Is it me, or does it smell like chlorine in here?
Thứ Sáu, 31 tháng 7, 2015
Can You Match The "Harry Potter" Quote To The Book?
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
All The Single Ladies: Why Movies Need More Platonic Pairings
Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road.
Jasin Boland / Warner Bros.
One of the understated pleasures of the summer standout Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie that generally opts for glorious overstatement, is that Imperator Furiosa and Max Rockatansky never kiss.
Not a peck.
Their chemistry is terrific, but it's not sexual. And it's not like the duo, played by Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, aren't equals in battered postapocalyptic survivor magnificence (though Furiosa's warpaint is a little more striking and Max's mental state is a lot more unstable). They could rattle some rafters together, were there any rafters left to shake.
Instead, Furiosa is consumed with a last-ditch plan to help the five "wives" of local warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) flee to a barely remembered sanctuary, and Max is a desperate prisoner trying to make his own escape in the chaos. The understanding at which they arrive is all the more impressive given how few words the two exchange and that their meet-cute is a no-holds-barred brawl in the middle of the desert.
Theron and Hardy in Mad Max: Fury Road.
Warner Bros.
Theirs is a partnership formed on the run, one grounded in a shared acknowledgement of the other's competence. There's something continually gratifying in the ways in which, once they decide to trust each other, they cede control as needed without ego or friction.
Furiosa and Max are dust-smeared soulmates for whom a romantic clinch would, frankly, feel anticlimactic. Instead, we get the scene in which Max tends to a wounded Furiosa by reinflating her lung and giving her a blood transfusion, a gory, sublimated answer to a smooch that's somehow swoonier while being more befitting for their torn-apart world.
It's enough — and any more would be a disservice, because the pair doesn't have time or the emotional bandwidth to fall in love. They're too busy trying to stay alive and prove there are still scraps of humanity worth saving on the wreckage of their ravaged, dying planet.
Of course, romance is as fundamental a cinematic element as action and comedy. It is one of the basic things that movies are about — and who doesn't like to watch larger-than-life beautiful people falling for each other (or at least falling into bed together)? And of course, films have told some fine romances in the past, and will in the future. So I mean nothing against love stories when I say that platonic onscreen pairings like the one in Mad Max: Fury Road are like treasured drinks of Aqua Cola out in the arid wastelands. They are rare enough that they deserve a salute for what they don't do — for not insisting that love or sex is an inevitability from which, barring sexual preference, no man and woman in close proximity can escape.
Giving a protagonist someone to ride off into the sunset with is such a standard part of a studio happy ending that love interests can become nothing more than plot accessories — another part of the hero's journey, around for ornamental purposes. Perfunctory romances get thrown into movies that devote almost no time to their characters forming a connection or even showing a plausible attraction to each other. It's no accident that the lack of a love story in Mad Max: Fury Road feels directly related to how sharply drawn the characters, particularly Furiosa, are in the midst of all that fireball freneticism. It would be an injustice to shuffle them into something underdeveloped, when throughout the movie their priorities are elsewhere.
Having leads who don't dutifully smoosh their faces together allows that romance isn't the only relationship option for a man and woman, and, more pointedly, that it isn't a requirement for leaving characters in a better place than when the movie started.
Melissa McCarthy and Jude Law in Spy.
Larry Horricks / Twentieth Century Fox
That's what's so nicely bittersweet about the ending of Spy, in which Melissa McCarthy's character, Susan Cooper, turns down a well-intended dinner invite from Bradley Fine (Jude Law), the dashing agent for whom she's long been providing support and pining. Bradley’s been appreciative of Susan’s skills as a deskbound analyst while being oblivious to her as any kind of romantic prospect. He’s not being mean-spirited when he makes the offer of a date, and she’s not being spiteful in saying no — just getting to acknowledge that proving your talents in the field isn’t the same thing as magically making someone see you as a sexual object after years of indifference. Susan lets go of her crush, and at the same time Spy affirms that there are other characters who do find Susan attractive. She even ends up in bed with one in a reveal that’s funny and surprising while in no way suggesting she’s found a substitute prince and fairy-tale finale.
And in Magic Mike XXL, Amber Heard's character, an aspiring photographer named Zoe, doesn't end up with the stripper turned furniture maker turned stripper of the title either. They do exchange some flirty banter when they meet during a party pit stop on the road Myrtle Beach, but that is basically as far as things go.
Twitch, Teresa Espinosa, Amber Heard, and Channing Tatum in Magic Mike: XXL.
Claudette Barius / Warner Bros.
Zoe at first looks like a replacement for Cody Horn in the first movie, a similarly surly blonde for the single-again Mike to woo, a sign that the fact that there's a woman in Mike's life is more important than who that woman is. But the closest the pair gets to any consummation is when Mike pulls a reluctant Zoe onstage during his act in the finale. There may be almost fully clothed grinding, but it's all for show.
