Saturday, September 29, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Sixteen

The More Loving One
by W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Friday, September 28, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Fifteen

7:3 CHOCOLATES: ADVENTURE IN A BOX

Complex and funky, pure and satisfying, 7:3 Chocolates are uncompromising in their excellence. We combine the finest chocolate with fresh cream and natural fruit juices, extracts, and spices to create chocolates that leave candy bars in the dust. Our truffles contain no artificial flavors and no added sugar, because great chocolate doesn’t need complications.

7:3 Chocolates signature dome-shaped truffles develop and concentrate the flavors from the first bite through the finish. The crisp chocolate shell gives way to smooth creamy ganache infused with unique and compelling combinations. When you look down and notice an empty box, we’re sure you’ll agree with our philosophy.

We love making these fine truffles and dreaming up new flavors to seduce and surprise you. 7:3 Chocolates appreciates your patronage and hopes to see you again soon.

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Number One-Hundred-Fourteen

HOW SEX KILLED FRANK WEDEKIND
By JOHN SIMON, Theater Critic of New York Magazine and Film Critic of the National Review (1990)

WHO was the greatest turn-of-the-century American playwright? It was Benjamin Franklin Wedekind, begotten by a German father on a Swiss mother in San Francisco, but born in Hanover, Germany, in 1864. He became known later as Frank Wedekind, author of “Spring’s Awakening” and the Lulu plays, “Earth Spirit” and “Pandora’s Box.” Until World War I forced him to obtain a German passport, he moved around Europe with American citizenship papers. But, of whatever nationality, he must be reckoned as one of the brightest stars in that great cyclorama against which world theatrical history is played out.

Americans know their illustrious near compatriot as the author of those three splendid plays; but he wrote two others as good or better, and several more too precious for oblivion—not to mention narrative prose and light verse of distinction. Until his premature death in 1918, he also acted in his plays and performed his cabaret songs with a quirky but insidious individuality, and championed freedom of expression, women’s rights, anti-anti-Semitism (no small thing in Wilhelm ein Germany) and other worthy causes. His drama was the fountainhead of not just one form of German modernism, but of all three movements that superseded naturalism: Symbolism, Expressionism and that tertium quid whose creator, Bertolt Brecht, acknowledged him as his master.

Quite regularly in his younger days, and sporadically later on, Wedekind also kept a diary that his younger daughter only fairly recently released for publication. The title “Diary of an Erotic Life” is not inappropriate; young Frank, especially during his Parisian years, was a great womanizer. Not until 1906, when he married the young Austrian actress Tilly Newes, 22 years his junior, did he become fiercely monogamous and ferociously, needlessly jealous. It was this jealousy that killed him. For he felt that he had to be, creatively and sexually, incessantly active to preserve his wife’s devotion: Tilly tried both separation and suicide, but only because of his insane jealousy. So when, still insufficiently recovered from an appendectomy, he started strenuously acting again, he developed a hernia that one specialist refused to operate on immediately. Insisting on surgery, Wedekind died of ensuing complications.

But that was much later. As a very young man in his father’s Swiss castle, then as a rebellious son and self-made man in Berlin, Munich, Paris and London, he kept a diary of his preponderantly erotic vie de boheme. He also had unusual jobs: as a writer of advertising jingles for Maggi soup, and as a publicist for a circus. And he wrote, though without getting anything produced for years. Mostly, he would rise at noon, see people in the afternoon, have dinner with friends, go to a theater or cabaret or opera house, then drink in good company till early morning. Some days, though, he just worked.

Sparingly in Berlin and Munich (money was very tight), but liberally in Paris, he picked up women: usually cocottes, sometimes lowly streetwalkers, occasionally juveniles, to whom he was strongly attracted. There were also leanings toward homosexuality and sadism, but these were kept in check. Meanwhile he enjoyed women, recklessly but generously, at times giving away the little money he had for the mere pleasure of their platonic company.

“Diary of an Erotic Life” is sharply observed, outspoken and wonderfully deadpan. Wedekind possessed the gift of implying rather than stating his editorial comments in a prose that subtly winks at the reader—a reader most likely never intended for these journals, which he meant as a sourcebook for plays and as autotherapy: “Others have recourse to a girl, I stick to my diary.” For example, he meets two artistes and comments: “Leitner and Holtoff are the two strongest men in the world and have been engaged by the Casino de Paris as a counter-attraction to two American brothers, also the strongest men in the world . . . due to appear . . . at the Folies Bergere.” Or he goes with a young woman to the outdoor market at Les Halles, a favorite wee-hours Paris sport. Consuming oysters and wine, they “sit at a window . . . and have the whole bustle . . . before our eyes. We agree there’s no finer sight than watching people really hard at work.”

What a delightful fellow, this Wedekind, who rushes off to be photographed “so as to know . . . in the future what I looked like when I had a thousand francs in my pocket.” He has a chat with a resplendent demimondaine who tells him “it wouldn’t cost 100,000 francs” to sleep with her, but he insists that “with her looks she couldn’t very well ask for less.” With another girl, “when I asked her if she had syphilis, she replied, not so far. She was bound to get it sooner or later, everybody did. Had I had it yet?—Yes.—So much the better, then I was safe from it.”

Some famous people appear in the diary, but the obscure ones easily outshine them. Literary observations are few, but those few perfect. For example: “I buy myself Maeterlinck’s ‘Princesse Maleine,’ take a seat in a cafe and read it through in one go. It shows me how the thing should not be done.” It is better to publish than not, he tells some overfastidious acquaintances: “It cost nothing, apart from one’s reputation, but it was better to have a poor reputation than none at all.” There are vivid observations of the damnedest things, as when, in an excursus on geese, Wedekind observes, “The goose’s profile, incidentally, is Greek.” Or this, about women’s legs: “Black or red tights make the legs seem slimmer than they really are, while blue, white, or flesh-coloured tights have the opposite effect.”

“I seek woman,” he announces in a diary entry unfortunately not included here; “she will be welcome in any shape.” True enough, the diary is full of detailedly, intimately, multifariously welcoming passages, far better than anything in Henry Miller or Frank Harris. Something is astir in these pages that reaches fruition in the Lulu plays, and in those two masterpieces of the year 1900, “The Marquis of Keith” (which Wedekind considered his best play) and “The Court Singer” (which he considered his worst). Tilly Wedekind, in her incomparable autobiography, “Lulu: Die Rolle Meines Lebens,” correctly sized up the phenomenon that fascinated her husband, “that tragic events flip over into the grotesque.” You find traces of it here, as also of another canny insight of hers, that he professed eroticism religiously, or religion erotically.

W. E. Yuill, the British translator, fills in a few gaps in the German edition and seems, at times, to decipher Wedekind’s difficult handwriting better than Gerhard Hay, the German editor. The translation is smooth and generally faithful, though there are a few unfortunate lapses. Thus in the lovely last poem Frank writes for Tilly very near his death, it is not “ailing souls” he refuses to hang around, but the “sickly visitor”—infirmity, slow dying. The French mystic novelist was Peladan, not Peladon; what delighted Wedekind about a certain pink petticoat was not that it was “diaphanous,” but that it was duftig, aromatic. Still, even in translation, this prose is aromatic enough. Though dead at 53, Wedekind lived, and made live, a century.

OH, WAITRESS!
The waitress finds his beer-mug half full and asks me if the gentleman has gone. I reply that he has settled his score, and suddenly sense that her question was after all nothing more than a mark of her favour. Then I see how she pours the contents of the old consumptive’s beer-mug into her own tankard at the bar. She seems to have a healthy thirst, as it is. She has recourse to her mug every couple of minutes or so. But this isn’t something that upsets me unduly. It makes the situation somehow more homely. It cuts out sentimentality. No abstract phantoms intrude between my gaze and that admirable bosom. Is the bust genuine? I recoil from this thought with a grimace. Mind you, if it is genuine, then it’s truly adorable. The upper contour in particular is as gloriously domed as the Hagia Sophia.

I order another half, and the girl brings me a full measure. That seems to be her way. She did exactly the same with the old stalwart from the Prisoners’ Aid. I invite her to join me in a drink. She doesn’t like to drink the froth, but she’s prepared to stretch a point. For all its beauty, her face no longer has a pristine freshness. I reckon she’s about twenty-six. Her name is Fanny.—From “Diary of an Erotic Life.” by Frank Wedekind

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Thirteen

Lovely Lulu Lives Again
by Laura Evenson, San Francisco Chronicle (1998)

A decade after her death, silent-film star Louise Brooks is more popular than ever.

She drank with W.C. Fields and Tallulah Bankhead, socialized with Robert Benchley, danced with the Ziegfeld Follies, slept with Charlie Chaplin and beat out Marlene Dietrich for the starring role of Lulu in the 1928 German classic “Pandora’s Box”.

Yet for all her charisma, beauty, talent, lovers and antics, Louise Brooks is probably best remembered for her trademark hairstyle, a glistening, raven helmet called the bob.

A silent-movie icon who did her bit to make the 1920s roar, Brooks is enjoying a revival 70 years after the height of her fame and more than a decade after her death. A mini-mania over Brooks erupted about eight years ago when Knopf published Barry Paris’ “Louise Brooks” biography.

Spurring the latest revival is a new documentary, “Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu”, that will be shown Tuesday on the Turner Classic Movies channel. On May 18, the Castro Theatre in San Francisco will screen “Pandora’s Box” as part of a citywide Femmes Fatales Festival that coincides with a femmes fatales series at the San Francisco Opera. That series includes a new production of Alban Berg’s 1937 opera, “Lulu”. But in this version, the title character will look more like a leggy Jean Harlowe-style siren than Brooks’ petite vixen.

Two San Francisco exhibitions that feature Brooks will be displayed at What’s for Dessert, a cafe and bakery on Church Street. Starting today and running through the month, “Stars of the Silent Screen” will include movie memorabilia, portraits, film stills and other vintage material designed to promote early screen stars including Brooks and Rudolph Valentino.  Starting May 31, a “Homage to Lulu” exhibition will display literary, cinematic and musical evocations of the Lulu archetype, from Frank Wedekind’s turn-of-the-century expressionist plays through Berg’s opera.

What is it about Brooks that stirs such passion and nearly fanatical devotion?

“She’s an amazing screen presence, and she was incredibly beautiful, but it’s really the extra-cinematic qualities about her that stir devotion”, said Thomas Gladysz, a Brooks fan who has put together the exhibitions. “She was amazingly intelligent, has quite a compelling life story, and later wrote very witty, intelligent essays on film. Plus, she had a smashing haircut”.

