Thursday, November 29, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Fifty-One

Tis the Season

Holiday parties at Leo Burnett, the advertising agency, have that something extra special.

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

Number One-Hundred-Fifty

Ocean’s 11 conman and a royal heist
by David Brown, London Times (Nov 2007)

It was one of the most audacious jewel thefts in history. In the middle of a crowded room, the famed Star of the Empress Sisi was stolen from its high-security case and replaced with a replica.

Nine years after the heist, a criminal mastermind has finally revealed how he stole the Austrian royal heirloom while travelling the world carrying out frauds and thefts on the orders of a mysterious British crime boss.

Details of Gerald Blanchard’s years as head of the most sophisticated crime gang in Canadian history has led to prosecutors comparing his activities to the Hollywood movie Ocean’s 11.

The 35-year-old computer expert has already admitted responsibility for stealing the famed Koechert Diamond Pearl, or Star of Empress Sisi, from the Castle Schonbrunn in Vienna, Austria.The jewel-encrusted brooch had been placed on public display in an alarmed case in 1998 to mark the centennial anniversary of the assassination of Elisabeth of Austria.

Posing as a tourist and accompanied by his wife and father-in-law, Blanchard disabled the case’s alarm and replaced the jewel with a replica bought at the castle’s souvenir shop. The swap was not discovered for more than a month and the loss of a priceless part of Austria’s history remained unsolved until Blanchard led police to its hiding place in his grandmother’s basement earlier this year.

Sheila Leinburd, a Crown attorney, told a Canadian court: “Cunning, clever, conniving and creative — add some foreign intrigue and this is the stuff movies are made of.”

Blanchard has admitted 16 charges of theft and fraud after police built up a picture of his activities during a massive investigation involving thousands of intercepted telephone calls and hundreds of hours of video which he had taken during his international travels.

Scotland Yard has now been asked to help trace the London-based criminal known as “The Boss” who co-ordinated many of the scams. Blanchard has told detectives that the man was raising money to fund Kurdish terrorists in northern Iraq.

Blanchard was a master of disguise and used at least eight aliases to travel the world with the help of forged identification documents and by changing his appearance with make-up, spectacles, beards or moustaches and dyed hair. He used his forgery skills to create fake VIP passes and media identification to interview celebrities and attend major sporting events. One week he would interview the singer Christina Aguilera, the next he was in the pits at the Monaco Grand Prix.

His jet-set lifestyle was funded by sophisticated thefts and frauds through what the Canadian authorities have named the “Gerald Blanchard Criminal Organisation”. With his leadership the gang was estimated to make millions of pounds a year. In one scam they targeted newly-built banking centres which contained cash machines from several banks. Using pinhole cameras and listening devices he monitored the construction work before emptying the cash machines of up to C$500,000 (£250,000) the night before their grand openings. Blanchard was also involved in a massive fraud using details of stolen credit cards to target the accounts of British bank customers in operations across Europe and Africa.

He was finally caught following an operation in November last year when “The Boss” ordered him to fly to Egypt. He was provided with the details of credit cards and PINs of tens of thousands of British bank accounts to create fake credit cards. Gang members wore burkhas while using the cards at cash machines in Cairo, withdrawing up to £500 from each account. When one of the gang disappeared with £25,000, Blanchard was held hostage in London until he could persuade the runaway to return.

Ms Leinburd told The Times: “He is a very charismatic guy and his gang would operate like the guys in Ocean’s 11. But at the same time he knew he was funding terrorism. We have intercepted telephone conversations with The Boss. I don’t think he had any political or religious reasons to support terrorism but saw it as a way to get the information for his operations.”

Blanchard was sentenced to eight years in jail this month but will be eligible for parole in two years. As part of his plea bargaining, he agreed to sell a number of luxury apartments he owns in Vancouver to repay the banks. He has given the banks details of his operations and is in negotiations to work with them on his release from jail.

Associate Chief Justice Jeffrey Oliphant told him: “I think you have a great future if you wish to pursue an honest style of life — although I’m not prepared to sign a reference.”

A life of crime

— Gerald Blanchard born in Winnipeg, Canada. Moves to Nebraska at the age of 7

— Overcomes dyslexia to become expert in computers and security systems

— Escapes from police custody twice within 24 hours in 1993

— Deported to Canada in 1997 after serving sentence for theft

— Star of Empress Sisi stolen in Vienna in 1998

— Becomes leader of the “Gerald Blanchard Criminal Organisation” in 1999

— Police begin investigation into bank raids after thefts in 2004

— Detectives find adult nappies used by Blanchard in hire car during surveillance of banking centre in 2004

— Blanchard and seven others arrested in January this year

— Charged with plotting the kidnap and murder of Lynette Tien, his girlfriend and alleged accomplice, in May. Charges were dropped

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

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Forty-Nine

Velda Lauder Corsetiere
(with a h/t to the Lingerie Blog by Petite Coquette in the UK)

On graduating from the College of Design in Dublin, Velda Lauder was head hunted for the creative team at the world-renowned Brown Thomas store, as senior display artist and assistant fashion coordinator. Whilst there she designed her first clothing collection, won a Smirnoff Young Designer of Year Award, and joined the first Dublin based performance art group, Boutiques for Divisions.

In 1994 she relocated to Ibiza, selling her designs and working with the creative design team at the Ku/Privilege Nightclub. From there she moved to London, and immediately found herself designing clothing for rock stars and royalty, and working as a stylist for Tatler and Opera Now.

More recently Velda has specialised in consulting on projects with various high profile celebrities. She created the spectacular head to toe look for Dita Von Teese photographed by the late great Bob Carlos Clarke. George Michael used 3 of her classic looks in his ‘Easier Affair’ video, and Robbie Williams film noir video ‘Love Light’ featured 12 dancers dressed in Velda’s military ‘Peace Warrior Collection’.

In October 2007, the Sugarbabes wore 3 of Velda’s underbust corsets, encrusted with Swarovski crystals for the finale of the Fashion Rocks event shown on Channel 4.

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

Number One-Hundred-Forty-Eight

Private collections by Cotton Club (designed by R. Crescentini)
(with a h/t to the Lingerie Blog by Petite Coquette in the UK (in “Muses” on the left side))

You can also view their collections at Cazar.

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

Number One-Hundred-Forty-Seven

Mata Hari: The spy who came in from the cold
Ninety years after her execution for espionage, Mata Hari remains a byword for female treachery. Here, the director Martha Fiennes explains why she is now making a film, starring Dita Von Teese, which casts this notorious seductress in a very different light
Martha Fiennes was talking to Peter Stanford, London Guardian (November 2007)

Mata Hari is a name everybody recognises but nobody seems to know anything about. You could argue that she is the ultimate fallen woman. What interests me about her is that she created her own identity and branding. Her story is all about fantasy – conceiving an idea and then selling herself brilliantly on it – in short, an advertiser’s dream. Mata Hari is all the more fascinating when all the things that have been projected on to her since her death are considered. It is a phenomenon that has been shared by a myriad other “fallen women” through history, from Mary Magdalene to Pope Joan to Princess Diana.

It is perhaps appropriate to start by giving a few facts about Mata Hari’s life. Her real name was Marguerite Zelle and she was born in the Netherlands in August 1876. Her father was a bankrupt hat-seller. At 18 she married a Dutch naval officer, Rudolf MacLeod, and moved with him to Java in what was then the Dutch East Indies, later Indonesia, where she had two children. The first, Norman, died as a child, possibly, it is said, as a result of poisoning. This is alleged to have been an act of revenge, carried out by a maid who poisoned the child’s rice as a response to Rudolf’s extreme brutality in this colonial outpost to a young Javanese soldier. In this telling of Mata Hari’s story, then, men were destroying her life – in this case as a mother – from the start.

MacLeod was certainly a drunk and abused his wife. Their marriage lasted less than a decade and ended up in divorce, with their daughter, Non, placed in the custody of her father. He refused to allow his ex-wife any contact with her, though she continued trying to get letters to her ever after.