Keeping true to the sequel's shift in focus to what women want, the movie takes seriously the fact that Zoe's adrift after what she believed was a job offer in New York turned out instead to be an offer to be someone's side piece. In Magic Mike: XXL's spirit of male stripping as a service (as Donald Glover puts it, "We're like healers or something"), Mike is committed to cheering Zoe up, not getting laid.
And that flicker of honest-to-god thought for the movie's female character is what makes the choice not to force a romance so refreshing — because sending a woman spinning into the arms of a man not infrequently has to do with affirming a male lead's virility and allure. We have the phrase "gets the girl" because of the way female characters are traditionally envisioned as prizes to be won, their internal workings left unconsidered. If a woman onscreen is shown to be desirable, then her story usually becomes one about who's doing the desiring.
It's why, for instance, the kiss between Emily Blunt's Rita and Tom Cruise's Cage in the otherwise thrilling Edge of Tomorrow seemed like a minor betrayal of the time-looping rapport the pair had built up. The two had been all business up until then, because while Cage kept returning for training from Rita, she always experienced meeting him as if it's for the first time.
Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow.
David James / Warner Bros.
Rita is the "Full Metal Bitch," already a veteran of a major battle who's become a piece of living propaganda, and she's all but sure she's going to die. She kills Cage, repeatedly and without hesitation, so that he can start the day over again. Blunt brings such nuance to the character that the clinch, when it comes, is a blatant annoyance. It so clearly happens because women are supposed to kiss Tom Cruise, not because it feels like something Rita would do.
But Cruise's relationship with his female co-star in his new movie, Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, could be looked at as an apology for what his character does in Edge of Tomorrow. Double agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) is introduced as a Ginger Rogers to Ethan Hunt's Fred Astaire, capable of doing everything he can, in high heels (except when she knows it's time to take them off). Ilsa looks fabulous in a bikini and in a killer gown, but it's her supreme formidability that's the basis for the mutual respect that blossoms between her and Ethan.
Ferguson and Cruise in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation.
Paramount Pictures
The movie's signature convoluted plot has Ethan and Ilsa's paths intersecting at different locations around the globe, including one in which they white-knuckle their way through a motorcycle chase along winding roads in Morocco. Like Furiosa and Max in Mad Max: Fury Road, Ethan and Elsa have moments of silent understanding in which they're able to instantly get on the same page, their eyes meeting in the middle of a tense scene. And like Furiosa and Max, they never kiss. Their ability to take out a group of baddies without exchanging a word is allowed to be intimate enough.
The Mission Impossible movies belong to Cruise, but Ferguson is a delightful addition who may not hang off an airplane, but who carries her share of the action. It's unfortunate that, given the franchise's Smurfette tendencies, Ilsa's likely to be shuffled out for another female lead in the next installment, which Cruise claims is already in the works. But in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, at least, she stands tall on her own, as essential and active a part of the plot as any member of the IMF team. Cruise's character can get some in some other sequel — for now, we can revel in another summer heroine who's allowed to be glamorous and dangerous without those qualities being indicators of who she's due to end up with.
How I Tried To Slide Into A Relationship
It began the usual way, via direct message on Twitter. I’d just tweeted a photo of a book I was reading: some lines of dialogue that referenced John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” This amateur display of my B.A. in English caught the attention of a gorgeous man who then slid into my DMs.
His message read, “Good catch on the Keats.” I’d already known his Twitter handle, so I asked for his name. I’ll call him Nate. He asked me what I was reading. I asked him out on a date. Soon, Nate and I were exchanging phone numbers, thanks to the open book beside me, having read lines of what I thought were truth and beauty.
Nate started following me on Twitter after discovering my writing online. I write about my exes and other things I love, so I used to think publishing my emotional baggage for the world to read meant I’d never go on a date again. On the contrary, men often send me messages on Twitter, all parched variations on the theme “So you’re single, right?” Nate was one of them.
I never told him this, but I’d always known who he was. I had a Twitter crush on him, in the same way you have a crush on someone in school. I saw Nate around when my friends retweeted him, thought he was dateable when he tweeted something cute about his favorite animal.
With every retweet, every fave, every 140 characters imported from his stream of consciousness, I gathered a working knowledge of who I thought Nate was: an intelligent and attractive brunette twentysomething, who worked in media and had his shit together. And by virtue of how he found me, he knew upfront about my romantic failures and the disorganized shit that followed.
Nate had the luxury of reading me as an open book. While I had to thread bits of his online persona to see a constellation of his identity, he had a manual to me: to infidelitous boyfriends, boyfriends who were never there, my dual desire for stability and fear of stagnation. He’d been sufficiently warned. He knew what he’d be getting himself into. My cards weren’t just on the table; my cards were in the cloud.
But Nate called me “beautiful,” not in spite of, but rather because of my messy truths. I knew him and he knew me. And so, our thirst seemed pure.
