Life imitates anti-anorexia art

By Anne Kingston - Friday, January 9, 2009 at 5:46 PM - 3 Comments

German photographer Ivonne Thein intended her bold new photographic exhibition, “Thirty-Two Kilos,” which opened yesterday at the Goerthe Institute in Washington, D.C.,  to telegraph a harsh anti-anorexia message and to serve as a critique of  the fashion industry’s fixation on skeletally thin models.  The 29 year old, whose portfolio includes high fashion shots, used 14 friends as models, then digitally manipulated their bodies to grotesquely emaciated proportions (click here to view).  A Washington Post review reports the most common response among visitors has been “horror.” But in an all-too-predictable development,  ”pro-ana” (pro-anorexia)  websites, sick havens that celebrate the eating disorder as a “positive lifestyle choice,” have seized upon the images  as “thinspiration” to goad the afflicted to starve themselves even further.  Thein is now being unfairly criticized for feeding the monstrous affliction.  Yet her manipulated images look positively robust next to the lifeless, occasionally headless models featured in Dolce & Gabbana’s gushed-about new coffee table book, Diamonds and Pearls. For a glimpse of these new plastic role models, click here.

The world's newest oldest mum

By Anne Kingston - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at 10:17 AM - 1 Comment

At age 70, Rajo Devi of  Alewi, India has become the world’s oldest mother, abetted by donor eggs and an “intra cytoplasmic” sperm injection technique that permits even low-quality sperm to inseminate embryos (Devi’s husband is 72).  The couple has suffered the stigma of being childless for 55 years, they told the Times of India. Just wait for the outrage they’re about to face now. Slate.com‘s insightful science writer William Saleton does a nice summary here.

Violence at home

By Anne Kingston - Tuesday, November 25, 2008 at 1:01 PM - 1 Comment

Today’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, another of those ghettoized “good cause” days, this one intended to focus attention on systemic gender-based brutality. Hence this new  report on domestic violence in Egypt that claims almost half of married Egyptian women have been physically abused by their husbands. Or we can contemplate details from today’s arrest of 10 Taliban members for the grotesque acid attack on 15 Afghan schoolgirls and teachers earlier this month that indicate the brutes were paid $2,000 for their efforts. And lest white-ribbon-wearing Canadians feel too smugly distant from the violence, a  key United Nations human rights monitoring body has just issued a critical report on this country’s record on women’s human rights, focusing on the failure of law enforcement agencies to deal with the disappearance and murder of Aboriginal women and girls.

Grey's Gay Anatomy

By Anne Kingston - Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at 3:33 PM - 0 Comments

The ABC series Grey’s Anatomy has become a flash point for Hollywood’s in-out-in ambivalence toward gay tolerance. First, T.R. Knight, who plays Dr. George O’Malley, announced he was gay after cast mate Isaiah Washington directed a now-infamous slur at him and was fired for it. Now, Brooke Smith, who played lesbian character Dr. Erica Hahn, has been booted from the show, ostensibly because her budding relationship with Dr. Callie Torres, played by Sara Ramirez, didn’t have right “magic and chemistry,” according to executive producer Shonda Rhimes. Many don’t buy it, including Smith (who’s last appearance is this Thursday’s show) in this interview with EW.com. Count on Smith’s dismissal being analyzed with more zeal than the U.S. presidential results.

Continue…

Julie Couillard's Sex Tips for Girls

By Anne Kingston - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 5:06 PM - 0 Comments

Now that Maxime Bernier’s former girlfriend’s memoir has been wrung dry for its scant political dirt, let’s put it where it belongs: in the self-help section. That’s because My Story is a brilliant, if unwitting, reverse dating manual, the ultimate how-not-to book. With unfailing instinct, Julie Couillard hooks up with a parade of no-good guys who leave her heartbroken or just plain broke.

The top ten lessons to be gleaned from her woe-begotten travails in the dating trenches:

1. If you don’t want to meet bikers, don’t hang out in biker bars.

2. If your knight-in-shining armor can help you break into your apartment when you’ve locked yourself out with “tools” he carries around in the back of his truck (as did her former boyfriend Giles Giguère, the “love of her life”) and he’s not a locksmith, odds are he travels in unsavoury circles.

