Aging, but Make It Fashion | Racked

The fashion industry’s fascination with older models doesn’t impress me, a 55-year-old woman, very much.

All hail her grace Lauren Hutton, First of Her Name, Queen of ’70s Insouciance, Lady of Flowing Palazzo Pants, and Insignia of Women of a Certain Age.

Born in 1943, Hutton has been modeling for almost 50 years, and these days she’s kind of a poster girl for … something. Body positivity in the septuagenarian set? Fashion diversity? Aging with grace and a low BMI? A canny grab at aging women’s disposable income? Who can say? It’s aging, but make it fashion.

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When It Comes to Women’s Pockets, Size Really Does Matter | The Guardian

Until my jeans pockets are big enough for my phone, keys and purse, I’ll see them as a political rather than just a fashion issue

Broken in and cunningly ripped, my favourite jeans fit loosely. They’re designed to look as if I borrowed them from my guy. Hence their name: “destructed boyfriend jeans”. My jeans may have been cut to ape the lines of men’s denim, but they fail in one major way: the front pockets are only 5.5 inches (14cm) deep – too small for my hands, hardly big enough for my tiny wallet and certainly too snug for my iPhone Plus. My boyfriend jeans have pockets that would make a man laugh.

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There Are a Lot of Problems with Sex Robots | Medium

From body weight and batteries to programming and consent, there’s nothing straightforward about sexbots. But they’re coming anyway.

In a promotional video, robot designer Dr. Sergi Santos runs his finger inside the mouth of his Samantha sexbot. “Uhhh,” she moans. Sergi touches the doll’s hand, and she moans again. “She felt that,” he says, “and she’s actually getting quite horny.” Samantha is not, of course, getting horny. Samantha is a nearly inanimate object, which, by definition, is incapable of horniness — as well as hungriness, loneliness, suspiciousness, and even obliviousness. Samantha feels nothing, even if Santos wants her to.

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The Rub of Rough Sex | Long Reads

Chelsea G. Summers considers the ways in which outwardly ‘progressive’ men like former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman use kink as a cover for abuse.

This is a piece about abuse. This is a piece about kink and a piece about consent. This is a piece about the law. This is a piece about some powerful men whom I’ve never met, and it’s a piece about some nobody men whom I’ve loved. This is a piece about rough sex, about “rough sex,” and about how these two categories overlap and rub each other raw. This is a piece that was hard for me to write and may be hard for you to read. Most of all, this is a piece about why masculinity is fractured, and how women get caught in its cracks.

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Love In a Time of True Crime | Medium

Women are taught to fear the bogeyman. The real threat is closer to home

Last October, I married a Swede. The wedding, which took place the day after the New York Times broke the first Harvey Weinstein assault story, was a Viking whirlwind in a posh Icelandic Airbnb whose claim to fame is that the Biebs once stayed there. The honeymoon was a sun-dappled stay in Portugal. (There were castles. So many castles.) And eight days later, clad in my freshly espoused skin, I found myself smack in the middle of suburban Stockholm legally wedded to a man I didn’t know very well.

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Aging Ghosts in the Skincare Machine | Medium

On expensive skincare and a changing face

Let me start with my skin in the game. In the four months between November 2017 and February 2018, I spent about $520 on skincare products. This number does not include makeup. It does not include shampoo or conditioner. It does not include body lotion. And it is, in all likelihood, a little low. If I pored through every receipt and every debit card transaction, the actual, shameful tally of skincare spending during these four months would hover above $600. Average it out, and that’s $125 a month, more than my $90 Con Edison or Verizon bills, and a little less than a third of my monthly college loan payment, which, at age 55, I’m still paying.