Andrew Richard / BuzzFeed
Nate was tall. In his selfies, his coiffed hair would be just out of the mirror’s frame. When we hugged for the first time at a coffee shop, I rose onto demi-pointe to throw my arms around his neck. We discussed past jobs, current books, future kids, our elbows on the table as our knees grew familiar.
Nate was funny. His tweets made me giggle to myself when I was bored at bars. On a dinner date, our banter had me on my toes and we smiled even as we chewed. I couldn’t help but kiss him in the Thai restaurant, as his hands easily found my back pockets.
Nate was sexy. He’d DM me and I’d have to throw my bedsheets to the floor. To break in my new dining table, we cooked a meal together and had sex thereafter. He tiptoed naked through my kitchen and I learned his silhouette by the light of the refrigerator.
But Nate had a habit of rain-checking on our dates. A promotion at his new job gave him plenty of work, terrifying hours, and a title he wanted to live up to. Still, he thought about me, about what I’d already been through. I didn’t have to wait for him, he said, I’d waited on other men long enough. I can be patient, I told him. The lover is the one who waits.
When I was with Nate, I felt heard. And in this comfort, I came to see Nate exactly like the constellation I drew: that brunette twentysomething, who worked in media and had read me like an open book, who understood me, already knew me before he even met me. It was as though we’d skipped the hard parts, the growing pains, like I’d slid into a relationship.
There was no mad pursuit, no struggle to escape. Nate and I spoke often, to each other, of each other. I’d see texts from him in the morning, @mentions from him in the evening. When I tweeted I’d be getting an Apple Watch, with its haptic perception and constant presence, Nate replied, for everyone to see, “Promise to send me your heartbeat.”
So I patiently waited for him outside the movie theater for our viewing of Into the Woods. I was 10 minutes early. He was 20 minutes late. When Nate arrived, I was thrilled to be wrapped in his arms, to smell his cologne on his neck, to call him my “very nice prince.”
After the movie, we went to a bar with a backyard. We sat on a bench and shared his scarf, my arm looped around his. Talk of the movie led to us ask each other, “What do you wish for?” I wish to publish a book, many books. He said he’d throw me a party when I got my first deal. I was swift to fantasize my toast to him. He believed in my work, in me, and so I believed in us.
Andrew Richard / BuzzFeed
On the topic of books, I asked Nate, “What’s your Patronus?”
“I have to think about that.” He sipped his beer. “What’s yours?”
Mine was a peacock. Always had been for as long as I could remember. But after my most recent breakup, I’d been feeling an existential shift toward something else. An owl, I thought, had learned its lessons. But with Nate, I’d become a romantic once again.
“A peacock,” I told him. “Flashy, showy, a master of courtship dances.”
Nate laughed. He stopped to think of his.
I studied him in the faint light of the bar. The dark circles under his eyes were looking permanent. Nate had mentioned to me how stressful his new job had been. But all he tweeted about was how excited he was for big projects and new opportunities. Here, I saw my brunette twentysomething, who worked in media and had his shit together, had his shit together only by a thread.
A sharp gust stung my cheeks. It was winter, a new year, with short days and chilly nights. I pulled Nate’s scarf up to my face and closed the space between us. I linked my fingers with his under the clear velvet sky.
“OK,” Nate said. “I think I know what I am.”
Still confident that I knew him too, I took a shot at naming his Patronus — and, by extension, him — this compassionate, charming, considerate, clever creature whom I had the luck of meeting, of constellating.
I kissed his cheek and said, “A panda.”
But I was wrong. Out of nowhere, it began to rain.
“A hummingbird,” Nate said. He gathered his scarf, tugging it from me, to leave the backyard. “Prone to loving a sweet and shiny thing for a moment, then it moves on to another sweet and shiny thing the next.”
A week later, Nate called me 10 minutes before our dinner reservation. He said he couldn’t see me anymore. He blamed his job, cited anxiety, claimed I deserved better when his work would keep me waiting. I was 15 minutes early to the restaurant, so I gave up our table and hailed a cab to his apartment. He answered the door with heavy shoulders and a sigh I echoed. The circles around his eyes were so dark I had to insist upon panda. He didn’t laugh.
In his bedroom, I alternated between reasoning and crying. I remembered the dedication page of my manuscript and recited lines from love letters I had dared to put to paper. So fervent was my desire to know and be known easily and immediately, to skip the hard parts of starting fresh, that I tried to slide into his life and slide him too into mine. But he’d already made his decision. Nate made his silence his only verse, an unheard melody so bitter.
When I ran out of tears and he out of sorrys, we lay in bed together. He wouldn’t let me hold him or his hand, but he let me gather my breath. Then he pitied me with one more kiss and asked me to leave. I shrugged on my coat and gave his roommate an awkward hello, before Nate gave me a goodbye and the vague promise of being just friends.
I really liked him when he really liked me. And then he didn’t, when I still did. I told myself it was as simple as that. So I stepped out of his building and onto the Manhattan streets. I looked up at the sky, nary a star in sight. The Earth was only turning, disassembling the constellation I saw for a season, a constellation perhaps dissembled from the start.
