Web Log Archives: May 04, 2003 - May 10, 2003
Saturday, May 10, 2003
Erica Jong reviews On Blondes by Joanna Pitman, a cultural history of myth, symbolism and obsession about blonde hair. Jong finds the book a bit shallow (which she blames more on the publisher than the author), but her review passes along many fascinating tidbits from the book.
We learn that "by the mid-nineties [Princess Diana] was spending £600 a year dying her hair blonde." We learn about Queen Elizabeth I’s transformation, as she aged, from auburn hair to blondeness, about the courtesans of Venice sitting on their altane bleaching their hair in the sun so that Vittore Carpaccio might immortalize them, of Hitler’s equation of blondeness with Aryan purity, of Jean Harlow’s platinum revolution (which made her hair fall out), of Marilyn Monroe’s hair the color of a dirty pillow slip, and finally of Madonna’s banal conviction that "blonde is definitely a different state of mind."
Dante Gabriel Rosetti was so obsessed with hair that he used to stalk women in the streets, drawn to their streaming manes. Hair was apparently a familial obsession, since in his sister Christina Rosetti’s poem "Goblin Market," a golden lock is traded for forbidden sex with subhuman creatures.
The ancient Romans so prized blond hair that they sheared Germanic slaves to make blond wigs for their Mediterranean-looking noble ladies—emulating, of course, the very people who would eventually overrun the empire.
Dark beauties had their day during the reign of Louis XIV and in the 17th century, when Van Dyck, Rembrandt and Vermeer apotheosized the dark. Ms. Pitman points out that blond hair lost favor in the 17th century because dyes had fallen in price, and thus had become too available to the bourgeoisie. The rich needed a new sign of status, which they found first in dark hair, later in wigs of enormous complexity and expense.
Later Jong ponders what she sees as Pitman's central insight.
The deeper theme in this book is the infinite mutability of human symbols. Blondness has stood for vice and for purity in different cultural contexts. This ought to alert us to the human tendency to manipulate symbols so that they become an outer expression of inner drives. How does this process occur? How do fashions change, and why? How is it possible that the same symbol that stands for vice and experience also may stand for purity and virginity? "Blondes are the best victims," said Alfred Hitchcock. "They’re like virgin snow which shows up the bloody footprints." And yet, as Yeats wrote, "some woman’s yellow hair has maddened every mother’s son." More interesting than the hair color itself is the human tendency to mythologize certain physical objects and ascribe magic to them. Considering how common blond hair has become in an age of single-process streaks, why does it still have power—and can that power last? I think not.
Friday, May 9, 2003
Flash cartoon by Mark Fiore: Senator Santorum's Department of Sexual Security.
Katharine Mieszkowski profiles an eccentric abstinence advocate.
Calling herself the Pink Nun and done up in a bright pink habit and white makeup, she spreads her gospel in concerts, at music festivals, and even on city street corners as a one-nun spectacle. Her message: No sex until marriage. Not even the everything-but kind. "I'm very pro-sex," the Pink Nun writes on her Web site, where she proclaims herself a superhero defending purity. "I just have high standards for the use of sex. I believe sex is a sacred, precious, amazing thing."
The Pink Nun — a 27-year-old art teacher named Lisa Bulten — is proud to say that in carnal baseball, she's never gone farther than first. But it's not lost on this Christian virgin that her breed of abstinence pride is not exactly mainstream in 2003. So she seeks to turn 13- to 30-year-olds on to the benefits of keeping or rediscovering their virginity — it's never too late! — with all the ribald frankness of a potty-mouthed sex educator, counseling girls to "keep it tight!" and commanding boys to "lock your cock."
I'll go along with the "sacred, precious, amazing" part, but she loses me after that. The Pink Nun also puts out a zine and sells "stickers, buttons, patches, T-shirts, and even underwear plastered with her signature cold-water slogans."
Learn all about Japanese "love hotels" (rabu hoteru or just rabu-ho) in this fascinating illustrated guide. The author notes ruefully, "The love hotel is changing though, and the news isn't all good. They've gone upscale, lost some of their sleazy associations and the decors have become more tasteful but the bad news is that in an effort to clean up their image, they got rid of a lot of the exciting theme rooms. Although they still exist, it's getting harder and harder to find places with bumper cars and disco lights." (Link snagged from Geisha asobi.)
And recently in Wai Wai, the Japanese tabloid review:
College girls put their whoring behind them. "Gone are the days when female university students could be relied upon to staff Japan's myriad sex services."
Natsumi cleans up on jerky train rides. Yes, it's exactly what you think.
Chippy gets close shave on 'lucky hole'. Sexagenarian carpenter rushed to hospital after inadvertently, well, uh, owwwwwwww.
Pudgy porkers pare pounds with new wanker's diet. Finally a weight-loss program even I could stick with.
The Great Sasuke grapples with well hung imposter. The masked wrestler-turned-politician insists that's not him in the porn video Sasuke's Member is a Heavyweight Champion.
Recent sex quirkies from Ananova:
Elderly couple arrested for 'sex act in fast food restaurant'. The 70-year-old man and 59-year-old woman have been charged with public indecency and banned from Hardee's.
Norwegian students compile penis gallery. "Our mission is to get the average penis out to the people. We wanted to show that the penis exists in all variations and we wanted to break down the visualisation from the media/internet of the great giga-penis."
Dozens of women want Bronze Age hunter's babies. The 5000-year-old body of "Otzi the Iceman" was discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991. "Alex Susanna, director of the Bozen Museum where his body is exhibited, says requests have been received by many women wanting to have Otzi's babies. He told Austrian broadcasting company ORF that all of the requests had been turned down, not least because Otzi's penis had decayed away."
Thursday, May 8, 2003
Poet Mike Snider discovers Daze Reader, calls us "nifty" and prints a playfully erotic sonnet in his blog for the occasion. That's just about the coolest compliment I've ever gotten.
Earlier this year, porn studio Python announced two new video series called Maximum Hard and Stuffed Hard. The DVD box covers of each installment would mimic the previous month's issues of Maxim and Stuff. "We'll have the same pose, a girl that looks like the cover girl they used, and the same clothes. Have you looked at that magazine? They're selling sex, and so are we." Here are the first two box covers:
The company that publishes Maxim and Stuff didn't much like the idea. After some legal wrangling, Python has agreed to recall the DVDs and redesign the box covers.
PayPal (now a subsidiary of eBay) will stop processing payments for porn sites and downloads next week, and adult-themed auctions and products next month. PayPal insists it's simply a business decision in response to high fraud and chargeback rates in adult entertainment. This AP story also discusses recent moves by Visa and Yahoo to distance themselves from adult entertainment.
Did you know that PayPal "also bans payments for tobacco, lottery tickets, used air bags and human corpses"?
Wednesday, May 7, 2003
Read the amazing true story of the Asian H-cups as told by the mysterious Dr. Bust. If you've ever wondered what a woman with a 73-19-29 figure might look like, you'll find more pics here. (From Satosanto via Venethinker via the Cowgirl.)
Headline of the day: Shatner's ex-wife sues over horse semen.
Violet Blue writes about the work of Sharon Mitchell and the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM), a non-profit which provides testing, services and counseling to porn industry performers. "AIM Healthcare serves over 400 clients a month and is making plans to expand. Since its inception [in 1998], the organization has successfully lowered the spread of HIV in the porn industry, and has certainly increased awareness among performers." In the second half of the column, Blue warns against some unsafe practices depicted in modern porn, sort of like those "professional driver on closed track" disclaimers flashed during TV ads with SUVs jumping mountain gorges.
Debra Hyde celebrates the virtues of masturbation at Clitical. (Also note that Pursed Lips is alive and well after some server problems. Just for the record, "grex" is not a legal Scrabble word.)
The Atlantic reprints two articles about the Santorum affair from National Journal. Stuart Taylor offers a legal analysis of Santorum's slippery slope arguments. "Santorum's remarks are more plausible as legal analysis, in the context of a major gay-rights case now before the Supreme Court, than most critics have acknowledged. Meanwhile, Santorum's assertion in the same April 7 interview that there should be no constitutional right to privacy reveals an agenda that is more controversial than most of his defenders seem to understand." William Powers argues that the burst of Santorum-inspired punditry serves a useful purpose. "We should give thanks for the Lott and Santorum brouhahas, and others like them that, if we're lucky, are coming. Not because they increase partisanship and divide us along the old conservative-liberal fault line, as some commentators love to argue. Rather, because they do precisely the opposite. Look closely at these stories, and what you'll notice is how many of the pols and media people who jump in and thrash around don't choose sides in predictable ways."
Tuesday, May 6, 2003
Policeman mistaken for stripper. "An Israeli policeman responding to neighbours' complaints about a noisy hen party found himself mistaken for the main attraction. The rowdy women had ordered a male stripper dressed as a policeman and, thinking the stripper had arrived, began trying to undress and caress him, ignoring his protestations." Didn't this happen on a sitcom once?
UPDATE: Byron Beck writes in to say that this happened on The Golden Girls. A quick Google search finds this Golden Girls episode guide summary:
There Goes the Bride (part 1)
Rose's casual dinner with a friend is ruined when the man's ex-wife shows up at the restaurant and threatens her with a lobster. She is frightened by the woman's harassment, and calls the police to try to feel safe. Blanche and Rose throw Dorothy a shower, but Sophia will have no part of it. The woman are bored to tears by Rose's shower games, but a stripper, dressed as a cop, arrives to spice up the party. Blanche is goosing the "cop", only to find out it's the real Officer Rose called for protection.
I love it when life imitates bad TV. Thanks, Byron!
Sydney Morning Herald: "Investors embraced shares in the sex industry group The Daily Planet Ltd today, with the brothel more than doubling its value on its stock market debut. The Daily Planet, with its core asset the eponymous Melbourne brothel, hit the Australian Stock Exchange boards at 70 cents - compared to the 50 cents issue price under its $3.75 million initial public offering." By the end of the day, the share price had topped $1.00. Daily Planet had hired Heidi Fleiss as a consultant, which "helped turn the listing into a media circus just by her flamboyant presence."
New York Times: "Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's largest retailer, said yesterday that it had halted sales of Maxim, Stuff and FHM, men's magazines that feature a mix of scantily clad starlets and bawdy humor but go to some lengths to avoid being labeled as pornography. . . . Maxim has been sold in Wal-Mart for the last three years, while FHM was added recently. The standards and general content of the magazines have not changed, but Wal-Mart, which is based in Bentonville, Ark., has been under pressure from Christian groups in the past over its distribution of various magazines." Shorter but non-registration-required articles here and here.
Found via Metafilter, get free two-year subscriptions to Maxim and Stuff. Fight the power.
Monday, May 5, 2003
GameSpy chooses the top ten game babes of all time.
- 10. Samus Aran - Metroid
- 9. Firiona Vie - EverQuest
- 8. Blaze - Streets of Rage
- 7. Jill Valentine - Resident Evil
- 6. The Girls of Street Fighter
- 5. Sophitia Alexandra - Soul Caliber
- 4. Mai Shiranui - Fatal Fury/King of Fighters
- 3. Morrigan Aenslan - Darkstalkers
- 2. The Girls of Dead or Alive
- 1. Lara Croft - Tomb Raider
I might have taken Claire from Resident Evil 2, otherwise can't argue with the choices. Click through for anime cheesecake and fanboy gushing.
Forbes looks at the recently imposed Visa regulations for adult website billing. Much of the article deals with the plight of mainstream financial services company InterCept, which purchased iBill last year just before Visa began its crackdown.
The absurd legal wrangling over Sex.com continues as conman Stephen Cohen appeals his case to the Supreme Court. "Cohen is fighting to overturn several lower court judgments, which found him guilty stealing the domain name Sex.com by fraudulent means and ordered him to pay $65 million in damages. Experts don't expect the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case, which so far has been rejected by two lower courts, one of which said said Cohen stashed illegal financial gains in secret offshore accounts." This article rehashes the whole sordid history. One episode I hadn't heard before: "Cohen owned two large ranches through a company known as Montano Properties. In September 2001, Cohen filed bankruptcy and the ranches were handed over to Kremen as a partial payment. However, when Kremen took control of the properties he found that virtually everything on the ranches, including wiring, plumbing and toilets had been removed."