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The Birth of Vintage | Racked

"If anyone has a divinely seedy raccoon coat lying around the house, riddled by a few heavenly holes and ravishing rips,” Nan Robertson wrote 60 years ago in the New York Times, “now is the time to wear it.” Robertson’s claxon call for wearing 1920s raccoon coats — those giant, shaggy full-length furs that were all the rage for frat boys on pre-Black Tuesday college campuses — feels fresh. Who doesn’t want to wear a seedy coat rendered divine by the passing of time? Fashion’s dime may turn on the new, but vintage clothing springs eternal: All time is the right time for vintage clothing.

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What's Distressing About Distressed Clothing | Racked

To be fair, “Lmao wait one minute” is an apt response to this particular pair of sneakers. A grungy pinky-gray shade reminiscent of worn pointe shoes, these sneakers resemble a Twinkie in that they look not so much made as extruded. They’re scuffed and grimy, and they’ve got these dull burnished silver strips of duct tape wrapped fore and aft; their frayed laces, knotted like lies, promise to snap. Coming from Italian company Golden Goose, the sneakers are brand new. Barneys New York was selling them for $585, believe it or not.

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The Politics of Pockets | Racked

The history of pockets isn’t just sexist, it’s political

Hillary Clinton wore a deceptively simple suit when she took the stage at the Democratic National Convention to accept the party’s nomination for president. Its impeccable tailoring announced Clinton’s authority; its snowy whiteness connected her to the suffragette movement; and, with no designer claiming it, the suit seems to transcend fashion — unnamed, it belonged to every woman. All of these points make Hillary’s white suit a significant garment, but the suit did more than make Clinton look powerful. One omission in Clinton’s suit whispered a long, questionable history, and that is this: It has no pockets.

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Infinite Scroll — Real Life

Bowie’s first dictionary was likely much like my first dictionary — an eight-inch-thick tome. It was big, heavy bitch with thin-skinned pages that stuck to your fingers, covered with a stew of spider-fine print. I’ve grown up, and the dictionary has shrunk. The big, heavy book first became a couple of featherweight CD-ROMs; then the CD-ROMs thinned into weightless internet. This disappearing act is a paradoxical one, for as the dictionary has journeyed from analog to electronic to digital, it both holds more and is easier to use.

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Kik Starter — Real Life

“Do you have Kik?” read the OkCupid message from Odin’s Thirst Trap, a 20-year-old blond living in Stockholm. “It’s what all the kids here use.”

I was traveling to Sweden to write and to get laid, not necessarily in that order. I prepped for my trip by checking the average April temperature, booking an AirBnB in Hornstull (“the Brooklyn of Stockholm”), changing my OkCupid location from New York City to Stockholm, and joining international Tinder. I downloaded an app for the T-Bana, the Stockholm Metro, because it was free.

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Tools of war: Why cannibalism has disappeared but rape hasn’t | Fusion

Every adult—and every astute kid—knows what’s really going on in “Little Red Riding Hood,” and it’s a lot creepier than a wolf sitting at the top of the food chain. Audiences recognize that this fairytale is less concerned with literal predation than it is preoccupied with literal rape. But when the anthropomorphized wolf consumes Grandma and Red, “Little Red Riding Hood” conflates eating and rape in a strangely cannibalistic act.

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FIfty shades of Shakespeare | New Republic →

In a new memoir, an obsession with the Bard and spanking transforms what it means to live a sensual life.

Put your head on your lover’s chest and you will hear ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. It’s a heartbeat, but it’s also a very specific rhythm—it’s iambic pentameter, the metrical foot made famous by William Shakespeare. Even if you don’t know your trochee from your spondee, you know an iamb. You can’t not know it; iambs are the poetry of your lover’s blood, your mother’s blood, and of your own.

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Sucking the fun out of fellatio | Hazlitt →

It’s a straightforward act, yet it’s a slippery one. “Milkshake,” “skull-fuck,” “hummer,” or “head” all name it; likewise, you might suck a dick—or you might enjoy getting your cock sucked, or both. Opting for delicacy, you might call it “oral” or “fellatio.” But real talk: if we’re going to name the sexual act of giving pleasure to a penis by mouth, chances are we’re going to call it a “blow job.” In the kingdom of sexual slang, “blow job” reigns supreme; it’s the odd sex term that sits nearly unchallenged on its throne.