Brooks’ compelling life story started in 1906 in Cherryvale, Kan., then moved rapidly to New York, where at age 15 she joined the renowned, arty Denishawn Dance Company that included a young Martha Graham. But by age 18, Brooks’ infamous reputation for hauteur and temper prompted Denishawn director Ruth St. Denis to expel her from the troupe. In the next year, she danced with the George White Scandals, joined the Ziegfeld Follies, had an affair with Chaplin and signed a five-year contract with Paramount.

Later, Brooks would say: “I learned how to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned how to dance by watching Charles Chaplin act”.

Films with Paramount included “The American Venus”, “A Girl in Every Port” and “Beggars of Life”.  But when B.P. Schulberg denied her a raise in 1928, Brooks quit Paramount. Later that year, she rejected $10,000 offered by the studio to dub a movie she had just finished as a silent, “Canary Murder Case”.  Meanwhile, she had gone to Germany, where she starred as Lulu in G.W. Pabst’s “Pandora’s Box”.  She went on to star in Pabst’s “Diary of a Lost Girl” and “Prix de Beaute” directed in France by expatriate Italian Augusto Genina.

While the European films are perhaps her most enduring, snubbing Paramount cost her the chance to equal them in Hollywood.

“The studios were using the impending arrival of sound as an excuse to bust contracts, and her outrage was totally justified,” said biographer Paris. “Every single other Hollywood star agreed to it, but Louise Brooks didn’t. She was so far ahead of her time in terms of taking control of her life.”

Paris adds that while Brooks was beautiful, brilliant and original, she also exhibited a shadowy side. “She was also by far the most self-destructive, difficult, bitchy, obnoxious and belligerent character to hit Hollywood,” he said.

Elaina Archer, co-producer of the TCM documentary, attributes the promiscuous Brooks’ difficult personality to her intelligence and, in part, to her having been molested at age 9 by a neighbor.

“I think that event led her to want to control her own identity, and because of it, I think she didn’t like to be controlled by men,” she said, “She wanted to be in control, and what better way to do it than with sex?”

After Brooks returned to Hollywood in 1930, she landed a series of small roles in films, including “It Pays to Advertise” with Carole Lombard in 1930, “When You’re in Love” with Cary Grant in 1937 and her last film, “Overland Stage Raiders” with John Wayne in 1938, just before Wayne became a star in “Stagecoach”.

When major film roles failed to materialize, she tried to run a dance studio in Wichita, Kan., failed and returned to Manhattan. There she did radio work, gathered gossip items for Walter Winchell and had a short-term stint as a sales clerk at Saks.

“She probably would have died alone, incoherent and forgotten, if not for James Card, the legendary film curator of Eastman House who made her move to Rochester and write,” Paris said, “He’s the real hero of her life.”

In the 1950s, a retrospective organized by Henri Langlois in Paris re-established Brooks in Europe as an American icon, an image shored up through the 1960s and 1970s through her friendships with an array of film historians and critics including Kevin Brownlow and Kenneth Tynan.

She remains an object of fascination to this day. Her frank sexuality and her whimsically childlike quality have captured the imagination of M. Doughty, 27, lead singer and lyricist for the New York funk band Soul Coughing. In September, the group will release a paean to Brooks called “St. Louise Is Listening” on its new release, “El Oso” on Slash/Warner.

Another homage to Brooks pops up in “Lulu on the Bridge” a film starring Mira Sorvino and Harvey Keitel that will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival. In it, Sorvino plays an aspiring New York actress who captures the role of a Brooks-style Lulu in a contemporary remake of “Pandora’s Box” Keitel plays her lover, an ill-tempered jazz musician.

Shirley MacLaine, who hosts the TCM documentary, for years has wanted to do a film about Brooks’ later years. She is also a member of the Louise Brooks Society, the 600-member organization headed by Gladysz, who created the “Homage to Lulu” and “Stars of the Silent Screen” exhibitions in San Francisco. Gladysz also maintains a massive Web site at Pandora’s Box that features photographs, articles, information about silent films and the jazz age, and links to a range of Brooks-related sites, including one for bob-haircut worshippers.

Hugh Munro Neely, director of “Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu” credits Gladysz’s site with helping to sell the idea for the documentary to Turner executives. It includes interviews with Brooks’ friends such as actor-film scholar Roddy McDowell, actress Dana Delaney and Frances Lederer, who co-starred with Brooks in “Pandora’s Box”.

“When we originally put together a proposal, (what) we discovered was that Louise was one of the most popular silent film stars on the Internet and that there were a number of sites dedicated to her,” Neely said “The hub of all that activity is Thomas Gladysz’s site.”

Tom Karsch, senior vice president and general manager for TCM, said that he immediately went online to learn more about Brooks after Neely and the film’s producer, Elaina Archer, brought the project to him.

“In this case, Web sites such as the Louise Brooks Society and several others helped confirm our decision to go ahead with producing the documentary after we got the pitch,” he said.

But documentary producer Archer credits the making of the film to the allure of Brooks herself.

“Most of all it was her natural way of performing in front of the camera,” she said.

Anita Monga, director of programming for the Castro Theatre, said interest in Brooks is so infectious because of the actress’ rare, special charisma.

“She’s a combination of vixen and innocent, and her life force comes through on the screen,” Monga said, “She’s also really intelligent, and it’s obvious. Sexy and intelligent. You can’t beat that.”

* * * * *

PANDORA’S BOX: CRITERION COLLECTION
Reviewed by Judge Brett Cullum, DVD Verdict

The Charge

“I learned how to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned how to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act.”—Louise Brooks

Opening Statement

In 1929 Louise Brooks fled Hollywood’s Paramount studios and headed to Berlin to work under G.W. Pabst in Pandora’s Box. Everyone told her it was career suicide, but the girl with the black helmet hair found the vehicle that elevated her from everyone’s favorite flapper to immortal screen legend. The film stands out even today as a daringly dark, psychosexual journey which features incestuous love triangles, murder, prostitution, lesbians, and even Jack the Ripper bedding the heroine. Pandora’s Box is a decadent classic that The Criterion Collection has thankfully named its 358th title worthy of the best treatment DVD can muster.

Facts of the Case

It’s all about a girl named Lulu who nobody can resist. She’s a dancer who seduces everyone to get exactly what she wants. Trouble is, Lulu shakes society to its core by using sex as a weapon, and the consequences are terrible. Like the mythical figure alluded to in the title, the girl seems to unleash hell anytime someone falls for her. A father and son are ruined, show business moguls topple over in disgrace, her first husband finds himself shot, and his son flees the country as a chronic gambler. Ultimately Lulu herself attempts a fatal trick with an infamous serial killer on Christmas Eve.

The Evidence

There has never been a role that defined an actress so much as Lulu did for Louise Brooks. The story came from a series of famous German plays, and director Pabst was severely chastised for casting an American in the lead role for his film adaptation. He protested that even a German actress such as Marlene Dietrich couldn’t pull the character off like Louise Brooks, and the end result proves him right. Pandora’s Box is an ensemble piece, but you’ll walk away with one indelible image—Louise Brooks as Lulu. She’s a revelation in the role, and she introduced a realistic acting approach to cinema that revolutionized cinema. Even though the film was silent, Brooks scrapped the melodramatic techniques of her peers in favor of playing everything for honesty and truth. Instead of conveying one emotion at a time, Lulu became a portrait of mixed feelings so complex you swear you hear her voice as you watch.

Pandora’s Box is wonderfully designed and technically a flawless picture of the era. Pabst’s camera techniques and skill easily put him up there with German contemporaries such as Lang, Wiene, and Murnau. Yet in contrast to those expressionistic visionaries, Pabst gives us a heady romantic tale firmly set in a tangibly real world with classic elements. He was a master of working with actors to tone things down when needed, but allowing the chaos to explode when he wanted it to. A control freak to the core, Pabst manipulated his sets to insure he got exactly what he wanted. He made sure Fritz Kortner used no restraint when manhandling Brooks during their confrontations in the film, and even destroyed a favorite dress of the actress to make her feel violated and defiled in the final sequence. Pandora’s Box captures Weimar era Germany perfectly complete with sexually forward touches: including a father and son love triangle, and the introduction of the screen’s first lesbian Countess Geschwitz (in American pronounced awfully close to “gay switch"). The film was mercilessly censored by the American film board, which didn’t even allow these relationships be revealed, and changed the ending entirely to omit the serial killer. By 1929 standards this was a shocking piece that was contemptible and reviled by censors worldwide.

If there is one DVD company that can deliver Pandora’s Box in a complete, gorgeous package, it’s The Criterion Collection. Collectors will be happy to know the film has never looked better, and even more astonishing is how robust the sound is. The picture has been digitally polished, and even though inevitable blemishes remain the result is awe-inspiring. The release looks fresher than it ever has, and the transfer is as near perfection as we can expect from the source. There are four different musical scores to chose from including two orchestral treatments, a cabaret style, and improvised piano. The first orchestral traditional score can be played in either full surround or stereo, and the others are offered in two speaker modes. Each track changes your experience of the silent film, and it’s pure genius to allow the viewer the option of several to fit the mood.

Extras are contained mainly on a second disc, and include several documentaries and a still gallery. First up is a 1998 biography of Brooks produced by Turner Classic Movie network called Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu. It’s a very good sketch of the actress’s entire life narrated by Shirley McLaine. Next up a forty-eight minute interview with Brooks herself filmed in 1971 conducted by Richard Leacock named Lulu in Berlin. We also get a 2006 interview with Pabst’s son, and an extensive still gallery. On the feature film disc is an essential commentary provided by film scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Mary Ann Doane. They avoid the typical dry scholar analysis by engaging and debating each other throughout the film. Also included is a book of photos and essays on the film.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Even though Pandora’s Box contains sexy, sadistic scenes, it’s still a silent film from 1929. The pace set at the 133 minute running time is not fast-paced by any stretch of the imagination, and modern viewers may have their patience tested. Certainly the rewards are great for those who can slog through the first half hour, because soon you forget its a silent film. It still feels drawn out, and eight acts seems a few too many to convey the story with any sort of economy. Sit back and soak up the sumptuous visuals when things get slow, because they never stay that way long.

Closing Statement

This is how DVD is done for classical films, and you couldn’t ask for more from the people who produced this package. Pandora’s Box is a masterpiece of German silent cinema, and the lasting legacy of American actress Louise Brooks. You’re not a true cinema fan until you’ve watched this title, and here’s the edition to seek out. The transfer has never looked better, and the extras impart why the film is such an important entry into film history. And any chance to revisit one of the silver screen’s sexiest sirens is a must-own in my book.

