Are you ready to have your mind blown? If the answer is yes, prepare for the bass stylings of one Hyunmo Kim, a South Korean man who “hopes to be the world’s greatest stupid idiot bass player”. He does this in a dress. With pigtails. He is a pigtailed man in a dress with mad bass skillz who does not drink milk until he gags or examine his delicate faux-cleavage with the aid of his camera. You must be imagining things. It’s probably the awesomeness of his bass, frying your brain.

The British Teddy Boy subculture is typified by young men wearing clothes inspired by the styles of the Edwardian period, which Savile Row tailors had tried to re-introduce after World War II. The group got its name after a 1953 newspaper headline shortened Edward to Teddy and coined the term Teddy Boy (also known as Ted).

So sayeth the neck-beards at Wikipedia in the entry for Teddy Boy, a sub-culture heretofore unknown to me. The article goes on to credit the Teddy Boys with helping to create a youth market in England, having been one of the first groups to identify as teenagers with a specific code of dress, perhaps only predated by the Scuttlers of mid 19th century Liverpool and Manchester. Scuttlers, as an interesting aside, were identified as wearing an eclectic get-up of:

[...] brass-tipped pointed clogs, bell-bottomed trousers, cut like a sailor’s (“bells” that measured fourteen inches round the knee and twenty-one inches round the foot) and “flashy” silk scarves. Their hair was cut short at the back and sides, but they grew long fringes, known as “donkey fringes”, that were longer on the left side and plastered down on the forehead over the left eye with oil or soap. Peaked caps were also worn tilted to the left to display the fringe.

By now, Coilhouse tees are appearing in mailboxes all over the world. We’ve seen a few tweets come through from satisfied customers (enjoy your shirts, atavistian, rickiep00h, msalistar, girloncamera, Jerem_Morrow!), some comments on the blog (glad you got it in time for your Recycled Rainbow meet, Jezcabelle), and photos are starting to pop up on Flickr. But also, we’ve received a couple of emails stating “where’s my shirt, beyotches?!” To those people we’d like to apologize for the delay and let you know that the shirts will be on their way shortly, if they’re not already. We originally indicated in our T-Shirt Ordering FAQ that there’d be a 2-week delay between the time or ordering and the time of shipping because of the time it takes to screen-print the shirt, but we’ve fallen a couple of days behind due to the sheer number of orders. We are shipping them out in the order in which they were received, and all shirts should be mailed by the end of the week at the latest.

So if you haven’t received your shirt, hang in there – it’s on its way. And when you do receive it, or if you already have: pictures, pictures NOW! Take a snapshot and post it in the comments. We want to see the Coihouse Army in uniform!

UPDATE: We shipped the last batch on Wednesday. Everyone’s shirts are in the mail.

Left: Durova as a noble lady. Right: Durova as a soldier in uniform.

When she was an infant, her father placed her under the care of a soldier after her abusive mother threw her out of a moving carriage. Growing up, she memorized all the standard marching commands, and her favorite toy was an unloaded gun. A noblewoman by birth, Nadezhda Durova wanted nothing more than to don a uniform and defend Russia against Napoleon. At age 24, she did just that. “With firmness so alien to my young age,” she wrote in her memoirs, “I was wrecking my brain about how to break free from the vicious circle of natural and customary duties assigned to us, women.” In 1807, disguised as a boy, she left home on the back of her favorite mount, Alchides, and enlisted in a Polish uhlan regiment. “At last I am free and independent. I had taken my freedom, this precious, heavenly gift, inherently belonging to every human being!”

Durova’s service in the military earned her distinguished honors, and throughout her career she was, by all accounts, revered by everyone in her chain of command. A few officers knew her secret, but most did not. Tsar Alexander I, aware of her true identity, awarded her a cross for saving a soldier’s life and gave her permission to join the regiment of her choice. He gave her a new male surname, Alexandrov (after his own name). Durova continued crossdressing after retirment from the military. She died at age 83 and was buried dressed as a man, with full military honors.

In 1962, the Soviet Studio MosFilm released a musical called Gusarskaya Balada (“Hussar Ballad”) based on Durova’s life. In what’s certainly a complete misrepresentation of Durova’s complicated existence, the musical paints Durova as a young patriotic woman in love with a male soldier, eager to win him over on her terms, as a fellow fighter. The film is without subtitles, but has enough colorful characters, costumes and music that I think a non-Russian-speaking audience would appreciate the clip above, which showcases Durova’s character first dressed as a woman, then dressed as a man. I love actress Larisa Golubkin’s confident, homoerotic swagger in the second half of the clip.

