“Androgyny” by Rasha XO. (Via Genderfork.)

Earlier this summer, Warren Ellis (yes, that one guy we reference every ten minutes on COILHOUSE, shaddup) posted some cogent thoughts on what he describes as the end of “The Patchwork Years” on the internet: “Nobody needs another linkblog… There are already thousands of them. The job of curation is being taken care of. Look ahead.” He’s right. I’m as guilty of rehashing as the next blogger, but yeah. Generally speaking, we could do with far less circle-jerk turd-polishing online.

Paraphrasing the feisty theater renegade Maya Gurantz, those of us in any position to create new media should be baking new bread instead of quibbling over stale crumbs. At the very least, we existing curators should be doing helluva lot more cogitating instead of regurgitating the same tired old ones and zeros. (“Hey dood, check out this awesome link via BoingBoing via Fark via Digg via Shlomo McFluffernutter’s Livejournal feed. Cut, paste, click.”)

More on internet culture’s addiction to shorthand tastemaking at some later date.

Meanwhile, even in these postulated-out, post-patchwork years, it’s still very possible to be galvanized by some vital new curator. Fellow bay area sasspot Whitney Moses emailed me a while back about a blog called Genderfork, run by Sarah Dopp.

Shave by Madame Raro. (Via Genderfork.)

Genderfork is an exploration of androgyny and gender variance through artistic photography and personal essays. Dopp has two personal goals for the project:

To compile all of the genderforking resources, imagery, and ideas that I come across on the web into one beautiful repository. I want to experience a sense of cohesion with these concepts — they all too often feel scattered and disparate.
To encourage a conversation around the grey areas of gender with friends, with strangers, and with strangers who need to become friends.
…because I think we can all agree: Gender is a loaded word.

Loaded, and how. That’s why complex arguments revolving around gay marriage and partnership rights can become so volatile so quickly, and why debate rages endlessly on between gender-abolitionist feminists and their less radical sisters. It’s why surprisingly empathetic reportage on 20/20 examining the lives of transgender children feels like a huge victory, and why my co-editors and I fought tooth and nail to find a way to publish Siege’s Neogender piece in Coilhouse Issue 01, if only in a limited capacity.

“Pardon! Bonjour! Fromage!” (photo by Rafe Baron.)

One balmy summer’s eve a couple years ago, Herr Titler came into my life. I was standing in the wings of an ancient Brooklyn theater, reeling in the chaos of Amanda Palmer’s boisterous Fuck The Back Row film/music/theater revue night, when I beheld a broad-shouldered figure in a slinky cocktail gown and perilous high heels. With his sultry voice, his sharply parted/pomaded hair and villainous moustache, Titler was simultaneously demure yet forceful, domineering yet somehow… dainty. I tell ya, he KILLED it that night.

Having basked in his commanding presence, I have trouble understanding what zealots on either side of the ongoing Dr. Steel vs Dr. Horrible debate are getting their jodhpurs in such a twist over! For my money, Titler is all anyone could ever want in a singing musical madman, with the unexpected (but welcome) bonus of a truly fetching décolletage.

Comrades! For your consideration:

Daily Drag Queen Affirmations (DDQA) offers 365 videos of different drag queens who each offer you a fresh, life-affirming nugget of wisdom for every glorious new day – all for just 20 bucks. “Buy it for yourself. Buy it for a friend. Buy it for that bitch you know!” They offer some samples on their YouTube channel, including my favorite one, above.

The all-star cast of this endeavor includes Willam Belli, the mastermind and star of Tranny McGuyver, a show that Belli describes in the following terms: “Basically, it’s In the Heat of the Night meets Tootsie without all the heart-of-gold, positivity bullshit. We’re not trying to out-dyke Cagney & Lacey or anything. Just watch it. It’s fierce.” No, really. Just watch it!

“You want the beef taco or the fish taco?” Priceless.

Daily Drag Queen Affirmations, via bluefirecracker

Larger images (NSFW and hello, Pigbutt Worm!) here and here.

The ads above, part of a European AIDS prevention campaign, appeared today on my favorite advertising blog under the title “There Are A Lot Of FishDicks In The Sea.”