The Verdict

Pandora’s Box is guilty of being sleek, sexy, and silent.

Scales of Justice

Video: 95
Audio: 100
Extras: 100
Acting: 98
Story: 95
Judgment:  98

* * * * *
Opening up Pandora’s Box
Paul McGann on Louise Brooks’ silent beauty
The Guardian (2007)

Louise Brooks is unique and immortal. Her face can still command a magazine cover, the breathtaking beauty and the enigma are always instant and contemporary. She never dates or ages. To see her in Pandora’s Box is like watching a modern, living actor who had somehow moved into a silent film set. And at the same time she brings home how rich the silent cinema was and how much it can still offer. She is the model and the despair of actors. She simply IS her character. What actor does not dream of that?

How did this 22-year-old from Cherryvale, Kansas, end up playing the most iconic role of German theatre in one of the classic films of German silent cinema? She had begun her career as a teenage dancer with the avant-garde Denishawn Company, and progressed to the Ziegfeld Follies. At 20, she was in Hollywood. Her bobbed hair and her looks did not make a huge hit with audiences; but the German director Georg Wilhelm Pabst had taken notice. By 1928 Pabst had spent two years on an obsessive search for an actress to play Lulu. Rather like the casting, a decade later, of Scarlett O’Hara, startled women were approached in railway stations and on street corners by Pabst’s assistants, and carried off to be auditioned. Some possessed the look but couldn’t act, others might have great skill but the wrong physical attributes. Hundreds were tested, all were turned down.

Looking for a Lulu became a German national concern. Frank Wedekind’s erotic heroine was one of the great figures of the nation’s literature. Driven by curiosity and free of moral constraint, she can express herself only through pleasure. More a concept than a character, Lulu was a poetical German figure, perhaps even an element of the nation’s psyche. Ambivalent about the prevailing expressionist tendency in German cinema, Pabst sought to combine Wedekind’s two Lulu plays, Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, modifying their grand guignol excesses. Pabst was developing a new cinematic style and wanted this Lulu to be “real”. More real than anything else - for Pabst and for cinema - was her visual image.

Pabst had spotted Brooks’ breathtaking beauty and defiant sexuality in Howard Hawks’ 1928 A Girl in Every Port. He’d asked for her at once, but she was under contract to Paramount. As the legend goes, at the very moment Brooks was refusing to sign a new contract in Hollywood, in Berlin the young Marlene Dietrich was about to be offered the lead in Pandora’s Box. Instead Brooks, suddenly free, was given the role after all. Brooks walked away from Hollywood and into immortality.

Seeing Pandora’s Box now, it is strange to think of the panning it got on its release. It represents the peak of silent-era cinema and is one of the most adult pictures ever made. Only when we learn how much its look at lasciviousness, pimping and prostitution - not to mention the first outright lesbian character in cinema - turned censors into butchers, do we begin to understand. Most critics were only able to review mutilated versions. The failure of the film was assured with the arrival of the talkies.

Pabst would get over the disappointment. His reputation was solid and in the decades that followed he’d make successful pictures. He and Brooks were to have a better press with their next collaboration, Diary of a Lost Girl. Brooks went on to Paris to create another unforgettable tragic portrait in Augusto Genina’s Prix de Beauté. But after that, at 24, the game was up. She returned to Hollywood, which gave her derisory roles in films that were instantly forgotten. Whatever it was she wanted, it couldn’t have been movie stardom. She married. She vanished. In the 1960s she re-emerged as a writer of vivid style, and the shrewdest commentator on the inside history of Hollywood. It was at this time that the extraordinary creation of Brooks and Pabst began to be rediscovered.

· Pandora’s Box, with the world premiere of a live Paul Lewis score, screens on September 15 at Colston Hall, Bristol

* * * * *

DIARY OF A LOST GIRL

* * * * *

Prix de Beauté (aka Miss Europe)

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Monday, September 24, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Twelve

The Strange World of Women’s Private Time
Interview by Jon, PingMag (August 2006)

Tucked away in a quiet, Aoyama backstreet is Space Yui, a charming little event space that is currently host to an unusual exhibition by illustrator Makiko Sugawa. Entitled “Women’s Private Time”, this collection of 50 line drawings depicts women in a variety of positions and situations - from the erotic to the bizarre. PingMag had the chance to ask Makiko some quick questions about her illustrations.

An Osaka resident, “Women’s Private Time” is Makiko’s first exhibition in Tokyo.

“Lace Queen” is a play on words - “Race Queen” is the Japanese word for a bikini-clad female racing car model.

PingMag: In your illustrations, more so than facial features or body detail, my eyes are drawn to the clothes. They are so detailed and fashionable - do you have any aspirations in fashion design?

Makiko: I love to draw them but sadly I have absolutely no skills in making clothes! Illustration allows me to experiment - as you can see with all the lace detailing and beadwork. I think yes, it might be fun to prototype clothes on paper for a fashion house.

I think Agent Provocateur should give you a call…

Other than lacy lingerie, some illustrations featured archetypal “erotic” costumes, such as the above nurse.

This exhibition focuses on what you call “Women’s Private Time” - I wonder, would you ever consider doing something similar with men as the focus?

Haha no! I’ve only tried to draw men a few times - I’m just no good at it! But also, I find it so much more interesting to draw women - there’s a real sensuality, a sense of drama; lots of underlying emotions and themes that make it much more satisfying, to me.

The illustrations with the small animal characters are among Makiko’s latest (and currently favourite) work.

A series of 6 illustrations in this exhibition features a sexy, female form - with a false leg or even an amputated leg. How do you think audiences react to this?

Naturally I expect it to have some kind of impact. I think it creates an interesting contrast - we have this erotic female form dressed in lingerie, with a rather mechanical looking leg. I wonder if it’s then possible for the audience to attach a sense of beauty to something that is mechanical, artificial?

Something like sexiness by osmosis…

Yes. Also, I wanted to see if such a style could even be considered fashionable in its own right.

Beautifully detailed lacework on the girls’ underwear

The Good Girl’s Guide To Bad Girl Sex

Makiko’s illustration work can also be seen in the Japanese translation of The Good Girl’s Guide To Bad Girl Sex, shown above.

“Women’s Private Time” illustrations and information can be seen here.

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Eleven

An interview about Sense & Sensuality
Written by Uleshka, PingMag

On a night out in London in 2000 I met two giggling women around Hoxton Square ringing a door-bell to get into a shop. Curious by nature I simply decided to follow them - and found myself in an erotic empire for women only. I felt pretty misplaced and embarrassed when one of the staff held a vibrator to my nose explaining that this was the way to test its strength….

Now years have passed and the whole erotic market has really opened up for women. Sex and the City did tremendous changes to a general awareness of sex-toys, brands like Coco de Mer offer “tools for bedroom art”, Myla invited big name creators like Tom Dixon or Marc Newson to design sex toys for them and all that seems perfectly acceptable… Does it? How much has really changed? Aren’t there still many women around feeling uncomfortable by the thought of having to enter a sex-shop, no matter if it’s called “erotic boutique” or not? Aren’t there plenty, who want to do something to enhance their sexuality, but don’t quite have the courage to start with something as full on as a Shiri Zinn piece? Or think the other way around - ever noticed men who lose their confidence watching their partner being hooked on Rabbits? How much do toys actually enhance your sex life? Isn’t there still something missing?

PingMag talked to Charles Hayes - who very recently started his own sensual well-being brand Sense & Sensuality in London - about the misconceptions in the industry and how his products actually get you talking - enjoying a healthier, relaxed and fun relationship. Read on!

Charles, when and why did you decide to set up a business for a sensual well-being range of massage oils, lubricants and accessories?

Some research I had been doing for my masters degree pointed to major shifts of interest in wellbeing (health plus emotional & aesthetic context) moving away from the clinical and medical to the more holistic and pampering. Sex was clearly one area that had been overlooked in these holistic regimens, yet 40% of British women experience sexual dysfunction. It’s a buried issue that has a massive impact on people’s lives. I focused my MA degree show at Central St. Martins College of Art & Design on creating a future sex retail environment that solved the problems of accessibility, comfort, information and luxury.

How do you interpret “luxury” then? We will get to the accessibility later…

For S&S it’s about the luxury of having a great sex life, no matter who you are or what your interest is. It’s about knowing that the products you buy from S&S are of the best quality, actually good for you and fun at the same time. The days of healthy AND indulgent being opposites are over. People want to indulge and excite and not feel guilty and unhealthy for it.

What kind of “users” are you aiming at then?

35-50 year old women AND their partners. I feel that the by women, for women- movement has passed, and it’s time for men and women to be on equal footing, have real conversations about sex and respect each others feelings and celebrate each other’s differences.

What do you think happens to an insecure man in a questionably stable relationship when he passes in front of an Ann Summers in London and sees a poster called the “Evolution of Man” and the last rung on the stairs is a rabbit vibrator? Do heterosexual women really want to project an image of vibrators replacing their partners? That causes more problems in the bedroom than the vibrator is worth!

Hm! I get your point! Seems like there is some conversation missing, but what actually gets you talking? Bringing home a sex toy might be a pretty forced on way to break the ice…

I believe if you’re really going to help the majority of people, you’ve got to start the conversation earlier than introducing a toy. Most sex psychotherapists will tell you that fixing a sexual problem and or exploring a new sensual fantasy starts with communication.

Things like massage oils are “safer” ways to start the physical communication that can over time lead to more adventurous explorations such as toys. However, certainly toys are a terrific way of helping women discover their own bodies and can be completely appropriate in the right context.

How do you think massage oils can improve your sexual health and pleasure? How do you get over embarrassing conversations and move on just with that?

You’ll have to read a great interview on the S&S website with a sex psychotherapist that explains the importance of techniques such as sensate focus and physical communication in sexual relationships. Something as simple as a massage oil can introduce an entirely new physical language into a relationship, revealing new discoveries about a lover’s body while at the same time creating a context for relaxation, comfort and contact.

In what way do you think differs pleasure design for women to sex toys for men?

I conducted some research with a group of women this past february. When I asked them what comes to mind when I say “sensual wellbeing”, they answered: touch, smell, warmth, confidence… When I asked them what comes to mind when I say “sexual health” they said: men, disease, divorce!