It’s difficult not to revel in the fabulousness of Gusarskaya Balada, but I wish that someone would make a textured, compassionate film that dug deeper into Durova’s life. There are many different ways for this play out, for many facets of Durova’s identity are still debated to this day. On the topic of her gender identity, Wikipedia states that “some readers interpret her as a cisgendered woman who adopted celibacy and male clothing to achieve professional freedom,” while others believe that Durova was transgendered. Similarly, Durova’s sexual orientation remains a mystery. She eloped with a man when she was young, against her father’s wishes. However, she omitted her marriage (and any description of attraction to men or women) from her memoirs. When it comes to her relationship with women, one biography notes, “Durova felt uncomfortable around other women. On at least two occasions women recognized her true identity and addressed her as ‘Miss.’ Her fellow officers often joked that Aleksandrov was too shy and afraid of women.”

The deeper I dig, the more fascinating scenes I find. Beyond the obvious allure of wartime crossdressing, there are many odd tidbits, like Durova’s powerful connection with animals. As a child, she “frightened her family by secretly taming a stallion that they considered unbreakable.” Later in life she provided shelter to stray cats and dogs that she rescued, and she passed on her animal-taming abilities to her descendants, circus legends and founders of the Durov Animal Theatre in Russia. Then, there’s her horrible mother, who only wanted a boy, and seemed to punish Durova for being born a girl by making her spend countless hours doing monotonous “women’s work” like sewing and crocheting. That’s a whole other story itself, right there.

Hopefully, one day soon, someone will make a serious film about Durova. Until then, enjoy the song and dance.

• Nadezhda Durova Bio on HistoryNet
• Nadezhda Durova on Wikipedia
• Gusarkaya Ballada on YouTube (in Russian)

Get ready to INFORM. INSPIRE. INFECT! Next week, and next week only, we will be offering our first-ever limited run of Coilhouse tees.

We’re screen-printing these shirts in reflective silver ink on black T-shirts from American Apparel. We will be offering two different unisex styles, which you can check out in the pictures after the jump. On the front, we have the monocled, corseted, seahorse-obsessed INFORM cover girl from Issue 01, drawn by Zoetica (here’s the original sketch). On the back, our slogan. Simple, sexy, eye-catching.

The shirts will go up for sale on Monday, and the last day to order will be on Friday. This window of time will be your last chance to get a Coilhouse shirt for a while, because after this sale is over, it’s crunch time on Issue 03 for us. It will be your only chance to get this particular style.

Image gallery, sizing chart and mini-FAQ about the shirts after the jump. Other questions are welcomed in the comments.

The ever-weird EnglishRussia just posted a rare collection of Yuri Gagarin photos. I’m used to seeing this hero of my childhood, the first man in space, smiling like Superman while decked in Soviet bling, so the image above of Gagarin posing with a skeleton and his creepy friend, Russian Crispin Glover, took me by surprise. There are so many things to love about this image. I love the expression on the skeleton’s face! I love the buttons on that coat! This is definitely the kind of pin-up I’d put on my wall.

And below, we have… well, I’m not entirely sure what we have there. It appears to be Gagarin dressed as Neptune for a play. But if he’s Neptune, then who’s the guy in the turban? And doesn’t it look like they’re in a gym locker room? Someone help me decipher this mystery.

When I was wee, I didn’t play with Barbies. I preferred toy soldiers, plastic dinosaurs, Briar horses, Transformers, etc. Admittedly, I related to these objects a bit differently from my guy pals. I’d still knock my toys around as enthusiastically as the little boys who lived up the street, but at playtime’s end, something shifted in my psyche. A deeply ingrained maternal instinct compelled me to soothe and calm my action figures, tucking them into snug swaddling “nests” I’d make from stockings and underoos. The walls of my room were often lined with balled-up socks that had the heads of D-Day soldiers and T-Rexes sticking out of the top. I’d sing to my podlings, “flying” them slowly through the air to help them fall asleep. My parents looked on in confusion and dismay. (But hey, at least I wasn’t finding new and interesting ways to vivisect Malibu Stacy.)

This pointless and meandering trip down memory lane is brought to you by the discovery of Alex Poutianinen’s ridiculous short film Rise and Fall of the Nazi Dinosaurs, as well as my desire to bump that potentially libelous Danzig post down as swiftly as possible. Yay, internets!

Yerim and Her Pink Things, 2005

The images above and below are just a few from JeongSee Yoon’s Pink And Blue Project, an ongoing set of images dealing with gender, consumerism, and globalization. Dozens of surreal, hyperdetailed images of mostly Asian boys and girls with their blue and pink things appear on Yoon’s page. The girls’ images are what strike me the most. “It looks like these little princesses vomited fairy-floss all over themselves,” observes Katie Olson at Lifelounge, then adds: “Fabulous.” Indeed!

