season of the bitch

me.

John McCain. (Thanks, Sondra! You rule. you have a blog you want me to link?)

I have decided that glitter eye makeup will save the world.

I said in an email conversation:

And to think about whether or not the world would be a happier place if EVERYONE wore glitter eye makeup (or was free to without any sort of gender policing.)

Picture the construction worker on the corner with glitter eye makeup. Picture your fourth grade teacher. Picture John McCain. Come on, isn’t that a happy thought?

And I’m sticking to it.

Could you declare war in glitter eye makeup? Could you punch someone in the face? Think about how much happier the world would be if everyone spent just a few minutes in the morning playing around with pretty things for themselves.

Look at Siouxsie. Isn’t she fabulous? How could you not smile and laugh things off if you had this much sparkle and shine going on

Makeup like this isn’t some patriarchy-pleasing dollops of blush and red lip gloss just bright enough to make you look postcoital but not bright enough to rub off on the man who might kiss you.

And glitter drawings on your forehead combined with eye-lengthening liquid liner and lipstick–on a man? Oh, Bowie, you blur those lines so deliciously.

Makeup and clothing can be so much more than just means of attraction. They can be means of subversion, but most importantly, a means of celebration.

I used to draw exaggerated eyes on myself back in my goth days. Now I buy mineral shadows in every color of the rainbow (dollar samples from this site, BTW. love them!) and paint my eyelids with streaks of shimmer and shine.

I put on makeup for myself. Clothing gets noticed by others, but sparkle makeup is something I do for me, my time in the bathroom in the morning before I see the rest of the world, where I dip into my palette like the artist I’ll never be and paint myself a face.

I can’t find any pictures from A Game of You (which used to be one of my least-loved of the Sandman stories, but which I keep quoting lately), but in that story Barbie, who in A Doll’s House was a typical blonde pretty girl, has decided to use makeup in a completely different way. She draws a chessboard or a veil on her face, obscuring her pretty-girl features and making the idea of makeup front and center, the illusion that it is.

And Courtney Love, whose entire existence can be seen as one huge subversion of femininity, used and abused makeup throughout her career, but always pointed out the very obviousness of it as a device.

And that’s what’s so fabulous about it, after all. To quote Ms. Love, “I fake it so real I am beyond fake.” What’s wrong with artificial? Artificial was always set up as the “good” side of the debate when it was man vs. nature and women were nature. (See, oh, eleventymillion feminist theorists.) Why is artificial so bad when it comes to gender?

Perhaps because by making gender artificially exaggerated, we point out that it is, after all, a performance. A game of you.

And so. Glitter makeup will save the world.

Ten points to the first person to post me a photoshopped pic of John McCain in glitter eye makeup.

(This post brought to you by the department of Sarah woke up too early and is caffeinated. Now I’m off to download Hole videos. And have I really not posted that Courtney Love essay I wrote weeks ago? Goodness! Must rectify.)

Because it also occurred to me that as well as being Western-centric, the idea that gender presentation always privileges the male and punishes the female kind of ignores large portions of even Western history.

Or even what’s going on in culture right now, as male fashion magazines spread and male “grooming products” flourish with the rise of the “metrosexual.”

Consider this:

Yes, it’s from the movie.  But it’s also a fairly accurate representation of how men and women of the upper classes dressed at the time. And it’s a photograph of actual people dressed in those outfits.

Yes, Marie Antoinette’s dress is huge and unwieldy. But her husband Louis wears a powdered wig and makeup of his own, a high-collared shirt and (though you can’t see them here) knee-breeches, tights, and high-heeled shoes.

There’s a discussion of privilege that we aren’t even going to have here because simply having the time to worry about whether or not to shave one’s legs implies privilege.

What I want to talk about is the fact that male gender presentation has not been static through the ages. That quite often it too has consisted of very specific clothing, shaving, hairstyling, and behavior requirements. Yes, most of the time the women’s were more restrictive, and I don’t think we’ll ever see women embracing bound feet the way some have re-embraced the corset (full disclosure: I own two steel-boned corsets that can take two inches off my waist, but I’ve never done real corset training like Dita or others).

Sparkle, in other words, wasn’t only for women.

I hope I won’t find any feminists who will argue with me that male gender presentation is if anything more heavily policed these days than female. While a woman can wear pants, no makeup, cut her hair short, and while she may be called butch or told that she’d be prettier if…, she probably will not face the same sanctions that a man who wears makeup and dresses will (unless he’s Eddie Izzard). The sanctions for a man who prettifies, who embellishes his appearance, are generally going to be much greater than those for a woman who de-prettifies, most especially in terms of his personal safety in certain quarters.