The male sex shop is a very physical experience. By that I mean it’s all about the act, about revealing, about cutting to the chase. Which - by the way - I believe a lot of men are also tired of. Don’t even get me started on the whole issue of male sensuality! Rest assured that S&S will be addressing this in future collections…

The female take on it is about foreplay, teasing, narrative, concealing… Unfortunately, most of the retail environments for women have slipped into perpetuating female sexual stereotypes rather than promoting respect and communication between couples…

Overall you sound very much like an educator in this field. What products or programs do you actually offer to people then?

This industry is full of misinformation, taboos, and urban myth. Working with sex psychotherapists has been critical in helping me understand how to approach this subject with people and also give them the tools and “permission” to solve their problems and answer their questions.

I will be featuring a series of articles on various experts from sex psychotherapists to medical doctors to aromtherapists to researchers to tantra gurus in an effort to help people find something of interest to them. At the same time, I will be hosting a series of exclusive sexpert events in London which will also educate and inform.

So for the time being - your natural products and accessories are a help to get you started. Still when getting further, what would a good sex toy be in your opinion then?

I think sex toys are starting to experience the same problem as handheld devices, people tend to try and integrate as many functions as possible, known as convergence, when really a couple of really simple and high quality objects in the right contexts does a much better job.

I believe that the toy must be functional and aesthetic. It needs to be designed with a user in mind, grounded in some serious medical, ergonomic and ethnographic research! LELO are the ones doing it right!

Tapered at one end, rounded at another, the toy is small enough to sit comfortably in the palm of your hand. It’s “an everyday sensual massager. comes included with gift box, charger, introduction manual, a satin carry pouch

Visually, LELO draws its inspiration from a mix of elements, the main being; the natural curves of the female body, abstract sculptural shapes, contemporary fashion, ergonomics and the ever present question: how to invoke in an inanimate object the essence of sexy and sensual allure?

When you look at product placement, I find it quite amazing to see that a couple of years ago condoms were in the most hidden corner of my local drugstore, then they moved to a more open space an extended their product range and now they are even placed at the very best spot along with lubricants, massage tools and traditional condom companies such as Durex collaborated with people like Seymour Powell and bridge over to sex toys with their Play series products. I find that quite an amazing development!

Exactly! It is a leap forward in my opinion to move these products into a visible and ‘normalized’ context. However, many people still associate purchasing a lubricant or oil from a drugstore as a medical or clinical experience. That is where I see my products coming in.

So where will you place your products, then?

I don’t want to sell in low-end drugstores or sex shops at all. My products should be visible in the health & beauty section of selected department stores and boutiques and should be a first step to try out something new with your partner. A woman might never enter a seedy looking sex shop in her life, but when she sees sensual health care products in a bright and trustworthy environment, this could actually help her to jump over a few barriers and make a first change.

What is in demand now? What has been missing so far?

Burlesque has been hot for a good 3 years now, don’t know if it will be for another 3. What’s missing? Things that actually impact people’s sexual satisfaction! Healthy products that are fun and sexy, that don’t embarrass people, that actually work and serve a purpose, and that say it’s ok to be who you are!

If people want to explore their sensuality, they should be able to do it in a way that doesn’t harm them. (toxins, parabens, chemical leaks) They have these options for organic food and natural cosmetics, why not for sensual goods?

Thanks a lot, Charles!

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Friday, September 21, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Ten

Here’s To You, Mrs. Robinson
By Norine Dworkin-McDaniel, Special to LifeScript

Gossip columns had a field day when Katie Couric, 50, started stepping out with a new 32-year-old boyfriend. Tongues initially wagged when Halle Berry, 40, seemed to find happiness with her 31-year-old model beau, Gabriel Aubry. While celebrity romances are always news, what catches many people’s attention about these matches are the age differences. Meanwhile, men like Donald Trump have splashed around in younger dating pools for years and no one bats an eye. Are the tables turning at last? Absolutely…

“We’ve radically changed our vision of women at forty, fifty, sixty, but there’s still a sense that wouldn’t you rather have a thirty-year-old?” says sexologist Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D., author of Prime: Adventures and Advice on Sex, Love and the Sensual Years (Collins, 2007). “We don’t get it because we generally don’t think men are capable of loving women for deeper reasons than their beautiful, young bodies. It’s not very respectful of men to think they can’t, but the fact is most men are looking for a younger woman, so the stereotype is based on a lot of data.”

Of course, the stereotype cuts both ways. There’s an equally ingrained expectation that women will “marry up” in terms of age, status, identity, and financial security. But as women have found their own status and financial security, the dating landscape has started to shift. Not so long ago, dating a younger man was seen as strange and pathetic; now it’s hardly extraordinary.

Celebrity Trend-Setters
“It’s taken off so hugely because of the celebrities,” notes Toronto relationship expert Valerie Gibson, author of Cougar: A Guide For Older Women Dating Younger Men (Firefly Books, 2002). Among the ranks of celebrity women with younger men are Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, Madonna and Guy Ritchie, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, Julianne Moore and Bart Freundlich, and Geena Davis and her husband, Dr. Reza Jarrahy.

“It does help that Katie Couric is dating someone seventeen years younger, and that Demi Moore married Ashton Kutcher,” Gibson says. “It gives legitimacy to it in the eyes of North American people.

“The reason they [celebrities] are with younger men is a) it’s becoming acceptable and b) women are so fantastic these days,” Gibson adds. “We’ve been indoctrinated throughout history that at a certain age we’re just finished, we’re not desirable or sexy – which is absolute rubbish.”

Rubbish indeed. Older women have never looked better. Of course, there have always been women who were sexy at any age – Sophia Loren and Catherine Deneuve, for instance. But with the general youthification of culture (40 is the new 30 and so on), we’ve learned how to age sensually and take better care of ourselves: power workouts, healthy eating, skin treatments, and anti-aging lotions. And, of course, there are cosmetic surgeries that can nip, tuck, lift, and smooth the years away.

We’re seeing an “enormous social shift,” Gibson says. As proof, she cites the popularity of events like the Cougar Cruise on Lake Ontario, which she organized for years when she was the Toronto Sun’s sex and relationship columnist. “We were swamped with younger men. They lined up five deep,” she recalls. Then there’s UrbanCougar.com, a site that gleefully chronicles the exploits of cougars and their “cubs.”

“Women are more secure with their sexuality and their power, and men aren’t feeling so constrained by expectations about the kind of woman they should couple with,” says Branford, Connecticut sex therapist P. Michele Sugg. “It takes a lot of security on both sides to be comfortable with this type of relationship. You have to be the kind of person who’s willing to say, ‘I don’t care what people think. I’m just going to enjoy the relationship.’”

“Older women who date younger men are often very independent, very confident,” Gibson says. “And they’ve also found what men have found – that having control of your own money and your business life gives you enormous freedom to choose and act as you wish.”

Pop Culture Weighs In
Women also now have some admirable icons to replace negative, pop culture stereotypes from movies like The Graduate and Harold & Maude, not to mention the plays of Tennessee Williams. Goodbye, Mrs. Robinson. Hello, Sex and the City’s Samantha, the uber-cougar who bedded gorgeous young guys without ridicule, guilt or retribution.

Then there’s this summer’s hot TV series Age of Love, a Bachelor-like dating show that pitted women age 39-48 against 20-somethings in a competition for the affections of an Australian tennis star. Another TV series, Saving Grace, also recently made its debut, featuring Holly Hunter as a sheriff with a taste for younger guys. And coming soon is The Cougar Club, starring Faye Dunaway, a movie about college grads who discover the charms of older women.

The fact that 40-plus women are presented as desirable, plausible options is certainly telling.

Wouldn’t You Like to Be a Cougar, Too?
Gibson didn’t coin the term cougar, but she takes some credit for putting a new spin on it when she took it as the title for her 1992 book. Once a slur for a boozy woman lurching after younger guys in dive bars, Gibson turned it into a compliment.

“I thought, what a fabulous symbol,” she says. “It’s a beautiful creature, so sleek and gorgeous and in control. It’s got a lot of power and strength.”

By strict definition, cougars are women in their late-30s to 60s on the prowl for exciting, sexually charged – albeit short-term – relationships. But these days, Gibson says, it could apply to any woman who’s involved with a younger man, whether it’s for short-term fun or long-term commitment. After all, Demi Moore married Ashton Kutcher.

“I’ve had 34- and 35-year-old women tell me they’re cougars,” Gibson says. “One woman was even 28, dating a 22-year-old. I said, ‘Okay… if you want to be a cougar, you can choose to be.’”

And why not? For the women, there’s the thrill of being the alpha female, the one in the driver’s seat. Plus, being with a guy whose erection isn’t dependent on a little blue pill – and whose recovery time is measured in hours, not days – has charms all its own.

But perhaps most important, it puts a lot more fish in the proverbial sea. The fact is, when single women reach a certain age, the dating pool shrinks dramatically because so many men their age and older are married, gay or dating sweet young things themselves. Dating younger guys gives women new waters to chart.

Better yet, it can be refreshing to date someone who grew up in a different generation. Younger men “are not caught in the role constraints that older men tend to feel caught in,” Sugg says. “They don’t have the shoulds about relationships that older guys have.”

That said, age-gap relationships come with some unique features, so before you cast your lures, keep these dos and don’ts in mind:

DON’T dwell on the age gap. See it as a plus, not a pitfall, Gibson advises. “There’s this sharing of information that you get when you’re with younger people that keeps you up to date.” For instance, one of her husbands exposed her to rave music. “I hated it, but at least I knew what it was,” she says.

Regardless of whether you see it as a pitfall or a plus, “you’ve got to get over the fact that he’s younger, and he’s got to get over the fact that you’re older,” Schwartz warns. “This should disappear pretty quickly. If it’s a playful thing between you, no problem. But if he’s calculating how soon you’re going to die, that’s not going to work.”

DON’T obsess about your body. Women of all ages worry that their bodies aren’t up to snuff. But it can be even more worrisome if you feel like you’re competing in the beauty Olympics with women who are 10-15 years younger. Keep this in mind: “When you get into bed with a younger man, the last thing he remembers is whether your breasts drooped or you had cellulite,” Gibson says. “What he does remember is that he had the best sex ever.”

When Gibson was with the Toronto Sun, she asked readers to send in pictures and stories about their “May-December” relationships. “Far from looking like Demi Moore, the women were overweight, average, everyday women you’d see at the mall,” she recalls. “But what the men saw in the women is something else. It’s vitality. They make them laugh. They’re wonderful in bed. It has nothing to do with looks. They have other skills, other assets that obviously appeal.”

DO talk about babies. Maybe you don’t want children. Or you want children but need to have them right away. Or you’ve had children, but don’t want more. Whatever your situation, make sure you’re both on the same page. “You don’t want to put your heart out there and then find out they want a deal you can’t make,” Schwartz says.