Andrew Richard / BuzzFeed
While an internet-assisted meet-cute is no longer novel in the 21st century, there was an appeal to meeting Nate through Twitter. Between trite dating profiles and stilted Instagram accounts, Twitter felt like the only place to find someone living authentically on the internet, even when they’re not. Since most of Twitter is lived publicly, you’re held accountable for your actions. Your thirst is on the record. So to swipe right on Nate’s personal brand felt like a verified act.
But Nate and I had tweets and DMs and photos that catalyzed only an inflated familiarity. And with all I’ve written on the internet — my public diary, sylvan historian relaying my history, my loves, my weaknesses — I thought Nate knew me from cover to cover. And I thought I knew Nate from reading him in the stars.
We were both still on Twitter, so our breakup was not unlike a breakup you’d have with someone in school. I’d see Nate around when my friends retweeted him, think he was dating someone when he’d @mention another man.
Sometimes Nate still faves tweets of mine here and there. I quietly do the same, out of courtesy. But being the peacock that I was, for Valentine’s Day, I sent him a bouquet of flowers. In my card, I wished him well, hoped his work might be easier. I attached the note with the seal of a golden hummingbird. I wanted to send him something shiny and sweet.
Andrew Richard / BuzzFeed
15 Questions The "Oops!...I Did It Again" Video Left Unanswered
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah?
What is a "gravity device"?
So...is that a device that suddenly makes the gravity on the entire planet equal to earth's?
So if Britney's album is found on Mars, we can assume that's where it's originally from...so how did it get to Earth?
Because all us earthlings know this image. Also, maybe Britney is actually like thousands of years old? IDK. Confused.
Do aliens on Mars have the same physical attributes as humans? Or are they able to shape-shift to appear less threatening?
Either way, they do have hula hoops.
Is there a store that sells suspenders on Mars?
(But maybe they don't have shirts.)
Remembering Lesley Gore, A Lesbian Icon
Revisit that damned interview with Lesley Gore.
It was one of the more ambitious items on my maiden to-do list of 2015. I’d been trying to write a freelance profile of the singer off and on for two years, pursuing different contacts who knew Gore with slight success. As open as she had been about her sexuality in decade-old interviews, few journalists had lately bothered to ask her more about her life as a gay woman.
I’d almost lucked out once in 2013, when the Lesley Gore International Fan Club’s president, Jack, forwarded my contact information to her. LGIFC is one of those romantic setups — members receive autographed 8×10s and membership cards by post. Now in its 50th year, the club has survived the transition from snail mail to HTML, its vintage membership perks intact; batches of high-gloss photos and customized cards are still mailed out. The club inadvertently gives new meaning to being a “card-carrying lesbian.” I like to imagine a happier world in which queer women could effortlessly Bat Signal one another by flashing our Lesley Fan Club credentials — that is, if more queer women actually knew that Lesley was gay. Many didn’t, and still don’t.
Jack told me Lesley would be in touch. She never was.
When I didn’t get my interview, the alternative became a eulogy.
After experiencing back pain following an extensive tour, Lesley Gore went in for an MRI. She discovered that the pain meant a tumor, and the tumor meant terminal lung cancer brought on by years of smoking. She died soon after, a couple days after Valentine’s this past February; she was 68.
Born in Brooklyn in 1946 and raised in New Jersey, her father earned his keep making children’s swimwear. Survivors included her partner of 33 years (a jewelry maker), her brother and co-composer, and a cocker spaniel named Little Billie, named after one of her favorite singers.
With the release of "It's My Party", Lesley as we knew her happened overnight. She was just another 16-year-old American girl singing into her hairbrush until she became a guest on Sam Riddle’s Hollywood A Go-Go and Dick Clark’s American Bandstand — a high school junior dreamily poring over Seventeen magazine until she suddenly found herself within its pages. Her death came with a similar, overnight rapidity. The public didn’t know Lesley Gore was ill until she was gone. Her fan club would continue to send out autographed photographs, but they would be photocopies.
Lesley had been working on a memoir and an autobiographical musical before she died. Her final curtain had been called all too soon: first by mortality, and later by the obituary authors who mentioned so little about her apart from her Billboard success with “It’s My Party” and “You Don’t Own Me.” Along with those two songs, she was memorialized with a series of physical descriptors: bouncy blonde hair, blue eyes, Motown sound, as well as the "Queen of Teen Angst" (an arbitrary title that begged a few questions: At exactly what age do people age out of angst? Is the A-word simply replaced with another one, anxiety, when one reaches womanhood?).
The Advocate managed to come up with 235 words about Gore, not mentioning her close friendship with feminist leader Bella Abzug, her soft spot for rural queers (“there are probably two gay people in the whole damn town,” she sympathized when meeting Midwestern queers during her tour), her surprising apathy toward the institution of marriage (“for me, it isn't important to get married”), or the great extent to which she lent her voice to reproductive and queer justice campaigns, including Joan Jett’s recent feminist PSA and the LGBT docuseries In the Life.