But before I tell you about more about this magical blog, a quick trip down memory lane: before blogging existed, back when I used hide in the school library because no would would sit with me at lunch, I discovered back issues of Consumer Reports and Ms. Magazine – in particular, their Selling It and No Comment back pages, which were eerily similar. Both departments critiqued advertising. Consumer Reports was strictly in the business of calling bullshit; highlighting self-contradiction, spoofing ridiculous copy, and pointing out deceptive images. Meanwhile, Ms. made it their mission to shine the spotlight on the advertising world’s misogyny. At 13, my obsessive love-hate relationship with advertising (currently a.k.a. “my job”) had begun.

All the pleasures I got from those magazines – from the pleasure of mockery to the pleasure of discovering an interesting photo, even if my beloved Ms. was hating on it – I now find at the incredible Copyranter blog. Copyranter is this phenomenally hateful individual, a New York advertising copywriter who’s been working at the same ad agency for the past 16 years.  His bio consists primarily of his exhaustive shitlist: capri pants, advertising, advertising people, PR people, marketing people… the list goes on and on, ending with “men named Jack” and Scrabble. Almost every day, he provides ingenious commentary on a given ad campaign (usually ripping it to shreds) with inimitable elegance and wit. Lots of insight about the advertising industry, our culture, and the creative process here. To show you what I mean, I present some of my favorite posts in categories of interest below:

Retro!

• The Bra Of 1950s Hollywood Starlets…$1.00.
• Buygone Ad of the Week: Green Spot Dicknic.
• And think of the plane as her womb.

PSA’s

• Ad Council PSA confuses wasted NYU student.
• Doctors Butcher Childhood Obesity Ad
• MTV Anti-Piracy Ad Guilty of First-Degree Stupidity.

Freaky Art Direction

• Imagine The Oral Sex Possibilities.
• Farm Animal Necrophilia Sells Meat Seasoning.
• Dills Digestive ads are pretty, confusing.

Ads for/about The Ladies

• PUT ON YOUR 6″ F*CK-ME PUMPS AND SHUT THE F*CK UP.
•  “This is my Diaphragm. Scared?” 
•  The most sexist beer ads ever produced?

Copyranter Likes

• This is an…ad that is…fairly humorous.
• Well, it is the subtlest WonderBra ad I’ve seen.
  
• I tried to find a third but can’t.

I love you, Copyranter. Even if you hate me.

Oh no she dint! Oh yes she did! Go, Katie, go!

Sensual, challenging, awkward and sublime in turns, Katie West‘s self portraits readily draw comparisons to folks like Cindy Sherman and Aaron Hawks, although I personally find her output more endearing. She is vulnerable and toothsome, and an unrepentant goofball. It’s been such a joy to watch her vision deepen and ripen over the years. Fellow brave, wee wonkettes of the world, you’ve found your muse. Buy her book.

“The Dancer’s Fall” by Katie West.

It all started when Energy BBDO created the “Damn Right” ad campaign below for Canadian Club Whiskey. The ads featured vintage photographs from the 60s and 70s, with the running slogan “Damn Right Your Dad Drank It.” The headlines were “Your dad was not a metrosexual,” “Your dad had a van for a reason,” “Your mom wasn’t your dad’s first,” and “Your dad never tweezed anything.” The press release for this campaign proclaimed that “the thought-provoking campaign challenges consumers to embrace their dads [sic] classic masculinity, most visibly expressed through their choice to drink Canadian Club whisky cocktails.” Some choice copy:

Your Dad Was Not a Metrosexual. He didn’t do pilates. Moisturize. Or drink pink cocktails. Your dad drank whiskey cocktails. Made with Canadian Club. Served in a rocks glass. They tasted good. They were effortless. DAMN RIGHT YOUR DAD DRANK IT.

But the people weren’t havin’ it. The first thing that was pointed out on many blogs when this campaign launched is how “Your dad wasn’t your mom’s first” wouldn’t have quite the same ring to it. Graffiti appeared on the Van poster: “and that’s why your mom left him.” And the parodies of the nostalgic views of masculinity poured in… “Your dad didn’t use condoms when he was in Saigon.” “Your Dad smoked while pumping gas.” “Dad didn’t call it ‘Date Rape,’ it was just a ‘Date’.”

But the best was when blogger Michelle Schwartz created this template, which let people really go to town, resulting in the ads below and in many more here. The revised taglines proclaimed, “Damn right your mom drank it! And it sure as hell wasn’t Canadian Club.”