This was a front-burner issue for Debra D’Avignon and Shane Schimpf, a Seattle couple who’ve been together for 10 years. D’Avignon is nearly 50; Schimpf is 40 – together they have one son. “It would have been nice to take some fabulous vacations and get to know each other better before adding a little one to the mix,” D’Avignon says. But because of age and a ticking biological clock, “we had to start our family earlier,” she says.

However, that too was a compromise because D’Avignon knows her husband wanted a larger family. “I told him, ‘If two kids is really important to you, then you can’t marry me.’ That could have been a deal-breaker.”

DO think about the money. The classic assumption is that a young guy is only after an older woman’s money. Of course, it’s not always true, but if you’re at the top of your game and he’s just starting out, chances are your wallet is bigger than his. Picking up the tab doesn’t make you a sugar mama, but you ought to think about how shouldering the lion’s share of financial responsibility sits with you.

“If you’re okay with paying, that’s one thing,” Sugg says. “But if you’re feeling used, then there’s something to figure out with your partner. Maybe it means you’re relegated to pizza instead of fancy steak dinners, but at least it’s leveling the playing field so you don’t feel uncomfortable.”

DO think about your social circle. In the beginning you may be wrapped up in each other. But if your relationship has legs, eventually you’re going to want to mix and mingle. And according to Schwartz, one of the toughest parts of an age-gap relationship is figuring out whom to spend time with socially. “You have to find a mixture of people so you don’t always feel out of water,” she says.

DO develop a thick skin. Inevitably, you’ll run into insensitive and cruel people who will make snide comments about boy toys or even assume that your date is your son.

The more secure you are, the less embarrassed you’ll feel. If you want to turn the tables and put the person who made the comment on the spot, Schwartz suggests asking, “What makes you think this is my son?” Or wink and say, “I’d be put in jail if this was my son.” Schwartz’s advice? Saying “something confident, sexy and unflummoxed is the best way.”

Could You Be A Cougar?
NBC’s Bachelor-like dating show, Age of Love, features older women competing against younger women for the attentions of a 30-year-old Australian tennis star. Does dating young guys make you feel like you’ve got it goin’ on… or like you’re robbing the cradle? Take our cougar quiz and find out!

* * * * *

At first take Cougar: A Guide For Older Women Dating Younger Men seems frivolous and perhaps even sexist. Do we, in this enlightened age, even need to spend time thinking about such things? Haven’t we passed the era when an older woman with a younger man will attract shocked comments and glances? According to Valerie Gibson, the relationships columnist for The Toronto Sun, and a self-acknowledged pioneer cougar, we have not.

Gibson feels that, beyond the fun of Cougar, her book is about empowering women of a certain age to keep reaching for the brass ring and that reaching 35—or 45, 55, 65 or more—doesn’t mean you should give up your sexuality, your vibrancy or your ability to have fun. Though “empowerment,” Gibson insists, is not the right word. “That sounds almost as though it’s some kind of crushing thing, which it isn’t. It’s about doing something in life, even if people condemn you for it or are against it. But if you feel it’s right for you, you should do it.”

Gibson could be the poster girl for her book. At 62, and with five marriages behind her, The Toronto Sun’s relationship columnist exudes a frank and friendly sexuality that she is, if anything, quite proud of. “I’m a pioneer cougar, really,” she laughs. “Because I’m quite a bit older than that age group. I tend to say I’m an older cougar teaching younger cougars the tricks.”

Linda Richards: When I saw the title of your book I laughed and I thought it was fun, but the term “cougar” hasn’t always been meant in such flattering terms.

Valerie Gibson: In the old days they weren’t known as cougars and [were] never nicely known. People were very condemning. That woman, people would say. Or: scarlet woman. Slut.

There’s certainly a lengthy history for cougarism.

Well, for older women having relationships with younger men, oh yes. It goes back in history. But it was hidden. Always, always hidden. Never came out, if that’s the word, for someone to say: Yes, I’m having a relationship with a younger man and I want everyone to know. No one would do that. No woman. Because of the severe condemnation. Now a man, absolutely. [Laughs] Put it up in lights: I’m dating 20 years younger, aren’t I clever and everybody would applaud and celebrate that. And, really, it’s exactly the same relationship. Exactly the same. Older man, younger woman and younger man, older woman. There is no difference, except one thing: babies. Procreation and so on. An older woman does not usually want children; she’s probably got a couple. Two or three maybe or whatever. Doesn’t want to do it again and may not even want marriage.

But is there still such a stigma attached?

Yes, there is. It’s nowhere near as bad. I wrote a book 10 years ago on a similar subject and you’d think I’d written something about incest. In fact there are more books out on incest—can you believe that?—than there is on this subject: older women dating younger men. I find that horrifying because this is two single people enjoying each other, enjoying an alternative relationship, as they’re known today—and yet they’re condemned for it.

This whole book is geared towards boosting older women’s self-esteem. I really get very angry that older women are sort of told that they’re not valuable. They’re not desirable. They’re not wanted. Young, young, young. Youth, youth, youth. Beauty. They haven’t got what the modern world takes in order to be valuable to society. That’s absolute crap and absolute rubbish. They are valuable and older women today go into their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s looking fantastic. And feeling good and fit. Working—some of us—work forever. [Laughs]

You know, it’s not a question that as you age you’re of less value. In my opinion you’re of more value and I try and tell women that. They have everything: they have experience, they have knowledge, sophistication, they’ve learned so much, sexual skills particularly, when it comes to younger men. These are important things and they’re misused by society [when women are] told they’re not valuable. Also they’re told that older people don’t have sex or are not supposed to have sex. I think this is, again, rubbish. Older people have sex. [Laughs] And they enjoy it [perhaps] more than younger people, because they know so much more. They’ve learned so much more: what they want, what other people want. The older they get, it doesn’t die. This is another thing older women are told: Oh, when you get to a certain age you’ll hit this and—bang!—it’s all over. I have women say to me: Oh, when I get to that age I won’t want sex anymore, will I? And I say: Excuse me, I hate to burst your bubble [Laughs] but I can tell you for sure that it goes rolling on.

Now it should be pointed out that, for men, that’s not always the case. And I guess that’s one of the arguments for younger men.

This is true. Mid-life can have health problems. You can have health problems when you’re young, too. But you can go through mid-life and have some health problems. And men have that, which was why Viagra was so well received. [Laughs] Because they don’t want to have that die on them, if you’ll pardon the expression. They don’t want to be non-sexual. And neither do women.

Most older men, if they’re single at mid-life, are dating younger. Or they’re married. And so the field of relationships narrows right down. If she finds herself single, she hasn’t got the field there. Why not look further and have further dating options in different age groups? Men have done it and do it all the time. They don’t often look in their own age group although I’ve seen that happening more. So older women are coming to the conclusion: if it works for them, it works for us. So they look younger too and say: That suits me.

I think the cougars often are much more youthful than their age group. They are very vital and very active and very sensual and they tend to have groups of friends that are younger and their minds work better with younger. I find for my age group [the men are] all too set in their ways, they’re not up-to-date, they’re not with it, you know, they’re not willing to try new things. Their attitudes are very stale and they’re often jaded by life. They may have three or four children, two ex-wives and all that and—just like the older men who turn around and see the women in that situation sometimes—we say: That’s not quite what I want. I want someone who is optimistic, full of life, got loads of stamina, very interested in sex, certainly non-jaded and looking forward to the future with optimism, which a lot of older people do not do. Cougars do. Cougars are very vital women often in careers. They may have their own companies or something: just very vital and aware and got an attitude, if you like.

Are you a cougar?

I’m a pioneer cougar, really. [Laughs] Because I’m quite a bit older than that age group. I tend to say I’m an older cougar teaching younger cougars the tricks. [Laughs] I actually pioneered—not the name or anything, I didn’t do that—but sort of the whole concept of it. I was right in there a long time ago and thought it was the greatest. I thought: Wow! All these younger men were wanting to date me—it’s the other way around, by the way. Even though this is a fun book with this idea that the women are predatory, it’s always the young men that chase the older women. The whole idea is that this book, basically, offers options to older women, I think.

Don’t you think though that, for either gender, it’s difficult to form a strong bond with someone a lot older or younger than you, because you do share life experience?

You’re talking about a generation gap. But you see whereas a lot of people see that as a detriment, I see it as a positive. I really think it’s wonderful. I love the generation gap because you get the best of both worlds. The older woman learns from the younger man a helluva lot about what’s happening in his world, which could be quite different from hers. It could be very techie, it could be music, it could be anything. But she keeps really young listening and learning from him. He sees her as an exotic world of already great experience and she’s so interesting and fascinating that he gets a whole lot from that and he deosn’t have to put up with a lot of added things young men find when they date young women. Like, of course, the first time they go to bed: Well, when are we going to pick out the china pattern? [Laughs] And: How would you like to meet my parents? They want a commitment. They want something settled. These cougars don’t. They already know where they’re at and what they want.

How old is a cougar?

Late 30s to 50s, yes. It depends very much on their style; their attitude. It’s all relative; if they’re dating younger they tend to feel that that is what they’re called. Whereas it might have started out as a bit of a derogatory term, it isn’t at all. I think the women like it: they love that kind of sleek, animal, predatory, in control of their life kind of image: I’m in control of all of this. I think they like the name now.

They are generally very well dressed, very well put together and fit. It’s a different lifestyle from the old days when they were encouraged—older women—to get to a certain point and then knit booties for their grandkids: Just disappear, please. Particularly the baby boomers are not going to disappear. They want what they want and they’re moving everything from health to attitudes to sexuality and they’re saying: Excuse me, this is me. I’m strong, independent and I’ve got my own money.

And there are strong role models now, as well. Madonna, Kim Basinger, Goldie Hawn…

Now there’s a good example. And that’s a long-term relationship: [Kurt Russell] is 15 years younger than her. My last husband—my fifth husband—was 14 years younger and it was a great relationship. I thought it was wonderful. It didn’t break up for anything to do with sexuality or my age or anything. His job took him to New York and I couldn’t go and we tried long distance. It doesn’t work. And, in fact, the relationship between an older woman and a younger man breaks up generally at her behest because she decides. She says: Look, it’s time you maybe had a family or whatever. And they say: No, no, no. Because they get terribly besotted with their older women and want to stay with them forever but there is that whole thing of babies and family and the mid-life crisis of the young man, maybe. [Laughs] Or whatever.