(And I’m not even talking about trans people here, because we all know transition is policed. And that there’s the assumption that if one transitions, one automatically adopts all the gender signifiers, is straight, and otherwise does everything possible to enact some repressive gender role.)

One exception to present-day gender restrictions on makeup, high heels, and the like is, of course, the rock star:

Ok, so that’s Bowie in the 70s. So pretty. Bowie caused quite a stir by wearing the things that he wore and acting the way that he did. He certainly wasn’t ‘pleasing’ the patriarchy. Gender-bending has always been a part of the “fuck-you” tradition of the rock star, after all, but it also served to attract the opposite sex. Putting on makeup and dresses didn’t make Bowie less attractive to women, it made him more so.

And of course, the other assumption that all of these things are evil and can have no pleasure for the people who use them makes women even less powerful. We are (slightly more than) half the human race, after all. Is it to be believed that over most of human history, women have been so beaten down that they’ve had no input into any of the choices made for them? That every decision, every choice, every second of their lives was pure misery?

We assume that ‘patriarchy’ (I prefer Kyriarchy, these days) is a vast system of subconscious controls, but if it is this way, rather than something rigidly outwardly enforced like a school dress code, how can you really tell what was a result of it and what was in spite of it?

Anything that is outwardly enforced, coerced, becomes no choice at all, of course. If you face social sanctions for not dressing like the gender you appear to be, for not having children (or for having them), for not having a gender-appropriate job, for being with someone of the ‘wrong’ gender, then it’s not a free choice. If you do those things despite social sanctions the action is seen as subversive, even when you’re just living your life.

Feminism shouldn’t be another system of enforcing social sanctions on its members for their actions, should it? What’s liberatory about that?

Working still. So, Tori for you. Bizarre video, but, um, Adrien Brody?

Lyrics below jump.

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I meant to have a substantive blog entry today, but I’m exhausted from the BUST party, celebrating 15 years of funfeminist goodness. Twisty would not approve, and I don’t much care. I saw old friends and made a new one, danced to good rock’n'roll, spied on Jon Spencer (least I’m fairly sure it was him), saw some foxy burlesque–don’t know if it empowerfulled them, but it was damn sexy–and some hot circus acts (like the picture here–I am in love with this woman).

But I’m just going to use this post instead to say how much I love the BUSTies and how much I enjoyed my summer, despite heat and unpaid occasional drudgery. I made friends, met tons of people, got free things and got work in the magazine. And BUST has meant a lot to me over the years, as the only women’s magazine that I nearly always relate to. From frank sex talk to my fave cover girls and all sorts of kitsch and crafts in between, BUST gets me. I get her. And I’m glad to be a part of her (and will be continuing to blog and write for them!).

So I will leave you with pictures and go back to transcribing the mountain of interviews I’ve put off.

I posted this video the other day when I had too much going on to really explain the thoughts going through my head. It was a synthesis of my teenage dream-come-true interview with Neil Gaiman (yes, Neil fucking Gaiman, buy the next issue of Comic Foundry to read all about it) and talk about Iggy Pop, and my beloved Pop Feminist’s question Can Women Be Part of Counterculture? and Octo’s post on Feministe about “Sparkle.”

And so before I went out I posted Siouxsie. With her short-cropped hair and Egyptian-queen makeup, her shorts and vest and skinny boyish body are genderfuck supreme here, especially singing an Iggy Pop song where she takes on the male power-role—she isn’t the passenger, someone else is. She’s going to take him for a ride.

She’s got both masculine and feminine aspects here, of course. She’s glittery and glam and made-up but in skinny boyclothes, taking on the male role. When she dances, she does high kicks with the boys from her band, she covers Budgie’s eyes, and mostly you have to stare her in the face—each time she moves, she keeps her eyes on you.

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Back here in good old South Carolina…yeah, well…

It feels like I never left. Feels like the last year or so was a dream (on better days, feels like the two years before that were a dream, too, and I never met that guy). I’m working and laughing at myself at the thought that I could ever get out of there and be having as much fun as I’ve had in the year I’ve spent in Philly and NYC.

