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I forgot how loathesome I find breaking in new boots. These are much thicker leather, and much higher heels, than I've had cause to deal with in some time. Of course, i can walk in anything, anywhere but today it was hard work.
Had breakfast with a friend and then sort of didn't do all thw errands I had intended to do. The Rome box set was more than I was anticipating, so I'm waiting until I manage more gift cards. And I was going to see The Illusionist, but I was tired so I came home and napped. I don't feel the slightest shame about it either. I'm just sort of waking up now, and once I am more conscious lots of writing to be done, some of which I really only have time to do today (but means descensus goodies for you very soon).
I am glad people like my latest weird costume idea for Phoenix Rising.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
feyandstrange wins for finding the words I couldn't -- Bermuda shorts -- yes that's it exactly. I'm going to be such an adorable little darkity dark teen wizard you all won't know what hit you. Yes, yes, pictures.
I spent a lot of time in Barnes & Nobles today. It was, as it so often is to me, disappointing. Granted, I'm an extraordinarily particular reader and more so when I'm emeeshed in my own fantasy life. Books must grab me by the scruff of my neck and drag me kicking and screaming into their universe. Most books can't do that, and that's fine, but in the last several years it seems as if books are unwilling to try. A fesity, plain but pretty woman in [insert random historical time period] struggles with the confines of he gender and class to find happiness. You know the type. Or perhaps. A group of four friends in [insert random American city] watch their dreams disintegrate under the pressures of careers, marraiges and children until one betrays the others in a shocking act. Finally, let's not forget A white woman goes [somewhere "exotic"] and learns about sexuality and redemption from a most unlikely source. I am BORED. I am OFFENDED. I want books about things -- that change and save lives as opposed to encouraging our contentment with the ordinary while making us vaguely wish we were just a little bit sassier. Fuck that! DO SOMETHING!
I've also been thinking about fashion more thanks to the New York Times fashion supplement that's out today. It, once again, confirms that I am fashion forward and delightfully, instinctively now and in a way, always. More than one slide show focuses on this butch/femme moment in women's fashion -- women as feminized men, not because they are women, but because this was once the height of male beauty (before feminized men were merely the unsettlingly sexy villains of our fictions). This, juxtaposed with the dread of war (really, the return of 80s fashion, the return of the Regency-esque silhouettes we once blamed on Adam Ant, is every so very much about that -- last time we did this, Regan was in office and we were all listening to Alphaville songs about the threat of nuclear war) and a flurry of marketing campaigns focusing on men as dumb and gleefully unruly beasts ("eat like a man" campagin from Burger King, that horrible Hummer campaign, several different Budweiser campaigns and a diet food campaign on cable assuring us that is is manly for men to watch what they eat) puts us at a weird, nearly terrifying, moment in gender politics: gender as class (although _not_ how we understand class in America, which is maleable and nearly solely income based). Women as ladies and gentlemen and men as laborers and dirty-faced urchins. Welcome to yet a new wrinkle in the weird homosociality that people started writing about during the first Lord of the Rings release. If you want companionship within your own class (in the context we insist on pretending isn't real in America, which I've lived _very_ clearly in America, a denial which makes me CRAZY) these days the message (and option) is largely it's got to be gay - whether that involves the gay sex or is just romantic friendship being rather immaterial.
On a similar cultural note -- societies on the upswing are full of individuals hellbent on being the first of their kind. Societies on the downswing are full of individuals hellbent on being the last of their kind. Oh this beautiful dying world! Seriously, people mght have viewed the initial emergence of dandies and fops as the end of the world, but the dandies and fops certainly didn't view themselves as such. Seriously, when did we start looking so hard for the end of all things?
Had breakfast with a friend and then sort of didn't do all thw errands I had intended to do. The Rome box set was more than I was anticipating, so I'm waiting until I manage more gift cards. And I was going to see The Illusionist, but I was tired so I came home and napped. I don't feel the slightest shame about it either. I'm just sort of waking up now, and once I am more conscious lots of writing to be done, some of which I really only have time to do today (but means descensus goodies for you very soon).
I am glad people like my latest weird costume idea for Phoenix Rising.
feyandstrange wins for finding the words I couldn't -- Bermuda shorts -- yes that's it exactly. I'm going to be such an adorable little darkity dark teen wizard you all won't know what hit you. Yes, yes, pictures.I spent a lot of time in Barnes & Nobles today. It was, as it so often is to me, disappointing. Granted, I'm an extraordinarily particular reader and more so when I'm emeeshed in my own fantasy life. Books must grab me by the scruff of my neck and drag me kicking and screaming into their universe. Most books can't do that, and that's fine, but in the last several years it seems as if books are unwilling to try. A fesity, plain but pretty woman in [insert random historical time period] struggles with the confines of he gender and class to find happiness. You know the type. Or perhaps. A group of four friends in [insert random American city] watch their dreams disintegrate under the pressures of careers, marraiges and children until one betrays the others in a shocking act. Finally, let's not forget A white woman goes [somewhere "exotic"] and learns about sexuality and redemption from a most unlikely source. I am BORED. I am OFFENDED. I want books about things -- that change and save lives as opposed to encouraging our contentment with the ordinary while making us vaguely wish we were just a little bit sassier. Fuck that! DO SOMETHING!
I've also been thinking about fashion more thanks to the New York Times fashion supplement that's out today. It, once again, confirms that I am fashion forward and delightfully, instinctively now and in a way, always. More than one slide show focuses on this butch/femme moment in women's fashion -- women as feminized men, not because they are women, but because this was once the height of male beauty (before feminized men were merely the unsettlingly sexy villains of our fictions). This, juxtaposed with the dread of war (really, the return of 80s fashion, the return of the Regency-esque silhouettes we once blamed on Adam Ant, is every so very much about that -- last time we did this, Regan was in office and we were all listening to Alphaville songs about the threat of nuclear war) and a flurry of marketing campaigns focusing on men as dumb and gleefully unruly beasts ("eat like a man" campagin from Burger King, that horrible Hummer campaign, several different Budweiser campaigns and a diet food campaign on cable assuring us that is is manly for men to watch what they eat) puts us at a weird, nearly terrifying, moment in gender politics: gender as class (although _not_ how we understand class in America, which is maleable and nearly solely income based). Women as ladies and gentlemen and men as laborers and dirty-faced urchins. Welcome to yet a new wrinkle in the weird homosociality that people started writing about during the first Lord of the Rings release. If you want companionship within your own class (in the context we insist on pretending isn't real in America, which I've lived _very_ clearly in America, a denial which makes me CRAZY) these days the message (and option) is largely it's got to be gay - whether that involves the gay sex or is just romantic friendship being rather immaterial.
On a similar cultural note -- societies on the upswing are full of individuals hellbent on being the first of their kind. Societies on the downswing are full of individuals hellbent on being the last of their kind. Oh this beautiful dying world! Seriously, people mght have viewed the initial emergence of dandies and fops as the end of the world, but the dandies and fops certainly didn't view themselves as such. Seriously, when did we start looking so hard for the end of all things?