It always irritates me when people say: You know, she’s going to get older and saggy and… I say: Excuse me, aren’t we all aging at the same time? The young man is aging too. And that is not what this is about. Because, as you know, when you get into a relationship with someone and you adore them or the sex is fabulous or whatever it is, you’re not looking and saying: Oh, but look at the damn wrinkles! It’s not how it works. Sex doesn’t work like that. Good sex and great relationships are not anything to do with looks in the end. It may start out that way, but it’s all to do with a lot of other complex factors.

Three words: Camilla Parker Bowles.

Absolutely! There you are. And look at the whole condemnation of society on that. All right, I know about Diana and [Camilla] was the mistress and all of that, but even if it wasn’t like that, they would still condemn her because they feel she looks like the back of a bus and she’s old and why can’t he have a nice [girl] like Diana? Have many of these people stopped to think: Well how come this man has had a 27-year relationship—or more—with this woman and he’s so besotted with her? Well, she knows exactly what to do and what makes him happy. He’s not looking at her and saying: Oh God, you look like that back of a bus! [Laughs]

You see, that illustrates my point exactly. When people get into relationships, especially young men when they have great sex—or any man when he has great sex—they’re not thinking about whether or not she’s got a stretch mark, they don’t think about that. They’re just: Oh! That was great! When are we going to have it again? [Laughs] It’s an understanding of what sexuality is. Sexuality is not looks and it’s not body, it’s all a way of being. How you match up: compatibility and how much you like each other and get along. It doesn’t matter what age group you are.

Cougars often have their own money. They’re independent. They’ve got their own bank accounts, cars, condos, you name it: they’re doing OK. All of the things that, in the old days, young women married for. That you got together and pooled your resources or he had more money, well, they’ve got it. They don’t need someone for their money. So they find with young men who haven’t got a lot of money—they haven’t reached the peak of their careers yet—that some people say: He’s just after your money. And I say: Do you think these women have worked so hard and come so far just to throw it away because some guy walks in? It doesn’t work that way. She may buy him a few things, she may even consider paying for a trip or something, but they’re not that stupid.

Women aren’t stupid and that’s another part of the whole thing: women do not get less intelligent as they get older. In fact they get more intelligent—they learn more and so on. But there’s always society saying: Well, you know, she’s not acting her age, she’s looking foolish, she’s being taken for her money. I resent it bitterly because they don’t do the same to men. They don’t put down older men in the same situation. Now if a woman is, let’s say 60, and is very, very wealthy and gets a young man everyone is extremely condemning about that. They just feel it’s disgusting. I’ve had that said: That’s disgusting. Why is it disgusting? And I think: Get your head together!

But the cougar, what she offers, generally, is a lot of fun. A good time.

Does she ever lie about her age?

Oh, every woman lies about her age. [Laughs]

No!

Well, OK. Let’s say you were single and let’s say you were 41 or something. Would you immediately say: I’m 41? No, you don’t. You may lead up to it at some point. He might say: Well, you look 33. And you’d say: Well, no. I’m a little bit older than that. [Laughs]

Men, particularly of older ages, have never liked the idea of older women being in control. To be honest, this is what it’s really all about. The whole of society resents women—especially older women—who have a lot of control. That they have control of their sexual lives, particularly, is a real taboo. You’re supposed to give up and have a man take care of you or whatever. No, no, no, no: it doesn’t work like that anymore. It may have had to work like that. History is full of women having to do certain things to survive, to have a roof over their heads, to be looked after, whatever. But that doesn’t fit now. Women now know what to do to look after themselves. And they want some pleasure.

What kind of reaction have you had from readers?

Actually the reaction to the book has been younger men. Overwhelmingly younger men all want to know: Where can I meet these cougars? I want to meet a cougar! [Laughs] You’ve got to understand really that, for a lot of men, and I’m not saying young or old, their first experience—a lot of older men have told me—was with an older woman. And when you talk to an older man—if they’re not antagonistic towards you—they would say: Oh my first time was with this older woman and it was so wonderful. And they hold this as sort of a dream for all of their life: Oh, she taught me everything I know. They’ll wax lyrical! And then a lot of young men get into puberty and say: Oh, wouldn’t I love an experienced woman to teach me everything and just enjoy her. That Mrs. Robinson bit, if you like. And they dream of it. Of having this lovely, sexy woman all over them like a rash. And so it’s sort of a hidden thing, in a way, in men’s lives. But they do love that whole idea of being taken.

I think the whole concept of it is really how to deal with people or situations that are difficult. In other words, how to deal with society’s view of it and how they deal with you when you’re out there fully promoting it, I guess. One of the major things is: How to meet his mother. You might be the same age. [Laughs] very tough! I say try and avoid it.

How long have you been in Canada?

27 years now. Long time. And I still think of England as home. Just one of those things: the British are like that.

Where are you from?

Southampton in England. I’ve lived all over Europe and I ended up in the Channel Islands, just off the North coast of France, and from there came to Canada. And, boy: was that culture shock!

Did you come with a husband?

No. I came for a man. [Laughs] He was in Canada and I was there and I came over to be with him. It was a wild decision because I didn’t know him very well. However...

That was 1974?

That’s right. It seems a very long time ago.

Were you a journalist there, as well?

Oh yes. All my life I’ve been a journalist. Well, mind you I was a professional scuba diver for six years. That was second husband: number two. I was an Avon sales representative for three years. I was a swimsuit model once. These were all in between while I was moving countries. I’ve done a lot. I was an interior designer for a while. And always writing, even as a scuba diver I used to write for scuba magazines. I was the first British woman to become a professional scuba diver in the world. No, actually that’s not true. Valerie Taylor in Australia was the other one. They didn’t allow women into the whole thing [then]. And even when I went for my job as a journalist I was told they wouldn’t hire me because they didn’t hire women. It was as simple as that: Go find a profession that was more suited to women.

Where were you first hired as a journalist?

Southampton. My paper was called The Southampton Evening Echo and then was changed to The Southampton Daily Echo. And they just said: No, it’s a man’s profession. And I said: Why?

But I did get in, with a lot of persuading. The lowest of the lowest of the low, what was known as a copy boy. There were no copy girls. [Laughs] I started very low on the scale. And finally they let me write up dog shows and baby shows and funerals, you know. There was no college things in those days: you couldn’t go to college or university for journalism, you learned on the job. So it became sort of a long-term situation: you had to climb your way up.

When was that?

That would be 1956, something like that.

How old are you?

Sixty-two. And I don’t feel it, at all. I don’t even think about age. That’s why when they say: Are you a cougar? I’m kind of out of the age group, but still cougaring.

You’re now at the Toronto Sun and your beat is relationships?

Sex and relationships, yeah. It was the first newspaper column in Canada to do sex and relationships by a woman. In fact, I don’t think any paper had ever allowed anything other than Ann Landers’ advice. and I wrote very much from a personal point of view: Experience. Very honest. Used all the right names for things. Which shook up my editor-in-chief horribly at the time.

When did you start doing that?

I’m just trying to remember. Because my book came out, the old one [Younger Men: How to Find Them, Date Them, Mate Them & Marry Them] had been out for a while. I was fashion editor at The Sun for 12 years and my editor-in-chief said to me: What are you doing writing fashion? You should be writing this stuff, this is what we want. And I did. It’s been great, it’s been wonderful. Until recently there were really only three women sex columnists in the whole of North America. There was myself, one in Playboy, I believe and in Details, maybe. Now there are a few more.

Dr. Ruth…

Not the kind I do. Dr. Ruth is kind of done from a doctor’s point of view. She doesn’t write from experience, let me tell you. [Laughs] At all. And I always laugh because they really don’t know. They give good advice, they’re very good. But they really don’t know what it’s like to be out there getting involved in affairs or even being in a situation where they have to think about that or make choices in dating.

And you’ve been married five times so you know all about that.

And always loads of affairs. I got into a lot of trouble—an awful lot of trouble. I gave all my husbands all the money. [Laughs] All the houses, the cars, they could keep them and I just leave and move on. Which has not been wise and that is not the North American way! [Laughs]

Do you have any children?

Yes, I have one. She’s retarded. She’s 41. I would have liked a lot of children. But I didn’t. I must say, it’s a weird thing—and it’s really just how it works out—but I never date or have married any man with children. I guess I always thought that: You’re not great with children. It is an awful lot of problems as a lot of the letters I get are from people struggling with divorces and broken relationships where there’s children and a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and anger, bitterness and all that. Kind of sad, really. People get so angry, so bitter that they can’t see the reality or the light or be kind or anything.

I get a ton of mail. It’s very popular; the column. It’s also on the Canoe Web site so I get letters from all over the world. And once a month I do a chatroom thing on sex and relationships. But I find that sex and relationship advice [has] changed a lot. People today find they want to relate to [a columnist who is] real. They want reality. They want someone who understands what they’re going through. I mean really understands. Hasn’t read it in a chapter that says: After Divorce Emotions. Have they been through that and felt the angers themselves? Have they been approached by a young man absolutely determined to get you into bed? Have they been in a threesome at some point in their wild life? Whatever it was, have they tried it? And the answer was no: they’re doing everything from books. People today say: Well, they don’t know the stresses, the pressures and how different it is to be dating now or being out there in the relationship world. And it’s no good giving a stock answer: What you’re doing is wrong, therefore you should do this.

Dating now: is it different?

Oh yeah.

I know it’s not always true, but I’m real big on the commonalties of humans and general human experience. And our experiences seem to change a great deal, but often don’t very much at all. Historically, our emotional selves are essentially always the same, I think.

Well, relationships don’t change. The basics of relationships do not change. Humans don’t change: they want to be cherished, they want to be loved. They want a relationship that works and is happy. And they want to be together with someone. That never will change, that’s human beings. But the basics of getting there: oh heavens! Have they ever changed.

How have they changed?

Well, I think that what’s changed is that—possibly—women want more out of a relationship. They’re not prepared anymore to marry someone just to be secure or just take anybody because they’re a certain age or they’re not pretty or this or that. They have a list and they say: Why can’t I have all those good things?

The men, everybody is caught up on the movies and everything, they all want a gorgeous gal that looks like this and that even though they may not in a million years be able to do that. In other words, the expectation level has upped enormously due to indoctrination, if you like, by media in my opinion. And also the problem is they expect it to happen like that [she snaps her fingers]. This is an instant society, they want instant gratification, they meet you and say: There’s no chemistry. Chemistry may not be there then, but it may be there on the third date. It takes time. And the other thing is, a lot of it is visual: Well, she’s not my type. Or he’s not my type. But what is your type? Well, she’ll say: Mel Gibson. [Laughs] Well, hello: you’re not going to be able to date Mel Gibson. But whatever it is, they’ve got this expectation level and men are confused: What do women want? Because women can be very tough now: They have their list and their demands and if they don’t get it they’ll pretty well say: Well, I’m not going to date then, I’m not going to have a relationship. Men want certain things, but they want a relationship: a life relationship.

