The High-Heeled

Man Down

2011-06-06T13:54:00.000-07:00

Peggy Orenstein did a wonderful piece on her blog about the complicated (and colorful) reactions to Rihanna's new video for the single "Man Down." I have been thinking about the video since I first saw it last week - not least because the song itself is powerful and catchy, and features some of Rihanna's best singing yet. Her Bajan accent blends beautifully with the lazy, reggae rhythms, and that rolled-r rum-pum-pum-pum is to-die-for. But it's not her voice that has critics all worked up; rather, it's the video's strange, hazy message, which has left fans struggling to decipher it. The song is a woman's apologia for killing a man ("oh mama mama mama/I just shot a man down") but the lyrics offer very little in terms of a backstory. The video, on the other hand is crystal clear: a man mistakes the artist's flirtations and rapes her. She retaliates by shooting him dead.

The ensuing debate has been heated and, because it's mostly taking place on the internet, not particularly politically correct. Some fans take offense at the suggestion that Rihanna-the-character was entitled to take the law into her own hands, while others feel free to opine that her coquettish behavior in the video - wearing a skimpy outfit, smiling cutely at her eventual attacker - invited the assault. I think it's obvious by now that I side with the no-means-no-no-matter-how-short-my-shorts-are camp but that aside, it's interesting to me that "Man Down" has, to this point, evoked even more backlash than her "S&M" video - which features the lyric "sticks and stones may break my bones/but whips and chains excite me". Yes, YouTube requires viewers to sign in to view "S&M," due to explicit sexual content, but the video hasn't incited the same kind of enmity as "Man Down." Most likely, it's because "S&M" hasn't been framed in the same kind of heated political conversation - but why not?

It's clear that both videos seek to challenge some kind of taboo about female sexuality and get people talking. But compared to "Man Down" - which presents itself as almost photo-journalistic - "S&M" looks like pure bubblegum: I'm a barbie girl in a whips-and-chains world. Interestingly, both videos position Rihanna as empowered, though in "Man Down," that empowerment comes at a significant cost: guilt, tears, legal trouble. My suspicion - though I have to think more about it - is that "S&M'" is easier to swallow because although it shows a woman taking charge of her sexuality, it's in a culturally acceptable way. Rihanna is still being cheeky and sexy for the camera. She's singing about her own pleasure, but the video is shot for the pleasure of the audience.

My inclination is to watch "Man Down" in terms of its storytelling, and not as Rihanna taking a position on whether or not women have the right to act seductively, to take revenge on an assailant, etc. But I think it's hitting a nerve not only because these questions are so complicated, but also because a female pop star - known for her good looks as much as anything else - is asking them.

My, How You've Changed

2011-06-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

Eight years ago when I moved to Brooklyn, I lived next door to this property. Across the street? A vacant lot filled with trash. Next to that? A slummy low-rise with walls held together by duct tape. I don't mean to suggest that one version of Manhattan-between-Scholes-and-Meserole is more "real" than the other; just that New York City, with its ability to transform itself*, is mind-blowing.

*The real estate agents who get all sorts of Shakespearean when re-branding neighborhoods help usher the process along, too.

Skins

2011-05-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

Just finished watching the second cycle of Skins (UK) - is there anyone more devastatingly vulnerable than Kaya Scodelario as Effy Stonem? Watching out-of-control teens always ushers in a wave of nostalgia for a time when breaking the rules - however tiny the infraction - felt enlivening. Effy, as the troubled Lolita-esque Ice Queen, stole my heart (though don't make me choose between her and Cass from the first series). I'm tempted to check out MTV's version (is it still even on?) but know it will flatten most of the nuances from the British one. And believe me - for all of its wonderful outrageousness and smut, the show is actually really insightful about teens when they don't have positive role models. Seriously! Also:

I'm in love with Effy's wardrobe. Can I get away with dressing like a drug-addled teen at almost 30? (No.)

Kaya Scodelario is on twitter (@kayascollywogs) and she's adorable - nothing like her chilly, distressed alter-ego.

With the Power of My Mind

2011-03-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

Faxing Charlie Sheen by tylerwalker

Bi-winning: on Charlie Sheen and John Galliano

2011-03-03T14:52:00.000-08:00

Two very high-profile men, in equally high-profile ways, have melted down. And by golly - it’s fascinating.

Charlie Sheen, the bad-boy of primetime, has been hitting the media circuit, giving crazy-eyed interviews about his rockstar lifestyle, his enduring specialness, and his hatred for his Two and a Half Men boss Chuck Lorre (or Chaim Levine, as Sheen pointed out – referring to Lorre via his birth name in what many people have since determined to be a case of casual anti-semitism). Meanwhile, John Galliano was recently fired from his position as head designer for Dior after rumors of an arrest and a drunken, hate-filled diatribe flooded the internet; soonafter, The Sun released a video of Galliano berating a pair of travelers at an outdoor café. “I love Hitler,” he seethed, “people like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed. You're ugly."

Both stories have dominated the press these past few weeks, particularly because Sheen seems determined to go down in a televised blaze of glory, and the media is more than happy to oblige him. Sheen’s behavior, while extreme, shouldn’t be totally surprising – he’s notorious for his drug and alcohol use, his addiction to prostitutes, and for abusing ex-wives Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller. Galliano, meanwhile, has been an enfant terrible in his own way, though no one necessarily anticipated his affinity for the Third Reich. But I think it’s captivating when celebrities fall apart for a few reasons. As a culture, we want to hold celebrities to high moral standards, even though there’s no logical connection between fame and inner goodness (some might even argue that the former necessarily corrupts the latter). We want to believe that the people who enjoy riches, privilege and glory somehow deserve it – if they don’t, it corrodes our collective sense of justice.

Intellectually, we understand that celebrities aren’t always formidable people but then, when we’re faced with the reality of those flaws, we feel betrayed. I am not a drug addict/wife beater/lunatic/racist, but I’m also not a multi-millionaire with one of the most coveted jobs on the planet. How is that fair? PR reps can only do so much to save their clients from themselves. Galliano lost his job, because even though anti-semitism doesn’t really interfere with brilliant fashion design, it’s just not a good look for the brand. Sheen, however, is a different story. His off-screen awfulness is, somehow, part of his on-screen charm, and it’ll be interesting to see how this insanity affects his career in the long term.

Personally, I’ve never been a big Charlie Sheen fan, so if this whole thing proves to be a big ol’ career ender it won’t be much of a loss. As for Galliano – put him on the “I used to like you” island with Mel Gibson. Thanks to my last name, my ethnicity is front-and-center. I saw a Galliano t-shirt on sale at Daffy’s the other day, and walked right on by.

The Celebrites Get Dressed

2011-02-28T13:54:00.000-08:00

My Oscar night favorites:

1. Gwyneth Paltrow in Calvin Klein. Say what you will about her singing, but this dress is gorgeous.

2. Anne Hathaway in electric blue Armani Prive. Part Star Trek, all star quality. Love it.

3. Jennifer Lawrence in Calvin Klein. This was her coming-out moment, when she shed the Ozark-chic to prove that all you need to turn heads is great hair and makeup, a killer body, and simple sheath-style gown. And what can I say? I <3 minimalism.

Runners-up:

1. Scarlett Johansson in Dior. Adore the vintage-style lace and the keyhole back, but the color didn't cut it on the red carpet, and the glorified bedhead read as bumpy from certain angles and was out-of-place on the Oscar stage.

2. Reese Witherspoon in Armani Prive. The 60's theme (and green chandelier earrings) work but the hair extensions look over-the-top.

On Romance & NYC

2011-02-24T12:21:00.000-08:00

"The thing about living in New York is that you have to be a little bit in love with the imaginary; you have to be able to see past the homeless guy yelling about Jesus on your street corner, past the bed bug infestation, past the pools of piss in the subway underpass. Imaginary romances are akin to walking to Central Park on an unseasonably warm afternoon listening to Kate Bush on your iPod so loud you can barely hear the hum of the traffic; akin to looking up to see the sun shining on the facade of one of those fancy hotels on Fifth Avenue and suddenly experiencing New York through a tourist’s lens, noticing that you’re not even pushing through the crowds, that you are in fact strolling. In a moment, you’ve forgotten that you have a job you’re late to get back to, that your rent is too damn high, and that most days this city makes you feel small and alone."

Well said. Via Slice Literary.

You Are Pure Joy

2011-02-24T07:58:00.000-08:00

Olivia Benson (ok, Mariska Hargitay) founded a nonprofit called the Joyful Heart Foundation, devoted to victims of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse...(but c'mon - how totally Benson is that? Apparently, Hargitay's role as the kick-ass female cop on Law & Order SVU opened her eyes to the epidemic of abuse in this country, and in 2004 she decided to do something about it. Go Benson! I mean Hargitay. Whatever.)

Anyway, an LA-based Yoga apparel company called AZAIM recently debuted the $40 "I Am Pure Joy" tank, with 10% of the proceeds going to the Joyful Heart Foundation. The kicker? They've rechristened the classic wife-beater as a "Wife Lover." Cute!

Get Well Soon Lara Logan

2011-02-16T07:10:00.000-08:00

This is the kind of hideous story that undermines any sense of hopefulness after Egypt's successful revolution. British journalist Lara Logan, filming a segment for 60 Minutes about the celebration after Mubarak's resignation, was separated from her security and crew by a mob of men who then proceeded to beat and sexually assault her. She is currently being treated in a US hospital.

This seems terribly obvious, but I'll say it anyway: celebration cannot amount to rape. As an international community, we cannot tolerate this. At my editing job, I've had the pleasure of meeting a handful of brave female reporters who travel to places where women are treated like garbage for the sake of the news, and their readers, and the implacable search for the truth. They know the risks. They know that simply by virtue of their biology, they are targeted, and that some men feel the need to exert their power because they believe that women have no business venturing outside of the home.

Women are attacked everyday, and it's not just in places where the sexual politics of the region are as corrupt the governmental ones. I am always so impressed by women who understand the dangers that their bodies can incite and yet - they push ahead. They do their jobs. And in NO WAY does Lara Logan "deserve" to be the victim of this kind of violence just because she's beautiful and pursued a high-risk career path (which, somehow, is how these stories subtly get spun even on US soil, where we supposedly all believe that women are just as capable and entitled as men).

Thinking of you, Lara Logan.

Frostbite for Fashion

2011-02-15T06:38:00.000-08:00

Mr. Newton, I love you, I DO, and I get that dressing for February's New York Fashion Week is a challenge, but I don't think pretending that it's September is the answer:

This is the most extreme case of weather-defiant streetstyle I've seen coming out of Lincoln Center, but in general I don't love the no-tights/summer shoes look many attendees seem to be rocking. Working around the elements sparks creativity! I want to see New York's style stars playing with arctic fashion.

When Will Celebrities Endorse Birth Control Pills?

2011-02-14T09:43:00.000-08:00

I've been wondering about this ever since Amanda Seyfried raised eyebrows by popping the oral contraceptive pill (with a chaser of Lexapro) in front an Esquire reporter. In the Golden Age of Hollywood, female contract players would be concealed from the public eye during the latter half of their pregnancies, so the image of their "bumps" couldn't interfere with the aura of perfection that movie stars had to cultivate. But these days, things have changed. Tabloids are on constant "bump watch," documenting soon-to-be mom's in their finest maternity wear. Now, teen idols like Avril Lavigne and Katy Perry endorse Proactiv, allowing the brand to run photos of them with imperfect skin. And in 2009, before she married Russell Brand, Perry also told a journalist that she chews birth control pills "like vitamin C," because while she wants a family someday, she's focused on her career right now - a statement which, once upon a time, would have instantly invited critics to condemn her skewed priorities.

So, are we approaching a moment when a celebrity will sign on to be the face of the birth control pill in the US? It already happens elsewhere - Lo Bosworth, cast member on MTV's Laguna Beach and The Hills, became a spokesperson for Bayer's low-dose contraceptive Yaz in Canada. Many celebrities are notorious for their serial dating and bed hopping, so they certainly would be believable as clients. I'm confident that a celebrity endorsement would have a positive impact on sales; many women avoid using hormonal birth control because they're concerned it will make them gain weight. A January 2011 study using rhesus monkeys showed evidence that the widely believed connection between the pill and weight gain is a myth, but try telling that to unhappy users; in response to the study, Jezebel's commenters cried bullshit, and 52% (of an undisclosed number) of NY Daily News readers voted that these findings "are crazy." The overwhelming reaction: rhesus shmemsus. But wouldn't the image of a trusted, svelte celebrity help mitigate concerns that a woman on the pill will necessarily end up with a less-than-ideal figure?