Marguerite emerged from the divorce “fallen” from bourgeois respectability with few options open to her. She used her natural and precocious sexual sense to reinvent herself completely – a kind of Madonna of her day. A divorcee at that time was regarded as damaged goods, so while her solution may sound extreme, it is also understandable.

She headed for Paris, where she worked initially in a circus as Lady MacLeod, but in 1905 started performing as an exotic dancer and calling herself Mata Hari, a name taken from the Indonesian and Malay words meaning literally “Dawn of the Day”. She performed almost nude on some of the best stages in Europe, veiling herself and her body in elaborate layers of fantasy. She was, she would tell audiences, a princess from Java of priestly Indian birth, who had been initiated into sacred dancing as a child. Her act took on both an erotic and a quasi-religious dimension.

She had what we would today call a high skill set, both on stage and with men. She spoke seven European languages and was a courtesan with many lovers, including high-ranking military officers, who funded what became a lavish lifestyle. In the fin-de-siècle world of pre-1914 Paris, she was a celebrated figure.

The script I am writing about Mata Hari’s life and myth is based on what I feel is the best (of many) biographies of her, by the British-based Canadian writer, Julie Wheelwright. Hers is a perceptive and insightful take that identifies the extraordinary and sometimes damaging mythologising of powerful women who capture the public’s imagination. In her book, Wheelwright quotes the historian AL Rowse. “There is a wide-ranging association,” he wrote, “of war with sexuality, complex, intricate, intimate and at every level.”

So, in Mata Hari’s case, what had been acceptable before the First World War became something other once the conflict began. Her lifestyle, her independence, her ability to travel alone, the essential selfishness of what she did, all became suspect. At her subsequent trial, one of the chief prosecutors, Lieutenant Mornet, labelled her typical of the sort of “international woman [who] has become so dangerous since the hostilities began [because of] the ease with which she expresses herself in several languages, especially French, her numerous relations, her subtle ways, her aplomb, her remarkable integrity, and her immorality, congenital or acquired”.

In effect, the men who had enjoyed Mata Hari’s skills mostly turned against her once war broke out, and unleashed a brutal misogyny as they sought to condemn her. A prison doctor who looked after her during her trial described her as “a being without physical charm, something of a savage, it was certainly through hard work before her mirror, and by strength of will, that this woman had succeeded in cultivating beauty, by putting her body in the most pleasing attitude”. ‘

One lover had been the French Defence Minister at the outbreak of war. He would have worried that she knew things about him that could be valuable to the enemy. Mata Hari was to find to her cost that if you sleep with men across Europe in peacetime, once a war begins, your position becomes extremely precarious. Contrast her with the women whom the leaders of wartime Europe valued and she can be seen as a victim of the sexual politics of the era. Women during a war were required to embody chastity, patriotism, to be essentially passive and self-sacrificing. She was none of these.

In such an exposed position, it was understandable that when she was approached by French intelligence agents, who wanted her to exploit her contacts with military officers of all nationalities to uncover secrets, she agreed. So, she became a spy, but a curiously naive one. It was as if it was another game for her. In that sense there is something almost comic about it. But it quickly turned to tragedy.

When she came back to the French authorities with information she had extracted from a contact in Madrid who had links to the Germans, their fundamental doubts about her only increased. She had made it seem almost too easy. They accused her of being a double agent. Mata Hari was arrested in February 1917, tried and found guilty of spying for Germany and therefore of causing the deaths of 50,000 young Frenchmen in the trenches. The evidence against her was slight. One witness sought to condemn her on the basis that she was a femme forte – a strong woman. She was executed in Vincennes on 15 October 1917.

Even her death is surrounded by myth. There are various stories – that she blew a kiss to the firing squad, that she wore a fur coat, that she opened it at the last minute to flash her naked body in an effort to make the riflemen miss – but I find the reality much more moving. The image I have of her is of someone without food in a damp, rat-infested cell, so different from her boudoir as a courtesan, awaiting her execution, abandoned by Vadime de Masloff, her young Russian lover and the love of her life. No one came afterwards to claim her body.

My script does not attempt to put her on a pedestal. She was not your typical heroine. She was a contradictory and sometimes unlikeable character. She also got caught up in something bigger than herself. She was hopelessly ill-equipped and even arrogant when it came to getting involved in espionage for the French. Yet she went about it all so very grandly – which I secretly admire her for.

I want to reflect on the sheer shoddiness of her trial. In many ways it was just as much of a charade as her performances. She was packed off to her death because France needed someone to blame for its woes on the battlefield. It had to be seen to cut out the cancer of its losses. It needed a head to hold up, a witch to burn. Her death came at a very particular moment in the course of the conflict. It can be argued that a month or so before, or a month or so later, Mata Hari would never have been sentenced to death, but France itself at that instant was in crisis, and she was an easy scapegoat. I find myself reminded of the phrase that the only good woman is a dead woman.

There is, though, a huge attraction in the visualisation of feminine seductiveness and beauty and my film will not pull its punches in this respect. “I see things big,” Mata Hari once said. I want to honour her on this – with the help of Dita Von Teese, who will play Mata Hari. I was writing a synopsis of the script, early on in the project, and found myself saying of Mara Hari that she was “the Dita Von Teese of her day”. In that moment it seemed so logical to cast her.

Dita is usually described as a burlesque artist, but what she does is strip. Mata Hari used to say that “stripping is my art form” and she made it one – a show, a performance, an escape route even. There is certainly an art to taking your clothes off in front of an audience, and Mata Hari did it very well. As does Dita now.

The other fascinating element in Mata Hari’s story for me is why it has endured for so long. Why do we all know her name? In part it is because of the demonisation that followed her execution. There were 10 women and around 300 men executed in France for espionage during the First World War, but we remember only one name.

Mata Hari illustrates the need we have for morality tales – especially around women. Why, to take a recent example, do we care whether Princess Diana was pregnant with Dodi al-Fayed’s child? What does it matter? Yet somehow it does.

What the Mata Hari legend shows, in particular, is a courtesan getting her just desserts, men punishing someone who at the same time they want. The myth “proves” that a seductive woman who exploits sex, who exploits men, is not to be trusted. And you see that curious mixture of the allure of Mata Hari and that need for her legend in the books and films that have come at regular intervals since her death.

The first attempt to construct a story around her name came in 1921, in a silent German film. In 1931, Greta Garbo appeared as Mata Hari in a fiction based very loosely on the facts. And, in succeeding decades, a range of actresses from Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jeanne Moreau, Sylvia Kristel, Marlene Dietrich and Doris Day have played her. She was said in the Indiana Jones books to have deflowered him. And in the 1967 spoof James Bond film Casino Royale, to have fathered a child with the secret agent. All this fantasy was possible in part because the actual details were under lock and key. Without any substantiated research, the facts of the death of this sexual, sensual female icon by firing squad grew and mutated and became something it was not.

But in the 1960s, documents began to emerge that provide a very different picture and take us behind the distortions that are part of the ghastly cliché of Mata Hari to her still riveting picture. The first biographer to use these archives was a Dutchman, Sam Waagenaar, in 1964. By 2001, a French publisher had made available her entire dossier, and MI5 records about her – showing that the British could find no evidence that she was a spy – are now in the public domain.

In my film, I will attempt to put the record straight – and to uncover those deeper, darker reasons why this fallen women has remained with us for so long. *

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

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Forty-Six

Cabin In The Sky
Reviewed by Judge Joe Armenio (Retired), DVD Verdict (2006)

The Charge
“Can’t you see that cabin in the sky, mister?
An acre or two or heavenly blue to plow.”