Then you’ve got the whole thing, well like condoms. In the old days nobody used condoms. Now there’s the etiquette of condoms: when to get them and what to do. Past sexual histories: people worry about that. There’s a lot of added things now. Added pressures onto a relationship. And, again, if it’s not perfect pretty well right away, people just give up. I [get] that all the time. They say: I’d rather not bother. I’d rather be with myself and my cat. [Laughs] And how sad that is. Everybody needs somebody. And ... sometimes it’s the most unlikely person that is the perfect person for you.

One could argue that, five marriages in, you would seem to be an unlikely advocate for relationships.

Oh yes, because I’ve had a lot of them. [Laughs] But yes, some people say to me: Well, what would you know about marriage because you hop in and out of them? And I say: I know an awful lot about marriage because I’ve been in so many of them. And I know a lot about people and relationships because I went out there and did it. Which would you rather have: someone who’d been married to one person for 50 years having never ever dated telling you how to go about your dating life or whatever?

Yeah: My life’s been pretty wild. [Laughs] Very enjoyable in many ways. And very tough. I’ve had a very tough life as well. I’ve learned a lot from it and I intend to give compassionate advice based on the knowledge that I remember when I did this and it went wrong. And you could try this: It might go wrong, but I know what it’s like. I really do know what it’s like.

But marriage: I guess I’m not good at it. I’m a bad wife. I’m a rotten wife.

Actually it does sound like it, I must say.

But I tend to love rather passionately. I get very passionate about things and maybe it burns down. Or what happens, like in a lot of relationships, I grow into something else and I move into a different era but they don’t. When I look back on my five husbands—or four [of the five] anyway, for sure—they’re all still in the same spot I left them in. Whereas I’ve long [since] moved on into at least three more careers or whatever. I’m always developing: not necessarily growing, but developing into something else and trying something else. And that is, I think, one of the things about older women and younger men: It’s not just older women. It’s vital older women. Older women who are full of life are the ones that attract younger men. They’re intelligent and they really have that essence of vitality about them. And I think that’s what it is that draws. It doesn’t just draw younger men. I mean, I get asked out on dates by older men, mid-life men and really older men.

I’m sure some of our readers would want to know: Where are you meeting all these guys?

I get asked that all the time, but I never have a problem. Mainly because I like men. I really like men. I mean, I married five of them. And I think, going back to what you said about dating, I think that is a problem these days. I’m not sure that a lot of young women really like men. They want something from men: they have a list. They want a home or they want a family or they want some money or they want a lifestyle. The thing is, I like being with them. I love them. I love being with men. I love their conversation and I love their little macho ways and I just love all that. I just enjoy them.

Today, I think, [young] women don’t like men: they like their girlfriends better. They’d rather be with their girlfriends. It’s easier, it’s not so stressful, they don’t have to be this, that or the other. They can say anything they want, they don’t have to play games. And men and relationships—or getting relationships—is a lot of work. It always has been: it’s never been any different.

Do your attitudes strain your relationships with other women?

No, not at all. Funnily enough, and I don’t know why it is, but I have as many women friends and fans as I do men, because I like women too. My last boyfriend used to ponder that and say: Women like you. And he’d be surprised: They shouldn’t because you like men too much, you go out there spouting this, that and the other. But I get along really well with women. I like women. I think that’s it, isn’t it? It’s really that communication. I can spend an evening with a man I have no intention of dating and this is something young women haven’t learned. That you can [spend time] with a man you have no intention of having a relationship with or dating and have a lovely, lovely evening.

Can men and women just be friends?

It’s difficult. That is a big question: I’ve written columns on it… Is there underlying sexuality always in a male/female relationship? Well, I say there is. Always. But it may never go over that boundary. Because friendship is an asexual thing: it’s neither male nor female. And I think friendship is a very pure thing. You can have a great friendship with a girlfriend and you can have a great friendship with a male but with a male sometimes at some point there is something. There are some that say: No, we’ve never thought about sex. But I’ll bet the guy has at some point.

And going back to what you said about dating today: I think women today are definitely moving more into girlfriend friendships. That is huge. And men say to me: Well, they’re out in their group, how the heck do I get to meet anyone? I’ve told these women when they write and say: Well, I go out with my friends and we never meet guys. Hello? Go out with one friend or go out on your own and you’ll meet whoever you like because they won’t go into a group. Anymore than a woman will walk up to a group of men and say: I like you. So it’s not difficult to meet men, they’re everywhere!

But readers want to know. You said you meet guys all the time who want to date you: where do you meet them? At work? At the Laundromat? Shopping?

Yeah work. Bars. Shopping. Supermarkets. I’ve had guys ask me: How do you cook zucchini? Sometimes women run the other way. But I’ll tell him my best recipe, while looking him up and down. [Laughs] You know, if you like men, you meet them. They’re everywhere. You smile at them. They might look at you and think: What the hell does she want? [Laughs] Why is she smiling at me? There’s so much fear and confusion in the relationship world. I get four or five marriage proposals a week.

You don’t!

On e-mail. Not out and about, for God’s sake! [Laughs] But they all have this concept of me. And they’re everything from 25 to 85. I’m already in a situation that is pretty beneficial if you’re thinking along those lines, but even before I did this job, I never had a problem meeting men. I was always outgoing, I think that’s the thing. And I was never afraid to go up and talk to a guy who was on his own and even years ago I would ring the guy and say: How are you doing? One of [the things I hear most in letters] is from guys who fear being rejected and they hate rejection. And I say: That’s dating. Dating includes rejection at every level, every age group no matter how beautiful you are. I just read somewhere that Brad Pitt got dumped by his first girlfriend. People don’t understand that at all and, for her, obviously, that relationship didn’t work. And what a smart girl: she didn’t just keep going because he was so handsome, she just said: It’s not right for me. And moved on to someone else.

Meeting people is a matter of personality and wanting to meet people. And not expecting all of them to turn into the great relationship. Everybody is looking for the one great relationship. Well, obviously, I wasn’t. [Laughs] But they were all great. They were all nice people, lovely men, really. It just didn’t work because… well, in my day you see that’s what you did: You married. My father wouldn’t let me move out of the house at all unless I was married. I had to almost basically get married to get out of the house. Only prostitutes lived in apartments or had careers or whatever.

When was your first marriage?

I was 18.

You married to get out of the house?

Well, yeah, but I was madly in love, too. He was everything the magazines said: six foot tall and handsome and a sweet person. The fact that he was bisexual has got nothing to do with it. [Laughs] He was a lovely man. And that was the father of my daughter. And the other ones, we should have lived together. You can now: you can co-habit and nobody bothers about it. But then: My God! There was one husband, it was the second, I think, his parents said either we married or they cut him out of the will. And they were quite wealthy and he was quite worried so we got married. I would have married the first one and I might have married the fifth one. We did cohabit for six years before we married but… I might have married him. And I would have had two marriages, just like everybody else. [Laughs] Instead of all those.

Are you in a relationship now?

Actually I’m dating. I’m dating two or three nice guys of all age groups.

And if they’ve got any sense they won’t marry you, because you’re a bad wife. [Laughs]

Yes! [Laughs] I don’t encourage it. I don’t want to get married. No, no, no. I’ve done my bit for marriage and the wedding cake business and all, I’ve done my bit. I don’t want to be married. What I want now is someone who is supportive and can live with a media gal like myself. It’s tough. I’m out there on TV and doing many things and a lot of guys get competitive about that. I’ve found that in life. That’s why I like young men, actually. One of the reasons: they don’t give a damn that you earn more money than they do. They really don’t. They just celebrate it and say: Hey, well done! The older men always say: What? She’s earning more money than me. And they get all affronted as though you’ve done something against them. They’re competitive. In fact my fourth husband was just like that: Very competitive. And you can’t have that, not [in] my life style. And the younger men are very supportive. My fifth husband was wonderful. He was so supportive. No matter what time of day or night I got back home, it was always: Was it OK? Did you have a good time? It was always great. Young men are like that: They’re very confident with themselves. Older men always feel threatened. Social indoctrination or whatever by their mother or society. This is probably why I married so many times: The men I meet loved the vitality, the sexuality, the fun, the laughter, the good times, the whole vital thing of life. But the very things that attract men in the first place are the very things that repel them in the end, if they can’t control them. Because I find I get married and they say: Well, now you can settle down and you won’t be like that anymore, will you? And I’m saying: Hello? I don’t change. And I’ve never changed: I’ve been the same all my life. And then they go: Oh. But I don’t want you to wear a dress down to here because you’re showing off to the other men. And he’d say: All these men are looking at you. And I’d think: Oh, I hope so. [Laughs]

Who is this book for?

Well, it’s not for all older women. I mean, there’s no way that all older women are interested in young men. A lot of older women want an older guy. And why not?

Is your message about female empowerment?

Not totally. That sounds almost as though it’s some kind of crushing thing, which it isn’t. It’s about doing something in life, even if people condemn you for it or are against it. But if you feel it’s right for you, you should do it. And not giving up on your sexuality. That’s the whole thing. I think older women are crushed easily. The biggest critics I get are women: women are hard on each other. Men aren’t. Men celebrate each other. They say: Fred’s got himself a little chickypoo. [Laughs] The women tend to condemn and be difficult. The bitchiest comments are always from women about this situation. It’s a shame. Why can’t we be more supportive of each other? Particularly women who are aging or getting up there or mid-life or whatever. Women who should be given support if they’re failing or feeling as though they’re failing in self-esteem. And the underlying theme [in the book] is boosting of women’s self-esteem and saying: Look, don’t give in. Don’t say: I’m too old. Never say that. You’re never too old for anything. It’s all in your head. And don’t let anyone else tell you that you shouldn’t because you are this age or that age or too old. It doesn’t necessarily bring you happiness, but it makes you feel good about yourself and I think that’s important. When you get into late life or mid-life, this is an option. That’s all. There’s always something better; that’s how it how I look at it. It all works out eventually and something better comes along.

This is your second book?

Yes. The other one was called The Older Women’s Guide to Younger Men but it was 10 years ago and it was much too soon. And it was an entirely different approach. That was very much a low key kind of flippant...

You’re flippant in Cougar, as well.