Just to be clear: I understand that celebrity endorsements of any kind of medication, let alone one that prevents pregnancy (and thus dovetails with the pro-choice/pro-life argument) is morally complex, but I'm just generally surprised that big pharma hasn't teamed up with Hollywood yet. I also believe that those confession-style Proactiv commercials are a tipping point, and we'll start seeing more famous faces aligned with products that gives us hints about the spokemodel's body and personal life. Think about it; not too long ago, it was probably risky for an aging actress to appear in a commercial for hair dye, because it suggests that she might be camouflaging greys. And now? A L'Oreal contract is an enormous paycheck, and Andie MacDowell in particular has prolonged her stint in the limelight by telling us how she covers up those stubborn little wiry hairs. Supermodel Christie Turlington is the face of Maybelline's Instant Age Rewind line, thus admitting that she has wrinkles. In general, these commercials have the surprising effect of making gorgeous ladies more relatable, in the same way that Amanda Seyfried's honesty about her diets and prescriptions helps average women to feel like she's just like us (as in - a little bit of a headcase).

From a straight-up advertising perspective, using a celebrity spokesmodel for birth control pills is a no-brainer. Given that Holllywood tends not to cave to conservative politics, I'll go ahead and guess that we'll see this happen within the next few years.

Cheek'd!

2011-02-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I was cleaning out my purse, when I found this card at the bottom:

Cheek'd! Well that sounds fun. Except I had no idea what it meant. And I was raised at a time when trips to "the city" meant warnings about the prevalence of pickpockets, so naturally a foreign object in my purse meant that I should do an inventory of my personal belongings. My wallet secured and a few keystrokes later, I found the Cheek'd website and FAQ...

I JUST RECEIVED A CHEEK'D CARD - WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?

Congratulations. Most likely, you received a card because the person that gave it to you is interested in meeting you again. If you are interested, go to the Cheek'd home page and enter the code number on the card. You will be taken to that person's profile page, where you learn a little bit more about them.

So here's the deal. Cheek'd is a dating service that provides members with ID-specific cards that they can give to potential dates, often surreptitiously. A person who finds a Cheek'd card in her purse can then log onto the website and input the ID number to learn a little bit more about her secret admirer. Contacting that person requires logging on as a guest, which I did not do because I am, well, engaged and thus not particularly interested in dating, online or otherwise.

But this is flattering! And kind of a cool innovation in the (frequently creepy) art of the sidewalk pick-up. If I were single, I might just reach out to this person, if only to thank them for getting close enough to my purse to slip something into it, without pulling anything out in the process.

Addicted to Love

2011-02-04T11:12:00.000-08:00

You guys – Jersey Shore’s getting totally real.

I first started watching for the obvious reasons: the hype, the voyeurism, the crazy. But recently, 5 or so episodes into JS’s third season, I’ve noticed something surprising in Ronnie and Sammi - they are most realistically fucked up couple on television.

Think about it. Just on last night’s episode, the couple tried to get past last week’s drama by going out for a night at Karma with the gang. Cut to Ronnie puking in his bed while Sammi, so grossed out by vomit that she has to plug her ears, holds a bag under his face. The next morning, Ronnie wakes up with a hangover so bad that his ass bleeds. Seriously. So Sammi, out of love and concern, accompanies him to the proctologist, giggling with him when he emerges and tells her (in a classic JS no duh moment) that he should take it easy on the boozin’. The truce, of course, only lasts half an episode, and by the end, they’re screaming at each other for no discernable reason and Sammi resumes the game of chicken, challenging Ronnie to end it. These two are so horribly codependent that they pull out the breakup trump card every chance they get, as if to prove to themselves that they are totally capable of surviving without each other (bleeding butt notwithstanding).

Here’s the thing. Ronnie and Sammi are entertaining but they’re also stuck in a cycle of mutual abuse that is playing out in the public eye. These two are so destructive that the rest of the cast, no wilting violets themselves, shudder when they hear the fighting coming from upstairs, like kids bracing themselves for another one of their parents’ blowouts. Ron and Sam aren’t mugging for the cameras, nor are they falling into roles crafted for them by MTV’s producers. For a while, JS tried to position Sammi as the villain, but it’s difficult to paint Ronnie as the victim when he’s cheating on Sam and then crawling into her bed, or he’s laughing maniacally and tossing all of her clothes onto the floor.

Neither one of these people is right or wrong, which is why I believe Ron and Sam are one of the most complex couples on TV. I know – calling anything on the Jersey Shore complex is like claiming to have learned about the nation’s economic crisis from Star magazine. But the fact that JS has lasted three strong seasons without really mixing up the formula suggests that there’s something more than Gym-Tan-Laundry that viewers find appealing. To me, it’s that flicker of the real – the genuine friendships between Snooki and Jwoww; the hysterical camaraderie among Situation, Pauly D and Vinny; Mike’s recurring winks to the camera that imply he’s completely in on the joke, that he’s smart enough to know that “The Situation” is a brand and he’s laughing all the way to the bank.

Everyone has known a Ronnie and Sammi, or has been a Ronnie or a Sammi, or has wondered what it would be like to be in a relationship so dramatic – often misread as passionate – that their selves hit together till they shatter. Ronnie and Sammi really love each other. I have no doubt. They love each other, but it’s toxic love, and they need distance, and probably therapy, to get their lives back on track. They’re not doing this on purpose and they are certainly not happy. But they get so high off the honeymoon periods that they can’t see the Bermuda Triangle’s hastening approach.

I can’t think of another couple on TV – scripted or otherwise – that depict the cycle of abuse with such nuance. Writers and editors often can’t help favor one partner over the other; I’m reminded of Carrie & Big during SATC’s television arc, and how Big, despite Carrie’s craziness, always came off as the jerk. On the other hand, Ron & Sam are the Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf of the Jersey Shore: they love each other so much it hurts.

And Speaking of Lauren Hutton...

2011-02-01T06:58:00.000-08:00

Is she not still mind-blowingly chic and beautiful? At 67! Wrinkles and all.


From Tom Ford's September '10 runway show

From Tom Ford's guest edited edition of French Vogue

The Space Between

2011-01-30T08:32:00.000-08:00

The gap-toothed model trend has been widely noted, but it's of particular interest to me, because I once was a gap-toothed girl. After my front teeth grew in separated, my mother would tell me a story:

When Lauren Hutton first started modeling, her agent insisted she get her teeth fixed. She refused. Instead, she had a piece fitted that she could wear on shoots, and then remove in her personal life.

Immediately, Hutton became my gap-toothed idol. Her willfulness became a shorthand for integrity, uniqueness, and embracing one's looks as-is.

So imagine my cognitive dissonance when I decided to fix my gap at the end of my senior year, just before I turned 18. I loved that my teeth made me different, but I also thought that the Flaw - smack in the middle of my face - made me look less pretty. I had trouble smiling with my mouth open. It was just before college when I finally caved and asked the dentist (a family friend who had offered countless times) to bond it. In a matter of hours I had a new mouth: two perfect front teeth that matched the rest of my pearly whites - which, like Hutton's, had always been totally straight, except for the space between the front two.

In retrospect, I think I was seduced by the opportunity to remake myself before moving to a new school, and that moment - the very unusual chance to put my Best Self forward - chipped away at my resolve. I could smile at my new friends with perfect teeth (my old friends, on the other hand, were largely wistful for my imperfect ones, and only reluctantly admitted that I looked good when I emerged from the dentist's chair).

Which is why I greet this toothy trend with mixed feelings. I quietly champion hot models like Lara Stone and Ashley Smith who embrace their spaces, and feel like all this attention from the fashion world is a win for the good guys. On the other hand, I'm a gap-toothed girl in spirit alone, and I wonder - if I had waited, if I been patient in letting my self-confidence get over the hump of freshmen year - would I have given in to the pressure for perfection? Because let's face it, these girls look awesome.

(From Left to Right: Lara Stone, Ashley Smith, Georgina Jagger & Jessica Hart)

As is often the way, the very thing the fashion world once rejected is - without explanation - suddenly regarded as something to be admired and even coveted. At this moment, gaps seem to signal quirky sexuality - and in fact, this isn't the first time in history when a space between the front teeth symbolized sex. In the scheme of medieval physiognomy, gapped teeth in women were considered a sign of promiscuity. Chaucer used the Wife of Bath's teeth to telegraph her wantonness (I learned this in a high school English class while keeping my mouth firmly shut).

If I still had a space, I'd probably regard this current trend the same way fans of underground bands react when they see them featured on VH1: with a proprietary stance, proud that I'd had the courage to love my gap before the rest of the world caught up. That said, I don't regret "fixing" my teeth. I smile with my lips apart.

On Wearing Mismatched Shoes to the Golden Globes

2011-01-29T08:06:00.000-08:00

"'I was just having fun,' says [Helena] Bonham Carter. 'For me, fashion is all about fantasy and putting unlikely things together. That’s what I love. I genuinely love dressing up.' One person Bonham Carter praises is Lady Gaga for her daring fashion choices. 'I love the way she dresses. She’s like a work of art,' she says. 'Anybody who is inventive, different or has fun like her, I love and admire. I’m amazed that she’s able to stand up in some of those shoes she wears.'" (via People)

And People Think MY Shoe Shelves are Funny!

2011-01-27T05:47:00.000-08:00

(Via Apartment Therapy)

Eat Pray Julia

2011-01-26T11:08:00.000-08:00

A few weekends ago, sick at home on a Saturday night, I took advantage of the Boy's absence* and watched Eat Pray Love. Guys, it wasn't good. And I actually liked the book! But like so many book-to-film interpretations, it doesn't translate. The memoir is a soul-searching pseudo-philosophical treatise on pleasure, the foundations of the self, and the search for happiness, while the movie simply lifts the plot points and tries to construct a cohesive arc. In this case, the film reveals the problems with the architecture of the book; namely, that nothing really happens. Without Gilbert's vivid descriptions of place, and satisfying revelations about her own life and mistakes, the spine of the narrative is a love story, in which Liz's love interest doesn't even appear on-screen until the third act.

Anyway, none of this is not the point. The point is that Julia Roberts is freaking star. HUGE. And I think, in my sleepy, sickly haze, I got a little closer to understanding why:

It's not just that she's gorgeous (which she is) or that her smile lights up the screen. When watching Julia Roberts, you simultaneously never forget that it's her - the movie star - but you also (in most cases) believe 100% in her performance. In other words: she glides seamlessly into her characters while bringing that special Julia Roberts-ness to every single one of them.

Maybe?

*I do this a lot, and the chick flicks that I choose very rarely turn out to be good. On Monday night, I watched Valentine's Day. Please, somebody save me from myself.

Lou Doillon

2011-01-26T10:11:00.000-08:00

So cool, isn't she?

The Upside...

2011-01-25T12:52:00.000-08:00

to a mid-day Dr.'s appt. on the Upper East Side:

Lunch for 1 @ Naruto Ramen.

"Fairy Tale Wedding"

2011-01-24T10:24:00.000-08:00

In her post "What the Hell Is A 'Fairytale Wedding' Anyhow?", Jezebel's Sadie Stein responds to the Guardian's Hadley Freeman's response to journalist Piers Morgan, who apparently, in a CNN interview, asked Condoleeza Rice "if she ever dreamed of a fairytale wedding". Stein blames Princess Diana's nuptials, and Disney, for creating the myth of the fairytale wedding: the idea that one day in a woman's life could be so regal and spectacular that she'll feel like a princess, and it will set the tone for a fairytale marriage. Says Stein:

There's another layer to the whole "Fairytale Wedding" notion: the idea that, whether we admit it or not, it's what every woman dreams of. It was this as much as anything that made Piers Morgan's leering questions so cringe-worthy. And in particularly good form, the Guardian's Hadley Freeman has her own views on why. "In short," she writes, "fairytale weddings exist only to appease men who like to fancy that women see them as princes who will rescue them from the cold plains of spinsterhood. And, my dear Piers, it will take more than the promise of a big ol' dress to make some of us see you as anything approaching regal."

Read more: http://jezebel.com/5741822/what-the-hell-is-a-fairytale-wedding#ixzz1ByfsqsXD

So, this post really resonated with me this morning because I happen to be planning a wedding, and though neither me nor my fiance has ever dreamed of a traditional, ballroom reception, both of us have noticed the subtle yet incredible cultural seduction that begins once you announce your engagement. American weddings are a $160 billion dollar industry that relies on the underlying belief that a wedding should be a perfect day. There's a sense that - especially as a woman - if you don't pull out all the stops, you'll eventually come to regret it. It's a powerful ploy! I'm confident that the Boy and I, like many of our friends who have gotten married in the past few years, will keep our celebration true to ourselves, but let it be known: the temptation to do something larger-than-life can be created even if it's not inborn, because bridal entitlement translates to money in the vendors' pockets.

