Surely we've all become educated and enlightened enough to appreciate the struggles women have gone through to obtain equal rights in this country. It's a lesson retaught weekly on today's most engaging TV show, Mad Men, which delves heavily into our recent past when opportunities for women were limited and social morays were unsettling at best. Not to mention the suffrage movement and the fight ladies like Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony waged to give women the right to vote. Surely all that history and the lessons we've learned from it can't be completely lost on today's youth?

Here's what celebrity skank Brooke Hogan had to say on the subject:

“You know what? I am actually not that much into voting. I think it's kinda crazy that a woman is running, because I think that women deal with a lot of emotions and menopause and PMS and stuff. Like, I'm so moody all the time, I know I couldn't be able to run a country, ?ause I'd be crying one day and yelling at people the next day, ya know?”

Pearls of wisdom from a media whore who wears acid wash denim chaps. I hope I live to see a day when we all tire of the idiot spawn of the rich and famous transforming into minor celebrities simply because they have no shame and will allow cameras the film them anywhere.

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Posted on November 10, 2008

Mrs Addams

While I’ve never considered myself a particularly big fan of The Addams Family, I sure seem to remember watching it quite a bit when I was a kid. I also remember catching episodes of its more blue collar rival, The Munsters, too. Man, what a strange world it was when not one, but two sitcoms focusing on spooky families were in competition on network TV. In my book, The Addams Family is the superior show. Not only is its source material top notch (Chas Addams’s wickedly funny New Yorker cartoons), but it’s got the beautiful Carolyn Jones (take that, Yvonne De Carlo).

Jones is most recognized as spooky matriarch Morticia, a role her sister said was custom made for her offbeat sense of humor, but there’s much more to her career. She was lovely with haunting eyes, and can be seen in The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Seven Year Itch, House of Wax, a couple of Elvis flicks and How the West Was Won. Her award winning role came with The Bachelor Party, where she played a “philosophical nymphomaniac” and shocked everyone by cutting off her blond hair and dying it jet black. What a brilliant style decision from an independent woman (she consciously chose to focus on her career and refused to give it up for family life).

Jones died far too young, at the age of 53 of colon cancer.

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Posted on October 27, 2008

Hollywood’s First Chinese Film Star

Anna May Wong was a fashionable, determined and talented beauty who managed to forge a career as a Chinese American in a less than tolerant decade (“miscegenation” laws, which banned interracial marriage and sex – barred her from even having on screen kisses with non-Chinese actors).

While she was often only playing stereotypical roles of dragon ladies or demure obedient women, off screen she was daring and non-shrinking violet. She was a stylish and sophisticated woman who was called “The World’s best-dressed woman” to the public’s shock by the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York. She was good friends with other independent women like Marlene Dietrich and the controversial Leni Riefenstahl.

One of her most famous films, Piccadilly received new attention and praise when it was re-released after a restoration by the British Film Institute. This week’s website pick, Refinery 29 has a gallery of images.

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Posted on October 13, 2008

Author

Judy Blume is more than just a talented and wise writer with a smashing smile and great age defying cheekbones.

She changed the face of reading for young women, she offered popular stories that kids could relate to and she never shied away from the realities of life in her writing.

Her boldness has often and repeatedly made her a target of censors which in turn has made Blume even more awesome in my book as an advocate for free speech.

She works with the National Coalition Against Censorship and is probably as horrified as the rest of us about the possibility of Palin becoming Vice President. While the stories of Palin’s plan to ban books has been partially untrue (that list she supposedly made of books was not likely to be her own list, just a list of commonly banned books and she never specified the banning of any particular books), she still “asked the library how she could go about banning books,” according to TIME magazine.

Blume is also very humble and personable about her talents. She’s said that she simply as always making up stories in her head and once she had two kids to tell them to, began writing them down. She was twenty seven when she began to write seriously, which can make anyone who feels like it’s too late to become a success at doing what they love feel better.

I doubt there’s many people my age who can’t recall at least one Judy Blume book in their life.

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Posted on September 29, 2008

Pop Artist

Life can be very unfair and very, very sad. I fist heard of the name Nagi Noda, a thirty five year old Japanese pop artist and all around amazing person, when I read an article about her death. Surgical complications after a car accident cut short a prolific, inventive, electrifying, and diverse career.

A well of imaginative and fun ideas, her works have included a collection of fantastic hair hats, bizarrely cool over-sized half panda/ half other animal costumes called Hanipanda, a collaborative fashion line with artist Mark Ryden called Broken Label, music videos for The Scissor Sisters and Yuki, this awesome poodle exercise video, this Coca Cola commercial, and a brilliant project called Horror Caf? – an actual caf? she opened that served funny, Halloween themed food and had customers sit in coffin chairs.

She was lovely and I am sad the world has lost such a unique artist and voice. Truly awesome to the end she passed away “in her Mark Ryden dress, Chanel boots, perfect make-up with Viktor & Rolf lace black eye lashes.”

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Posted on September 15, 2008