Last winter, we’d already lost another sixtysomething Jewish dyke from New York named Lesley: the author and activist Leslie Feinberg. Her obituary in The Advocate was 1,300 words in length — deservedly so. And perhaps pop will always pale in comparison to literature, just as angst will always be for teens. But as Susan Sontag once wrote: "If I had to choose between the Doors and Dostoyevsky, then — of course — I’d choose Dostoyevsky. But do I have to choose?"
I wanted my Doors. Lesley deserved better. As do all the rest. History, even that of the LGBT community, is notorious for abandoning queer women — relegating our sort to the footnotes. Historical documentation so often fails to mention our roles in fine art, in science, in royalty, in renaissance, in presidencies, and — yes — even on American Bandstand. While we have an ever increasing number of lesbian role models to take after in 2015, we continue to be denied the privilege of looking back in time and seeing women like us everywhere. We don’t know nearly enough about the queer women who came before us. Lesley was one of them.
Ben King for BuzzFeed News
When I was still hoping to get my interview, I had planned to talk to Lesley about her recent tour, ask how she felt about performing her classics after all these years, and hopefully renew contemporary interest in her live performances.
Thanks to The First Wives Club — which was fast becoming a feminist cult classic — and an unfuckwithable scene from American Horror Story: Asylum, young women were rocking out to “You Don’t Own Me” like it was 1963 all over again. So it seemed absurd to me that soon before her death, Lesley was performing at puny convention centers in New Jersey. I wanted her to become an unquestionable lesbian icon — to elbow her way into our temperamental canon somewhere between Bessie Smith and Melissa Etheridge.
She could have used the hype. In a frank interview at the age of 59, she voiced concern over her finances. “I don’t really have the money to retire yet,” she said. “I haven’t really taken care of myself financially and that’s one of the things I regret most.” After her passing, Page Six revealed that Lesley’s estate was worth $50,000. By celebrity icon standards, she died appallingly broke.
But what I wanted us to talk about most, which made me feel slightly guilty, was her sexuality. I initially thought it would be both prying and superficial to focus on her personal life — but I reminded myself that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith–era affair made the New York Times a decade prior. Even the most esteemed of news outlets aren’t above reporting on the intimate aspects of celebrated heterosexual relationships.
And I wanted to talk to Lesley about her gayness for more than just superficial reasons.
People of all sexual orientations inherit a useful first-aid kit of platitudes from their mother figures: don’t swim immediately after meals; never go to bed with a wet head; don’t talk to old men driving vans older than they are. But when you’re gay, a straight mother can only teach you so much about navigating the messy world of your own desires. This is one of the minor tragedies of lesbianism: We often have to seek out advice about how to figure out our identities elsewhere. This "seeking out" is why lesbians still watch The L Word years after its finale; why so many young queers talk about the internet like it’s a favorite aunt; why lives like Lesley’s are worth the space in our public and personal archives. We should be able to consult with and see ourselves in our gay grandmothers — witness how they survived.
David Redfern
I crate-picked my very first Lesley Gore record in the land of alternative rock — The B-52’s, Neutral Milk Hotel, Of Montreal. Cornered between a sorority boutique and a parking deck in downtown Athens, Georgia, Wuxtry Records has resisted Starbucksification for nearly 40 years. It owes its longevity to another alt ensemble from the town, R.E.M. Two of the band’s members, Michael Stipe and Peter Buck, spent hours at the Wuxtry poring over musty stacks in the '80s while attending college in Athens.
People pay the Wuxtry a visit for two reasons: to trail Stipe’s swishy teen aura around the shop and see what new finds it leads them to, or to buy a certain record. Both are equally satiating, and on that inescapably muggy Sunday morning in August 2013, I was of the latter camp.
I thumbed through box after box of L’s until The Golden Hits appeared somewhere between Lenny Kravitz and Lynyrd Skynyrd. And there she was, a woman depicted in watercolor with unmistakable, omega-shaped hair. She sat wide-legged in a red chair near the cover’s bottom-left corner, a forearm lazily resting on its back: Even by today’s ungirdled standards, her posture, her jeans, and her button-down were anything but ladylike. A list boasting her 10 most popular tunes fell to her left, stylized in a red handwritten font far from the expected calligraphy of her old home ec courses.
I sought out Lesley because I was sad about love and tired of listening to Lana Del Rey. I was attempting to date in a rural place while feeling as though I — multiracial, working-class trash, gay yet very apathetic to HRC bumper stickers — was too much. I was not simply a date, but one that came with baggage rivaling Mary Poppins’. Remembering that Lesley was also gay, I romanticized her narrative, conflating being a lesbian in the New South in 2013 with being one in a big city in 1963.