Postcards from the Everywhere

2011-01-22T06:51:00.000-08:00

From New York Mag: When she is traveling, Lana sends letters and postcards to herself—a diary from the road, you could say.

I love this idea. Turner (no relation to the 1940s sexpot) is a real-estate broker and vintage fashion collector who, for an upcoming open house, decked out a property in Harlem with items from her wardrobe. And in the age of the overshare, I'm enamored of the thought of mailing home little notes to self as a an ongoing chronicle of personal experience - maybe it's because I was an only child until I was 8 that I don't find this strange (there's that oversharing again).

Hasbeens for H&M

2011-01-20T07:59:00.000-08:00

Swedish shoe company Hasbeens has been at the forefront of the clog renaissance, and it was just announced that they're partnering with fast-fashion powerhouse H&M for a line in s/s11. Their sandals, which normally retail for over $250, will be available for just $59.95-$69.95.

Awesome.

Manolo Blahnik Sequined Pascalare Over-The-Knee Boot

2010-11-20T07:53:00.000-08:00

And I thought my sequin leggings from Strawberry were cool. Whoaaaaaaaa. (via The Shoe Goddess)

You are Beautiful (I Like This!)

2010-11-20T07:48:00.000-08:00

As I contemplate it-girls, I find myself also thinking about Facebook - because doesn't it make us all feel just a bit more famous? I made pancakes for breakfast!, a friend writes on a Sunday morning, and scores of silent observers come out of the woodwork to give her a virtual high-five. This is the oft-acknowledged, lovingly ridiculed work of Facebook - that it elevates the mundane to levels of greatness, where everyday activities like going to the doctor and getting stuck in traffic are treated with the same consequence as birth announcements. But I've noticed a subtle generational difference in the way we use Facebook; because I have two much younger sisters, I have a handful of Facebook friends who are between 17 and 21, and there's a particular way that younger users acknowledge their buddies' new photos. You look amaaaaazing. The comments collect. You're so hotttt, teenage girls remind each other.

Whether or not these comments come from the heart, they seem to be obligatory - this is what good girlfriends do now. Friends don't let a friend's new profile pic go unnoticed. Everyone's a supermodel if they have the right girl crew.

I wonder about this because it's so different from the way my girlfriends and I grew up, which is a weird thing to say given that we're not that much older, but notable because we were the last generation to come of age without childhood internet. When we were 19, my friends and I were making fun of these new-fangled websites; by the time we graduated from college, at 21, we couldn't live without them. Back in high school, I certainly thought about my looks, but I didn't get so much feedback. Girlfriends gave me compliments for the usual reasons; I looked rested, I was wearing a good outfit, they wanted to copy my homework. I certainly didn't hear I was "gorgeous" everyday, nor did I have access to a backlist of compliments in any sort of public database. When I heard that I was pretty, I had to hold on to it - which I did, for a minute, until some other slight to my fragile teenage self-esteem wiped out anything nice I might have thought about myself, ever.

The truth is, I had a decent amount of affirmation from my family and friends, but none of it felt particularly meaningful, because I hadn't yet figured out a way to internalize it, and to connect the words I heard from others with anything that I imagined to be true. I'm curious if this onslaught of positive feedback helps today's teenagers to build real self-esteem, or if it simply widens the void, so that girls become overly reliant on (frankly, kinda empty) compliments, and don't learn how to become their own cheerleaders. When I get an email from Facebook telling me that so-and-so says I look pretty, I love it - but I also don't expect it to happen. And if I did? Would I feel like I had great, supportive friends, or like I eventually needed to hear it, over and over again?

It certainly encourages girls to put themselves out there more - to post photos of themselves in bathing suits for instance, the very thought of which would have made me want to kill myself in 1997. And again, when I see a 16 year old with the confidence to upload of picture of herself in a tiny string bikini, I'm caught off-guard by two conflicting feelings: envy for her self-possession at that age, and relieved that I grew up in a world where I didn't feel inclined to put my whole self on the internet.

What is IT?

2010-11-14T14:07:00.000-08:00

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about it-girls, partly because my book has a little something to do with them, but also because I find it fascinating that each generation/medium/social scene finds an attractive young woman to celebrate and oftentimes, also to vilify. I worked on a really interesting book called Starstruck that published Friday, and the author makes the argument that the phenomenon of celebrity happens both globally and locally: that the high school Queen Bee can be just as captivating to her peers as Marilyn Monroe was to audiences in the 1950s and 60s (check out the book. It takes a scientific approach to a not-so-scientific subject, and Elizabeth Currid-Halkett is a sweetheart). Research-wise, I’ve finally reached the last chapter of my book, which covers the 2000s and the Sex and the City moment. And although I didn’t initially intend to pay her any attention, my mind keeps coming back to a socialite who in the mid-2000s, made herself impossible to ignore: Paris Hilton.

I don’t think anyone has successfully explained what the Paris Hilton thing was about, except that she took pains to be ubiquitous, and once she made it to the spotlight she behaved so outrageously that she challenged anyone to turn away. Paris hit the mainstream right around the time I graduated from college, and I remember feeling horrified by her, while simultaneously I was jealous that she could so recklessly do what she wanted, and never seem to suffer any consequences. At a moment of countrywide economic concern and personal financial unrest (I needed a job, yo) it was tempting to idolize this tan, lithe girl who could buy anything in the world with a carefree swipe of her Amex. And so – I paid attention to her, like the rest of the world, enamored with her lifestyle and all the while waiting from some terrible flaw to show itself.

What I find annoying is that the frustration against it-girls often comes out in ruthless comments about their looks. People still argue that Marilyn Monroe wasn’t really beautiful, and that it took makeup and hair dye and camera angles to turn plain old Norma Jeane into Marilyn. This is only true to the extent that we’d all look more glamorous if we had a team to make us over every morning, but the idea that Marilyn would have been a beastface if it weren’t for Hollywood magic is just absurd. In the same way, critics love to snark that Paris Hilton is nothing more than a hair weave, an imperfect nose and a wonky eye, which I guess is true if we’re looking for her flaws, but seems to ignore the fact that the overall package is still pretty good, and that some of the world’s highest paid models have imperfections that actually make them look more striking. Whether or not she’s your cup of tea, Paris was a working model before she was the toast of the tabloids, and its hard to argue that she’s hideous when people just can’t stop looking at her face.

I noticed that Julia Allison – the “media personality” who Gawker once proclaimed to be their Paris Hilton – is subject to this kind of divided lens, where some people genuinely admire her, some find her fascinatingly irritating, and others devote a mind-boggling amount of time to pointing out her shortcomings. Google “Nonsociety”, Allison’s lady-centric website, and you’ll find “Reblogging Nonsociety” – a site that plumbs Julia’s content and ridicules it. Fascinatingly, it’s not the only Allison-hating blog of this kind. From quick glance, it’s clear that the commenters like to poke fun at Julia’s appearance, as if to say: how dare she act like she’s gorgeous when the truth is she’s a total hag. Just by being herself, Julia is inspiring this kind of venom. It’s as if the only way to question the legitimacy of her celebrity is to take cheap shots at her looks – which, if you take this argument to its logical conclusion, seems to suggest that if only she were objectively beautiful, then she would somehow deserve the fame and self-indulgence and self-absorption that come with being an internet star.

I would hazard to guess that the thing that people find so compelling and at the same time, so deeply disturbing is the level of narcissism displayed by it-girls like Hilton and Allison, who unapologetically grab for the limelight and don’t bother to prove that they’ve earned it. Deep down, it’s as if we all wish we could behave this way, and because we can’t, we ask someone else to do it – even if it means that the resentment we all feel at being passed over will ultimately be hungry to take them back down again.

Her former manager Elliot Mintz calls Paris Hilton's inimitable quality "the light." What do you think makes an it-girl shine?

The Shoe Rules

2010-06-11T06:18:00.000-07:00

List of shoes American Apparel employees allegedly can and can't wear, according to Racked:

On the list of banned shoes: Uggs, winter boots, flip-flops, gladiator sandals, Converse, Vans, Keds (unless they are spic-and-span clean), moccasins, and Doc Martens. Allowed: vintage shoes, booties, and boat shoes. Oh, and shoes they sell in the store, naturally.

Are the verboten shoes too hipster-y?

Sex and the City, Take 2

2010-06-11T06:03:00.000-07:00

I think I’ve gotten to the bottom of all the backlash against Sex and the City 2. It isn’t all the extravagance in the face of a stubborn recession, or the fact that culturally, we can’t stand the sight of aging women on screen. No, the problem is much simpler than that…

The movie is terrible.

Once upon a time, circa 2004, Sarah Jessica Parker wanted to end the series gracefully, at the height of its success. Then, four years later, came the first film: have you ever had a break up where you know the relationship just isn’t right, but can’t bear the finality of it? So you get back together for a snapshot of time, high on the familiarity of each other until the old problems creep back in. Audiences – female audiences – scrambled to their theaters in their highest stilettos, willing to forgive the sins of the movie for just one more night with their old friends.

The second-chance relationship never lasts long. The honeymoon bubble bursts, leaving cold hard reality in its wake. But then sometimes, when either cocktails or masochism are involved, you give it one last go. You see each other at a party and you acquiesce to the moment, all too aware that you’ll be eating your breakfast the next morning with a double dose of shame and regret.

It’s here, in the harsh morning-after, that Sex and the City 2 lives. The relationship has nothing left to give: all that remains is the memory of what once was, the touchstone of happiness that stays tucked in your senses but can never really be accessed again. Before I go any further, I should admit, in no uncertain terms, that I’m a big fan of Sex and the City. I didn’t go to the movie looking for flaws; rather, I met two good girlfriends and bought a big ol’ bag of popcorn, excited to catch up with the gang.

Unfortunately, within the first half hour, I realized I’d been had. The instinct came even earlier: when we sat outside of the movie theater, waiting for the previous showing to end, a woman stomped out with a face on her face and muttered, “it’s the worst movie ever.” Afterwards, my girlfriends and I would remember this woman as the outspoken friend who tries to save us from ourselves. She was the Miranda to our silly Carries – the friend who tries to warn you before you go another round with Mr. Big.

Oh right – but Carrie married that jerk. Sex and the City has always had an element of fantasy to it, wherein Johnny-Come-Lately has a third-act epiphany and chases your sweet ass to Paris. Boyfriends and husbands, who often don’t get the whole SATC thing, think this is the show’s bread-and-butter, that women gorge on the fairy-tale world where $500 shoes – a bargain by today’s luxury footwear standards! – and handsome, available men, all exist for your personal delectation.

But that’s only part of the story. Yes, the fantasy element is fun, but women loved Sex and the City because it had a heart: an insight about friendships and relationships that transcended all of its over-the-top moments. The series stayed true to itself, to its characters, and even in the first movie, when the drama felt just a little bit contrived, the love between the women was still palpable, and the lives they’d built for themselves seemed consistent with spirit of the show.

This just isn’t the case with Sex and the City 2: Arabian Caper. Like Liza Minnelli performing Single Ladies in a sequined tunic and translucent tights, the concept feels tired (She’s going to have a STROKE! my friend whispered as Liza copied Beyonce’s moves). In the movie, the girls’ trip to Abu Dhabi is positioned as a way to mix it up, to step away from their overwhelming lives. How telling this feels in retrospect! It’s as if the writers, at a loss for what to do with these characters who, for all intents and purposes have settled down, spun a globe around and thought: wherever Michael Patrick King’s finger lands, we’ll take them. As the movie shows us, settling down isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Carrie and Big are in a rut, and Charlotte, who prayed for children, can’t get the youngest one to stop crying. Miranda’s career, her lifeblood, is in the gutter. Luckily, for those who resist the ticking clock, there’s Samantha, who’s cheating Father Time with creams and hormones and yams and vagina puns (she calls her latest conquest “Lawrence of My Labia” – eww).

