Eat With Your Eyes

I found these in a compilation book of photography from Tank magazine. My knee-jerk reaction was 'HA!'



Then going back to look at them after scanning them out of the book, I now think about how great they are at literally representing the point of consumer products.
Frying up some lipgloss and eye liners; spooning up some lipsticks. I'd thought about eating lipsticks before I started to use them. Love for products, makeup, and consumer products is a kind of hunger. When I look at the bowl of lipsticks in the cereal, I think about how if I could only chew and swallow up those creamy sticks, maybe I could have permanently colored lips, rich and developed like the photo colors. More than the application of makeup, these images remind me of a kind of desire projected onto consumer products: they'll make up us, we will become them, and they us. Just like the way food becomes a part of you when you eat it.
These pictures remind me that I want to gobble up the powders and creams and cakes, and become what I consume.

An Afternoon of Self-Righteousness In Borders Books

SO

I sauntered into Borders the other afternoon with no intentions whatsoever. Curious about their magazine selection, I did some hardcore browsing. I had read the above issue of Bust in the Brown bookstore a few days before (I'm very non-committal about magazines), and that along with Bitch were sitting right behind the placard that read "Gay and Lesbian". I took a quiet offense to the possibility of this being a gesture towards generalizing feminist periodicals as being for 'dykes' and what-have-you...
I mentioned it to the lady working at the desk, and being the non-mentioning type I am, I felt a certain shot of self-esteem leak into my bloodstream, then rocket towards cushioning a little tumor of self-righteousness in my chest. Huzzah! Tah-dah forever!
Of course, after delivering my opinion to the nice lady employee, I immediately felt the pangs of contradiction begin their monologue: "No! I know feminism and queer interests are totally allied and in tandem with each other! They are historically linked! I wouldn't want girls/women to maybe not give these titles a chance because they're shelved under 'Gay'! Not that that would be right anyway! Or maybe people wouldn't care! Or maybe they do! I don't know, I'm out of touch with what the rest of humanity thinks anyway! DON'T LISTEN TO ME FRIENDLY BORDERS EMPLOYEE, CONTINUE DOING YOUR JOB AFFABLY AND HONORABLY! Goodbye!"
This was all internal, although may have showed by way of a deeply furrowed brow. Anyhow I did get the hell out of there before I collapsed under the weight of my one-woman silent debate meeting.I went back a couple days later, and lo and behold, Bust and Bitch were no longer under Gay & Lesbian, but Culture & Society! VICTORY!

But, oh...

Ok, it's actually that they don't seem to have enough shelf space or carry enough Gay & Lesbian titles to fill a rack that would be able to fulfill the promise of that placard. It's a tie this time Borders!!
And I bought the issue of Bitch on display just because I felt guilty. Although I'm not sure what exactly for...
Moral of the story is...don't get angry until you're sure you actually have something to be angry about.

The End.

3 Caves

1. Cave in the Barbados
2. Mike Kelley drawing
3. my own screenprint

Basket Case

Sitting right in front of a tv in the living room at Kapalua in Maui. Green Day led me to believe that you played the guitar just by moving your hand up and down rapidly, I didn't really understand that there were individual strings tuned to from low to high sounds. And the masks the hospital nurses are wearing at the end of the video looked exactly like the face of this little old man pictured on the packaging of this rice candy we'd get in Maui; you could eat the candy's wrapper because it was made of rice. I didn't think you were supposed to eat the actual hard candy inside the wrapper though, so I never knew what the real candy tasted like.

1979

Watching MTV in the den with my covers on the couch, before going to PM Kindergarten at St. Paul's.

The Fourth Sex

a Vanessa Beecroft performance piece

Comme des Garcons advert

Pike Street Runaway, Seattle, photo by Mary Ellen Mark

Bunny Boy, Gummo

Women of the IRA

Columbine

All images from The Fourth Sex are paralleling and contradicting images of youth culture. When opposing realities and images of youth meet, they collide, there's violence...as in Columbine. I was in 4th grade when that happened.

Violence is a part of youth culture; the armed struggle of the IRA was propelled by youth, Bobby Sands was 27 when he starved to death.

Kids try on habits learned from adults.

The Fourth Sex

I read once that the most attractive part of a man is his femininity, and the most attractive thing in a woman is her masculinity. This is the epitome of that sentiment.

The Fourth Sex, Edited by Raf Simons, Francesco Bonami, Maria Luisa Frisa; published by Charta and Rizzoli International