I imagined that we held our tongues in similar ways. “I never found it was necessary,” she once told an AfterEllen interviewer of the soft-spokenness with which she’d approached coming out. “I really never kept my life private. Those who knew me, those who worked with me, were well aware.” Despite it being widely reported that Lesley only recently came out in 2005, she’d never hid; folks just never thought to ask.
Like her fellow 1960s songbirds Millie Small, Julie London, and Doris Day, the subjects of Lesley’s sweetest bubblegum pop tunes were men: Bobbys and other wholesomely named fellas; cheaters; gents she wished were hers; and boys who tried to tell her what to do (and what to say). But unlike her Technicolor contemporaries, Lesley had been a Sarah Lawrence–attending, gingham oxford–wearing gay girl who was singing songs about men in whom she would come to have no interest. It’s amusing to think that Lesley was not only capable of making the boy-crazy lyrics that music producer Quincy Jones stuffed into her mouth come alive — she did so in a way that was entirely convincing.
Like so many girls before and after her, Lesley sorted it all out in college. “I didn’t really know I was gay until I was in my twenties. I just experimented with boys and girls and had reason to adore them both. I think my first really serious relationship was a gay one, so that began to tell me things about myself,” she told Lesbian News in July 2006.
Was there a moment in university where she was bowled over by her own desire, where the songs about Johnny took on a whole new meaning? Or was performance just that: performance? How did she manage to meet other gay women in the hush-hush world of her youth? Where did she go on her first date with a woman? And fuck asking when she knew she was gay — when did she know she was in love? These were some of the questions I’d hoped to ask her. Aside from a couple of interviews conducted with the LGBT media in the mid-aughts and a conversation with k.d. lang curated by Ms. magazine in 1990, her history remained far from documented and far from appreciated.
Ben King for BuzzFeed News
In her performances, Lesley smiles through tears in an upbeat way that could be described as many things — deranged by today’s standards; normative by rigid 1960s ideals of gender performance. This is evident in the titles of her earlier tunes, many of which are now considered golden hits: “She’s a Fool,” “I Don’t Wanna Be a Loser,” “Wedding Bell Blues.” She was the daughter of the housewife in a 1950s kitchen appliance commercial, appearing thrilled over new technology while actually thinking I hate this fucking microwave oven and fantasizing about rereading The Feminine Mystique.
Gore showed physical restraint in live performances, softening enormously tragic lyrics with a beaming smile that refused to flicker until the final note. Female agony, when externalized, is understood to be ugly. Lesley’s smile was a way of viscerally denying hurt despite singing about it. She was able to send a message without ever looking like its expected messenger.
In her essay “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain,” another Lesley — Leslie Jamison — pinpoints a shiny new breed of maimed woman: the post-wounded girl. “They’re over it. I am not a melodramatic person. God help the woman who is,” she writes. “Post-wounded women make jokes about being wounded or get impatient with women who hurt too much. The post-wounded woman conducts herself as if preempting certain accusations: Don’t cry too loud; don’t play victim.”
Fifty years before the advent of the PWG, there was a type of girl in post-McCarthy-era America who articulated the pain of Lady Macbeth while possessing the carefree demeanor of the futuristic post-wounded girl. Lesley was among them. At a point in time, I too wanted to be this kind of woman, who could have her sorrow and look good, too. Her sadness felt like an exaggeration of mine. I stewed myself in the dated lingo of that era: I was a ditz, a dipstick, a dork, a drag; a skag, a skuzz.
But Lesley — even at her worst — would keep on trucking, beaming through the breakup that’s ripping her heart to shreds. Hey, she says, he’s a trifling idiot and doesn’t really love me, but in the meantime, I’m going to keep on trying because something good might come of it. After all, for every “It’s My Party” (wherein Lesley gets dumped by Johnny for Judy), there’s a lesser-known follow-up hit called “Judy’s Turn to Cry” (in which Leslie steals her boy Johnny back).
The true beauty in the Lesley Gore songbook isn’t that a handful of her songs are pre–second wave feminist anthems: It's that her songs are simultaneously upbeat and sad. If you listen to them, you just might forget why you were sad to begin with. So when my stabs at dating went as well as they do for those who are grossly out of practice, I turned to Lesley like boys in Athens, Georgia, still do to Michael Stipe. I laid needle to vinyl and “I Don’t Wanna Be a Loser” comforted me, just like “Everybody Hurts” does them. I’d found my heroine, the woman who could articulate those gross little emotions that I’d never vocalize myself.
I always get a funny feeling when I listen to oldies, particularly songs about romantic interests. Would Earth, Wind & Fire be OK with me associating “September” with a woman? What about Bobby Darin, or Doris Day? But there was never a doubt about Lesley — if anything, she’d encourage it.
Keystone / Getty Images
22 Times Grace Adler Was You As Hell
There’s a little Grace in all of us.
When she successfully multitasked her job with her lunch.
NBC / Via vampirepenguin.tumblr.com
When she went to the extreme just to get her hands on a bargain.