When it comes down to it, the theme of this latest film is that the ladies are having trouble letting go of the free-spirited singles that they use to be. And therein lies Sex and the City 2’s biggest problem; it’s not only that gushing over a $22,000/night suite is tacky, or that singing group karaoke to “I am Woman” is embarrassing, or that making fun of other cultures isn’t really funny, but more importantly, that the franchise has betrayed its loyal audience by underestimating them. While snarky comments about Kim Cattrall’s aging face are mean-spirited, they conceal a deeper truth. These actresses are growing older. They don’t look the same as they once did. Ergo - Samantha looks creepy hitting on twenty-something men. But what Michael Patrick King et al. have failed to honor is that moviegoers aren’t afraid to see their favorite foursome push into middle age. Like the best boyfriends and husbands and friends, we’re not put off by a few more wrinkles. But in keeping with those wrinkles, we just want to see our girls grow up.

There are rumors that the studio is trying to fast-track SATC3 so that this little issue of the actresses having the audacity to age doesn’t get out of hand. But after this debacle, it seems much more important to take it slow, and redeem – no, restore – the franchise to it’s former glory. In the wake of SATC2, it’s clear that a third installment has to happen. Otherwise, we’re left with a lousy early-morning imprint of a once great relationship: feeling dirty, disappointed with ourselves, and all-too aware of the magic, like that 145 minute runtime, that we’ll never get back.

5,500 Year Old Shoe - FOUND!

2010-06-10T06:27:00.000-07:00

In an Armenian cave, preserved in cow dug and stuffed with grass, rested the oldest leather shoe ever discovered. Researchers believe it belonged to a member of the upper class; like so many footwear innovations, issues of practicality are intricately braided with issues of social standing.

Chic Magnet

2010-06-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

I've been rocking these 80%20 'Bonnie' Peep-toe wedges since I bought them for a fraction of their original price on Gilt, and something strange has been happening...

Women on the street can't get enough of them.

Seriously, I've never received so much unsolicited female attention in my life. I thought it was a fluke at first - an offhand compliment here, a sideways glance there - but soon enough, it became clear that these shoes were getting cruised. Interestingly, men don't respond to them at all; it's only when I wear sexy, strappy numbers that I wonder just how common shoe and foot fetishes really are. But random women have noticed these wedges with unbelievable consistency. Just when I thought it might all be in my head, I wore them into the subway, and a fashionable girl with a cute boy on her arm glanced down at them, looked up, and squealed: ooooh!

I actually have another pair of black 80%20 wedges (what can I say - I like 'em) which I think are conventionally cuter: they're the blond haired, blue-eyed sister to these quirky redheads. And yet, women don't seem phased by them at all. It's the 'Bonnie' wedge - strange and slightly orthopaedic-looking - that has captivated New York's female population. I wonder if it's because they're attractive but non-threatening - a shoe, like a shy girl, that requires a second look, and never seems like it's trying too hard.

I Spy...

2010-05-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

via Studded Hearts

These shoes are hugely famous. Designed by Ferragamo in 1938, they're an iconic example of his experiments with cork after Italy invaded Ethopia in 1935. It's widely believed that they were made specially for Judy Garland - though no documentation exists to prove it. The shoes pictured are very likely reproductions, since Garland wore anywhere from a size 5-6, depending on whether she'd be standing or dancing in them.

Senescence and the City

2010-05-28T11:33:00.000-07:00

Interesting essay on The Awl today about backlash against Sex and the City 2. The author believes it reveals our cultural bias against aging women, and disgust at the notion that middle aged women still enjoy a roll in the hay:

My theory is that the radical aversion to the current installment of Sex and the City says something about the way we look at elderly women in modern American society. We would prefer that, if we must indeed be subject to their representation in popular culture, they be confined to small supporting roles in which they play spinster older sisters or embittered, loveless career women. The idea that we are not only supposed to pretend that the shriveled harridans we see on the screen might still engage in the act of sexual intercourse but that we are supposed to celebrate their enjoyment of such defies both credulity and good taste.

When "Sex and the City" premiered nearly a decade and a half ago it was still possible for viewers to convince themselves that these characters (and the actresses who played them) were vibrant and youthful enough that their carnal antics were both gratifying and arousing. All these years later the four protagonists, drained of their fecundity and more than halfway on the journey that brings every once-vibrant flower to its inevitable arid dessication, would be far more convincing as lesbian aunts or surprisingly spry grandmothers. Our visceral disdain for the most recent Sex and the City makes blatantly obvious our youth-oriented society's unspoken bias against females who are no longer credible as potential breeders. To paraphrase Andrea Dworkin, nobody wants to think about old ladies fucking.

Yikes! I respect the point-of-view here but don't know if I would describe any of these actresses as "elderly", "shriveled harridans," or drained of their fecundity and more than halfway on the journey that brings every once-vibrant flower to its inevitable arid dessication (a sentence that I honestly find as offensive to women as anything ever written about 50-something Samantha's not-so-fresh face). I just want to say: the SATC women aren't old ladies. They would be enormously unconvincing as grandmothers - unless the fact that they started young, and their kids started younger, was a plot point - but even then I'm reminded of the way Hollywood frequently hires 32-year-old women to play mothers of 17-year-olds (see: the O.C.). Cynthia Nixon, the youngest of the crew, is 44, and plays a mother to a single-digit child, which is believable in part because she also is one in real life. Aside from Samantha, whose age has been a gag throughout the series, these women aren't yet rubbing up against menopause, and certainly aren't treading dangerously close to Golden Girls territory.

Yes, this culture has a lot of work to do when it comes to discarding older actresses, and treating women older than twenty-five as irrelevant. Yes, audiences love a good ingenue, and it's hard to slide past ingenue age without feeling like a little piece of your social cache has been stolen. But maybe people are feeling resentful of SATC2 because of its excesses: the 50K outfits, the parade of (yes) unaffordable shoes, the sense that while these actresses are growing older, their characters aren't necessarily growing up. I haven't yet seen the movie (I will) but did respond viscerally to a moment in the television trailer when Samantha shamelessly hit on a twenty-something guy. Maybe so-called "cougars" are funny, or culturally relevant, but Samantha's shtick is more of the same, and underestimates SATC's loyal audience by suggesting that they're only interested in a recapitulation of the HBO series. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing Samantha fall in love with someone age-appropriate and dashing, in a way that's inspiring to women of any age - finding a partner to be her equal.

And Speaking of Parent/Child Relationships...

2010-05-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

Via New York Magazine

Loved this week's NY Mag article on Joan Rivers, a tragi-comic figure if there ever was one. But I was particularly amused by this story about Joan and Melissa, which seems to perfectly capture the (Jewish?) mother-daughter relationship:

Earlier this year, apropos of nothing, Rivers sent me an e-mail while she was out in L.A. visiting her daughter. “Just bought Melissa three hundred dollars’ worth of new place mats. God she must hate me.”

“That is a perfect example of what our relationship is like,” says Melissa. “So, my place mats are a little worn out! We all get busy. But my mother had the car stop on the way from the airport to my house. And showed up with all sorts of new place mats and napkins. Without asking me. That’s stepping over the line a little. I can’t take care of myself?” She laughs. “But luckily I needed the place mats.”

Isn't it great how Melissa is both annoyed and grateful? Mother knows best, and she'll never miss an opportunity to prove it.

I Love My Big Gay Son

2010-05-26T06:33:00.000-07:00

Far be it from me to suggest that entertainment should have any social responsibility (I WILL watch The Real Housewives of New York marathon and I WILL revel in the drama) but I'm impressed with Glee, which manages to set a positive example despite the cotton-candy musical numbers and over-the-top story lines. As a successful show with real reach, Glee is giving viewers access to primetime's first straight father/gay son relationship, in which football-watching, beer-swilling Dad grapples with his feelings of loss as he confronts the reality that Kurt would rather talk home decorating than running backs, stirrup pants instead of baseball. Still, he loves his son and stands up for him (in last night's episode, he kicks traditionally masculine pseudo-stepson Finn to the curb when he uses the "F" word - the three-, not four-lettered one - in the house) with all of the fierceness and poignancy of a devoted parent, no matter the child's sexuality. I can only hope that families dealing with similar issues will watch Kurt and his Dad interact, and realize that familial bonds can transcend these vital, but by no means catastrophic, differences.

Seriously, WALK LIKE A MAN

2010-05-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

The least masculine shoes I've ever seen, officially. Topman, 5/22/10.

OK, Walk Like a Man

2010-05-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

Geri from Because I'm Addicted (via Refinery 29) featured a new line called Alex & Eli, from a former pattern-maker at Zac Posen, and an ex-intern at Rodarte. The girls share a love of tailoring. Yes, me too.

I want to wear all of these things. I want to dress like Bianca Jagger, circa 1972, spotted at Heathrow airport:

I want to wear a skinny white suit, and pair it with these Loeffler Randall snakeskin booties, marked down to $532.00 from $760.00. Half 'em again Loeffler, and I'm yours.

Wow, fashion frenzy. So, um, FYI.

Walk Like a Snookie

2010-05-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

As Jezebel and Refinery 29 report, Steve Madden's "Snookie" sandal is on sale now for $109, and with a 5.5" heel, these shoes are all set to compensate for the Jersey Shore star's diminutive height:

Image via SteveMadden.com

I've just returned from my first trip to Vegas (more on that later) where Snookie's style impact is surprising, but undeniable. The poof - created in some cases by Bump-its, which as proof of their success have made it from TV to the internet to national drug store chains - was prevalent, as were hair extensions, orange tans, and glittery platform heels. Aesthetically, I'm pretty certain that Las Vegas and South Jersey, despite their geographical distance, are (as Snookie might say) friggin' soulmates.

Just In Case

2010-05-13T14:09:00.000-07:00

Today in the Style Section: Laura Holson writes about social networking sites, and how let-it-all-hang-out Generation Y is becoming more conscious of privacy. With a growing awareness that one's online activities can be easily accessed by college admissions staff and potential employers, a set of kids who've only known adolescence with Myspace and Facebook are learning (supposedly) how to mitigate their ingrained desire to overshare with the knowledge that virtual TMI is not without real-life consequences. I say supposedly, because around college application time, my senior-in-high-school sister and I'm assuming, her friends, didn't delete potentially compromising photos or content on their Facebook pages, but simply altered their handles so that their names were less easily searched by authority figures.

Anyway, while reading the article, one girl's rationale for monitoring her younger sister's profile struck me as funny:

Ms. Liu is not just policing her own behavior, but her sister’s, too. Ms. Liu sent a text message to her 17-year-old sibling warning her to take down a photo of a guy sitting on her sister’s lap. Why? Her sister wants to audition for “Glee” and Ms. Liu didn’t want the show’s producers to see it. Besides, what if her sister became a celebrity? “It conjures up an image where if you became famous anyone could pull up a picture and send it to TMZ,” Ms. Liu said.

What I love about this quote is that the implication that the best reason for letting go of one's online pseudo-fame is the pursuit of actual celebrity. A consistent critique of Generation Y is that they are unprecedentedly narcissistic, and sites like Myspace and (let's be serious) Facebook are appealing in part because they make users feel just that much more special. Once upon a time, average teenagers didn't give each other virtual pats on the back for looking nice in a photo, or for eating a great sandwich, and Facebook albums and Twitter updates allow all of us to feel like our friends are paying attention, often in amusing and ultimately validating ways. So why would anyone give this up? The promise of REAL fame. The eyes of the whole world - not just our friends - telling us we're pretty and funny and fascinating.

Free Advice, 1938

2010-05-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

via PBH3, and sent to me by my good friend the Brew-Ru

I always follow this advice. I never talk about clothes, and certainly hold to a firm list of topics the Boy finds appealing, right?

Tim Curry as Frank-N-Furter in Platforms, 1975

2010-05-11T06:22:00.001-07:00

Be Still My Bieber

2010-05-07T07:15:00.001-07:00

Yesterday the Times style section had a one-pager devoted to Justin Bieber, the 17-year-old singing sensation who has set all of these (pre-)adolescent girls’ hearts a-flutter. He’s the most recent in a long line of young, non-threatening male pop stars who capture the imaginations of young girls – young girls, just on the brink of discovering their own sexualities, who fixate on a male idol with pretty-boy good looks and a winning smile. There’s nothing dangerous about Justin Bieber, just as there was nothing remotely threatening about David Cassidy, Davey Jones, Leif Garrett, Joey McIntire (from The New Kids on the Block) or even Justin Timberlake, when he was still one-fifth of N-Synch. What the Boy Bands – beginning with The New Kids – did so well was to toss the youngest fans a Bieber-like bone while fleshing out the pack with boys to every taste, to give the older girls someone to fawn over, too.

There seems to be something unique about that moment – when a girl is 10, 11, 12 – that she wants a crush-object who isn’t too masculine, as if she’s testing the waters by projecting her feelings on a safe but unattainable friend. My first knockdown celebrity crush was 90210 bad boy Luke Perry, but before that I loved Kirk Cameron on Growing Pains, who was about as pretty and floppy haired (and apparently, super duper devoutly Christian) as any of these Pup Stars are today.