Opening Statement
This DVD release of Vincente Minnelli’s 1943 musical, Cabin in the Sky, one of Hollywood’s early attempts at a movie with an all-black cast, prefaces the film with a weirdly distancing and apologetic disclaimer which insists that the movie’s depictions of African-Americans “were wrong then and are wrong today,” and then weakly defends the choice to present the film at all, suggesting that it’s worthwhile as a document of a less enlightened time. Someone at Warner thought this apology was necessary in the name of racial sensitivity, but it seems to me wildly facile and reductive; representations of race are complex little buggers, and one can spend an intellectual lifetime trying to parse the intersections of aesthetics and ideology that produce them at a particular historical moment. Stamping them as “wrong,” with the authoritative voice of the reissue preface, cuts off discussion just where it might start to get interesting, besides being pretty insensitive to the great black artists who populate the film itself, among them Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong.

It seems to me that real respect for both the film and the history of race in the United States would entail neither a curt dismissal of the film nor an unquestioning acceptance of its attitudes, but would try to dig a little deeper into the context that produced it. The preface doesn’t help with that task, nor really does Todd Boyd’s commentary (I’ll talk more about that later).

Facts of the Case
Cabin in the Sky is the story of Little Joe (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, The Jack Benny Program), who is torn between the wholesome demands of home and family, represented by his wife Petunia (Ethel Waters, Pinky), and a dissolute life as a gambler and rabble-rouser, represented by the seductive Georgia Brown (Lena Horne, Stormy Weather). After being shot in a nightclub brawl, Little Joe has a dream which, Wizard of Oz-style, casts various figures from his life as devils and angels fighting for his immortal soul; this struggle takes place to the tune of a Harold Arlen-Vernon Duke score which includes the title song, “Taking a Chance on Love,” “Happiness is a Thing Called Joe,” and “Shine.”

The Evidence
As I already mentioned, Cabin in the Sky was Minnelli’s first film as a director and some of his trademarks are already apparent, such as a surprising darkness (the climactic sequence is downright apocalyptic) and a graceful integration of musical numbers into the film; Minnelli used the songs not merely as set pieces but as devices by which to advance the plot, to tell us something about character and to express emotions raised by the story. Waters’s jubilant rendition of “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe,” followed later by its heartbreaking reprise, is perhaps the most moving example of this. Not all of the musical numbers are so well integrated; the final nightclub sequence, which features performances by Duke Ellington, Horne, and John Sublett (aka “Bubbles"), is more of the old-fashioned set-piece variety.

Like 1936’s The Green Pastures, one of the few other early attempts by Hollywood to make a film featuring African-Americans, black culture is seen here largely as a repository of quaint and colorful folk stories, heavily musical and influenced by a certain naive and heartfelt Christianity. Anderson’s Little Joe is lovable but childlike, easily swayed, never fully a responsible grown man. Petunia is also the sort of African-American woman one sees often in mainstream culture of the period: asexual, fiercely religious, and relentlessly moral (though warmer and not as intimidating, I think, as Todd Boyd makes her out to be). Georgia Brown, on the other hand, is lighter-skinned, slimmer, dangerous, and sexually alluring. In Little Joe’s hallucination-fantasy, the representative of God is an upright deacon who pronounces perfect Standard English in a booming bass, while the devils are stereotypically shiftless, comic bumblers. The film’s final act takes place in the ironically named “John Henry’s Paradise,” the home of music (Duke Ellington’s orchestra), high living (embodied by Joe’s impeccably dressed, hedonistic, violent rival Domino), and beautiful women; it’s a site of pleasure and sin and Joe’s potential demise.

Certainly in 1943 a feature film with an all-black cast was a rarity, and seeing so much of Anderson, Waters, and Horne on screen was a rare treat and a somewhat progressive move; perhaps the demands of wartime unity gave a spur to the production of a film which would please African-American viewers. How much a viewer in 2006 enjoys Cabin in the Sky will be determined by his own moral and aesthetic calculations: Is he more offended by the caricatures on display, or moved by the skill and vigor with which the director and performers give them life? It seems to me that one can find some of the “cute” ungrammatical dialogue wince-inducing, the jokes tired, and the plot patronizing, and still not dismiss the film. One of the reasons why I find the DVD’s disclaimer distasteful is its willingness to condemn the film’s stars as accomplices to racism. Certainly Waters’s and Horne’s characters are stereotypes, but they’re never simply stereotypes; to hear Waters’ rich, stately, majestic delivery of “Cabin in the Sky” or “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” is to hear an artist of the highest order at work, and that’s a pretty radical statement in itself.

The technical presentation is impeccable, and the film comes with a commentary by scholars Todd Boyd and Drew Casper, both of whom teach at the USC; Boyd focuses on thematic issues, mapping the system of stereotypes at work quite expertly, even if he makes as many banal points as salient ones (do we really need to have it pointed out that the devils wear black and the angels white, with all the attendant racial implications?). He also has a clunky delivery that I find depressingly common in DVD commentaries; wouldn’t it be a good idea to write something out beforehand? (For example: “This becomes central in the process of the film as it goes forward.") Casper is more concerned with film technique, sounding weirdly frantic and breathless throughout. I found him helpful with his scene-specific comments, but overwrought and a little creepy. The commentary also features a few remarks from Anderson’s wife and daughter, who say that they loved their husband/father very much, and that he was a fine artist and a good man; they don’t go much beyond that. There are also (very) brief clips from Lena Horne and dancer Fayard Nicholas.

The 1946 short film, “Studio Visit,” is narrated by one Pete Smith, chief of publicity for MGM, who shows off some of the studio’s “talent”: a shell-game illusionist, a little girl with an improbable sense of balance, and Lena Horne, who sings “Ain’t It the Truth” while lounging in a bathtub, a performance that had been cut from Cabin in the Sky (perhaps for being too risqué, although, of course, you can’t see anything through the suds). Finally, the DVD includes the surviving audio from another performance of “Ain’t It the Truth,” this one by Louis Armstrong, which was also cut from the film (the video has not survived, unfortunately, and the audio is accompanied by scenes from the film and publicity materials). Armstrong appears as a devil in the film, delivers a few lines, and blows a few bars on the trumpet, but it’s frustrating that his big number was cut and partially lost: he was at a down point in his career in 1943, and I guess his performance was considered disposable.

Closing Statement
Disclaimer aside, Cabin in the Sky is more than a historical document; it doesn’t quite have the force of some of Minnelli’s later musicals, but it shows off his already vigorous and artful style, and its cast breathes life into a well-meaning but condescending story.

The Verdict
Not guilty.

Scales of Justice
Video: 90
Audio: 92
Extras: 78
Acting: 80
Story: 90
Judgment: 85

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

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Forty-Five

China’s Sexual Revolution
A nation’s sleeping libido awakens.
By Vanessa Richmond, TheTyee

The tanks are parked. Kids are kissing in Tiananmen Square. And if a new documentary is right, it’s the kissing that’s leading to more personal liberty than any form of rebellion since the Cultural Revolution began.

According to China’s Sexual Revolution, by Miro Cernetig and Josh Freed, Chairman Mao married sexuality with capitalism (as forms of corruption and decadence). But now Chinese youth are embracing both with a passion. At warp speed, in fact. There are probably people necking in front of his statue right now, and that’s just for starters.

Here’s what happened. Sixty years ago, Mao turned “couples into comrades and not lovers, and cloaked men and women in the same unisexual suits,” according to the film’s narrator. Makeup was forbidden, and hairstyles were dictated by the government (they were not what you would call flattering). Men and women were supposed to feel only like brothers and sisters, and were supposed to regard sex merely as reproductive labour. Instead, they were supposed to get on with more important work. Um, like making cheap plastic sex toys for the rest of the world (70 per cent of which now come from China).

Why? The communist party regarded sex as an outdated feudal custom. And as Dr. Pan Sue Ming, a scholar featured in the doc says, they considered it dangerous since the Revolution needed “a man to want to fight against someone, but sex makes you love and happy.” The party even chose people’s spouses. And there were propaganda films portraying people who believed in “romance” as foolish, and a source of shame to their families.

Virgin lust

The film reports that secretly, Mao’s own sex life was “worthy of an emperor.” He, in fact, had a lust for virgins, whom he believed kept him young. “And his sexual excesses are now legend.” But he didn’t want his comrades comingling.