NBC / Via piperelizabeths.tumblr.com
When she got left out of the brunch plans.
NBC / Via giphy.com
When she got left out of most things, actually.
NBC / Via neonkontra.tumblr.com
The Hardest One Direction Screencap Quiz You'll Ever Take
One way or another, you’ll find out if you are a true Directioner.
Columbia
Are You More Manny Or Emma From "Degrassi: The Next Generation"?
Are you cuckoo bananas enough to take this quiz?
Happy J.K. Rowling And Harry Potter Birthday Day!
Accio birthday cake!
Dan Meth / BuzzFeed
Today we're celebrating the 50th birthday of our favorite ~magical~ author and the 35th birthday of our favorite fictional character!
Warner Bros.
We've all learned some very important lessons from reading the series.
Warner Bros.
And we probably wouldn't be the same people we are today if we hadn't had Harry Potter in our lives.
Warner Bros.
Which "Super Mario" Character Should You Try To Hookup With?
This is what happens after the Mario Party.
Nintendo / BuzzFeed
Arthur The Aardvark Grew Up And He Is Looking GOOD
He Neville Longbottomed hard and he Neville Longbottomed proud.
We all remember Arthur the Aardvark from his years as a child star in TV's "Arthur", where he delighted us with his lovable antics and can-do attitude.
Arthur in 1998, giving the crowd what it wants.
PBS
But for the past few years, Arthur has stayed out of the limelight, leaving entertainment magazines and fans to wonder: what has become of America's favorite bookworm?
Via librarians-on-youtube.blogspot.com
Until, that is, last week, when Arthur made his first public appearance in months at an independent film festival in Northern California.
Via parents.com
And he did NOT disappoint.
Via onekind.org
13 Rubeus Hagrid GIFs That Perfectly Describe Being Drunk
One too many shots of firewhiskey.
When you walk into the bar after a solid pregame:
Warner Bros.
When you're on your fourth drink and start to over-share:
Warner Bros.
When the heart-to-hearts get a little too real:
Warner Bros.
When you've lost your squad at the bar:
Warner Bros.
15 "Harry Potter" Crossovers That Are Seriously Magical
Accio fandom-mixing fun!
Wizards in Black.
THE BADASS MAGICAL ALIEN CRIME FIGHTING TRIO OF YOUR DREAMS.
Game of Wands.
Wizards are coming.
Via pinterest.com
Pottermon.
A wild Voldemort appeared.
Via hypable.com
Sherlock: Hogwarts Edition.
It's just a boggart... just a boggart.
Via pinterest.com
How Should You Celebrate Harry Potter's Birthday?
July 31st is Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling’s birthday, which means it’s time to celebrate!
How Much Of Last Year's "Great British Bake Off" Do You Remember?
One last time to reminisce about last year, with innuendos like “I tend to do it on the floor, because it gets so thick.”
The Twilight Of The Angry Black Woman
Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters
As a black woman in public, I’m hyperconscious of my actions, tone, and words out of fear that I might seem too angry. Whether I’m making a suggestion to a customer service representative or telling the waiter he forgot a part of my order, I ask myself: Am I being the Angry Black Woman?
If black women aren’t characterized as hypersexual, man-stealing jezebels, or docile mammies with unlimited care to give our white employers, we’re the choleric group known as the Angry Black Women. Finger-snapping, antagonistic, and assertive, the Angry Black Woman is one of entertainment’s most reliable tropes: the short-tempered black girlfriend who emasculates her man for the the audience’s delight — with minimal consideration for how this archetype impacts actual, living black women.
But the Angry Black Woman shows up in the news as well. Two weeks ago, a 28-year-old black woman named Sandra Bland died in police custody after telling an officer she was “a little irritated” during a needless traffic stop. A week later, news outlets cast Nicki Minaj as the aggressor in Taylor Swift’s one-sided Twitter argument with the rapper. Two trending news stories — one tragic, the other trivial — showed how the fictional trope of the Angry Black Woman colors white Americans’ interactions with real black women. Bland’s death is a chilling reminder that, all too often, the imagined predisposition of black women has deadly consequences. And in both stories, the Angry Black Woman narrative quickly unraveled, suggesting white authority can no longer count on the trope to explain away the systematic mistreatment of women of color. We see it, we’re identifying it, and we’re not having it any longer.
As far as unflattering archetypes go, the Angry Black Woman is a relatively young one. She’s sometimes referred to as the Sapphire, after Sapphire Stevens on Amos ’n’ Andy, a radio and television minstrel sitcom popular from the 1930s to 1950s. Set in black Harlem — and written by two white men — Amos ’n’ Andy calcified many stereotypes about the African-American population, including the shrewish black wife. In an early episode, Sapphire’s husband, Kingfish, discreetly applies for a job in her name. Sapphire receives the offer letter and — none the wiser — considers taking the position. But not before humiliating Kingfish for being “the kind of man” who would want his wife to be a second earner.