But interestingly, the Times Bieber article wasn’t about his fainting fans, and how the crowds in Australia swelled to such an uncontrollable level that his team had to cancel Bieber’s concert. This feels like old, predictable news – girls have been swooning over teen idols since The Beatles performed at Shea Stadium or since Michael Jackson, in his Off the Wall heyday, left fans with tears falling down their faces and gasping for air. The article was about teenage boys and Bieber, and how they’re asking for his boy bang-ed haircut in hair salons…but without saying his name. The savviest stylists have learned to recognize the signs, and when a teenage boy asks for a full bang just long enough to drape into his eyes, she starts cutting with a nod and a smile.

Girls are always hyper-conscious of what their male peers find attractive, and will diet/tan/bleach/exercise/augment/shop to try to live up to the Britney Spears’ (circa Baby One More Time) and the Megan Fox’s of the world, already well-versed in the torture of comparing ourselves to famous women without ever having to hear that the boy we like thinks Blake Lively is hot. On some level, it’s nice to know that boys feel that same pressure, and are happy to Bieber-fy if they think it will get them a date.

Brooklyn Grange

2010-05-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

My badass friend Gwen is spearheading a rooftop farm project in Brooklyn (ok, Queens) that has the potential to be the first of its kind in the country. Check out these rock star urban farmers!

1970s Man Heels

2010-05-06T06:36:00.000-07:00

(Image by Jean-Marie Perier, via ArtNet)

Alice + Olivia for Payless

2010-05-05T13:06:00.000-07:00

Wore a pair of gold cork wedges to work that promptly dug into my toes and cut up my feet.

Spring/Summer footwear is a bitch. I haven't yet developed my full-foot callus that allows me to wear any strappy shoes I want.

So, on my lunch hour, I walked (carefully) over to Payless, and picked up these slip-on "Jazz Oxfords" for $29.99 - yes! Sometimes I think discount chains exist solely to remedy sartorial mishaps mid-day (see: Pair of Strawberry Leggings Purchased on the way to the Hole show, because the author and her companion could not withstand the gusty, arctic winds coming off the Hudson as we ventured towards 12th Avenue. Also a bitch: Spring weather in New York. It was 39 degrees one week ago, now it's 79. Seriously.)

"Man Heels"

2010-05-04T14:37:00.000-07:00

...and just when I'm researching the platform shoes men wore during the 1970s, Racked NY reports on a new trend.

I'm speechless! Girls, would you date a guy who wears man heels? I could get down with Zac Posen's shoes (right) but honestly, a man in platform, heel-less Nina Ricci's (left) is just too high maintenance for me.

Unisex Platform Boots, circa 1972-1973

2010-05-03T09:17:00.000-07:00

Image via the FIDM Museum blog

Prada's Print Collection

2010-04-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

Images via Nitrolicious

I love neutrals: black, white, grey, brown, blue and leopard print (yes, leopard print is a wardrobe basic. Don't argue). But come springtime, I develop an appetite for florals that surprises me each year. Prada's 1950s style voluminous, cinched-waist dresses are perfect for the season, to be matched with these adorable Liberty-of-London-esque ballet flats for some on-trend print mixing. As far as the dresses go, I covet the red and cream one on the back right, and the blue swirlies just left of center.

Kneel Into the Northern Lights

2010-04-28T07:03:00.000-07:00

I saw Courtney Love perform for the first time last night, and there was a moment – during Doll Parts or Miss World or Violet or Northern Star – when I thought fondly upon my teenage self, and how happy she’d be to know that at 28, she would stay out late on a school night to see Hole. Watching Courtney silhouetted on stage, with her signature platinum blonde hair and broad shoulders, I felt the reality of her icon status, which she’s managed to retain not in spite of her antics but, in part, because of them. No matter how old she gets, Courtney will always be a symbol of the say-what-you-want, do-what-you-want broad: the sort of messy provocateur that so many awkward teenage girls and boys – uncomfortable in their own skin – fell in love with in the first place. Her appeal was truly her outsider’s edge. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, or for that matter, conventionally talented, but she managed to front a hugely successful band, and marry the king of the loveable losers, Kurt Cobain himself, and create what for a moment appeared like an island of a family, correcting the mistakes of their own unhappy childhoods.

Ever since I read Tavi’s Sassy post, I’ve been thinking a lot about that time, and whether Tavi’s right that the 90s was a great moment to be a misfit, or if she’s just romanticized that decade. I was about Tavi’s age when Kurt Cobain died, and in some strange way, his suicide felt even more magnificent and divine that the body of his work – which I loved. I remember laying on the top of my bunk bed at camp, copying down the words of Kurt’s suicide note off my friend’s t-shirt, the way I used to listen to Nevermind and then In Utero on my walkman, pressing pause and rewinding until I could get each lyric right and write it down in my journal. Sitting there, reading his suicide note over and over, my deep empathy with the rock star’s pain reaffirmed something I’d already suspected: I wasn’t like those other girls at camp, who played sports and already, at 14, had boyfriends and wore makeup. Kurt’s loneliness made mine feel more glamorous, as if to say – I can’t relate to my peers, but I can relate to greatness.

It was a heady, anguished feeling that followed me into my twenties, long after I’d stopped going to summer camp and found friends who got me. And while now, nearly 30, I don’t feel like I need the Kurt Cobains of the world anymore, every once in a while I’m struck with nostalgia for the intensity of that moment in my life: a time when everything felt pitiless and dire, and I was grasping for role models in unlikely places. Watching Courtney Love perform, it was like a drug that transported me back to those teenage years but with the benefit of distance, so that I had perspective enough to actually enjoy myself. And I wonder, when Tavi writes about the 90s with such fangirl yearning, if her statement is less about this generation of young women, but about herself. Tavi is precocious, talented, skinny, awkwardly pretty – like many 13/14-year-old girls, a glimmer of the incredible person she’ll one day grow into and become. No doubt, in 1994, Tavi would have been glowering in her bunk bed and listening to Live Through This. But now, with the Internet, she’s all of those things, but she’s also famous. She’s at once uncomfortable in her own skin and heralded as the next great fashion writer, and perhaps something even bigger, like a burgeoning voice of her generation. Imagine feeling patently unacceptable while trying to also wrap your head around achieving that kind of international acceptance. That’s Courtney Love-style. That’s heady.

Le Smoking (1966)

2010-04-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

Helmut Newton for Yves Saint Laurent.

Is there ever a day I don't secretly want to dress like this? And by this, I mean nude with hats, of course.

P.S. Those pumps are quite high for the mid-60s.

Vintage Pretty

2010-04-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

White stilettos on Marilyn Monroe & Jane Russell at the premiere of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953); Red platform sandals on Jodie Foster from Taxi Driver (1976). Images via Talking Pictures.

Nine Westies

2010-04-23T14:37:00.000-07:00

Loving these medium-heeled, practical yet sexy Nine West patent nude sandals, modeled by Jessica @ Workoutfits. A great office-to-dinner shoe.

Eco-Living

2010-04-23T06:54:00.000-07:00

Happy (belated) Earth Day! I caught a bit of Josie Maran's home tour on E! News (I know) and though I don't really know who she is, I LOVED what I could see of her gorgeous, carbon-footprint-conscious home. It's proof that 1. green can be chic, and 2. not all sorta celebrities have over-the-top taste. Inspiration comes from strange places...

Walking on Nails

2010-04-22T06:34:00.000-07:00

From Margiela Fall 2008:

via Chictopia

From Acne Spring 2010:

via Well Shod, Well Informed

From Rob Goodwin 2010:

via Style Bubble

From a bunch of these shoes are craaaazy email forwards, provenance unclear:

...New Trend?

Yup, Reality Bites.

2010-04-21T06:49:00.001-07:00

I watched Reality Bites recently – as a period piece, for the shoes and the clothes – but also because I was stuck on the couch with the kind of head cold that makes watching any movie I haven’t seen at least twice already unbearable. And as much as I enjoyed another spin with Lelaina and the gang, and coveted, once again, her oddly shapeless white crocheted dress which she pairs with some clunky Mary Janes, I found myself distracted by something I’d noticed before, but couldn’t quite put my finger on: the movie’s incredible ambivalence towards the Michael character, played by Ben Stiller. As you likely recall (because seriously, has anyone from our generation NOT seen Reality Bites at least twice?) he’s one third of the love triangle completed by Lelaina, our heroine, and Troy, her college best friend and ultimate brooding slacker, played by Ethan Hawke. When we first meet Michael, he’s driving a shiny blue BMW, as opposed to the dingy one Lelaina begrudgingly inherited from her father. He’s the total-package Yuppie: expensive car, fancy job, patently uncool yet charged with shaping cool for the new generation of television viewers (he’s an exec at the In Your Face network, which at once is and isn’t supposed to be MTV). Lelaina meets Michael after she accidently tosses a lit cigarette into his car, which causes him to hit hers when the traffic light changes. He’s set up as the butt of a joke, the very guy who Lelaina and her friends like to mock…yet she accepts a date with him when he proves nice enough to forget the whole incident.

As I watched, I realized: there’s nothing wrong with Michael. We’re supposed to dislike him for what he represents, yet like him enough to buy that Lelaina, who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, falls in something close to love with him. The screenwriter, Helen Childress, set herself a tough task: the guy who’s nice to Lelaina, and treats her well, is ultimately the one she’ll cast off, and the boy who yells at her and brings home girls to spite her and refuses to settle for something as pedestrian as a job or even a diploma and embarrasses her by singing a hostile Violent Femmes song while Michael waits flaccidly yet apologetically, offering her tickets to New York as penance for standing by while her film was carved up, is the guy who proves to be her soulmate. We’re to believe so firmly in the nature of “integrity” that it trumps the reality of what Lelaina’s handed in Michael: a nice guy who treats her right. There’s something satisfyingly immature in Lelaina’s final choice. She doesn’t grow in a traditional sense; rather, the end reinforces what she believed from the beginning, which is that selling out, above all else, is the ultimate betrayal.

(I should note that Helen Childress was something like 19 when she wrote this script, and this may very well have been her honest point of view. Hell, it was close to my point of view when I was 21, and believed using my diploma to wait tables was more authentic than settling for a 9-5 job.)

Now don’t get me wrong: Troy is H-O-T hot. Their chemistry will get them through most of ’96, fighting and then making up steamily. But in this viewing, I wondered if Ben Stiller as Michael – his first real movie role in what also happened to be his directing debut - brought too much pathos to the character. Seriously, if Troy were played by a less attractive actor, would we still be rooting for Lelaina to make it work with him?

Makeup Samples Test Positive for Strep, Staph and E.Coli

2010-04-20T07:10:00.000-07:00

From the LA Times:

Wherever you see E. coli, you should just think ‘E. coli equals feces,' " Brooks says. "That means someone went to the bathroom, didn't wash their hands and then stuck their fingers in that moisturizer." Brooks says that when they tested the makeup on Saturdays — the day with the most traffic at cosmetic counters — the percentage of tainted makeup was 100%.

File under consider yourself warned, use with caution, etc.

The Price of Being Jessica Simpson

2010-04-16T10:59:00.000-07:00

Can I say this? I'm actually really starting to like this girl.

Around the same time that Britney was telling Candies to take their photoshoppers and shove 'em, Jessica Simpson, once considered Brit's squeaky-clean Christian clone, posed for this makeup-free cover photo for Marie Claire. Now, Jessica's been through quite a few career transformations over the years - from Christian pop artist to postergirl for the preserved hymen club to sexy pop star to Nick Lachey's brain-dead wife to sudsy Daisy Duke to dismal divorcee to Ashlee's supportive sister to Country artist to sexual napalm - but this latest iteration, as a champion of authenticity, feels - somehow, surprisingly - authentic. Ever since Jess became the butt of a week-long joke about her weight gain and her taste in high-waisted jeans, it's as if she's become more sure of herself, more devil-may-care, more honest. Maybe it's all a publicity stunt to promote her new VH1 show The Price of Beauty, but I don't know - I want to believe that all of the criticism J-Simps has endured has shaped the girl we're allowed to see in this picture. The hair extensions are gone, and she's resting comfortably at what looks like a natural, healthy weight (in March, she told David Letterman that all of the cluck-clucking about her changing silhouette just made her want to throw up her hands and eat whatever she wanted, as if she'd glimpsed the worst of it and thought: that's the best you can do?)