As a result there are many Chinese people with as much sexual knowledge as I have of the Mandarin language (I know two words). In fact, a recent survey found that 20 per cent of Chinese men didn’t know what the clitoris is and 50 per cent of Chinese women had never had an orgasm. Sounds super.

One male student from Beijing recently called in to Whispers, a radio sex show (which is now one of the most popular shows in the nation) with a question. He wondered if he could have made a girl pregnant or got AIDS himself from their encounter. The incident in question was one where he and a girl kissed and hugged (and that’s all) while wearing winter coats.

In the past, the government would have cracked down not only on the naughty public kiss but also on the radio show, but now, realizing whole generations lack adequate sexual information and it’s leading to restlessness and resentment of the government, they tolerate it. The government has even come to tolerate sex conferences, complete with sex toy sales and video demonstrations, often flooded by as many as 15,000 people; whereas they used to shut them down. And Beijing alone has 5,000 sex shops, more than New York—all of which are allowed to dispense free sex ed and sell lingerie and sex toys—without bother.

It seems sex ed really is needed—the film has other anecdotes about the level of sexual information out there. One couple, recently married, went to a health information centre to ask about “marital relations.” The counselors soon realized they were both virgins. The couple thought sex entailed touching legs in bed. When I spoke to him, Cernetig said when he heard these two stories, he was shocked. But he’s since heard countless more.

Raunch meets Revolution

Now, I’ve asked a few male friends about this. All said no one specifically told them the details about the birds and the bees, but they were pretty sure that a certain part of their anatomy was meant to make contact with something else—anything else, in fact. And the idea that leg-touching could be “it” seemed, to them, hard to buy. But as a woman, who grew up before so-called third wave feminism made pole dancing and lingerie-in-high-school the norm (have you seen Gossip Girl?), I can see that with sexual repression 100 times stronger than what I experienced, that kind of deep ignorance is not only possible but likely.

Young people in the film are aware they’re under a cloak of darkness and are moving into the cities in droves in order to shed it. The phrase “Sex and the City” comes up frequently, albeit in interesting translations. There’s even a word for the first city haircut a country girl gets—and it represents a kind of metamorphosis. And on the documentary, one such country-bumpkin-transformation says she’s now working as a waitress, and gets shocked when she sees men and women kissing in the restaurant—she sticks out her tongue. But she sticks around.

Another, Xiao Feng, the editor of the Chinese equivalent of FHM is in her 30s and still not interested in getting married. “Once, I would have had a husband and love him and do everything for him. But now we can do things just for ourselves.” She says this would have been unheard of even a few years ago, and her parents still aren’t pleased. But she’ll continue the way she is. And many other women are leaving party-arranged, loveless marriages to pursue the city life too, creating an urban divorce rate comparable to ours.

Feng, and many other “city girls” are glamorous. But most women in the doc aren’t. In fact, one of the most striking things about the documentary is the images of women not subject to “beauty” obsession present elsewhere, like here.

I covered the Miss China World pageant for a magazine a few years ago, and let’s just say most women in the film don’t look like they just stepped off that stage. It threw me for a minute, to see women not so elaborately commercially groomed, and it was also a relief. There was a kind of innocence—meaning un-self-consciousness—that I definitely don’t experience here. And unlike when I watch “normal” TV, I wasn’t constantly measuring myself against the women in the shows. Instead, I was just drawn in to what they were saying.

It’s the feminist irony. On the one hand, I wanted them to find liberation and their dreams. On the other, I wanted to warn them against looking for it in a lip gloss.

Dancing without the stars

In fact, the most charming thing about the doc is the images—shots of ordinary people and of places like night clubs. In the last clubs I went to, in Vancouver, New York and even London, most people looked bored and jaded (maybe nightclubs have “ended” but that’s another story). Not so in Beijing. The club-goers look like they’ve been locked away until this very minute and have just seen color, warmth, music, booze, drugs and the opposite sex for the first time. There’s joy on their faces and in their uninhibited dancing. It’s worth watching this film just to see the wholehearted enjoyment.

But it’s not all rosy—and unlike most docs that focus on sexy topics, this one delves into the complex sociological implications of the trends.

The one child policy was meant to curb overpopulation, and on the good side (depending on whom you ask) had the unintended consequence of liberating women to pursue other things like education and paid employment. But solving the population problem created social problems—given the culture’s strong preference for boys, there will be 30 million more men than women within the decade.

Cernetig says for him, it was the saddest part of the research. In the cities, there are whole armies of men who will never have a girlfriend or a wife. They’ve moved from the country to make a certain kind of life and won’t ever have it. And a form of class-ism is building. Working class men in the film talk about how they know they will never get a wife because they don’t own an apartment and they aren’t at least 173 centimetres tall.

“There is already a rising sense of gang violence in China,” he says, “and it’s getting harder to control. And that’s the reason. A lot of men have nothing to lose. They go to Beijing only to find they will never be a Beijinger.”

And it’s also given rise to a thriving, brand new sex trade, not unlike that of Thailand’s bordellos—to serve those men. Some scenes show “karaoke bars,” shot with a secret camera, where a hundred women sit in a basement, waiting for a client/john to purchase their services for the evening. Cernetig says the dungeon-like grimness there is one of the things that shocked him most.

So what can we learn from watching a sped-up version of the 1960s North American revolution take place at warp speed? Cernetig says, “One is that the Chinese are more like us than you might think. And the other is that it’s a very layered place and a lot of what you see about the great rise of China actually masks a lot of problems.”

* * * * *

CHINA’S SEXUAL REVOLUTION
from CBC-TV

You’ve heard about China’s Cultural Revolution and its sizzling Economic Revolution. But you haven’t heard about its other great social upheaval - the Chinese Sexual Revolution - and like everything in that country it’s happening at warp speed.

It’s China’s version of the 60s revolution - on steroids.

CHINA’S SEXUAL REVOLUTION is the world’s first glimpse - often using secret cameras - into this forbidden new China. It’s a surprising portrait of the Chinese today: the new free love generation that’s left their parents in shock; the booming sex industry that’s creating an HIV crisis; the new generation of career women and feminists that suddenly wants it all - while millions of men feel left out.

This long untold story goes back to the days of Chairman Mao, who made sexuality a great taboo. He ordered everyone to wear unisexual Mao suits, and forbid women from wearing sexy clothing, getting stylish haircuts, or even wearing make-up. Men and women were expected to be comrades - not lovers - though Mao himself enjoyed an emperor’s sex life, seeking virgins to retain his “youth”.

China’s sexual libido was bottled up for 50 years, but now it’s bursting loose, with dramatic effects on marriage, personal freedom and the government itself.

During the film we meet:

- MADAME CHEN, who runs one of 5000 sex shops that have sprung up in Beijing alone in the last decade – that’s more than New York City.

- MUZEMEI, a gutsy woman blogger who became a household name and hero when she broke the “sexual sound barrier” by recording her own love moans - on the internet.

- XIAO FENG, a real-life Chinese version of Carrie Bradshaw, TV’s Sex and the City heroine. She’s the editor of FHM, China’s hottest magazine – and she’s part of a new feminist revolt that’s trading in husbands for careers.

- RU RUMEIN, grandmotherly host of “Whispers” a popular late night sex talk show that’s finally giving the masses their sexual classes.

- JIANYING ZHA and other authors and intellectuals, who give us an intimate personal glimpse into the Chinese today.

We also visit steamy Shanghai discos, where rich playboys have exchanged Mao’s little red book for little black ones - and Beijing hip-hop bars filled with China’s new Generation Sex.

We see how China’s one-child policy has resulted in tens of millions more men than women. Many of those men will never find a wife or have a family - so prostitution now flourishes. Using hidden cameras, we spy on the new karaoke brothels that are more reminiscent of Thailand than China. They’re creating a rising sexual epidemic that’s forcing the Chinese government to loosen up.