However ubiquitous, though, “blow job” is hilariously inapt. 

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Horny | Hazlitt →

We know horny. We’ve used it to describe the state of our own bodies and those of others. “You make me so horny,” we might have told someone, and when we said it, we meant it as a compliment. “I’m so horny,” we might have complained, and when we said it, our auditors knew exactly what we were feeling, for they have felt horny too. We grew up with horny. 

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What Would Sex Robots for Women Look Like? | VICE →

"Once you've had a lover robot, you'll never want a real man again." That's a line from Gigolo Joe, the sexbot played by Jude Law in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the 2001 Steven Spielberg film. What makes Gigolo Joe special—aside from his dewy skin, gnocchi-plump lips, and shiny-suit razzmatazz—is that he represents a very rare filmic depiction of a male sexbot .

Think about it. The sexbots you know and love are almost exclusively female bots servicing human men. They're the Stepford Wives' gynoids and Austin Powers' s fembots; they're Ava and Kyoko of Ex Machina and Pris of Blade Runner. Chick sexbots populate television, too. Buffy the Vampire Slayer's April and the Buffybot were lovingly crafted with the express purpose of fucking.

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The Baudy, Electric | Hazlitt

December 1962, June Cochran changed history. More than being named the fourth official Playboy Playmate of the Year and the magazine’s ninth Miss December, Cochran (5’2”, 36D, 102lbs, 19 years old) became the first playmate to have her photos accompanied by a questionnaire divulging her “turn-ons” (Corvette sports cars) and “turnoffs” (fresh guys). Every Playboy Playmate since has reliably done the same, putting the objects of their erotic desire on display right alongside the things that quash that desire dead.

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The Year in Male Tears | VICE →

2014 was the year that misandry became chic. That January began with the reminder from Madeleine Holden, creator of Critique my Dick Pic, that "dick is abundant and low value," a Tweet that resonated with the power of a 140-character manifesto. The movie release of Gone Girl and Taylor Swift's video for "Blank Space" made misandry aspirational. Etsy samplers emblazoned with "men are scum" and Café Press mugs reading "male tears" proliferated. The year ended with feminazis opening their 2014 Misandmas presents with glee, finding copies of Bitch Planet and Bad Feminist.

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Stoya, James Deen, and why rape representation matters | Fusion →

A week ago, Stoya, adult performer, business owner, and essayist, accused her ex-boyfriend and fellow performer James Deen of rape on Twitter. Stoya described her assault in a pair of tweets; the first alluded to the pain of seeing her rapist lauded as a feminist, and the second named her rapist and described the rape. She said, “James Deen held me down and fucked me while I said no, stop, used my safeword. I just can’t nod and smile when people bring him up anymore.”

Stoya’s tweets packed a powerful punch: they brought down the most famous straight man in porn. 

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It shouldn't take a rape accusation to prove that sex workers can be raped | The Guardian →

Adult performer Stoya signed into her Twitter account on Saturday and, in two succinct Tweets, leveled rape accusations at her former boyfriend and one-time porn co-star, James Deen. “That thing where you log into the internet for a second and see people idolizing the guy who raped you as a feminist. That thing sucks,” she wrote. Just over 10 minutes later, she clarified: “James Deen held me down and fucked me while I said no, stop, used my safeword. I just can’t nod and smile when people bring him up anymore.”

The reaction was swift: since Saturday afternoon, the tweets went viral, engendering two supportive hashtags (#SolidaritywithStoya and#standwithStoya); porn outlets Kink.com and Evil Angel dropped Deen from their rosters; The Frisky ended Deen’s sex column; and two more porn performers, Tory Lux and Ashley Fires, came forward with their own stories of alleged abuse by Deen.

Stoya’s tweets and their quick entry into the news cycle hints at a larger cultural movement: that people are believing women, even sex workers, when they say they were raped.

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