3. Don’t lend money to men with whom you’re involved (especially if you’re being asked to fork over cash to buy your own $12,000 wedding ring).

4. A fairy-tale wedding like the one Couillard staged with her ex-husband, the ex-biker and ex-drug dealer Stéphane Sirois which featured the same Rolls Royce rented by Céline Dion and René Angélil never ensures a happily-ever-after ending.

5. Don’t become involved with men who are involved with other women: that karma bites big time. Continue…

It's Brady Bunch meets Flowers in the Attic

By Lianne George - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 2:56 PM - 0 Comments

Except for the braces—and, in hindsight, some pretty limp hair—Marcia Brady, the eldest, prettiest and most popular of the Brady sisters, was the kind of girl who made the teen years suck for everyone else in the early ’70s.

More than three decades later, no one will be too surprised to learn that the pressure to live up to the Marcia model was most crushing for the girl who played her on TV, Maureen McCormick. Now 52, McCormick writes about the Brady in her book Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice. Behind the scenes, McCormick was saddled with the typical child-star rites of passage: family dysfunction, bulimia, and depression. And later, most of the child-star legacy afflictions: cocaine addiction, Playboy Mansion debauchery, abortions and sex for money.

When you consider that the Brady Bunch set was some sort of hothouse of creepy sexual tension, it’s no wonder McCormick was messed up. When she was 16, she fooled around with her on-screen brother, Barry Williams (Greg Brady), while shooting episodes in Hawaii. Williams, meanwhile, is said to have been lusting after their TV mom, Florence Henderson. McCormick also admitted to having feelings for Bob Reed, who played her father, and reports being heartbroken and confused when she eventually found out he was gay. Rumours that she made out with her sister, played by Eve Plum, are exaggerated, she says. Continue…

Malalai Kakar: Lest we forget

By Anne Kingston - Sunday, September 28, 2008 at 8:32 PM - 11 Comments

The assassination of Malali Kakar, Afghanistan’s most senior police officer, by the Taliban earlier today is a brutal reminder that, in the seven years since the “liberation” by invading US and British forces, Afghanistan has seen a steady erosion of womens’ rights. Yet it was the plight of Afghani women, recall, that galvanized support for invading that country post-9/11. Indeed, at the official end of the Afghan war  Laura Bush was among those who declared that one of the most important achievements in overthrowing the Taliban was the emancipation of women. 

Few were as emancipated as Kakar, a mother of six, who was  shot in the head leaving her house in Kandahar on her way to work. Her son, injured in the ambush, remains in a coma. Kakar knew she was a marked woman, having received death threats for months.  Other female activists have been murdered in recent years. One of Kakar’s closest friends, Safia Amajan, a prominent female-rights activist, was killed also on her way to work. Yet Kakar remained a fierce and courageous champion of women’s rights, heading up a unit that specializes in spousal abuse and other crimes against women which are on the rise in southern Afghanistan, as reported in a Marie Claire profile of Kakar last year. 

Canadian photo-journalist Lana Slezic took this iconic photograph of Kakar a few years ago; it’s included in Forsaken, Selzic’s important, harrowing book published last year that documents the lives of Afghani women who need advocates like Kakar.  After Amajan’s death, Kakar was interviewed by The Independent. With  typical defiance, she spoke of the Taliban: ”These are the kind of people we are having to fight,” she said. “They hate any thought of women having freedom. None of us can be safe from such hatred.”

Prada pratfalls

By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 at 2:18 PM - 0 Comments

The Italian designer Miuccia Prada may be a genius, but she’s no font of common sense. Last night at the Prada 2009 spring-summer show in Milan, themed “cave-woman couture,” models tottered down the runway in sky-high python-skin platform heels. Two tumbled to the ground. Mayhem ensued. The Telegraph quotes one distressed mannequin: “I was having a panic attack, my hands were shaking. The heels were so high. Some of the girls were crying backstage they were so scared.” The designer said the shoes were safe; it was the little bow-tied sockettes the models were wearing that caused the problem and offered assurances the shoes would be lower by the time they hit stores next year. Here’s an idea: For fall 2009 Prada should just bind models’ feet. It’d be safer–and more comfortable.