So of course, there's an ongoing debate about whether she's actually not wearing makeup, and critics point to her well-defined lashes and her rosy cheeks as proof that she's lying. But if you ask me, I think she's wearing moisturizer, maybe some clear mascara, and possibly a little Vaseline for contouring. Maybe she pinched her cheeks, 1950s style, to redden them. Maybe it's crazy, but I want to believe that Jessica Simpson can survive that intrusive Dad of hers, the divorce, her own suffocating desire for stardom and the all-consuming hunger of the tabloids and come out clean, to show the world that she's flawed, and she's alright. I want to look at the lines in her face, and feel that she feels that she earned them. I want to believe the fairy tale, and not a bare-faced lie.

The Vajazzle

2010-04-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

There I was, minding my own business and trolling Gilt Group for good deals when I came across a discount for the Vajazzle.

The what? I did a little research.

via the Completely Bare spa:

Get completely bare…with a flair
Like all fashion trends, beauty treatments come and go, one day they’re hot, they next day they’re not. The need for hair removal doesn’t change, but how you get to be bare down there and the style you choose, like fashion, changes from season to season. Now it’s time to go completely bare with a flair. Accessorize your own jewels…with crystals.
Whether your choice of hair removal be completely bare’s core treatment –IPL and laser hair removal reduction - or a French wax - you can be sure that your bikini area will sparkle.
Accessorizing your privates is the hottest rage. From crystal flowers to customized favorites, you too can now decorate your own jewels. Whether it’s a special occasion or you just want to sparkle everywhere, you can choose from an assortment of real swarovski crystal designs so you can shimmer and shine.

Hey ladies, can I talk to you a sec?

Is this really what we're doing now?

We're paying someone to rip off our pubic hair and replace it with Swarovski crystals?

I know I'm a little behind the curve with this one - what, with Jennifer Love Hewitt running all over the late night talk show circuit chatting about her sparkly pubis - but seriously, I don't think we're all talked out about the Vajazzle. We haven't fully plumbed the social implications of grown women signing on to sit through a full bikini wax and THEN, laying patiently in pain while the esthetician/visual artist applies rhinestones to her ladyparts. It's like the mullet of gender representation: business on the outside, party in the pants. Beyond the logistical questions - how do those little bedazzles hold up to underwear, let alone the, um, friction they're surely meant to inspire - bigger questions nag. One, for instance: have we reached a point of development where natural body hair is so offensive that we'd prefer to look like cyborg strippers with nothing but glitter between our legs?

Look, I can make a case for a little intimate tidying, en vogue since the 1980s when the cuts on underwear and bathing suit bottoms ascended. The "fur bikini" - as Holly Madison termed the natural look that runs through classic issues of Playboy - likely won't return to below-the-belt fashion anytime soon. Go ahead, get a Brazilian if it makes you feel hot. But once we reach a point where body hair removal veers from convenience to inconvenience - will those crystals be falling down your pants legs all day? - from grooming to "glitzy", I say:

Let me know if this is what we're doing. Because if it is, I'd like the chance to give up.

For more on the Vajazzle, check out Bryce Gruber sitting through the treatment for the Luxury Spot:

By the way, nothing but love for Gruber, who is my new hero. I don't know if I could say "vajazzle" on camera without turning seven shades of pink, let alone get it done in front of 820,000 viewers.

Britney for Candies

2010-04-13T14:54:00.000-07:00

via The Cut:

Britney Spears requested that her unretouched Candies ads be released alongside the photoshopped versions and guess what: girl looks pretty damn good. I agree with the majority of New York mag's commenters, who have observed that 1. The retouchers - who might better be described as "reshapers" - could have stopped at smoothing out her skin and fixing the unfortunate crotch/bathing suit situation and 2. These pics do NOTHING for the shoes, which is what they purport to be selling.

And good for Brit, right? The more celebrities insist upon being accurately represented in photos, the less we'll see this kind of aggressive, otherworldly photoshopping.

No Country for Young Men

2010-04-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

As reported in today's Times, a Staten Island college has created the Foundation for Male Studies, "to study malehood in all its power and powerlessnes," meant to counterbalance the way "misguided feminism" has chipped away at contemporary masculinity.

Lionel Tiger, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, said the field takes its cues “from the notion that male and female organisms really are different” and the “enormous relation between … a person’s biology and their behavior” that’s not being addressed in most contemporary scholarship on men and boys.

Essentialism at its finest: men like to barbeque while women like to tidy.

I don't really know what to make of this. Having attended Vassar with a student who proposed an independent major on "Man Studies" (no joke) back in 2001, the question of whether the counterpoint to Women's Studies has a place in education became a hotly debated topic amongst my friends - with a lot of beer, and laughing, and posturing tossed in. On one hand, there's nothing inherently wrong with examining the construction of masculinity and maleness, which, just like femininity, is shaped by an ever-changing zeitgeist with shifting cultural values. (Of course, Tiger here wants to study the nature, not the nurture, so there goes that argument...)

The real question becomes whether this kind of reaction is really necessary: if we're obliged to offset African American Studies with (you guessed it) White Studies. Is this an innovative, post-feminist way to look at gender, or an attempt for Men's Men to commandeer the dialogue?

And would it be easier to take The Foundation for Male Studies seriously if it cropped up at Brown, instead of The Situation's birthplace?

Lady Abstinence

2010-04-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

Lady Gaga: "You Don’t Have To Have Sex To Feel Good About Yourself, And If You’re Not Ready, Don’t Do It."

Big thumbs up to Lady Gaga for getting this admirable message out to her young fans. But I do have to wonder about the tacit mixed message: you don't have to have sex to feel good about yourself, but you should probably act sex if you want to sell a gazillion records.

This Season in Shoes

2010-04-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

There are clogs:

Clarks® Unstructured 'Un.evident' Clog

And platforms:

Yves Saint Laurent Essentielle Suede Sandals

And swallow print platforms:

Miu-Miu Sparrow Print Pumps

And platform clogs:

Jeffrey Campbell 'Charli-C' Clog

And swallow print platform clogs:

Miu Miu Dove Print Satin Clogs

Finis.

Spring into Shoes

2010-04-09T06:40:00.000-07:00

Cathy Horyn's "Stepping Gingerly Into the Heat," in yesterday's Times, tackles the missteps women take when choosing shoes in transitional weather:

As I went around the city — Herald Square, the West Village, Union Square — I sensed that women were glad to be outside but not quite sure what to put on their feet. They were not ready for sandals or maybe they had found some spring clothes they liked but not yet the right shoe.

So they were wearing knee-high boots, probably the same knocked-around pair they wore last week with a raincoat. You could imagine how they arrived at this choice. (Hey, we’ve all been there.) They had an adorable light-colored dress or cotton miniskirt they wanted to wear on a beautiful day, but then they thought the familiar boots would be comfortable and spare them from looking overly dressed for spring. So many complications, so many ugly boots.

Maybe these women weren't ready to unveil their pasty, un-manicured toes. Maybe, as Horyn suggests, they haven't yet had a chance to shop for summer shoes, and were blindsided by summer weather. But I think we have to go easy on women who make curious sartorial choices in these confounding in-between months. How many times have you worn thick black tights to the office only to step out for lunch and see bare legs luxuriating in 80 degree weather? How many times have you, expecting unseasonal humidity to turn into rain, worn knee-high boots in preparation?

And Speaking of Doc Martens...

2010-04-09T06:31:00.000-07:00

Angelina Jolie, age 15, in an early modeling shot. I totally would have worn this outfit in the mid-90s.

50 Years of Doc Martens

2010-04-08T10:09:00.000-07:00

The Duke Spirit in their DM's

To celebrate their 50th anniversary, the people at Dr. Martens have commissioned 10 bands to record covers of songs that "represent the spirit of the people who've worn DM's over the past 50 years" - proving once again the company's devotion to Doc Martens' legacy as the shoes of rock'n'roll royalty (they are, understandably, less committed to their history as the footwear of skinheads and German housefraus). When I started wearing Doc Martens at age 12, it was absolutely in loving imitation of the grunge gods I was coming to adore. In terms of my emotional connection to shoes, DM's by far outrank any other brand as the footwear of my "tortured" youth.

Catwoman's First Cover

2010-03-04T15:28:00.001-08:00

Check out her snazzy foldover pirate boots!

Jimmy Choo Spring 2010

2010-03-04T15:27:00.000-08:00

Streetstyle blogs have made a big impact on fashion advertising, don't ya think?

Caught in the Act

2010-03-04T15:25:00.000-08:00

In Honor of the Winter Olympics...

2010-02-03T14:28:00.000-08:00

vintage Johnny Weir in heels.

(via BlackBook)

Font Me

2010-01-14T07:54:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder which font embodies your essence? This brief, interactive Internet quiz sits you one-on-one with a faceless psychoanalyst, who asks you four questions in order to determine your type. For the font, or style, obsessed, it gives visual context to your personality - aka, loads of fun.

Psst: I'm Archer Hairline.

Rinko Kikuchi as Bang-Bang in The Brothers Bloom

2010-01-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

Style inspiration:

Black, white & red palette; tailoring; hats; sunglasses; red lips = LOVE IT. Costumes by Beatrix Aruna Pasztor.

Atomic Wedgie

2010-01-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

Wedge booties came back in a big way this past fall, and the newly released Spring '10 Lookbooks reveal that the trend will prevail through the warmer months. I love a wedge heel, which provides height without feeling precarious, and have fallen hard for these Acne Atamcoma Black Metal boots (along with the rest of New York).

Wedges, which originated with Ferragamo after Italy invaded Ethiopia during WWII, feel terrifically appropriate for these tenuous economic times (let's ignore the $599 pricetag on Acne's version, shall we?) A shoe that's very lineage begins with chronic instability and rationing - Ferragamo experimented with the wedge once other materials like steel and leather became inaccessible - also proves that ingenuity in tough moments can be incredibly fruitful. Because wedges literally lift women off the street, without interfering with the gait the way, say, a stiletto does, they also can feel more empowering than a Christian Louboutin pump - J-Lo's sartorially coded riff on "I Will Survive" notwithstanding.

Spring's versions vary from no-nonsense to whimsical: true, in the case of the former, to the wedge's somber past while in the latter, embracing the spirit of spring. These two pairs from Swedish designer minimarket make me want to whip out the credit card and pony up the Kronors:

The Princess of Manolo

2010-01-05T10:33:00.000-08:00

Grace Kelly here is wearing a classic Hollywood open-toed pump in silver. You can't see the heel, but I'd wager it's a demure medium-height stiletto (the stiletto reached its first apex of popularity in the early 1950s, after World War II finished and steel - used to reinforced a pencil-thin heel - became available once again for civilian use).

Image via Talking Pictures

Manolo Blahnik was one of the premier contemporary shoe designers to revivify that "Old Hollywood Glamour" - a phrase nauseatingly overused each red carpet season - and he designed a pump in 2003 that closely resembles Kelly's shoes. It was featured in a Sex & The City episode called "Right to Shoes" in which Carrie provides a vacuous yet STRANGELY CONVINCING (in the moment, anyway) explanation for the relationship between shoes and the single girl:

"...the fact is sometimes it's hard to walk in a single woman's shoes. That's why we need very special ones now and then to make the walk a little more fun..."

Image and Quote via My Many Bags

These Manolos are elegant and timeless: the Grace Kelly of shoes. And now that heel heights are reguarly pushing the 5" range, I look back on these 3-and-a-half-ers nostalgically.

Balmain Alternative

2010-01-04T08:51:00.000-08:00

Since posting about the Balmain buckle boots early last month, I've noticed some readers searching for alternatives to the 1K+ designer originals. These Guess by Marciano Daylee boots are a decent, scaled-down version, and are currently selling for $207.87 at Endless.com.

Inglourious Shoe Fetish

2009-12-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

Image via NY Times T Magazine

Wow.

Watched Inglourious Basterds with the Boy a few days ago, and aside from liking it more than I thought I would, I couldn't help but notice the emphasis on shoes in the screenplay. When Col. Hans "The Jew Hunter" Lada discovers that the actress Bridget von Hammersmark was present at the bar the night of the shoot-out, has a plot-point since Cinderella's hinged so precisely on a high-heeled shoe? The reveal: sniffing at their tracks like a bloodhound, Lada can't understand why the Basterds, dressed as SS soldiers, would have found themselves at a remote French watering hole. Then, he spots an upscale woman's shoe amongst the carnage, which tips him off to the presence of someone else at the scene: "Someone fashionable." The implication is that only a woman - and a sexy one at that - could have managed to place the renegades in such a vulnerable position. Later, when Lada confronts von Hammersmark at the film premiere, their stand-off takes on an erotic character as he seats her across from him for the interrogation. Aware of the ace in his back pocket, Lada asks von Hammersmark to present her foot. With trepidation, she rests a stiletto on his knee, which had admires, savoring the moment of power. He disarms her; removes her spike-heeled shoe. Then, with smug precision, he re-soles her, replacing the lost shoe to her bare foot and in effect letting her know that he's all-too-aware of her role as double agent.