Finally, we visit SEXPO, a massive new sex fair where peasants meet 21st Century sexual paraphernalia. And we learn about the tens of millions of Chinese tired of sexual repression and suddenly finding the joys of sexual expression.

Will the Sexual Revolution succeed where the Tiananmen one failed?

* * * * *

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

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Forty-Four

Sappho’s Exhortation to Learning
from Scott Horton’s blog, “No Comment”, on Harpers Magazine site (November 10, 2007)

Sappho, oil painting by Charles-Auguste Mengin (1877)

A handsome man guards his image a while;
a good man will one day take on beauty.

–Sappho (Σαπφω), The Exhortation to Learning (ca. 590 BCE)(W. Barnstone, transl.)

* * * * *

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

Friday, November 09, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Forty-Three

WELCOME TO THE SEX PARTY
Art - Pleasure - Community - Fun - Learning - Progress
Politics for a Sex-Positive Future

Vote! (if you’re in Canada that is)

Cherry Nipple from SAVY ART

The Sex Party aims to develop a sex-positive culture. We are the world’s first registered political party dedicated exclusively to sex-positive issues. Central to our strategy is to run candidates in elections. We are registered in British Columbia and ran three candidates in the B.C. election May 17, 2005. We are in the process of registering at the federal level. We intend to run in future federal, provincial and municipal elections. Check out our comprehensive platform: federal and provincial. We also seek to build sex-positive community and to challenge sex-negativity through court action and public education. Our main fundraising and community-building vehicle is a social gathering we call SexArtVoteYes! (SAVY) celebrations where we display erotic art, do edge-pushing and explicit erotic performance art, hear erotic poets and comedians, and dialogue about sex and politics in our personal lives and culture.

We need you.

Help make society better and have fun doing it. If you are an erotic artist or performer we can showcase your art. We also need volunteers, skilled and general. Got extra cash and want to give it to a revolutionary cause? Donate to The Sex Party.

* * * * *

PLATFORM - PROVINCIAL

OUR PROVINCIAL PLATFORM To realize a sex-positive culture we need to: a) change our education system b) repeal sex-negative laws and regulations c) support sex-positive community. The provincial government has responsibility in each of these areas.

1) CHANGE OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

Teach sexual gradualism in schools
Canadian studies indicate that the quantity and quality of sexual health education and sexual health services being provided to our youth are inadequate.

The Sex Party would establish a comprehensive education program in sexual health and hygiene. But we would go further. We favour a school sexual education program that encourages sexual activity - but in a gradual and disciplined way. Our youth need to know that sex is enhanced in both the short and long term by a step-by-step process of sexual gradualism, whereby extensive sexual experimentation precedes first intercourse. Virtually every other learning system involves a gradualist approach, and children naturally embrace it.

Instruction in sexual gradualism would teach a teen a way to explore the erotic responsiveness of his or her own body without contact with another person. Teens would also learn how to set the stage for healthy and satisfying sexual liaisons. They would learn, for example, that trust, emotional intimacy, relaxation, and verbal communication are all key to an optimal first sexual experience. As well, a course in sexual gradualism would teach young people about erotic massage and would emphasize the importance of non-coital erotic experimentation prior to intercourse.

Parents play a key role in the sex education of their children, although that role is usually unconscious. The Sex Party would introduce a program to support parents in their vital role as sex-positive educators.

Teach Tolerance
A key omission in all existing school sex education programs is the lack of any information about the prevalence of irrational attitudes to sex and about the system that generates those attitudes. Sadly, schools are breeding grounds for many intolerant attitudes toward sexual minorities and sexuality generally. The Sex Party would introduce a school program that teaches about the ethic of tolerance generally and specifically about tolerance in a sexual context.

Intolerance in schools is especially harmful to lesbian, gay and bisexual youth. A recent Task Force on Safe Schools in BC heard reports from nearly every BC community about bullying based on sexual orientation. Currently there is no provincial policy aimed at such harassment. The Sex Party would establish a code of conduct in all provincial schools that prohibited harassment based on sexual orientation. We would require school districts to create policies to support lesbian, gay and bi-sexual youth, including the support of gay-straight alliances and peer counseling. We would also require school districts to establish professional support programs for teachers and administrators to deal with discrimination aimed at lesbian, gay and bi-sexual students.

Sexual Studies Department at UBC
The Critical Studies in Sexuality program at UBC offers students a minor in sexual studies. Sexology is a burgeoning field with a promising future and the advanced education system of the province must give far more attention to the subject that it presently does. The Sex Party would establish a department in Sexual Studies, offering courses in all aspect of sexology, including its medical, psychological, educational, technological, legal and sociological aspects.

The Institute for the Advanced Study of Sexual Policy
British Columbia is the home of many world-class think tanks in the areas of medicine, technology and social science. No significant research program focuses on human sexuality and especially its public policy aspects. The Sex Party would provide provincial funding for an institute to conduct high level research into several sexuality policy issues, including enhancing sexual education throughout the lifespan, and eradicating sex negativity systems in the media, religion, the law, and family life.

2) REPEAL SEX-NEGATIVE LAWS AND REGULATIONS

Public Nudity
The federal Criminal Code prohibits all recreational nudity in public areas. The provincial government controls the enforcement of these provisions. At present there is no systematic enforcement policy. As a result of history or geographic isolation, enforcement policies tolerate recreational nudity in specific areas, such as Vancouver’s Wreck Beach. Relatively few such areas exist. Recreational nudists are denied rights to the vast majority of accessible public lands.

Public nudity has many social benefits for both nudists and non-nudists, chief of which is to normalize all parts of the human body and de-stigmatize human sexual organs.

The Sex Party would pass legislation requiring all public parks and beaches larger than one hectare to designate areas reserved for nudists.

Sex work
At present federal criminal law prohibits almost all form of commercial erotic touch. Such a blanket prohibition has been implicated in the stigmatization of sex workers, which in turn contributes to violence towards this vulnerable social group. British Columbia is the setting for one of the most horrific mass killings of sex workers in the modern world. Despite this unspeakable violence against an identifiable minority, successive federal and provincial governments have done almost nothing to change the inhumane prohibitions aimed at sex workers.

Twenty years ago the Fraser Commission undertook an exhaustive study of these prohibitions and recommended radical change. Nothing has happened, except the deaths of dozens of sex workers.

Criminal sanctions against sex workers are within federal responsibility. However the province has control over enforcement of these provisions. The Sex Party would:
a) urge the federal government to implement the recommendations of the Fraser Committee with respect to the repeal of laws prohibiting consensual, adult sex work in private;
b) adopt enforcement policies of the existing laws such as to achieve the same effect as if the existing criminal laws were repealed as provided in the previous paragraph;
c) establish the Sex Worker Empowerment Program (SWEP), a provincial agency providing counseling, education, and advocacy to provincial sex workers.

Municipal bylaws also prohibit most forms of indoor sex work. The Sex Party would amend provincial legislation such that municipalities had to impose on sex workers no more onerous zoning or licensing regulations than those applying to other touch professionals.

Sex Toys
The Municipal Act and Vancouver Charter allow municipalities to effectively prohibit the sale of sex toys in their jurisdiction. Typically a municipality uses this power to define the sale of sex toys as “adult entertainment” and then to confine that business to a zone where there is no land available for rent or purchase - a de facto prohibition. The result is that pre-existing sex stores, which are almost always seedy and intimidating and purveying mainly mass market pornography, have a monopoly on the sale of sex toys. BC law effectively prevents the establishment of wholesome, woman-friendly, sex-positive businesses that sell sex toys. By protecting only seedy style sex stores, BC law helps stigmatize the erotic products industry.

The Sex Party would end such negativity and provide that sex-positive sex toys businesses could operate in any municipality in the same locations any other retail store could operate.

Sexually Explicit Private Gatherings
At present many federal criminal prohibitions inhibit sexual expression in which only willing adults participate and observe. For example, the criminal code prohibits any “immoral, indecent or obscene performance, entertainment or representation.” British Columbia police forces have used such provisions to threaten to charge adult, consenting artists and entertainers who seek engage in sexually explicit conduct before willing adult audiences. The criminal code also prohibits the keeping of a place where “indecency” regularly occurs. In jurisdictions outside BC these provisions have been used to attack bathhouses where open sexual expression occurs, and gatherings of practitioners of group or fetishistic sex. Terms such as “immoral” or “indecent” have no objective meaning. Such laws unduly restrict sexual expression and send sex-negative messages about human sexuality.

Criminal sanctions are within federal responsibility. However the province has control over enforcement of these provisions. The Sex Party would:
a) urge the federal government to repeal these provisions
b) adopt an enforcement policy that formally terminated enforcement of such laws in all cases where sexual expression involved only willing adults, and could be observed only by willing adults.

Sexually Explicit Films, DVDs and Videos
BC legislation provides that the sale of any video or DVD with any explicit sexual content is absolutely forbidden, unless a bureaucrat gives permission.

The Sex Party would repeal this legislation. The federal criminal code already affords sufficient social protection in prohibiting the sale of pornography depicting children or violence. The effect of the provincial regulations is to ensure distribution of only mass market pornography and to prohibit the distribution of sex-positive media, because the market in the former justifies the expense of the approval system, while the market for the latter is too small to recoup such expenses. Hence only the mass market porn, often depicting sex-negative messages, is freely available, while sex-positive material is totally excluded.

Sexual Entertainment in Licensed Premises
BC liquor laws prohibit in licensed premises, sexual entertainment including sexually explicit films or videos and sexually explicit performances, except exotic dancing.

While regulations designed to protect erotic performers and to ensure public health and hygiene are necessary, the BC prohibitions go far beyond serving those interests. They prohibit erotic entertainment which is entirely safe, healthy and hygienic. Why? Because they reflect the sex-negative idea that all sexual entertainment other than the stripper variety is “bad” and thus must be excluded from liquor areas.

The Sex Party would repeal these sex negative regulations and replace them with provisions that allow all forms of sexual entertainment that are consensual, adult, safe and hygienic.

3) SUPPORT SEX POSITIVE COMMUNITY

Long Term Care
Many people in long term care find great comfort and meaning in sexual expression. Most long term care facilities have no policies respecting the expression of sexual needs. This usually results in stifling sexual expression or forcing it to occur surreptitiously.

The Sex Party would require all long term care institutions to articulate a sexuality policy that is non-judgmental about residents’ sexuality and that aims to facilitate any desired activity among willing partners, who can be either fellow residents, visiting friends or spouses, or sex professionals.

The Sex Party would institute a program at provincial nursing schools for specialized sexual care nurses. Their duties would include sexual counseling, risk assessment, and facilitating sexual expression desired by residents, including washing, undress and positioning residents before and during sexual activity, administering erection-producing injections, fitting condoms and helping patients with cleaning and dressing, providing sex toys and erotic material and facilitating contact with sex professionals.

Sex Positive Press Council
Often unconsciously, the media plays a key role in perpetuating sex-negative attitudes. Because the media is generally unaware of their role, they need assistance in recognizing it. Examples of such negativity include:

a) Overt Censorship
1) in images accompanying news stories involving nudity, the media digitally blurs the genital region of the body or female breasts, or hides them via camera angles. See examples from the National Post and Vancouver Sun and the New York Times.
2) the print media censors the spelling of sexual terms, such as depicting the word “fuck” as “f---”. See an example from The National Post.
3) the audio media censors behind a beep sound the sounds of sexual words
Such censorship violates several principles of journalistic ethics and communicates negative messages about genitals and sex and the words, sounds and images that describe genitals and sex.

b) Subtle censorship
The news media has specialists covering every major aspect of human existence, including food, health, education, travel, the environment, business, the media itself, fashion, cars, and wine. Yet not a single journalist in a mainstream media organization focuses on sexuality. The subject deserves at least the same attention as fashion, cars and wine.

The Sex Party would create a Sex-Positive Press Council that would expose the overt and subtle censorship practiced by BC media.

Sex-Positive Holidays
The provincial Victoria Day holiday in May commemorates a monarch legendary for her negative attitudes towards female sexuality. The Sex Party would change Victoria Day to Eros Day to celebrate and encourage sex-positive expression.
There is no provincial holiday in February. The Sex Party would proclaim Valentines Day as an official holiday

* * * * *

PLATFORM - FEDERAL

OUR FEDERAL PLATFORM To realize a sex-positive culture we need to: a) change our education system b) repeal sex-negative laws and regulations c) support sex-positive community.

The federal government has responsibility in each of these areas.

1) CHANGE OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

Teach sexual gradualism in schools
Canadian studies indicate that the quantity and quality of sexual health education and sexual health services being provided to our youth are inadequate.

The Sex Party would establish a comprehensive national education program in sexual health and hygiene. But we would go further. We favour a school sexual education program that encourages sexual activity - but in a gradual and disciplined way. Our youth need to know that sex is enhanced in both the short and long term by a step-by-step process of sexual gradualism, whereby extensive sexual experimentation precedes first intercourse. Virtually every other learning system involves a gradualist approach, and children naturally embrace it.

Instruction in sexual gradualism would teach a teen a way to explore the erotic responsiveness of his or her own body without contact with another person. Teens would also learn how to set the stage for healthy and satisfying sexual liaisons. They would learn, for example, that trust, emotional intimacy, relaxation, and verbal communication are all key to an optimal first sexual experience. As well, a course in sexual gradualism would teach young people about erotic massage and would emphasize the importance of non-coital erotic experimentation prior to intercourse.

Parents play a key role in the sex education of their children, although that role is usually unconscious. The Sex Party would introduce a national program to support parents in their vital role as sex-positive educators.

Education is a provincial responsibility. The federal government can influence education policy through funding programs. The Sex Party would fund provincial and municipal education jurisdictions that adopt the national sex education program.

The Institute for the Advanced Study of Sexual Policy
Canada is the home of many world-class think tanks in the areas of medicine, technology and social science. No significant research program focuses on human sexuality and especially its public policy aspects. The Sex Party would provide provincial funding for an institute to conduct high level research into several sexuality policy issues, including enhancing sexual education throughout the lifespan, and eradicating sex negativity systems in the media, religion, the law, and family life.

2) REPEAL SEX-NEGATIVE LAWS AND REGULATIONS
Public Nudity
The federal Criminal Code prohibits all recreational nudity in public areas. The provincial government controls the enforcement of these provisions. At present there is no systematic enforcement policy. As a result of history or geographic isolation, enforcement policies tolerate recreational nudity in specific areas, such as Vancouver’s Wreck Beach. Relatively few such areas exist. Recreational nudists are denied rights to the vast majority of accessible public lands.

Public nudity has many social benefits for both nudists and non-nudists, chief of which is to normalize all parts of the human body and de-stigmatize human sexual organs.

The Sex Party would pass legislation requiring all public parks and beaches larger than one hectare to designate areas reserved for nudists.

Sex work
At present federal criminal law prohibits almost all form of commercial erotic touch. Such a blanket prohibition has been implicated in the stigmatization of sex workers, which in turn contributes to violence towards this vulnerable social group. British Columbia is the setting for one of the most horrific mass killings of sex workers in the modern world. A serial killer is victimizing prostitutes in Edmonton, and is still at large. Despite this unspeakable violence against an identifiable minority, successive federal have done almost nothing to change the inhumane prohibitions aimed at sex workers.

Twenty years ago the Fraser Commission undertook an exhaustive study of these prohibitions and recommended radical change. Nothing has happened, except the deaths of dozens of sex workers.

Criminal sanctions against sex workers are within federal responsibility. The Sex Party would:
a) implement the recommendations of the Fraser Committee with respect to the repeal of laws prohibiting consensual, adult sex work in private;
b) establish the Sex Worker Empowerment Program (SWEP), a federally-funded agency providing counseling, education, and advocacy to sex workers in Canada.

Sexually Explicit Private Gatherings
At present many federal criminal prohibitions inhibit sexual expression in which only willing adults participate and observe. For example, the criminal code prohibits any “immoral, indecent or obscene performance, entertainment or representation.” Police forces have used such provisions to threaten to charge adult, consenting artists and entertainers who seek engage in sexually explicit conduct before willing adult audiences. The criminal code also prohibits the keeping of a place where “indecency” regularly occurs. These provisions have been used to attack bathhouses where open sexual expression occurs, and gatherings of practitioners of group or fetishistic sex. Terms such as “immoral” or “indecent” have no objective meaning. Such laws unduly restrict sexual expression and send sex-negative messages about human sexuality. The Sex Party would repeal them.

Anal Sex
Federal criminal law prohibits anal sex between individuals younger than 18 or in sexual activity involving more than two people. Such prohibitions are unreasonable. The Sex Party would repeal them.

Child Pornography
The Sex Party supports all reasonable measures aimed at preventing the abuse of children involved in the production of sexually explicit media. Federal legislation prohibits the possession or production of photographs and films that depict real children involved in sexual activity. The Sex Party supports that law. But federal law also prohibits the possession of written material containing descriptions of sexual activity involving children. Such material could include novels, personal journals, or fantasies. No evidence suggests that the prohibition of such writing prevents harm to children. The Sex Party would delete that prohibition.

Canada Customs
Canadian legislation gives Canadian customs officials broad powers to prohibit sexual media crossing Canadian borders. For the last 25 years, federal customs officials have exercised these powers with a high level of capriciousness. Courts have censured this arbitrary behavior. Customs officials have especially targeted the gay community. All such action is unecessary. The Criminal Code provides ample resources to police officers accross the country to seize and destroy sexual media that is truly dangerous to society. The Sex Party would abolish the censorship powers of the customs agency.

Canada Post
The federal government runs one of the most powerful media organizations in the country: Canada Post. Its unaddressed mail program has an audience reach as large as the entire radio industry, or television industry or newspaper industry. Every year it delivers hundreds of millions of unaddressed flyers to Canadian households, including material from charities, churches, government agencies, corporations and political parties.Yet Canada Post refuses to accept The Sex Party’s election flyers because they include tasteful, non-pornographic sexual words and art images. To Canada Post any sexual content is prohibited regardless of its political, artistic or intellectual merit. Such censorship is a classic expression of sex-negativity. The Sex Party would re-write postal regulations to prohibit only sexual material that was clearly pornographic or designed to shock. (The Sex Party is also in the process of attacking these provisions in court.)

3) SUPPORT SEX POSITIVE COMMUNITY

Long Term Care
Many people in long term care find great comfort and meaning in sexual expression. Most long term care facilities have no policies respecting the expression of sexual needs. This usually results in stifling sexual expression or forcing it to occur surreptitiously.

The Sex Party would develop national code of ethics for long term care institutions that is non-judgmental about residents’ sexuality and that aims to facilitate any desired activity among willing partners, who can be either fellow residents, visiting friends or spouses, or sex professionals.

The Sex Party would fund a program at nursing schools for specialized sexual care nurses. Their duties would include sexual counseling, risk assessment, and facilitating sexual expression desired by residents, including washing, undress and positioning residents before and during sexual activity, administering erection-producing injections, fitting condoms and helping patients with cleaning and dressing, providing sex toys and erotic material and facilitating contact with sex professionals.

Sex Positive Press Council
Often unconsciously, the media plays a key role in perpetuating sex-negative attitudes. Because the media is generally unaware of their role, they need assistance in recognizing it. Examples of such negativity include:

a) Overt Censorship
1) in images accompanying news stories involving nudity, the media digitally blurs the genital region of the body or female breasts, or hides them via camera angles. See examples from the National Post and Vancouver Sun and the New York Times.
2) the print media censors the spelling of sexual terms, such as depicting the word “fuck” as “f---”. See an example from The National Post.
3) the audio media censors behind a beep sound the sounds of sexual words
Such censorship violates several principles of journalistic ethics and communicates negative messages about genitals and sex and the words, sounds and images that describe genitals and sex.

b) Subtle censorship
The news media has specialists covering every major aspect of human existence, including food, health, education, travel, the environment, business, the media itself, fashion, cars, and wine. Yet not a single journalist in a mainstream media organization focuses on sexuality. The subject deserves at least the same attention as fashion, cars and wine.

The Sex Party would create a Sex-Positive Press Council that would expose the overt and subtle censorship practiced by Canadian media.

* * * * *
Yes, British Columbia & Canada are very progressive!

* * * * *

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

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Forty-Two

Flowers!
from Biertijd

* * * * *

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

Number One-Hundred-Forty-One

Julian Opie
A few selections from the Bijou Collection

* * * * *

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

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Forty

Destination London: The Baglioni Hotel
By Alex Rose, for The Informed Traveler

The Baglioni is a very stylish, intimate, and sophisticated hotel that balances both luxe elegance and discreet personal service. And it’s absolutely first-rate where it matters– in accommodations and service. The hotel resides in a Victorian building in the heart of Kensington, with sweeping views of Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gardens and Palace, and Hyde Park (which is close enough for a leisurely stroll), while some of west London’s best-known shops and boutiques are only few moments away. The rooms are spacious, with welcoming hues, and for those amorous couples looking for an intimate weekend, the bedrooms are very comfortable and made for play. One nice touch is the lit candles in the bedroom and bathroom every night, compliments of the hotel. The bathrooms are decadently ornate with marble floors, elegant fixtures, and rich colors throughout. There are many complimentary “perks” available to guests such as high-speed internet (WiFi available in the lobby), flat-screen interactive plasma televisions, an expresso machine in each room, a large selection of on-demand music and movies available, and a personal butler for each floor. Unique services such as a baby-sitter and personal shopper are available to guests for a fee. Honorable mentions go to the spa for a full-range of health-and-beauty treatments, the Brunello restaurant for excellent Italian cuisine, and the swank private hotel bar, Boutique 60. Enjoy your stay!

* * * * *

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

Number One-Hundred-Thirty-Nine

Spotlight On: Blakes Hotel London
By Alex Rose, for The Informed Traveler

One of the most enticing hotels you’ll find in London where you can spend a sexy weekend that will indulge your senses in the most extravagant ways. Blakes is the creation of former Bond girl Anouska Hempel who has taken luxury and couture to a new level with her hotel. Each of the 52 rooms are a veritable feast for the eyes with all the decor and furnishings providing a feel of sumptuous luxury. If you value your privacy, no worries here; this is one of the very few hotels where celebrities from all walks of life can check-in and not worry about paparazzi. Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Gisele Bundchen, and other well-known celebs have stayed here. What rooms are recommended? All are extremely luxurious and chic, but request the White Suite or Room 309. There’s a wonderful bar and restaurant downstairs, but room service is all you’ll need at Blakes. Quite spectacular by any standard for those sophisticated travelers who appreciate a superb quality of service.

* * * * *

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

Number One-Hundred-Thirty-Eight

Off the Beaten Path in New York: the Charms of C.O. Bigelow
By Alex Rose, for The Informed Traveler

The old-fashioned apothecary claims, “If you can’t get it anywhere else, try C.O. Bigelow.” How true. Shoppers boast: “This is the coolest drugstore on the planet– a retro little shop in NYC’s West Village, where Mark Twain once filled his prescriptions!” Again, how true. This local landmark has more than the usual fare you’ll find on the shelf at the local chain drug store. It has an unparalleled selection of hard-to-find cosmetics and homeopathic remedies for everyone. The best thing about these items though is that they are hand-picked and road-tested by the store’s owner, Ian Ginsberg. He travels the world over in search of unique products that really work for his customers. For example, specialty items include: a cinnamon-peppermint concentrated mouthwash from the London pharmacy D.R. Harris, Crystal Eye Gel with a witch hazel potion known to improve tired-looking eyes in ten minutes, a Proraso menthol shaving cream from Florence, Italy, a Propoline First-Aid Balsam from Apitiva, Greece (which contains calendula and aloe known to heal minor sunburns as well as blisters on feet), almost the entire line of Acqua di Parma products from Italy, and London’s George F. Trumper brand of personal care products for gentlemen. And Bigelow’s long list of distinguished names that have popped in to shop since its founding in 1838 include the Roosevelts and John Belushi as well as current celebrities. Next time you’re in NYC, make time to visit this gem.

C.O. Bigelow products are available at all Bath & Body Works locations, and the C.O. Bigelow stores in Columbus, Ohio, Boston, Chicago, and Paramus, New Jersey.

* * * * *

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

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Number One-Hundred-Thirty-Seven

The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin’s Priestess of Depravity by Mel Gordon
A Feral House book
Reviewed by Len Bracken, Bookslut

Anita Berber was Weimar Germany’s decadent dancer extraordinaire. Her style if not her lewd inclinations inspired Leni Riefenstahl and Marlena Dietrich to the point of plagiarism: the former launched her acting career as the understudy who filled in for Berber, copying her every move, and the latter, whom Berber dated, borrowed Anita’s fashion sense and confident demeanor. Unmatched by her imitators, Berber danced through life, slinking her sable-wrapped-yet-otherwise-nude form across the chessboard tiles of hotel lobby floors. At one point she was everywhere—in the streets of Berlin with traces of powder on her nostrils and a pet monkey around her neck, on the silver screen playing macabre characters, in newspapers and entertainment reviews, and on stage in wispy costumes, dancing to words by her first husband, the expressionist poet and notorious international con artist, Sebastian Droste:

. . . Ah-jump over the Shadow
It torments, this Shadow
It devours, this Shadow
What does the Shadow want
Cocaine
Shrieks
Animals.

Mel Gordon brings together a dazzling array of photographs, drawings, paintings, anecdotes, poems, manifestos and other material into this short yet informative biography. Working with a novel about Berber by one of her contemporaries and monographs and articles by dance specialists, Gordon, a U.C. Berkeley professor and the author of numerous books on Germany, notably the biography Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler’s Jewish Clairvoyant, brings deep historical knowledge to his subject.

The height of Berber’s career and nude dancing coincided with the Inflation, and the author depicts this period primarily by its natural, hedonistic response to war and economic distress, although Gordon doesn’t dwell on it. Surprisingly, no mention is made of the noteworthy takeover of the country by soldier and worker councils following the war. Gordon prefers to remain close to his subject, the schoolgirl raised by her grandmother in Dresden where she attended body movement schools before moving to the capital at age 16 to become a dancer. Gordon knows from his encyclopedic Voluptuous Panic, now in an expanded edition, precisely where Berber fits in the erotic world of Weimar Berlin, and he fills in the background with plenty of interesting oddities, such as showgirls sliding down a giant razor blade.

Seen as a morality tale for the era, Gordon reports that Berber died from tuberculosis at 29 after a tour of Greece and the Middle East. But the author is clearly fascinated by Berber and sympathizes with her, especially when she was paid to do more than dance. It seems that Gordon himself was caught up in the 1990s Berber revival, in which her dances were recreated in several cities. The author even helped choreograph her moves for a new wave musician.

Gordon makes the point that Berber’s career was buoyed at various points by the graphic arts and her appearances in magazines. The best photographs show elegantly long, tapering legs with a narrow waist and slender shoulders—the body of a professional dancer. In movie stills she appears in an Eton-Boy tux with trousers, sporting a monocle; or again shooting an older man, possibly her father, with a pistol. Otto Dix captured her in 1925 wearing the tomato-red “Morphine” costume in a painting recently on exhibit at the 2006-07 “Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s” show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and nicely reproduced in the book. The semitransparent cloth clings to a long waist at the center of the painting. Dix hints at the muscles of her abdomen, her belly button and a small band of fat below it—all very smooth in contrast to the diagonal folds of the skirt and the rise of her breasts. One hand presses against her hip. The other curls toward her private parts, seen as a faintly dark triangle, with the fingers hovering like red-tipped pincers. Dix contrasts the high-collar dress blending into her auburn hair and the crimson background with Berber’s powder-white face and large eyes. She wears a fierce expression in the portrait that was turned into a national postage stamp in 1991—an expression at once determined with her glassy eyes staring at a point in the distance, yet whimsical with ornately colored lips.

That’s how she looked when she danced to the words in the poem “Morphine,” which is reproduced with others in the back of the biography: “strange flowers and greenhouse plants, painted people and listless sounding bells.so far.so.distant.merging.breathing.” These poems originally appeared in the Berber-Droste collaborative book The Dances of Depravity, Horror, and Ecstasy (Vienna, 1922) and Gordon draws a strong portrait of Berber’s first husband and dance partner, making this more like three books in one.

It was with Droste that Berber created some of her biggest scandals on the stage and in crime stories in newspapers across Europe. Gordon recounts how Droste finally conned Berber, stealing her furs and jewels to fund a transatlantic journey and his transformation into a baron. In New York Droste would manage to stage a Carnegie Hall recital and was featured in now-famous photographs by Francis Bruguière, while coexisting with sex guru charlatans in an Upstate love colony and reporting firsthand for German newspapers on the hanging of Gerald Chapman.

When they were still together in Europe, Berber and Droste were banned from most the top venues in Europe and expelled from Vienna—what Gordon calls “madness on tour.” Although never performed, in their book the perverse couple envisioned a dance with Berber catching Droste’s sperm in her mouth as he hangs from a rope above her.

Her second husband was another dancer, an American who met the dada artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhaven in New York and rented a room from her in Berlin. Anita heard about the well-connected arrival and caught his first performance in the city. She waited for him after the show, taking him for one of Anita’s nights on the town. He was content to go along with her plans. In an effort to restart her career, the cocaine-addicted cabaret star married the young American two weeks later.

Gordon quickly moves from incident to incident in this tumultuous life—from Berber’s arrest in Zagreb on charges of spying to Munich where she was shunned by her violin maestro father—always coming back to Berlin and dancing. Her last tour stretched from Athens to Cairo, Baghdad to Beirut and on to Damascus. When she finally returned to Berlin, using funds raised by friends to make the trip, she had tuberculosis on top of her addictions to drugs and alcohol. Berber would soon die in a Kreuzberg hospital, a trend-setting woman living in times that, for all the disruptions, encouraged artistic experimentation.

Gordon’s biography gives us Anita Berber’s irrational, artistic response to those times. The book shows a life striving to live beyond all limits, a life like the best art that fails for its excess but wouldn’t be the best without it. Berber left behind her performances, her drawings and poems, but with Gordon’s portrayal, Berber’s life itself can be seen as her unfinished masterpiece.

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From Feral House . . . . .

The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber is the first contemporary biography of the notorious actor/dancer/poet/playwright who scandalized sex-obsessed Weimar Berlin during the 1920s.

In an era where everything was permitted, Anita Berber’s celebrations of “Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy” were condemned and censored. She often haunted Weimar Berlin’s hotel lobbies, nightclubs, and casinos, radiantly naked except for an elegant sable wrap, a pet monkey hanging from her neck, and a silver brooch packed with cocaine.

Multi-talented Anita saw no boundaries between her personal life and her taboo-shattering performances. As such, she was Europe’s first postmodern woman. After sated Berliners finally tired of Anita Berber’s libidinous antics, she became a “carrion soul that even the hyenas ignored,” dying in 1928 at the age of twenty-nine.

• Includes nearly two hundred photographs and illustrations, including some that recreate Berber’s salacious and enduring “Repertoire of the Damned.”

• Berber was a lover of Marlene Dietrich and influenced and associated with Leni Riefenstahl, Lawrence Durrell, Klaus Mann, and the founder of modern sexology, Magnus Hirschfeld.

• An early movie star, Berber acted in Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler and the silent epic Lucifer.

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