Where have all the feminists gone?

This post has been a long time abrewing. Me and Sar have been talking about this one a lot lately. The gist is "why the hell are young modern girls totally in denial that a movement called FEMINISM ever happened (and they are loath to claim to be a feminist" and "why the HELL if women have achieved some measure of equality are they pissing it away on being slappers and "girls gone wild" whose only sense of achievement comes from getting boys excited (like that's so hard)".

Many years ago I read the newskool feminist works like "The Beauty Myth" by Naomi Wolf and "Backlash" by Susan Faludi that looked at why women are still so objectified (for an even the older piece, see Valerie Solanas" S.C.U.M. Manifesto, which is a pretty brutal anti-men piece). But I think things have got waaaay worse since the early 90s when new feminists were examining the movement's success of lack of.

More recently, Ariel Levy's book Female Chaunvinist Pigs: Feminism and the rise of female raunch culture really lays bare the strange place women now dwell in. Where empowerment is flashing your tits at strangers. Some of the reviews of this book are spot on:

"With Female Chauvinist Pigs, Ariel Levy becomes feminism's newest and most provocative voice, brilliantly laying bare the contradictions and evasions and self-deceptions that pass for empowerment."
-Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point

New York magazine writer Ariel Levy strips the Girls Gone Wild culture of its cuteness in her provocative Female Chauvinist Pigs, arguing that post-feminist poster girls such as the Playboy Bunnies offer only faux empowerment."
-Vanity Fair

"Ariel Levy understands that while we may defend to death every woman's right to look and act like a whore, it doesn't mean we're prigs if we find it unfortunate."
-Kurt Andersen, author of Turn of the Century

They put it so damn well! This subject is a mass of contradictions and thorny issues. None of us want to take away other women's right to behave and live as they believe, but are there really so many women who want to be hos - or do they think they have to be, to compete with other women, and to get men's attention? Just look at the whole Anna Nicole Smith debacle. Did she really starve her baby so it would be slim and sexy?

Yesterday's Sunday Star Times (February 25) again trawled over this issue, with some NZ examples like the World designer who has made a t-shirt for toddlers saying "future porn star". Surely there is a point where witty irony becomes tacky tacky tacky.

The sad thing is it mostly women making this happen. Who can blame guys for just sitting back and smirking when girls are leaping around flashing their g strings and kissing each other on the dance floor for just one moment of male attention. Why are girls competing for the glory of hanging out with old wrinkly tosspots like Hugh Hefner?

So what do we do? I don't know. Be aware. Don't fall for it.

My bit for brit

I hired "Crossroads" out of my local library...To remember the good times...Or at least to remember a time where the bad times was simply Brit's acting and the flimsy script...

The Ultimate Fan

The ultimate fan has a certain idea of what it means to care. It’s always the little things; The letters sprayed with the star’s favorite perfume, gift packages of their most loved foods, postcards of small towns they really ought to visit. (these rules per see obviously only applied to girl fans and slightly misguided male fans – die hard red blooded males either didn’t give fan mail and kept all their “applause” to the confines of a handy tissue or send eloquent love notes professing their burning passion to “fuck you senseless.”
An ultimate fan is not necessarily loyal; Longevity simply doesn’t need to enter the arena of fandom. Of course by some it is regarded as the touchstone of what being a fan is all about. “I loved them since before it was cool to like them” I’m sure has sparked many an internet debate. There is undeniably some status in those types of fans. It’s like loving the ugly duckling before they become a swan.
However an ultimate fan can be fickle. They can love hard and fast and their passion (as fierce as it is) will burn out and re-ignite for some new flame. The ultimate fan is an obsessive little blighter. Their motto (if they could tear themselves away from their “fanzines” long enough to think of one) would be something along the lines of “eat, sleep, breathe ________”. Perhaps that seems tragic. Or less than that, pathetic. To the outsider, the person not shackled by lust or envy on said star that is correct. It is pathetic. Really, what is the point of investing all this energy into someone (or something in the case of “show” fans such as Trekkies – though they tend to be more of the loyal, consistent type fan despite the reputation they are burdened with)who has absolutely no idea you exist. Who by all possibilities is probably a real asshole who you wouldn’t want to waste your breath on saying “hi” to, let alone getting down on your knees in the privacy of some swanky hotel. It’s not the person you fall for. It’s the idea.
It was Rita Hayworth I believe who said “Men go to bed with Gilda and they wake up to me” (cheers to “Notting Hill” for that quote). What Rita is professing (apart from the subtlest hint of promiscuity – you go Rita! Dawg!) is the very divide of fan and star – but also the unifying degree. We’re all fans of something/someone and that’s what simultaneously makes us equal and creates a hierarchy. I’m serious – it sounds like rubbish but think about it. I’m a fan of so and so whose a fan of so and so (a different so and so – I’m trying to make a point here) who looks up to - and so on and so on. It’s human nature that we envy or desire something that someone else has, regardless of whether that’s as simple as wanting your workmate’s sandwich or Jessica Simpson’s butt. (Please don’t get those two mixed up) We all have our little fantasies and to me that’s as healthy as an apple a day. Unless…
What we as ultimate fans (and the regular average Joe fans too) can tend to forget is that the object of our desire is real. (Again unless it’s a show or something not real, like a car – work with me here)
And that’s when I wonder if it isn’t incredibly inappropriate to think lascivious thoughts about our hot famous counterparts…when these hot counterparts may have families or loved ones…Is it ok to drool and plan a daydream shagathon with a very married Johnny Knoxville(**he was married when I first wrote this**), if it isn’t okay to do that about some married person in regular life? Or on the other hand (which I as a sometime ultimate fan prefer to think like) it’s perfectly okay as long as it stays in the mind and never more. And more specific to that, that it’s natural even so long as your desires for celebrities and a life different to your own doesn’t inhibit or prohibit you from going out and living and loving the life we have been blessed with ourselves…

