1. Scout of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Scout is simply a badass. She might be an eight-year-old girl, but her ability to process the world around her without acting in accord with society’s prejudice is remarkable. She often doesn’t even understand the significance of her actions, but even in her naiveté, the importance of her words are not lost on the reader. She manages to break up a potential lynching with a simple “hey, Mr. Cunningham,” her innocence and her kind heart forcing down the guns and anger surrounding her. Like I said, she’s just a badass.

2. Alison of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. These two panels say it all:

(I gave my thesis presentation last week, part of which was about Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home. I don’t know if it was my use of the word “fuck” or my pictures of lesbian sex, but the room was surprisingly quiet…)

3. Finn of Accomplice by Eireann Corrigan. I love love love everything written by Eireann Corrigan. Part of it may be that she teaches at the high school I attended (and there are subtle references to Prep in a lot of her writing), part of it may be that she uses the traditional Irish spelling of Eireann, and part of it is that all of her characters are so beautifully fucked up. In Accomplice, Finn helps stage the disappearance of her best friend, Chloe, so that the two of them can write kickass college essays. I was so drawn into Finn and her relationship with Chloe as I was reading this book, and it was impossible to predict what would happen next. But what really made me love this book and adore Finn in particular will ruin the ending, so I’ll leave it at this: go buy this book. Now.

4. Precious of Push by Sapphire.

everi mornin
by Precious j.

Everi mornin
i write
a poem
before I go to
school
marY Had a little lamb
but I got a kid
an HIV
that folow me
to school
one day.

5. Portia of The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare. I first read this play in a Shakespeare seminar on the politics of friendship–so naturally, we were preoccupied with themes of masculinity, political power, and relationships between men. Portia stands out as a character who, despite her circumstances, remains assertive, opinionated, and confident. She’s often pegged as manipulative because she so cleverly finds her way through social and legal loopholes with her cleverness and her male lawyer drag… while she’s not the only one of Shakespeare’s heroines to crossdress, I find her the most compelling. And you just can’t ignore the hilarity of a male actor playing a woman in male drag.

6. Rebecca of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Who says a heroine can’t be dead throughout the entire story? (That doesn’t give anything away, don’t worry.)

7. Kathy H. of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It’s Kathy’s best friend, Ruth, who is really the alpha-female of this novel, but Kathy is the clear winner for the title of Heroine. There’s one scene in particular–Kathy dancing to the song Never Let Me Go, holding a doll close to her chest–that I always think of when I recall reading this book. It’s Kathy’s kind-heartedness that ultimately makes the book so devastating, and her empathy for others, despite what she’s been through, is almost tragic. I think part of me wanted to see her express anger and lash out, but she refuses to compromise her humanity, even if society refuses to recognize it.

8. Dolores Driscoll of The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks. There’s something about Dolores’ pride in her work as a school bus driver that had me attached to her from the second she started narrating. The book is actually told by four different narrators, each receiving their own section, but the tragedy of Dolores’ life after the accident–especially when she becomes the scapegoat for the deaths of 14 children–left me in awe of her incredible sense of responsibility and genuine love for the children of her town.

9. Irene of Passing by Nella Larsen. Despite her weaknesses and her intense judgement of Clare, it was hard for me not to love Irene. As it turns out, neither Irene nor Clare are completely satisfied with their choices in life, and in more subtle ways, Irene attempts to “pass” as much as Clare does. (I’ve already included one lesbian sex picture in this post, so I’ll just go ahead and admit what you’re all thinking–it’s definitely the homoeroticism of this book that does it for me.)

Annnnnd drumroll please…

10. Pippi from The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking by Michael Chesworth. OK, all I remember of Pippi is from my childhood, of course, and I think I just thought her braids were really cool, but I had to save a spot for her to satisfy my 8-year-old self…

Bookmark to:

The photo above is from World Café Live on Saturday night, where I went to see Kina Grannis (who is somehow even more beautiful and endearing in person) perform.