Review the runway carnage, after the jump: Continue…

Is Gwyneth vying to be the next Martha?

By Anne Kingston - Monday, September 22, 2008 at 8:29 PM - 3 Comments

If IQ–or irritation quotient–is any measure, she’s off to a flying start. In what appears to be an elaborate hoax, Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna’s BFF,  has just launched a new “lifestyle” website called GOOP by Gwyneth Paltrow. (What GOOP stands for is unclear. But, remember, this is the woman who named her children Apple and Moses.) The site’s still under construction but the first newsletter brimming with tips on how women can “nourish the inner aspect” will be sent out to subscribers Thursday. Continue…

Bratz Ban

By Anne Kingston - Monday, September 22, 2008 at 8:28 PM - 0 Comments

Slate does a nice round-up of how the advocacy group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood forced the world’s biggest publisher of children’s books, Scholastic Inc., to stop selling and marketing its popular, highly skeevy Bratz series of books to school children in the U.S.  But fear not: the hypersexualized stars of Dancin’ Divas and Catwalk Cuties are still available for purchase elsewhere for all of those Pamela-Andersons-in-training.

Oh yeah, she's also a woman…

By Anne Kingston - Monday, September 22, 2008 at 2:42 PM - 0 Comments

Shimon Peres has chosen Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to form a new Israeli government, giving her 42 days to pull together a coalition. When she does, Israel will have women heading three branches of government–Livni as PM,  Dalia Itzik as Knesset Speaker and Dorit Beinish president of the Supreme Court.  How many modern democracies can boast the same? Clearly a comfort level with female power explains the refreshing absence of  ”gender” blather surrounding the appointment.  Still, obvious comparisons with the last woman to hold the post are being made. But as The Age argues here the mother of two and former corporate attorney and Mossad secret agent isn’t a “second Golda.”

Does your hair have what it takes to lead?

By Lianne George - Friday, September 19, 2008 at 2:34 PM - 2 Comments

Americans may be growing weary of Sarah Palin, but her hairstyle continues to amaze and inspire. According to a Wall Street Journal article, WigSalon.com says demand for wigs “that reflect the new looks made popular by Sarah Palin” has surged. Women can’t seem to get enough of her chestnut shade and swept-back do. The Journal writes: 

In the past week, the company has sold about 25 Palin-esque wigs, ranging in price from $100 to the “Bargain Sarah Palin” wig for $46…Early next week, [WigSalon.com's] Mr. Aronesty plans to send a newsletter to his 25,000 subscribers highlighting Palin wig options and styling tips.

If at first the wig-frenzy claim seems a little dubious—25 is really not very many—wait until you see the merchandise. I found the Bargain Sarah Palin wig on the site, and I can’t say it looks a whole lot like her hair. It’s a little Susan Lucci—although that could just be the peignoir talking. But it’s a whole lot better than the very sad looking Bargain Hillary Clinton wig on Wilshirewigs.com ($19.50). Zelda Fitzgerald meets Olive Oyl. 

Sarah Palin: Good Mother? Bad Mother?

By Lianne George - Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 8:00 PM - 46 Comments

Is Sarah Palin a good mother? When you put it as a direct question, her supporters are quick to cry, Sexiste! We don’t put Joe Biden’s performance as a father under the microscope, they say, so why should Palin be subject to scrutiny just because she’s a woman? But the reason the motherhood questions keep resurfacing is not that Palin’s a woman. It’s that she’s a strident family-values politician, and observers can’t help but wonder whether she’s exploiting her own family’s deeply private matters to lend her campaign even more family-values credibility. Why else did Levi Johnston, the 18-year-old hockey-loving father of her pregnant 17-year-old daughter’s baby, suddenly find himself front-and-center at the Republican National Convention?