Yes. There’s a lot of flippant, but this is more connected. More now. The women of now. They wouldn’t relate to the other one. It was different era altogether. It sounds mad: 10 years. But a lot has happened in those 10 years.

Boil it all down for me, Valerie.

You have to give love to get love. It sounds so simple, but it’s a very hard thing for a lot of people to get over. They figure they deserve love, they want love, they should have love, why isn’t it coming? But they don’t quite see—there’s this rejection thing. You have to give it first, then make it kick back at you. If you keep giving it you will eventually hit the target: It’ll work. You have to give love in life. You have to. Otherwise you’ll never have anything. You’ll have money, you’ll have yachts or whatever people want but if you don’t have love and you don’t give love you have nothing. Because when you’re lying there dying, your yachts won’t help you. [Laughs] But the people who love you will.

Linda L. Richards is the editor of January Magazine and the author of the Madeline Carter novels: Mad Money, The Next Ex and Calculated Loss.

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Number One-Hundred-Nine

Like Mother, Like Daughter: The Other Remarkable Ms Roddick

Dame Anita, the Body Shop tycoon and philanthropist, was one of the world’s most colourful activists. But Sam Roddick is an equally radical figure, and since her mother’s death she has seemed determined to get noticed. by Paul Vallely, The Independent / UK

It was not what you might have expected. A glittering horse-drawn hearse, pulled by gleaming black-plumed steeds, moved slowly through the streets of London to St Paul’s Cathedral on Wednesday. Behind it walked the actress Emma Thompson and the sex-shop owner Sam Roddick. But this was not a funeral. It was a demonstration, its organisers proclaimed, against sex trafficking. An art installation, they said, would open in Trafalgar Square this weekend, and then tour the country.

There might be some who would regard the presence of Sam Roddick at such an event as rather tasteless, considering that her mother has not yet been dead a fortnight. But then the desire to shock is something that has long characterised the behaviour of Anita’s Roddick’s youngest daughter who, metropolitan gossip has it, is shaping up to become a campaigner even more flamboyant than her late mother.

Her shop, Coco de Mer, which she describes as an “erotic emporium”, sells everything from lilac mink-lined crotchless panties to clitoris creams. From it, Roddick jnr organised a naked street protest against the war in Iraq with members of the International Union of Sex Workers. Most recently she has been in trouble with the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents traffic wardens, for surrounding a hapless black parking attendant with a street performance band and harassing him as he went about his duties on a Hampstead street. A video of the event, which features Ms Roddick bawling “Traffic Wardens Need Love” into the unfortunate man’s face, was posted on the internet.

It was probably always inevitable, given the whirlwind personality of Anita Roddick, that her younger daughter would struggle to compete for attention. Though she was happy helping out at the Body Shop, filling bottles and packing gift boxes during school holidays, Sam determined from early on to make her mark. She was rebellious at Frensham Heights boarding school in Surrey, which she was asked to leave. She got just two O-levels, pleading undiagnosed dyslexia, and was taken off to Nepal with the mother of one of her friends, who advised indigenous communities on how they could use their traditional crafts to make products that would sell in the West.

To Anita’s relief, her daughter returned fired with enthusiasm for direct action. She soon went off to Brazil to see how local people were opposing a dam being built by the World Bank. The reality unnerved her. Opponents of the scheme were being murdered. “I saw some really heavy stuff,” she later told an interviewer. “I saw dead bodies, I went to the middle of rainforests and saw burning acres, I saw malnourished kids working in charcoal pits. It was brutal.”

She spent the next few years in a desultory unformed activism. She gave a slideshow on the issue at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and did a tour with the Canadian-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, which was exploring economic alternatives for local people. But then she had a kind of breakdown. “I had this idea that change [would be] instantaneous,” she said. “I thought that once people knew what was going on, everyone would be so taken aback that they would change.” Rather than steeling herself to redouble her efforts on behalf of the disadvantaged, she decided that: “I didn’t want to work in global politics any more.”

From that point, she later said: “I thought ‘Right, the way I can change the world is by not consuming anything and setting up community development projects, going very, very grass roots.” She moved to Canada and fell in with a group of anarchists - many of them spoiled rich kids who dropped-out knowing they had an escape route out of their self-imposed poverty if they wanted it. They raided skips and bins for food that had been thrown away. They called it dumpster-diving. Their ideal was never to buy anything. “I gave up the whole notion of wealth for a while, and that was really liberating,” Sam said.

Her reality check came when she realised that she was pregnant. She ran home to her millionaire parents. “As soon as I got pregnant, I wanted to look nice. I started buying clothes for the first time,” she explained.

Back in Britain, she was struck by the differences in social attitudes to sex. “I was fascinated by the hiddenness [of the sexual scene] here. If you went to a club it was very liberated, but it was all done in a drunken haze.” While in Canada, aware she’d always been unhappy with her appearance, she began taking photos of herself naked. She was pleased with the results. From there she had started to get commissions to do “naughty pictures” of her women friends and put them into hand-bound books for their partners to masturbate over.

In London, too, she found there was a market for what she called her Little Boys’ Wank Books. “So I was running around town finding props for the photos and I realised that there was absolutely nothing that expressed a sophisticated idea of sexuality.” Most sex industry products were poorly made, catering to desperation rather than desire. There was, she concluded, a gap at the top of the market.

So in 2001 she opened Coco de Mer, named after a palm nut whose shape resembles a female bottom, and persuaded Saatchi & Saatchi - it’s handy having such a famous family name - to work on her launch for free. They produced a poster campaign of people, including her, photographed at the point of orgasm.

Her Covent Garden boutique is a high- class version of an Ann Summers shop except, that all the sex products are beautifully designed, luxurious and very, very expensive. A human-hair whip is £188, bondage knickers are £200 a pair, and a Shiri Zinn Crystal Dildo, with Swarovski crystals - made by the firm who make Formula One trophies - is £1,100, including stand.

“Quite frankly,” Sam Roddick says, “when you spend £150 on shoes and only £10 on your vagina, it doesn’t match in terms of sense of importance in your life.”

The idea, says the shop’s owner, who sports 10 tattoos beneath her sensible clothes, is that the shop is very ” female-centric” and celebrates sex without exploiting women. Her mother was not convinced. Anita Roddick just last year hit out at the sexualisation of contemporary culture, in which young women aspire to dress like Beyoncé or Britney Spears - that is, she said, like high-class hookers - and celebrities talk about visiting lap-dancing clubs.

We were falling prey to a “pimp-and-whore” pop culture, she said, that degraded sex and made it virtually impossible for young women to grow up with high self-esteem. “There are thousands of ads, mostly focused on young girls, that say you are not attractive, you are not sexy, you are not intelligent unless you look like this,” she said. “Something’s gone very wrong.”

Sam tried to defend her corner. “You can’t hold a popstar responsible for someone trafficking women,” she replied, “but I don’t think the way we communicate about sex allows people to connect all the dots, especially young people. If you treat sex like a throwaway culture, you’ll end up feeling like you’re a throwaway within it. I think that’s what she was addressing and I agree with her.

“There’s something selfish,” she added, “about buying a new pair of shoes, but you’re definitely sharing something if you’re buying a sex toy for your partner, right?”

Quite what Anita would have made of Coco de Mer’s current website is a moot point. It shows a film of two languid young women in silk gowns, stripping and posing against a black leather “tally-ho” vaulting horse with hand-stitched saddle and leather stirrups, demonstrating the use of the emporium’s various products. They use whips. They graphically insert glass dildos. And the film includes close-ups of an open vagina. The site also advertises Sunday “salons” for those wanting “erotic education, intellectual debate, music and debauchery,” which include sessions on Japanese Rope Bondage, The Sensual Whip, Back door Betty and Lesbian Sex Tricks for Men.

Sam Roddick sees no difficulty in squaring this with her campaign against sex trafficking. Porn should be reclaimed, she told a seminar recently, and the way to fight bad porn is to make good porn. More than that, in keeping with the traditions of her mother, all Coco de Mer’s products, she says, are “ethically sourced” - including a Fair Trade “spanking paddle”. She claims to have a WWF endorsement that her dildos are made from naturally-felled wood.

Whether the old Roddick cocktail of caring capitalism, world travel, self-fulfilment and campaigning on human rights and green issues is as persuasive in the context of the sex industry is another matter. As to her “Pleasure Project” - to educate women in developing countries on how to enjoy sex - it is probably wise to make no comment. The best her mother could come up with was that “my youngest, Sam, never stops surprising me with her creative radicalism”. But she gave her daughter very short shrift when Sam suggested that the Body Shop allow its windows to be used for promoting the rights of sex workers.

Others buy her line. The investment bank Triodos recently gave her an ethical entrepreneur award for “enabling individuals to use sex as an instrument to transform their own existence”. And an environmental group named Anti-Apathy have signed her up to a campaign to link sex to climate change with slogans such as “sex is carbon neutral” and “more sex means less shopping”.

“Sex is about pleasure,” she says, “and if you get fulfilment you will want fewer material objects”. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. But then Sam Roddick does. “People can be crazy on love… Allowing yourself to love is like free-falling off the edge of a cliff… I have felt ashamed in love, been ugly in love, basked in love… Sometimes, without realising, I try to make myself unlovable because I fear love.” We shall, doubtless, be hearing a lot more from her.

* * * * *

Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant.  Unpretentious.  Unconventional. ©

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Eight

SOLSTISS: THE SEDUCTION OF LACE

Femme fatale, romantic, flirtatious or quite simply divine… lace transcends femininity. Penelope Cruz in Dolce & Gabbana on the steps at the Cannes Film Festival, Nicole Kidman in Balenciaga to celebrate the happiest day of her life, Madonna in Jean-Paul Gaultier for her world tour.

At the zenith of their sensuality, the world’s most recognizable faces sanctify their personalities with lace. Lace sublimates women. They parade it like a second skin, which will always charm the famous couturiers like Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Christian Lacroix, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano for Dior.

In her book, Solstiss: The Seduction of Lace, fashion historian Anne Kraatz describes how lace is an ‘everlasting metaphor of femininity, with its seductive transparency and intricately interwoven threads.”

Solstiss, born in 1974 of a meeting between four lacemaking families from Caudry since 1870, which today is the number one brand in the manufacturing of lace worldwide. Louis Vuitton and Hermes ask Solstiss for the creation of exclusive designs for their houses.

Solstiss traces the history of the company, how it was formed and how it function in our high-tech world without losing the heritage of traditional lace manufacture. Runway photos of lace clothing shown on the catwalk by the biggest names in fashion take up most of the book, making this a good reference for design students. ----Assouline

* * * * *
Ann