Britney is Bald - for real?

Hot off the press



courtesy of TMZ.com

goose and gander

Ok I don't know if I'm out on a limb here but I figure this is my blog (well me and Kebabette's) so too bad!! I mean does anyone really read these anyway? Na na na na na -boooooo hisssss.
Right...Being normal...Anyway it seems everywhere you turn, you see straight girls making out with each other, or pashing or posing in some men's mag wearing nothing but a bikini thong and an awkward pout (I'm sure there's a whole lot of literal minded straight guys out there rapidly turning from left and right trying to see these alleged pashers)...Now before you think this is a full on rant against that, rest assured it's not...My "angle" is why aren't straight guys pashing? (not how I don't ask that they wear pouts and g-strings while they do it?) Seriously...There's this whole myth out there that all us girls are one champers away from snogging our best friend whilst we flick our hair about the place and stick our boobs out for some guy's benefit..or because we so just want to make out with every semi hot girl...Newsflash...It's not the case! Girls are just exploiting the fact that men are greedy...By this I mean, they'd rather look at two girls than one...Four girls than three...Etc etc. And I'm not going to begrudge that. I'm guilty of it myself.I was at a writers group once when one of the male writers asked me and a fellow female to kiss and he'd buy us drinks for the rest of the night...Easy...One tongue pash for a few beers.
But...if you asked two guys to do that, it's most unlikely. In fact guys have a few beers and just become incoherent, not inclined to tongue their rubgy team. Who's right, who's wrong? I don't want to lay it on the line...I just want to say I'm greedy too...Just suck in your man boobs and give your mate a peck on the cheek...I'll shout you...

Scandals & Sorrow

Firstly, a tribute to Anna Nicole Smith. If her life was a Jackie Collins potboiler, you would have thought the plot was over the top. NZHerald has a nice synopsis of her mad world online. I first remember hearing about Anna Nicole when she modelled for Guess. She had that creamy blonde voluptousness that made her a natural heir to Marilyn and Jayne Mansfield.

There were so many soap opera elements to her life, the trailer park, titty bars, marriage to a wizened billionaire, modelling, Playboy, dramatic weight gain and loss, drugs, endless court cases, reality tv, and the recent tragic loss of her son at the time of her baby daughter's birth.

Now she has died in mysterious circumstances and becomes another of the blonde legends and their fatal heritage.

See The Observer: Anna Nicole - a golden girl, not a gold digger
No more drama. Rest in peace

On a lighter note, here is a headline you didn't think you'd ever see.
Ralph Fiennes in mile-high scandal:
A QANTAS flight attendant faces the sack after being accused of having sex with British actor Ralph Fiennes in an aircraft toilet while flying from Australia to India.

Sydney-based Lisa Robertson (no relation to the Sisters R), 38, met the star of The English Patient while working in the business-class cabin on flight QF 123 from Darwin to Mumbai on January 24.

In a confidential report to Qantas management obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, Ms Robertson is accused of chatting to Fiennes during the flight and being seen exiting the same toilet moments apart.

She claims Fiennes, 44, became "amorous'' towards her in the toilet.

Ms Robertson declined to comment when contacted by The Sunday Telegraph.

Qantas staff who were aware of the incident said last night the couple were caught after crew members waited outside the toilet.

In a statement lodged with her employer, Ms Robertson denied the allegations.

The statement was presented at a meeting on Thursday between Ms Robertson, the Flight Attendants' Association, Qantas and airline services contractor Morris Alexander Management.

At the meeting Qantas representatives accused Ms Robertson of having sex with Fiennes.

Ms Robertson has been suspended without pay.

Fiennes had been in Australia to perform at the Sydney Festival before travelling to India.

Details of Ms Robertson's alleged encounter with Fiennes are contained in her statement to Qantas management.

It shows she has been accused of two breaches of the company's corporate and cabin-crew policies.

Read her statement
Yet more proof that the "repressed Englishman" ain't ... !