Weighing in on the Levi Johnston matter this week, even Bonnie Fuller, the inventor of the modern celebrity tabloid, was shocked by Palin’s poor taste. In an online face-off against political commentator Dick Morris for Page Six magazine (yes, that Page Six), Fuller scolds the Alaska governor for thrusting her daughter, Bristol, and baby daddy Johnston into the spotlight. Fuller writes:

“Becoming a teen parent is traumatic enough without having millions debate your effect on the McCain-Palin ‘family values’ platform. Normally, Levi and Bristol would be able to privately decide how best to deal with their circumstances. By thrusting them onto the national stage, Sarah Palin robbed them of that option.” 

Continue…

May misplays the "sexism" card

By Anne Kingston - Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 3:01 PM - 15 Comments

There’s something nostalgically  retro about Elizabeth May cry of “sexism” to explain her exclusion from the leaders’  debates. After all, isn’t “sexism” the very vehicle that transported Sarah Palin to the VP debates south of the border?  Talking to a group of reporters on Parliament Hill yesterday, May played the victim, blaming the “old boy’s club”: “This is anti-democratic, closed-door, backroom decision-making by four national party leaders who are all men and five television executives – who are all men – to keep out the one woman leader of a federal party.” 

That’s poppycock, of course.  Even more laugh-out-loud funny is May’s outrage over “anti-democratic, closed-door, backroom decision-making.” As I learned researching this profile of her last year, behind May’s feisty-martyr public persona is a woman well-acquainted with closed-door finagling. Just look at that contentious arrangement she hammered out with Dion in Central Nova last spring. Continue…

Girl Power in the USA

By Lianne George - Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 11:56 AM - 11 Comments

Wow, it appears to be true in the United States that, as my fellow Skirts blogger Anne Kingston said, one set of ovaries is as good as another. Who would’ve thought?

When John McCain announced Sarah “Community Shmorganizer” Palin as his running mate over a week ago, it seemed like a transparent and patronizing attempt to wrangle some disgruntled Hillary supporters and co-opt the sexism debate. I thought he was sunk—particularly as more unflattering information about the relatively unknown Alaska governor began to emerge (extreme positions on women’s issues and the environment, accusations of abuses of power, a lack of experience, and so forth). Surely, Clinton’s candidacy was about more than bringing high-heels and lipstick to the White House? 

Alas, the latest polls are finding that John McCain’s support among white women has surged thanks to his would-be VP. According to one report, the Washington Post/ABC News poll, Obama  held an 8 percentage point lead among white women voters in the days leading up to the Democratic National Convention. But after the Republican convention, McCain was suddenly leading by 12 percentage points among the same demographic. 

Could it be that there are legions of angry feminists out there who care nothing about policy? Or angry anti-feminists? Is this election going to be about revenge voting?

For the last time, people, she's nothing like Hillary—or Michelle Obama

By Sarmishta Subramanian - Friday, September 5, 2008 at 9:25 AM - 18 Comments

Why do people keep assuming that just because Sarah Palin can theoretically wear a pantsuit, she’s part of Hillary’s sisterhood? Or—even more desperate reach here—of Michelle Obama’s?

Much more accurate to compare her with Dubya, as Salon has done, with this excellent quiz, a list of cowboy quotes from Palin and George W. Bush. Which ones are Palin and which ones Bush? It’s pretty damn hard to tell.

Whaa? The "hottest VP" is a WOMAN?

By Sarmishta Subramanian - Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 12:40 PM - 2 Comments

Andrew Coyne blogged last night that Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican Convention was the best bit of political theatre he’s witnessed in years. I’d have to agree. Her performance – and it did feel like a performance, complete with that awesome baby prop, handed from telegenic person to person – was pretty spectacular. She’s tough, she’s confident, and even her fiercest critics have had to agree she’s got buckets of charisma.