It wasn’t always this way. The color pink, Yoon notes, was once considered the color of masculinity, a watered-down version of the virile color red. He quotes a 1914 American newspaper that advises parents to “use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention.” The reversal of colors for boys and girls occurred only after World War II. Writes Yoon, “as modern society entered twentieth century political correctness, the concept of gender equality emerged and, as a result, reversed the perspective on the colors associated with each gender as well as the superficial connections that attached to them. Today, with the effects of advertising on consumer preferences, these color customs are a worldwide standard.” This is the first time I’ve ever heard the claim that the feminist movement is somehow even indirectly responsible for “pink for girls.” Some quick “say it ain’t so!” Internet research reveals that historians have been unable to pinpoint the reason for the post-WWII color reversal. Reasons for the reversal have been pinned on everything from the Nazis (who labeled the homosexuals in their camps with pink triangles) to a cultural desire on post-war America’s part to bury Rosie the Riveter and replace her with Susie Homemaker. A plausible theory – and I think I uncovered the missing link!

With stores like nANUFACTURE in Spain marketing to parents who wish to avoid the pink/blue dichotomy, it’s clear that color-coding your child’s life is increasingly being seen as unfashionable, even a bit creepy – though, as SocImages points out, this expensive store’s “Save the Babies” campaign may be “more about ‘saving’ kids from things these young, hip parents think are lame or uncool.” Even without the aid of hipster-kid clothing boutiques, parents have a myriad of choices for dressing their kids. As Yoon shows us, some skip out on the pink/blue thing altogether.

For parents of transgendered children, on the other hand, the choices today are more complicated than ever. If your son insists, every day, for years, since the moment he can talk, that he’s a girl and not a boy, what kind of clothing do you buy? What kind of toys do you give them? A fascinating article in the current Atlantic examines this issue, focusing on the growing culture of parents who wish to honor their children’s wishes – and the difficulties that accompany such a decision. Delving into everything from children’s rights to Freudian therapy resembling scenes from But I’m a Cheerleader to the heartbreaking story of David Reimer (from the book As God Made Him), the article compassionately examines families on both sides of the fence, chronicling the paths of families who decide to go with their children’s wishes, and those who decide to fight against them.

So… Zo, Mer and I are in Issue 02 Deadline Hell. Posting’s slowed down until Issue 02 is sorted, with many thanks to our guest bloggers for keeping the fort. Later today, a very special post from copyranter involving Mexican food and toilet paper. For now, a quickie that I’ve been wanting to post for a long time: one of our paper dolls from the magazine’s back page (a tradition that will be carried over to Issue 02), fully dressed. For those of you who didn’t want to cut out the paper dolls but are still curious about how they look in their outfits, here’s 1 of 2, the lovely Juniper Fusion by artist Paul Komoda:

WWII image taken by Yevgeni Khaldey. Laibach was always present.

Laibach has finally returned to North America for a very short tour. If you’re in Portland or Seattle, I hope you saw them. If you’re in San Francisco, Hollywood, New York or Mexico City, you’re in luck! Click here for tour dates.

There are many reasons why this is my favorite band, and most of them actually don’t have much to do with the music. It’s the stories: weird, fantastical events that surround this band in which art, politics, history, media and human nature intersect in unexpected ways. My favorite Laibach story is this: in 1992, they group established the NSK State, a virtual “state in time.” Citizenship to the NSK State came complete with a very realistic-looking passport, and anyone could apply. Applications could be found at concerts and in the back of certain art books. In 1995, Laibach concluded their NATO tour in besieged Sarajevo. They declared Sarajevo to be NSK territory, so for a brief moment, the NSK State existed in the physical world. During this time, they issued 350 NSK diplomatic passports. What’s remarkable is this: some people were actually able to use these passports to escape occupied Sarajevo. Bosnian passports were not recognized at the borders, but a French soldier who saw the NSK ones let those people through. With their art and performance, Laibach was able to potentially save lives. Compelling – even more so when you consider that their work centers around a deadpan sense of humor.

The music is great too, of course! This entire website was designed while listening to Kapital, and partially inspired by the album’s aesthetic. So, Mildred and I will see you at the LA gig if you’re there. In the meantime, a random assortment of odd Laibach-related links:

• Melodrom – “Counting Days” – An 80′s-tastic music video featuring Mina Spiler, who performs with Laibach and sings on many of their recent songs (she’s also the subject of this illustration in Issue 01′s Laibach feature, in case you were wondering)
• Putokazi – “Play, Rew, F Fwd” – Dreamy, surreal music video by Croatian band Putokazi, with a rare vocal cameo by Laibach singer Milan Fras as the voice of a nightmarish teddy bear
• Fear the Kittens – Parody of Tanz Mit Laibach. Made in 2004, now an internet classic.
• Steel Trust – History of the Laibach euro-disco ballad and the lost Kapital that never was on Coilhouse
• Hilarious high school reenactment of the original Opus Dei video