From just about the second her first boot* peeked out from the lest stage, the whole audience erupted into shouts of “Kina! WHY ARE YOU SO CUTE?” and “we love you!” I think she was a bit overwhelmed when she first walked out – she nervously gave a quick “hi” to the audience before getting right to the first song (“World in Front of Me”). I couldn’t believe how beautiful she sounded in person – no backup vocals (with the exception of audience harmonizers!), no band, just Kina and her guitar – or, for one song, her ukulele. There was a really sweet backstory to the ukulele song: when her grandfather’s ukulele was stolen on her first tour of the East Coast, she tweeted about it to her followers and received a ton of support from her fans. Eventually, some of her fans surprised her with a ukulele they had made in a Hawaiian factory where her grandfather’s was from. All I could think of when she told this story was that only someone as sweet as Kina could have fans that thoughtful and dedicated – they even had her name carved into it. I’ve never seen someone so graciously thank their fans – sometimes you get the sense that performers are so used to the stage that shows don’t really phase them, but Kina appears so humble and thankful for every person in the room while managing to command the stage as though she was born on it.

The highlight (and cutest Kina moment ever) was definitely her performance of “Message from Your Heart.” (Video here!) She stepped away from the microphone, stood at the edge of the stage, and invited the audience to participate in the “bum bum bum” part of the chorus. A few fans offered to harmonize with her, and she ended up bringing them to the front of the room to sing with her. The photo above is of her ending number, standing at the edge of the stage with her harmonizers below her – even from upstairs in the Mezzanine section, the room felt as intimate as a small café rather than World Café Live. According to Rob, this is why Kina will one day rule the world as a peaceful domain…!

* In addition to somehow being even more beautiful in person, Kina has the most adorable outfit on – I was asked to tweet her asking where her boots were from. I got all giddy when she responded, because I can be a total 13-year-old girl sometimes…

And here we are!

(Thank you to Kim at Fans of Kina for re-posting this, and to both Kina and her sister Emi for tweeting about it!)

Bookmark to:

allthechocolatesinthebox:

sexisnottheenemy:

DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary  » Archive  » Transmen

…is she still receiving death threats over this comic?

Really though, I always felt that she was making fun of herself in this strip, and that its overall meaning was misinterpreted. I completely understand why the comic is triggering and, at least in the first four panels, fetishizes (white, thin, able-bodied, FTM) transgender men, but the last two panels show a certain awareness of her own cis-gender privilege and point out the problem of fetishizing “transmen” pretty directly. I could be wrong, and I don’t remember what she had to say about this comic after the backlash, but overall, I don’t think she gets enough credit…

Bookmark to:

This photo was taken at Passion Puddle, located on the border of the Cook and Douglass campuses at Rutgers (you can’t see the lake itself too well in this photo, but I only had a few minutes before the bus left, and at the time I was busy taking some freshmen on “vacation” — an activity that involves a Saturday afternoon bus ride to Sears, where we enjoy napping on real beds for a few hours). According to legend, when a male from Cook College and a female from Douglass College hold hands and walk around the water three times, they will soon become engaged. This myth seems to have been slightly modified since the merging of all undergraduate liberal arts colleges at Rutgers and changed simply to a male and a female — though I don’t think we’ve progressed to the point of incorporating same-sex hand-holding into the passing of the legend. I’m not sure I mind being left out, of course, because Passion Puddle is primarily known for another myth involving the very unromantic excavation of a body from the bottom of the lake, which leads me, in a very morbid transition, to Virginia Woolf…

This past week I finished reading Mrs. Dalloway for the second time in one of my courses, and during a class discussion, the subject of food was brought up in relation to the way Virginia Woolf’s anorexia seems to affect the meaning attached food in her writing. The passage we spoke about involved Miss Kilman eating a pink cake — Woolf’s description of this act is unmistakably resentful, with Miss Kilman’s eating directly paired with her own feelings of worthlessness and the narrator’s repulsive depiction of her. The image of food itself, though, is somewhat glorified — there’s a subtle sense of indulgence in the very hateful way she writes about food, with great care taken to describe in detail the way Miss Kilman speaks while handling her food, and finally swallows the last bit of her eclair, and then wipes the chocolate from her fingers, and then finishes with a cup of tea. A friend once jokingly suggested that the reason anorexic women so often work around food or otherwise aspire to go onto culinary school is because “it’s like porn for them” — and I think that’s the kind of withheld desire evident in Woolf’s writing… that there is something almost pornographic about the experience of watching someone eating while personally abstaining from food. When a person spends so much time thinking about and obsessing over food, I think that obsession can manifest itself in all sorts of ways, whether it be through one’s profession, writing, or artwork… I’m thinking Fiona Apple’s The First Taste provides an interesting musical comparison to Woolf (or perhaps Paper Bag, with its more blatant references to hunger and loneliness).