I love the fact that the web lets us respond to advertising so actively and directly. It was definitely amusing and somewhat therapeutic to see these responses emerge. Paradoxically, they probably made this campaign more successful in terms of branding/awareness than ever projected. So victory is bittersweet – unlike the drink, which will forever taste rotten to me.

via SocImages

Yesterday, one of my favorite blogs, Sociological Images, picked apart amputee alt model Viktoria‘s appearance in Bizarre Magazine:

What makes Viktoria “bizarre”? Is it her amputated leg? Is it the fact that she has an amputated leg and is still incredibly sexy? Or is it that she has an amputated leg and still considers herself a sexual person? Is this empowering? And to who? Surely the disabled are desexualized in this country, so it’s nice to see that challenged even, I suppose, in a magazine about weirdos. And yet, I suspect her sexuality is acceptable, fetishizable, only because she conforms to expectations of feminine beauty. In the big scheme of things, does she reproduce the standard of beauty, unattainable for most women, that crushes women’s self-esteem and sense of self-worth? And will disabled women, most of whom (like most non-disabled women) could never dream of being so beautiful, actually look at her and be able to identify? Or will this just draw attention to another way in which they don’t match up?

Now really, I think that SocImages went a little overboard with Viktoria (especially when they dismissed her comments about sexuality as “standard porn star talk”). Maybe it’s because I know her little better than they do, but I think that they oversimplify the genuine place that she comes from in choosing to be a model. However, they do bring up an important discussion that’s been nagging me for some time. What is an alternative model, and what is an alt model’s role in visual culture? In my life, at various points, I came up with 3 different definitions. I believe in each of them, and I have a problem with each of them as well. Here they are below. Which one resonates with you? Do you think it’s a combination of the three below, or something completely different? Opinions, please.

1. The model who challenges society’s notions of beauty.

L: Kenyan-born trans model Biko Beauttah R: Velvet D’Amour

I love these models, but the issue here is that, while they appear to push the boundaries of beauty in some direction, they usually wind up brutally reinforcing another traditional notion in the process. For example, trans models make us rethink gender/beauty, but with their self-presentation they usually reinforce the ideal of a sleek, hairless feminine figure, thus fueling the hair-removal industry. In fact, epilator-manufacturer Philips Norelco has already found a way to to capitalize on this to great effect – just watch this ad. And large models like Velvet D’Amour and skinny-by-comparison but still-considered-plus-size recent ANTM winner Whitney Thompson help to redefine weight in modeling, but what makes them “legitimately beautiful” in the eyes of the mainstream world is their “correct” bone structure, their blond hair. Without some “redeeming quality” of this sort, the world doesn’t recognize them as models, and wouldn’t even give them a shot at making a difference. Mainstream media often presents them as beautiful “in spite of,” not “because of.” While their individual messages are empowering (I love Velvet’s interviews), I don’t find our culture’s use of these models empowering at all.

Impeccable live sound, eye-poppingly elaborate costumes and hot ladies – what more could you ask of a Japanese visual rock band? Alright, so the ladies aren’t exactly ladies, but blast it, can they shred! These days, most old school visual bands have, for better or worse, abandoned their frills and velvet for a more modern and somewhat more masculine look. I didn’t think I’d ever get to personally witness the kind of gloriously indulgent showmanship as I did last night.

Versailles in full regalia. Click image for a large version.

As it turns out, while Japan’s visual rock scene’s been winding down for a long time now, some goodness is yet to be reaped. Yesterday this was proven once and for all at a sold out show here in Hollywood. My jaw hit the floor when Versailles, a supergroup formed last year from ex-members of Lareine, Sufuric Acid and Sugar Trip, entered the stage. I was a wee kid in a candy-shop as this straight out of an acid-tinged Anne Rice cosplay vision appeared before the shrieking audience. The hair? Huge. The outfits? Hand-beaded and perfectly gaudy. The singer? Oh yes, he wore a cape. And pantaloons. And heels. Where the hell was Poppycock?

They had this “visual” thing, undisputedly, down. It did not end there, however. Unlike another supergroup I saw live last year, Versailles worked it. There was no phoning it in for these poised professionals; not a missed note, cracked heel or torn hem – the show was excellent from beginning to end, powder breaks and all. Between Hizaki and Teru’s metal guitars, Kamijo‘s crooning and intense cape maneuvering I was reminded of Barry Manilow, Las Vegas and Lestat in all the right ways. Watch the ten-minute opus below and be transported to a darquer side of French royalty (had French royalty been Japanese and used flatirons) as you bask in the grandeur of Versailles.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/URCd6Qd1-DM" width="400" height="330" wmode="transparent" /]

• Official Versailles website
• Official Myspace page

Phyllis Lyon (left) and Del Martin, lesbian activists who have been together for over 50 years, embrace during their marriage ceremony at San Francisco City Hall in 2004. (Chronicle photo by Liz Mangelsdorf )

It’s a beautiful, balmy evening here in the east bay, but the mood in my neighborhood is uncharacteristically quiet, even somber. In a few hours, the California Supreme Court will publicly rule on the legality of this state’s ban on gay marriage. The tension is palpable.