The shoe, which had been von Hammersmark's weapon, ultimately becomes her undoing. The scene turns instantly violent, as the sadist, delicately stroking his victim, ultimately bears his fangs. In this case, he strangles her with this bare hands. But like the femme fatales of the 1940s before her, von Hammersmark learns her lesson: feminine wiles will only get her so far, and in the end, the very accessories of womanhood, so distracting to men in the moment, will ultimately prove her demise. Near the end of the film, after Lada has captured the Basterds, he tells them (using a humorous malapropism that I can't quite remember) that the shoe is on the other foot. Once again, shoes not-so-subtly equal power, and the extent to which high-heels can skewer their victim depends only on who's doing the digging.

J-Lo Hearts Lou-Lou's

2009-12-17T13:27:00.000-08:00

So there I was lying on my couch, watching the So You Think You Can Dance finale, when the much-hyped Jennifer Lopez performance started. I sat up as she reclined in a giant, red-bottomed shoe bed, picked up a sparkly phone, and called Santa.

"Hell Santa?" she said in a perfect, girlish pout, "I would like a shiny new pair of Louboutin shoes. You know, the ones with the high heels and the red bottoms?"

She then performed this little ditty, with lyrics like "What goes around, comes back around./And then you get what you deserve./You part time lover." It's a song sung to a philandering (or married?) boyfriend, and the kicker - if you will - is the chorus, in which J-Lou puts her foot down:

Now you got me stressing out
On the phone.
But it's the last time, I'm movin' on,
I'm throwing on my Louboutins.

I'm throwing on my Louboutins (x8)

Watch these Red bottoms,
And the back of my jeans.
Watch me go, bye baby.
Don't know what you got until it's gone.

We've all suspected that Louboutins are the new Manolos, and though a pop single might not be as influential as Sex and the City, it will certainly further establish Christian Louboutin's brand in the pop vernacular. Now it's Louboutins, not Manolos, that all the stars are wearing; now it's Louboutins that are the next desirable, and impossibly inaccessible, shoe.

Do companies pay for this kind of advertising? I know rappers have been compensated for singing about Hennessey, for instance, but I'd love to know exactly how this works.

Her full performance:

Fleet As A Fox

2009-12-16T10:55:00.000-08:00

The Keds company has done a terrific job of re-branding itself over the years, starting with that Mischa Barton campaign when The O.C. was at the height of its popularity. These animal print versions, available at hipster haven Opening Ceremony, are being met with fashionista approval, though at $125, they're not quite the tennis shoes of my youth.

Fun fact: Keds were the first sneakers!

Shoes Before Dudes

2009-12-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

An article in today's London Telegraph claims that while "92 per cent of women could remember the first shoes they bought with their own money...Less than two [women] in three recalled the name of the person they first kissed," according to a recent survey.

Hmm. I find this suspect, especially given that the survey was commissioned by Tszuji, a company that (you guessed it) specializes in shoe storage.

I'm a shoe girl - clearly! - but while I definitely remember my first kiss, I'm not so clear on the very first pair of shoes I bought myself. Anyone out there want to weigh in?

Some other stats from the article:

Previous research has shown that the average woman has 19 pairs of shoes.

But she only wears four pairs regularly and one quarter of the average woman's shoes have only been worn once.

(I happen to know the above stats were pulled from a 2008 Consumer Reports poll. Would love to see this info updated in the next year or so, especially given the recession.)

One in six women has more than 30 pairs of shoes in their closets, while a third have trouble finding the room to store then all.

On average, women purchase four pairs of shoes per year.

While the majority of women say their shoe buying habits have not created money problems, one in seven have hidden a new pair of shoes from their partner.

Six in ten women have regretted at least one shoe purchase.

Swoon

2009-12-15T11:12:00.000-08:00

A sample of Chloe Sevigny's shoe collection; image via Studded Hearts.

Now Is the Time For a Nice Italian Meal

2009-12-15T11:08:00.000-08:00

I helped prepare a classic Italian dinner this weekend with A Razor, A Shiny Knife, thus breaking my longtime pattern of showing up to poke around and snack when the Boy was cooking a supperclub. It was nice to roll up my sleeves and help, even if my cooking style tends to be a little less high-intensity. I helped the boy make a hare terrine and to that end, stepped up for my first attempt at weaving bacon (you heard me). Micheal & I worked a hugely successful blood orange granita, and I chopped a hell of a lot of vegetables.

Here's the menu in full, envisioned by the Boy and Michael, and executed with the help of Demien Repucci and Mike Lee of StudioFeast, whose time-lapse video really captures the event. I swear, I wasn't angry, I was just really cold.

Thanks for having me, boys!

Note: The "dress code" was Italian Casual, and as I looked at myself in the mirror Saturday morning I thought: "I look like a total Gina." Cut to a half hour later, when I showed up to the event space carrying a bag full of bagels, and was greeted with "Hey Gia!" I think I was successful.

A Razor, A Shiny Knife: An Italian Christmas Feast from Studiofeast on Vimeo.

CHRISTMAS DAY MENU - IL PRANZO:

1. Antipasto - Cheese, Salami, pickles, chicken livers, hare

2. Fagottini di manzo in brood (Beef Dumplings in broth)

3. Ravioli alla ricotta freschi con ragu di carne – Stuffed Beef, Sausage, Capon, Meatballs

4. Zampone con mostarda
Stuffed pork knuckle with fruit mostarda

5. Arrosto d'oca con una quantità oscena di piattini (Roast goose with 13 side dishes)

6. Amara insalata verde (Bitter Green Salad)

7. Blood Orange/Aperol Granita

8. Struffoli and a selection of traditional Italian pastries

CHEFS: Michael Cirino, Andrew Rosenberg, Demian Repucci, Rachelle Bergstein, Jonny Cigar, Mike Lee, many more good people.

Location: The Brooklyn Kitchen Labs
Music by: Zach The Shark Bernstein
The Bicycats
myspace.com/thebicycats

Andreia Chaves

2009-12-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

As you can probably tell, I'm pretty fascinated by experimental shoe design, probably because it takes an object that was once almost purely functional and then divests it of its function. These shoes from Brazilian designer Andreia Chaves could be described as wearable art, but they're certainly more art than clothing.

"The Invisible Shoe"

"The Prism Shoe"

See more at Refinery29 and Yatzer

Sorry Suri

2009-12-10T13:41:00.000-08:00

I've tried to stay neutral on the whole high-heels/Suri Cruise situation, but the truth is, I'm not OK with it.

Yes, I love a good towering pump. Yes, I spent a recent post singing the praises of Barbie. But there's something so incongruous about this image that it jostles me every time I see it. Mommy Holmes says that they're girls' ballroom-dancing shoes, and that little Suri loves 'em. But come on - shouldn't Suri be teetering in Mom's ten-sizes-too-big high heels like every other little girl, and instead of walking down the street, shuffling across the carpet? I hate to sound like a total square, but like it or not, high heels are a sexually charged object, and learning to walk in them is an adolescent (and in some cases, adult) right of passage. Just like little pageant girls who wear full faces of makeup, Suri looks creepily precocious in her heels, inadvertantly sexualized way too young.

There's a difference, also, between playing dress up and takin' it to the streets. Given that Suri's already growing up in the public eye, and will oneday (not too long from now) have to contend with all the appearance-obsessed messages that come with that, shouldn't her parents be helping her to stay a kid?

Selling the Dream

2009-12-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

From this month's New York Magazine:

An Ad that targets women as independent real estate buyers, or insults them as consumers who only respond to gendered stimuli like high-heeled shoes?

Gearing up for Winter...

2009-12-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

Thinking of spring.

(Image via Style Bubble)

C'mon Barbie, Let's Go Party

2009-12-07T06:22:00.000-08:00

Another Barbie, by Rei Kawakubo of Commes de Garcons, has debuted:

(Image via Mandi)

So far she's only available at Comme de Garcons shops, and Dover Street Market, in London.

Barbie Girl

2009-12-06T14:56:00.000-08:00

I know that as a strong, independent, self-respecting woman, I'm not supposed to like Barbie but I do; my affection for her was cemented long before I could understand that she might just be teaching me outdated notions about gender roles and giving me body dysmorphia. Blissfully unaware that Barbie was, quite literally, a relic - among my 1980s models my mother mixed in hers from the 1960s - I spent hours on the floor of my bedroom, styling her hair and playing mix and match with those inimitable, fantastic outfits. Whether or not she insidiously made me compliant with fascist beauty standards or gave me cockeyed ideas about polygamy (like all little girls, I only had one Ken doll), Barbie certainly inspired creativity in the fashion department. And given how quickly the $150 Barbie by Christian Louboutin doll sold out, I'm convinced more than ever that many grown-up fashionistas were, once upon a time, shameless Barbie girls.

Look at those tiny high heels! Barbie's catsuit nothwithstanding, I'm not sure she's ever been so stylish.

Shoes du Jour

2009-12-06T10:55:00.000-08:00

1967's Belle du Jour was a fashion masterpiece, with costumes by Yves Saint Laurent and footwear by Roger Vivier. It also was a controversial meditation on the nature of satisfaction and curiosity; played by the beautiful Catherine Deneuve, bored housewife Severine explores her sexuality by passing her afternoons in a brothel, first spying on the professionals and their patrons and then eventually becoming the belle du jour - the beauty of the day. In the film, she wears a pair of square-heeled shoes with a pilgrim buckle, which quickly became iconic:

(Image via La Mignonette)

In an exciting, retro turn, Roger Vivier has updated these infamous shoes for the 2009/2010 holiday seasons. The new version is sharper, sexier, and more vertiginous...

(Image via The Shoe Goddess)

And though the buckle boasts a little more bling, its squareness evokes straight-laced housewives (and their inner freaks) everywhere.

Free Advice

2009-12-04T06:18:00.001-08:00

If you go out for ice cream in December, get a cup, not a cone; fewer patrons in the cold months means that the cone will likely be stale.

Blue Suede Shoes

2009-12-02T10:45:00.000-08:00

Kate always looks great, but wow! I want her friend's blue shoes.

(Image via Studded Hearts)

Shoe Crave

2009-12-01T11:27:00.000-08:00

Three words: Balmain Buckle Boots.

Net-a-Porter describes these as "soon to be iconic," and while I agree, I can't justify spending $1605 on shoes. Still, a girl can dream - these boots blend the cutting-edge fetish/biker trend with a wonderful homage to mid-90s combat boots.

Annejet Kosters...

2009-11-30T06:56:00.000-08:00

is a Dutch shoe designer who creates sensible wedges and boots for ladies, as well as fashion-forward footwear for children. She also has a taste for the fantastical, producing "experimental" shoes that toy with the fundamentals of design. Her front-less shoes - which look to me like exquisite torture devices - have garnered some attention in the high fashion world:

Best for looking, not wearing, I think.

There's No Place Like...WTF?

2009-11-29T14:48:00.000-08:00

(Image via StyleBubble)

Red, sparkly shoes will forever recall the the ruby slippers, and this pair of red platforms by cheeky English designer Natacha Marro blends an iconic image with an innovative design. Susie Bubble says: So people keep banging on about how Natacha Marro shoes are the comfiest thangs in the world with their chunky chunky platform and I've yet to try them myself to add to that vouch and something tells me these heel-less platforms aren't the torture instruments they ostensibly look to be. Bang away, people, but I'm not convinced that these ruby platforms will take me anywhere but plummeting face first towards a pricey hospital visit. Will heel-less shoes make it to main street, or are these just a flash in the fashion pan?

Goody Two Shoes

2009-11-29T11:32:00.000-08:00

Adam and the Ants' video for 1983's Goody Two Shoes is one of the classic pop culture examples of the glasses and ponytail paradigm, wherein an uptight librarian conceals an inner sex kitten. The high-heels are the first clue:

The Death-Knell of Pants

2009-11-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

My girl P! over at The Zandl Group did an enthusiastic write-up of a new trend in footwear: leg-long boots. While over the past few years, leggings have slithered their way back into mainstream fashion, these boots-as-pants (as P! puts it: "boots are the new leggings") further outstrip pants of their status as, well, the preeminent things-that-cover-your-stems.