What I also wonder about, though, is the presence of Elizabeth in the pink cake scene, and how her relationship with her mother, Clarissa, might complicate Woolf’s ideas about food. It seems to lend to to the idea that eating disorders often develop out of an inadequate relationship with a woman’s mother, which would certainly make sense in Woolf’s case, given her mother’s death at such an early age. Either way I think that understanding Woolf’s relationship to food adds another dimension to the novel I hadn’t picked up on before now…

Bookmark to:

In seventh grade, I broke my leg pretty badly. With one fractured tibia and a screw in my ankle, I ended up with a cast that reached all the way up to my hip and a wheelchair to prevent any further mishaps. I was allowed to use crutches at home, but the doctor told me it was too dangerous to go out without a wheelchair, as my leg couldn’t handle any stress after my surgery. This proved difficult during school, even with the ramps (we measured them once during a math project — the angle is so steep it’s technically illegal). During gym and other activities I couldn’t take part in, I was brought to the library, where I sat overlooking a tiny courtyard that could see into classrooms across the way. A teacher of mine joked that it was the exact plot of Rear Window — that a murder would soon occur and I’d be the only one to notice it, all from the confines of my chair by the window.

It wasn’t until this past year that I finally watched Hitchcock’s Rear Window. I saw it in my Writing & Photography class — which, of course, was the class that inspired the photoblog aspect of this site. Anyway, I finally began to feel like the voyeur in the film when I went to the top floor of my apartment building to take some photos the other night. I first went up there with a friend on the fourth of July to watch the fireworks (it totally beat going to a park or some such thing — the view is so great from the 12th floor that we were able to see 11 different displays in nearby towns). Later on, I decided to take advantage of the view and bring up my camera.

Luckily no one at the restaurant across the street could see me, so I didn’t look like a total creep. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with these images just yet, but I’m thinking of creating some sort of time lapse video, as I’ve got a number of different pictures with the same view as well as access to that photo spot for the rest of the summer.

Bookmark to:

Recently, there have been some horrendous sounds coming from the bathroom in my dormitory. A late night trip to the restroom revealed to me the source of this problem: speakers hooked up to an iPod belonging to someone whose iTunes library apparently contains nothing but rap music. After discovering this, I also realized that one particularly annoying song, which Google has informed me is called “Crank Dat Soulja Boy,” has become very popular not just in my bathroom, but everywhere. I can’t walk around campus or go to the mall or do much of anything without hearing people singing about cranking dat Supaman.

Despite the widespread popularity of this song, I had a difficult time deciphering the words. My Google search proved useless here, as after reading the lyrics, I still had no idea what the words actually meant. Never have I heard “Superman” in this context before. I thought Superman was just a fictional character, and I’m not sure when the word became a verb. At this point, I turned to Urban Dictionary to help me. What I’ve learned is that when you “superman dat hoe,” you ejaculate on a girl’s back and attach a sheet or blanket to her so that it sticks like a cape. Apparently, this is how to “put a bitch in her place” if she refuses sexual activity, which somehow makes her a “hoe.”

I’m slightly confused by this message. First of all, the song contains the words “soulja boy” in the title, which I’m told should be read as “soldier boy.” Does the rapper mean to imply that soldiers are sexist, horny bastards who have no respect for women? Or does he mean to give off a more respectable image by implying that his disgustingly sexist ideas make him a strong role model for boys? I’m also confused about the spelling of “soldier.” Since when is there a ‘j’ in there?

From the message of the song to the music itself, which sounds more like a lot of banging on loud instruments and screaming, this song comes across as very confusing to a listener like me. As I’ve explained, it took me a long time to hear, decipher, translate and understand the words, and I’m still having difficulty. If you’d please excuse my ignorance and answer some of these questions for me, I’d greatly appreciate it. Perhaps if you would also find some artists with a decent amount of talent and begin making music with a more understandable and respectable message, this confusion would happen less frequently. There was a time when music contained melody and soul, but it has deteriorated into what I can only describe as a mess of ignorant, money-hungry celebrities with no talent other than screaming or looking pretty who like to masquerade as musicians, defacing what many others love and respect dearly.

I hope you understand how unfortunate this problem is and that you will do your best to save the world from horrible music, as they are becoming more and more corrupted by the day. Yesterday I saw a 12-year-old girl preforming what has been dubbed the “soulja boy dance,” and I can only hope the poor soul will one day learn and have the chance to appreciate what real music is.

Sincerely,
Concerned listener

Bookmark to: