5 years ago, I was a sexy cop for Halloween.¹ And I liked it.
The usual me wears jeans and t-shirts and flip flops pretty much every day (unless it’s cold, in which case the uniform becomes a sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers). I do a pretty half-ass job on my hair about 75% of the time. I never bother with makeup. I like dressing up occasionally, but most of the time, I’m just plain ol’ me.
So our last year before graduating from undergrad, my roommates and I got gussied up and hit 6th Street in Austin, and I went as a sexy cop. Granted, I unsluttied it up a bit by wearing at tank top underneath (there is no way in hell I’d be caught showing that much skin). The basic rules of fashion are to feature one area, meaning don’t go overboard on showing the rest, ya know? So I was covered on top, and the knee-high boots I was wearing weren’t stilettos but thick black heels, but half of my little ass was hanging out. There’s no denying that one.
But you know what? I liked it. I liked doing something completely not me for one night, and I liked that I was able to get completely over my body image hangups for once and rock the hell out of the look.
The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle on songwriting, feminism, and the new album:
Paste: How does your feminism inform your songwriting, not to mention your reading of the Bible?
Darnielle: My feminism is what came squarely up against my faith. There’s a lot of ecstatic post-patriarchal Christians who have stuff they do with that. But at that point, you’re doing Christianity with a double-superscript. The Bible, and especially the book of Genesis, is pretty unapologetically patriarchal. But as a songwriter, I’m actually really happy to be asked that. For years, I’ve written narrators who aren’t gender-identified. When I do autobiographical stuff, that’s different, obviously. But I’ve always tried to keep my songs as potentially not a man’s thing. I think so many rock songs you assume by default it’s a man’s thing. That’s a weakness of narrative. And when I was younger, my early songs employed this trope that is popular to this day with indie singer-songwriters, where a guy is gonna hurt himself or do something drastic and appalling in order to show the object of his affection how intense his love for her is.
Paste: And we’re supposed to celebrate his self-destruction.
Darnielle: Yeah! And you’re supposed to think that’s amazing when these guys tell these stories: “Oh, he broke something, he hurt somebody, he did something rash; his love must have been so great!” instead of, “Oh no, he’s a psycho.” When I was younger, I did those too. And then I thought, that’s kinda bullshit to tell stories like that. I try not to write songs in which men glamorize their own need for approval from women. That’s kinda a bogus way to go out. But I try to do this quietly, I’m not about to go around telling people how they should or shouldn’t think. My feminism is for me. [emphasis added]
Hello again, world. I’ve been MIA because of the evil, evil flu I came down with last week. I was pretty much passed out/dazed for 3 days, then kind of loopy and headachey for another two. Now I’m just headachey. Oh, also? In the midst of those 3 fever-filled days, I had to go to an orientation for my new part-time job, plus I had a job interview for a real job (that I completely bombed in my medicated stupor, might I add. *headdesk*). Twas not fun.
Anyway. You know what was fun? Coming across this blog post as I was playing catch up and weeding through the thousand unread articles in my Google Reader a couple days ago.
Yup. I have one conservative, anti-feminist blog subscription in my Reader. It’s kind of a perverse guilty pleasure. When they’re not posting a million pictures of how great their tea parties are (apparently, feminists don’t drink tea?), or being flat out offensive (as in “look at this great racist/homophobic/sexist new article Michelle Malkin wrote!” or “feminists want everyone to be sluts!”), they are mildly amusing. Case in point: “Feminists today refuse to let men be men and the result: Zac Efron.“
During his closing remarks at the International Freedom Award Ceremony in Memphis, TN yesterday, the Dalai Lama stated:
“I call myself a feminist. Isn’t that what you call someone who fights for women’s rights? … Whether you believe this religion or that religion, we are all the same human beings. We all come from the same mother. That creates the basis for compassion.”