In 2004, in a remarkable act of civil disobedience, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed thousands of gay and lesbian couples to wed before the courts stepped in and disallowed the marriage licenses. Debate has been raging ever since, with civil rights activists and SF city officials challenging the state family code law that restricts marriage to a man and a woman, and a SF trial judge declaring the ban unconstitutional. In 2006, a conflicted appeals court upheld the ban, stating that it should be up to voters or legislators to legalize same-sex marriages, rather than judges.

Conservative interest groups and the state attorney general are defending the ban, and the justices have remained divided. It could go either way. Regardless of what happens at 10am, Pacific Standard Time, it’s going to be a historic day.

Fingers crossed, everyone.

EDIT (12:15pm, 03/15/08): WOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!

Yeah. Hurray for “alternative beauty.” Photo by Mojokiss.

Catwalk Tragedy 4, the East Coast’s biggest “alternative beauty pageant,” took place in Philly last weekend. Having been to the first Catwalk Tragedy, which was the closest I’ve ever seen my beloved goth scene morph into a drunken frat party in a trailer park on Mardi Gras weekend, I was curious how this larger-scale endeavor would play out. With more of everything – sponsors, judges, contestants – would it be a be a creative talent show or an even bigger sleazefest?

The judges this time were a respectable and diverse bunch, which gave me hope: my friends Kambriel, Apnea and Philip (Lithium Picnic) were on the panel, as well as two individuals less known to me; Jayla Rubinelli from America’s Next Top Model and Joey Martini, a burlesque emcee/performer.

Kambriel: “I think Joey’s face pretty much says it all with whatever was going on in that moment!”

With such a mix of judges I hoped that the event would be more classy this year, but alas! This year, it was the contestants dropped the ball. A belly dancer Tempest tells it:

The competition was set up boys and girls – meaning each gender had it’s own category. The contestants were given a top from one of the sponsors to alter as they wish, as long as the logo was intact. There was somewhat of a slut factor involved in the presentation of some of the girls, but I didn’t think much of it. Short micro-mini’s are rampant (or were, they seem to be going out from the latest batch of Gothic trends), but it was mainly a lot of boob gesturing, but hey, if you got ‘em, flaunt ‘em right? The boys were more tame in general. Both groups seem rather inexperienced with the concept of modeling, especially with walking, but hey, competitions can be nerve-wracking right?

The third round was freestyle – the model’s own choosing and to really show off their stuff. It was here that my brain had nothing short of a minor meltdown. Out of perhaps 20 girls, no more than 3 didn’t do something akin to stripper routine, and even then, they were borderline. Again, I don’t have anything against strippers, and I love burlesque, but this wasn’t burlesque, and I’m sure better strip shows could be had at the Foxy Lady’s “Legs & Eggs” morning strip events. (New Englanders everywhere just cringed massively.) Apparently “crowd reaction” was a judging category for this round, and the great majority figured that the best way to do this was to strip. After the first few, it was “oh look, another set of boobs and pasties” again and again. I was surrounded by male colleagues and they weren’t impressed in the least (and yes, they were mostly straight). I wondered what the boys would do…

The boy’s third round was a much different story. Yeap, there were a few strip routines in there, but the majority of them danced and really showed off their moves, their agility, and their PERSONALITY…mainly, it was a reversal of the girls’ round.

Oh, Philly girls. How you disappoint! Unless you were all from Jersey, in which case I understand. But the story has a happy ending. “In the end,” Tempest writes, “the winners were the ones who showed personality and really showed off the clothes in how they presented themselves (and for the most part, kept their clothes on.)” Kudos to the judges for making that call. And don’t get me wrong; you know we love hot girls in corsets! It’s just when those crucial ingredients of creativity and ownership are missing that it becomes a little sad.

To end this on a light note, here is a video of male stripping from Catwalk Tragedy that made me want to laugh and weep at the same time.