(TOPSHOP Baxter Boot)

First leggings got cool, then girls started wearing them without the requisite tunic-length top to cover their cracks (seriously - no matter how marginalized pants become, I'll never understand this crotch-centric look). Soon after, Lady Gaga emerged on the scene, proving that hot pants are all a lady needs to keep her business covered. Now, these thigh-high boots show up in stores, proving that fashion-forward women beyond rock stars are willing to step into the pants-free zone. I'd be willing to give them a spin with a cute, fitted mini-dress, but if boots are the new pants, does that mean girls will start stepping out just in their stilettos and an ass-covering shirt?

The Shoe Deal: Christian Faux-boutin

2009-11-22T14:16:00.000-08:00

Ever since I was little, I'd get a clothing obsession in my head and find it difficult to rest until I found it. For instance: I once saw a comely makeup artist in the mall wearing a pair of cherry red jeans, and for weeks I searched high and low until I found my own comparable pair. Luckily, the Internet makes it easy to frantically scour while sitting around the house, and so, when I recently found myself daydreaming about nude platform pumps, I was able to do some comparison shopping without pounding the pavement and leaving stores, in that inimitably disappointing way, empty-handed.

Current obsession: these gorgeous, classic, Christian Louboutin patent-leather pumps that sell at Bergdorf's for the bargain price of just $625.

But look - I'm a writer. As much as I'd love to show off my shoe cache by showing up to holiday parties in the ultimate status pumps, I'd have to forgo paying rent this month in order to afford them. Naturally, I put my research skills to the test and started the hunt for a decent knock-off.

Score! I found these Steve Madden Trintie Pumps for $89.90 - nude, patent, platform, almost perfect:

I was just about to buy them - even stopping into the Steve Madden store in Midtown, ready to whip out my credit card until I learned that they'd run out of my size - when I decided to check Forever 21. Because really, how often am I really going to wear a pair of 4 1/2 inch high heels? No matter how glamorous they look in my closet, delicate, light-colored platforms aren't particularly practical for my day-to-day life of commuting, cooking, and getting my heels caught in cracks in the sidewalk.

Score again! For just $25, I found these perfectly acceptable alternatives to the Louboutins (apparently I'm not the only one, because they're currently sold out).

I bought them from the comfort of my apartment, and they arrived just a few days later. As much as I'd love to own the original Louboutins, what I lose in status I make up for in thrifty chic. And there's something to be said for that too, I think.

"If I spent $150 to $300 on shoes, this is my car"

2009-11-06T14:22:00.000-08:00

As if New York women needed more excuses to indulge in fancy footwear! A great article on the cover of the NYTimes business section, about how despite the lingering recession, shoe sales increased this September and October.

November 6, 2009

A Not-So-Guilty Pleasure

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

Julie Glassberg/The New York Times

Mary Paige Phillips at Macy's on 34th Street. Despite the recession, shoe sale rose in September and October.

For months now, consumers have been hunkering down in an economic storm, buying only what they need to survive, like groceries, diapers, medicine — and shoes.

Shoes?

The American public, it would seem, cannot carry on without new shoes. Boots, booties, sneakers, pumps — for the last few months they have all been selling well as the broader economy struggles toward recovery.

Retailing executives and analysts offer varying, occasionally wacky, explanations. The one favored by many of them is that consumers consider shoes more of a necessity than, say, dresses, cuff links or handbags, so people feel less guilt about buying them.

“I would argue you wear out shoes more than you wear out handbags,” said Marie Driscoll, an analyst with Standard & Poor’s Equity Research who is adept at rationalizing her own shoe purchases. Living in New York, she walks everywhere. “I use the argument, ‘If I spend $150 to $300 on shoes, this is my car.’ ”

Many shoes, of course, can be had for a lot less than that, which makes them a recession-friendly indulgence. Most of the shoes being bought today are moderately priced, according to retailers and market researchers. Executives at Macy’s said women’s shoes typically cost half as much as a handbag of similar quality.

Also, the cost-per-wear of a pair of shoes is far lower than that of a dress or suit, which can only be donned so many times a week before colleagues snicker. And new shoes spruce up old outfits, a cheaper alternative to buying more clothes.

Another popular theory is that as the economy has inspired a back-to-basics mentality, with families dining and vacationing at home, people are focusing on free outdoor activities that require comfortable or rugged shoes.

Scott Savitz, the founder and chief executive of Shoebuy.com, an Internet retailer, said sales of outdoor and athletic shoes by the likes of Timberland, Merrell and Adidas were robust.

“You could spend thousands of dollars to go away right now, or you can buy walking shoes,” said Mr. Savitz, whose company added more than 90 brands in the last quarter when most retailers were cutting inventory.

Shoe buyers for major retailing chains said sales were also driven by styles for children and babies, especially during the back-to-school months. Children regularly grow out of shoes and parents, while willing to sacrifice when it comes to themselves, are typically loath to scrimp on their children.

Among the more curious explanations proffered for the relative strength of shoe sales is that women — who make up the lion’s share of the American shoe market — get an emotional lift from shoe shopping in a way they do not when trying on jeans and cocktail dresses.

“Shoes democratize fashion,” said Kathryn Finney, who writes the Budget Fashionista blog. “You probably can’t buy a Zac Posen dress if you wear a size 14, but you can buy a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes.”

Or, as Jennifer Black, president of research company Jennifer Black and Associates, put it: “It’s just fun to shop for shoes. Maybe part of the fun is you don’t feel fat. And you don’t get hot. It’s exhausting trying clothes on, especially the skinny jeans.”

Certainly, shoes are what retailing merchants refer to as an emotional purchase. Eileen Lewis, director of fashion strategy for Zappos.com, said consumers were snapping up shoes in bright colors like yellow and red, “something that sticks out and makes you happy.”

Jamie Boucher, a lawyer in Washington, snapped up a pair of Christian Louboutin heels recently for 70 percent off at a local Saks store. “I think about value much more than perhaps I did before,” said Ms. Boucher. “But you’ve still got to have your shoes.”

Fashion trends also play a role. Voluminous sweaters and leggings are in vogue, a style well suited to showcasing shoes, said John D. Morris, a retailing analyst with BMO Capital Markets. Retailers said boots were selling especially well. A spokeswoman for J. C. Penney explained that consumers were not sticking with one type of boot for winter but rather creating entire “boot wardrobes,” buying over-the-knee boots, open-toe boots and ankle boots.

Ms. Finney added that with conspicuous consumption being out of fashion nowadays, shoes enable people to update their wardrobes without being ostentatious. “It’s not the same as wearing a Louis Vuitton monogrammed bag,” she said. “It’s this trend of being a little bit more coy.”

Shoe sales have been strong for three months now. They increased 7.9 percent in October compared with the period a year ago, according to SpendingPulse, an information service by MasterCard Advisors that estimates sales for all forms of payment, including cash, checks and credit cards. In September, sales climbed 7.8 percent year-over-year. In August, shoe sales increased 0.5 percent.

Sales of shoes were $1.5 billion in October, the highest they have been in any October since at least 2006. And major retailers like J. C. Penney, Dillard’s and Ross Stores said in sales reports last month that shoes were among their best-performing categories.

“Shoe sales are trending up, without question,” said Rory Tahari, vice chairman of the clothing brand Elie Tahari. “It’s one of our better-selling categories.”

A few weeks ago Larry Smith bought leather Allen Edmonds shoes to replace an old pair. “I needed shoes,” said Mr. Smith, who lives in Indianapolis and runs an educational Web site for children. “We’re still going to buy the stuff that we want, but we’re not extravagant.”

The shoe rally of the last three months is not likely to bring about year-over-year sales growth for the shoe sector, given that the beginning of the year was so bleak for merchandise sales of all kinds. Packaged Facts, a research company, estimates that, like other discretionary categories, footwear sales will decline by double digits for all of 2009.

Still, a few months of healthy sales may be a sign that some consumers are experiencing what Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for market research company NPD Group, calls “frugal fatigue.”

“They are getting tired of having to be so frugal and not spend on anything,” he said recently while observing the packed shoe department of a Bloomingdale’s in Short Hills, N.J., during a sale. “Repairing those boots yet again? Nah. Time to step out and buy a new pair.”

Teenage Pop Stars Classify Shoes

2009-11-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

There are two Billboard Top 100 songs out right now, performed by Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, that put you on the side of girls who wear sneakers in a world full of high-heels. Both songs position the narrator as an outsider who is, at least in part, more down-to-earth than her peers. To be honest, I think it's pretty sweet that there are famous teenagers who (at least publicly) relate more to cool sneakers than to sky-high pumps. It's age-appropriate and endearing - but yet another instance where shoes are used to express information about the wearer.

There's Miley's "Party in the USA":

Get to the club in my taxi cab
Everybody's lookin at me now
Like “who's that chick, that's rockin’ kicks?
She gotta be from out of town”

So hard with my girls not around me
It's definitely not a Nashville party
Cause all I see are stilletos
I guess I never got the memo

And then Taylor's "You Belong to Me":

She wears high heels, I wear sneakers
She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers
Dreaming of the day when you wake up and find
That what you're looking for, has been here the whole
time

Alexander McShoe

2009-10-15T06:18:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post these for the last few days: shoes from Alexander McQueen's Paris Fashion week runway show, for Spring 2010.

Wowsa. I wish real human beings could walk in these.

Glasses Ghost

2009-10-09T16:37:00.001-07:00

I'll never totally understand why sunglasses make me feel like Grace Kelly, while eyeglasses leave me feeling like Graceless Gilly, though I'm sure it has something to do with the childhood trauma of becoming bespectacled in Kindergarten. I was also the kind of shy, bookish kid who used precociously big words (let's put it this way: if my childhood self were a Hollywood film protagonist, I would definitely see dead people). Anyway, due to some eye irritation, I'm stuck in glasses for about a week, and every time I put the contact lenses to rest I watch my sense of self recede just a little. All of those old insecurities pop back on the radar, and when people say things like, "Oh! You're wearing glasses!" I irrationally hear this addendum: "...and you look like a complete troll". Since this is unhealthy and self-defeating, I've decided this time to try to embrace my glasses for the next 5 days as a "look," just as I would any other accessory. Honestly, I can objectively say that they're kind of cute: black retro-inspired cat-eyed frames that I've HEARD compliment my face (translation: you look less awful than you could). MOVING ON.

I found these amazing collages on the blog She's a Betty and whenever I start feeling glasses-glum, I'm going to refer back to them.

The Highbrow

2009-10-02T16:36:00.000-07:00

I realize I've neglected my book posts lately, what with all the history I'm reading for research, and the shoe/clothing/gossip trolling I do on the Internet when I need a break. Still, it's fall, when the literary heavyweights go to press, and books that aren't lauded as the Next Great Thing get lost in the shuffle. I doubt I'll get to read many of these books this season, but I'll get to them eventually, and in the interest of keeping them filed somewhere in my own overcrowded pile, here are the Fall 2009 books I look forward to eventually reading.

(Blurbs clipped from the Chicago Tribune Fall Book Preview)

"The Adderall Diaries," by Stephen Elliot t (Graywolf Press). Details the author's adderall-fueled obsession with Hans Reiser, the computer mogul convicted of murdering his wife.

"Normal People Don't Live Like This," by Dylan Landis (Persea). Debut novel about a young girl growing up on the Upper West Side of New York City in the 1970s.

"Her Fearful Symmetry," by Audrey Niffenegger (Scribner). When their elderly aunt dies, twin sisters inherit a London apartment and are forced to confront issues of identity, love and sisterhood.

"Chronic City," by Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday). The latest novel from the author of "Motherless Brooklyn" and "The Fortress of Solitude" follows a handsome man in Manhattan's high society, as he lives off the residuals from his career as a child star.

"Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife," by Francine Prose (Harper). This work of literary criticism examines the enduring influence and importance of Anne Frank's beloved, heartbreaking diary.

"The Humbling," by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). The master of American letters follows an aging actor as his confidence begins to unravel.

Mariah Carey Lifts Ban On Photographing Left Side Of Face - Celebrity Gossip, News & Photos, Movie Reviews, Competitions - Entertainmentwise

2009-10-01T17:25:00.001-07:00

You know what? This is so batshit that it's almost impossible to find it offensive. Honestly, I kind of love it. Bring on the next-level, too-nuts-to-be-true Diva behavior, Mariah! Because really - If not you, then who?

Mariah Carey Lifts Ban On Photographing Left Side Of Face - Celebrity Gossip, News & Photos, Movie Reviews, Competitions - Entertainmentwise

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