It’s fun to pretend that certain things never happened, but then I’m brought up short with the realization that they did. My father has to come into his office (at the house) where I’ve temporarily taken over because it’s home to the high-speed Internet connection, and he has to weigh himself twice a day to make sure he doesn’t have congestive heart failure. So the talking scale tells him that he’s over his target weight and asks if he’s taken his medicine that day. A sharp reminder that this time last year he was on his third week of five in the hospital and we thought he’d have to be on oxygen for the rest of his life. Thank whatever you believe in that he isn’t, but still.

My mother is depressed. She thinks she’s fat and hates to leave the house (she’s gained probably ten pounds. Why on earth should this be debilitating or grounds to stay inside all the time? But you know, I just can’t go there right now). She can’t work because of her shoulders, but she rarely does anything else. She watches soap operas and worries about my dad.

I miss Kacie like crazy right now. I have plans to watch the fights tonight with a bunch of old friends at B.’s house, and one of the last times I was at his house was with my sister and Kacie. And after remembering that, well, this was where she lived and so everything reminds me of her. So I put on more red lip gloss and pretend I’m doing it for her, and touch my tattoo and smile.

When I see other people that knew her, we hug for longer than we used to. It’s a way to hang on.

I come back and I have to go see the One that Got Away. It’s a rule, a compulsion…something. It’s too easy now. He runs a restaurant, my mother goes there all the time, and his parents always ask about me and I tell myself they’d be upset if they knew I was in town and didn’t stop by.

He looks shocked and then stares at me when I’m not looking (according to Megan, who had the seat with the angle that could see him). He will barely even come say hello to me. Like I’m going to bite him, or yell at him for breaking my heart? It was years ago. When I lived here I didn’t think about him as much, but when I come back for brief visits, again, it’s like a time warp and suddenly the wounds feel fresh.

Yet I’ve learned to take pleasure in little victories and little moments, and not ask for the world, and knowing that I’ve still got the ability to knock him for a loop makes me feel good.

He looks tired, thin. Had little to say. And when you love someone, you truly want them to be happy, and so I wonder if he is. Wonder what more he wants.

But there are other people in my life (one in particular) who make me happy now. So phone calls and visits to old lovers don’t have the weight they used to.

I missed you last night too.

There is blog drama, but I can’t be arsed. I’m in too good of a mood.

1. Best interview ever.

2. Totally sore and tired but not stressed mentally at all and just generally happy. Love my life and my friends today. (If you’re not sure if you’re included in that, you probably are.)

3. Off to find a sparkly dress for the BUST party.

4. This video sums up everything for you. Watch it.

So picking up Comic Book Tattoo has me on a Tori kick again. Downloaded a few songs that were in the book that I hadn’t heard before. Tori and I have a long history. She’s been there for me when shit went bad, like a good girlfriend. And I like this song, so here it is for you.

I’m off in the morning to work and then to Maine for one of my best friend’s wedding. She’s an amazing person, and the man she’s marrying, well, I’d be jealous if I wasn’t so incredibly happy for them. They make me believe in love. They are best friends and lovers and everything that you want in a relationship.

I’ve adjusted comment modding so that if you’ve commented before it’ll go right through, so you guys can keep talking on these threads. I hope that you do. And I can mod from my BlackBerry if I get a minute, so I’ll try to check in at least once a day. I’m really happy with the discussion that’s come out of me getting pissed and running my mouth.

I’ll leave you with one more quote, from an awesome article that Queen Emily sent me. Oh, and tell her happy birthday, too.

“Like drag, they [burlesque performers] require the audience both to reflect on the ways in which femininity is performatively constructed within the constraints of a normative, gendered culture, but also do justice to the extent to which feminine identity may be experienced as a source of pleasure.”  -Debra Ferreday

1. Sudy would like to remind us of the political killings in the Philippines.

2. Bitch, Ph.D. links to an excellent TNR article about Republicans’ use of racism. And as usual, she’s got some good comments of her own. If you aren’t reading that blog, you should be.

3. Cassandra Says that it’s fucked up to hate women for their appearances, whether it’s because they’re mainstream-pretty or anything else. This is an excellent, excellent post on something that I was just thinking about and will probably blog on later, but you should read hers now.

4. Scott at LGM on torture. Which really should not be something we’re still arguing about, should it?

5. So many things at Obsidian Wings that I want to link to, so just go and add them to your blogroll already, will you? I think I get more news from them than any place outside of NPR.

6. Pop Feminist on of all things, Michael Jackson. God, this girl is good. Love.

7. The Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy is up (and I’m not just linking this because I’m linked there.