Imitations of Sapphire multiplied and evolved to reflect the modern black woman— self-sufficient and self-reliant to a fault. Today’s Angry Black Woman is bitter and wrathful: Debra Wilson as a mouthier Samantha Stephens in MadTV’s black spoof of Bewitched, Be-Bitched; the character Kenya in Something New; Angela in Why Did I Get Married; Taraji P. Henson's “Lauren” in Think Like a Man. Their one-note personalities are mapped onto unscripted women. As the first African-American family entered the White House, the first lady was characterized as angry over and over.
The ubiquitousness of the Angry Black Woman isn't a matter of coincidence or paranoia. Studies indicate that negative racial stereotypes reinforced through media exposure unconsciously influence one’s interactions with the stereotyped group. That black woman may have been walking a non-black friend’s child home, but all you see is Aunt Jemima. At the same time, studies show that being the subject of a racial stereotype leads to low self-esteem and psychological distress. The repeated imagery of the Angry Black Woman eats away at black women’s mental well-being while simultaneously training the white population how to expand the trope’s power.
And the fictions foisted upon black women always work for benefit white male supremacy. The jezebel stereotype explained why slave women were eligible for extramarital sex while white women must remain chaste. Mammy suggested that black women enjoyed being domestic servants, and didn’t want lives of their own. What purpose, then, does the Angry Black Women serve?
It seems to me that the Angry Black Woman serves to silence women, and in particular to erase our identification of racism and sexism. Although black women exist at the intersection of these two systems of oppression, black women couldn’t possibly be righteously upset about either (or both). We are angry because it is in our nature. We are angry without cause. When 16-year-old Amandla Stenberg, a teenage actress known for her role in Hunger Games, explained how Kylie Jenner’s braids exhibited the theft and commercialization of black culture, Twitter users told her she was too angry. The trope doubles as an accusation; our opinions are irrational because they’re rooted in emotion.
In 2014, Minaj released “Anaconda” to record breaking views online, and collaborated with Beyonce on “Feeling Myself.” Both music videos — and the feminist messages therein — impacted pop culture for months to follow, but neither video was nominated for MTV's Video Music Award for video of the year. Talking to her Twitter followers, Minaj called it like it is: Black women who contribute exponentially to popular culture are never properly credited. A white reporter ran the numbers and confirm her claim — the work of women of color is consistently snubbed at the VMAs and various other award ceremonies. But Minaj’s own analysis of industry racism was nearly drowned out as a flood of images depicting an angry Minaj appeared on social media, illustrating her “attack” on a sweet Taylor Swift.
If racial stereotypes and racial discrimination are mutually reinforcing, it will be important to dismantle the Angry Black Woman trope in popular culture. That’s where the next generation will either learn to dehumanize black women by making anger her identity, or learn that anger is an emotion that, among others, all humans experience. To that end, it matters that Nicki Minaj refused to let media outlets write off her criticism as innate fury.
But worse than silencing women, images of the Angry Black Woman have colluded to engineer the perfect target for violence: too crazy to be believed, angry enough to justify physical retaliation. In the initial reports of Sandra Bland’s arrest, Officer Brian Encinia deemed Bland “combative and uncooperative” during her arrest. The Angry Black Woman narrative was more believable before a dashboard camera video of the events was released.
In the footage, it’s Encinia who seemed exceedingly on edge, because Bland was smoking a cigarette (legally). Bland was not silent or submissive — and that alone was enough to merit violence, and detention. This is what makes received wisdom about black womanhood so dangerous: It’s already accepted without any substantiation. Wrongfully detained — and later found dead — Bland never had a chance to prove the stereotype incomplete. If the Angry Black Woman trope doesn’t silence you, it’ll kill you.
Thứ Năm, 30 tháng 7, 2015
Which Harry Potter Character Are You Based On These Really Hard Questions?
Think carefully – this is more difficult than casting a patronus.
Being A Student In Your Early Twenties Vs Your Late Twenties
Group work: shitty at every age. :’)
Early 20s: "So ready for this brand new chapter of my life!"
CBS
Late 20s: "Ugh. This again."
FOX / Paramount
27 Things All Aussie Girls Who Played Netball Will Relate To
Ball hits frozen finger, finger breaks.
Getting up early every Saturday morning and losing that sweet, sweet sleep in.
FOX
Putting on your bodysuit or pleated skirt knowing it was going to be like 4 degrees out.
Disney / Via dreamingofdisney.tumblr.com
Matching your hair ribbon and your "scungies" to your netball outfit.
Getting to the courts when it was still actually foggy and not even being able to find your designated court.
CW
9 Celebrity #TBT Photos You May Have Missed This Week
A young Calvin Harris at a pub in the early ’00s kicks off this week’s #ThrowbackThursday.
Calvin Harris shared this photo from his brunette days back in 2002.
In honor of his birthday, Nico Tortorella took us back to his modeling days.
Paul McCartney posted this photo of himself from the cover of his album, Tug of War.
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