Of course, as with any hot-button show, reading the reviews is half the fun, and it was hugely entertaining to watch the CNN crack team, for instance, falling all over themselves to be sensitive and non-sexist (in reporting, incidentally, on an event peppered with placards hailing “the Hottest VP” from the coldest state). Campbell Brown seized on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s response to Palin’s speech as “shrill”—would he say this if she wasn’t a woman? Wolf and Anderson and the whole gang jumped on a commentator’s mention of Palin’s speechwriter … Hold on a minute now: would we be mentioning the speechwriter if this was Bush or Obama or McCain? (Uh, probably.) And it’s pretty adorable, watching them reach for words that aren’t “spunky” or “sassy” or “feisty” (though one poster on the Huffington Post did suggest that Palin’s ready to star in her own movie – Mean Girls 2).

I’ll be honest, I’m no fan of Palin’s. Or of the screeching turn the Republicans just made toward the same old trumped-up culture wars of elections past. But the big bad liberal media, chastened by critiques of its liberalness, now being in contortions to be even more liberal…. The irony is sweet. Poor Hillary. If only she’d been a bit less “shrill,” “witchy” and had less of a “nagging voice,” and looked more like Tina Fey. It’s not just the Harball gang; the same media elites Palin blasted at last night just might have treated her better.

It's a girl!

By Anne Kingston - Friday, August 29, 2008 at 12:44 PM - 0 Comments

So the rampant speculation about all of those establishment white guys as running mates was just a smokescreen. As I speculated yesterday John McCain has deployed Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his stealth weapon.

Are we seeing some kind of weird Republican affirmative action? Yes siree. With less than a term as governor under her belt, Palin lacks experience, it’s true. But her track record is pretty unassailable; she’s proven to be a tough operator, willing to take on oil companies. Anyway, the Dems would be dumb to drum on that point, given that inexperience is the criticism commonly used against Obama. How Palin will square off against Joe Biden during the VP candidate debate is another big question mark. But her presence will make it must-see TV. More importantly, Palin brings fresh bounce to the McCain campaign; she’ll redirect media focus from Obama to thrall over her Northern Exposure existence: She flies a floater plane! She eats mooseburgers! Continue…

Will McCain pick a chick?

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 5:29 PM - 0 Comments

The Telegraph is reporting the Dems are quaking at the prospect of McCain naming a female VP running mate tomorrow. As a political move it would have the one-two punch of being both smarmy and canny. The Republicans have never had a woman on the presidential ballot,  so McCain’s ticket would be given instant historic import. It would also cast him the definitive alpha male, something that might be a problem, say, if he were standing next to the younger, chiseled Mitt Romney.

Herewith the femme front-runners:

The safe/uninspiring choice: Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Republican senator from Texas. The 65-year-old Hutchison is pro-life and knows Washington sub-committees, though she has never held office. Her name keeps resurfacing in cyber-chatter but months ago she said she doesn’t want the job.

The favoured outsider: Meg Whitman, the McCain campaign’s national co-chair. The 52-year-old billionaire former eBay CEO would bring major business cred to the ticket. She’s also a globalization expert and ace fly fisherman. The fact she’s an internet/technology guru will come in handy with a candidate who’s famously internet illiterate. McCain has referred to her as one of his three wisest advisors. And Whitman has made no secret about having political ambitions. Plus, she’s already been given a primo speaking spot at the GOP convention. That she lacks exposure to foreign policy machinations is a decided liability when squaring off against Joe Biden. She’s also pro-choice, a stance that could alienate McCain’s base. It’s a big risk for McCain to bring on a pro-choice male, say, Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman, as has been rumoured. But a pro-choice woman could be political suicide.

The dark horse outsider: Carly Fiorina, 53, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, one of McCain’s top economic advisors. Fiorina’s well-connected, presents well (Fox News has tapped her as a business commentator even though she’s sane) and she brings economic smarts. But she has already provoked a campaign flap about abortion, even though she’s is pro-life. And her high-profile ouster from HP could come back to bite her.

And the potential masterstroke: Continue…

How do you say "discriminate" in Korean?

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 11:19 PM - 0 Comments

No, the Chinese basketball team didn’t win a medal at the Olympic Games, but Yao Ming still has one thing to be thankful for: at least he’s not a female golfer.

Chien-Ming Wang should be grateful, too. Same goes for Alexander Ovechkin, Dice-K Matsuzaka and every other foreign athlete whose God-given talent—and not their mother tongue—earned them a spot in the big leagues of North America. Because if Yao and the boys were teeing it up on the ladies’ tour, they’d have a lot more to study than the greens.

According to a jaw-dropping report on Golfweek’s website, the LPGA is ordering its international players to brush up on their English skills—or else. Beginning next year, every woman who has been on tour for two seasons will face an automatic suspension unless they pass a mandatory language exam. Rookies will be tested before they even hit the driving range. “Athletes now have more responsibilities and we want to help their professional development,” says deputy commissioner Libba Galloway. “There are more fans, more media and more sponsors.”

Libba and her cohorts are still working on the content of the test, but Maclean’s has obtained a draft version.

Question #1: Can you pronounce discrimination?

Question #2: Do you know anyone else named Libba?

Continue…

But does Hillary heart Bill?

By Lianne George - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 5:02 PM - 0 Comments

Speaking of what she didn’t say, did you notice that, in Hillary Clinton’s opening remarks, she pronounced herself a proud mother, a proud Democrat, a proud Senator from New York, a proud American and a proud supporter of Barack Obama. But no love for Bill, who stood there applauding, sucking his lip and looking generally verklempt. It kind of had the ring of Hilary Swank’s first Oscar acceptance speech, when she thanked everyone but her then-husband Chad Lowe, who was sitting right in front of her, sobbing into his prime rib.

Yes, she sort of made up for it later in the speech (although there she praised his political record, not his personal one). But still, the early omission—which was, undoubtedly, by design—still registered as a glaring one for two reasons. First, it was a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that her people knew she couldn’t have said “proud wife” and not expected a swell of snorts and rib-nudging from the audience and the media. And second, it stood out in light of Michelle Obama’s glowing tribute to her husband the night before. Continue…

Bill hearts Hillary

By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 12:54 PM - 0 Comments

Hillary Clinton’s speech was bang-on. And yes, we can — and will — spend days dissecting what she didn’t say, more “how HIllary screwed it up” deconstruction that has eclipsed the fact Clinton didn’t lose the nomination, Obama won it. But what she did say was powerful, particularly her “keep going” remark, referencing  Harriet Tubman. Will it be enough to sway the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits? Who knows? That’s one aggrieved gaggle of women. More interesting is the question of whether that shade of orange (more Hermès packaging than pumpkin) will henceforth be known as “Hillary Clinton citrus,” along the lines of “Nancy Reagan red.”

The unexpected bonus of the night had to be the seemingly heartfelt delight/devotion on Bill Clinton’s face as he watched the missus knock it out of the park. Check out minute 2:46. I’m not a lip-reader but the famous horndog whose concerned meddling had a big hand in his wife’s campaign’s detonation appears to be saying: “I love you. I love you Hillary forever.” Continue…

When ex-punk princesses travel

By Lianne George - Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 12:49 PM - 0 Comments

Remember when Avril Lavigne wore men’s ties and baggy sk8ter pants and skull-and-crossbones hoodies and a permanent scowl? She really was a breath of fresh air.

Nothing complicated about that.

But now, all that’s left of her former image is the scowl. That’s because a 17-year-old “punk princess” sells records, but a 23-year-old one is just sort of unpleasant.

And so: booty-popping lessons. Continue…

The most cringe-inducing ad that side of the Atlantic

By Lianne George - Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 3:11 PM - 0 Comments

About a month ago, I took in a movie in Paris and before the previews, there was an advertisement (in French, of course) for Orangina that nearly busted my brain. Truly, is was the sort of experience where you’re looking around, wondering if anyone else just saw that. I don’t know how else to explain the ad—for an orange soda popular among kids, no less— but as a sort of salsa-burlesque number performed by twistedly anthropomorphized zoo animals. It has flamingos pole-dancing. A bear in a loin cloth. And a creepy Flashdance homage.

As Broadsheet points out today, this ad has become a source of some controversy in Britain, where an English version now appears. Yes, I know the company is probably thrilled.

But surely PETA will be pissed.

Click here to watch it. Keep a bucket handy.