Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Well, That's One Interpretation

“Cameron Diaz Encourages Women to Keep Their Pubic Hair in Her New Book”

While it would make for an interesting bookmark, it's not terribly convenient with a Kindle or Nook.
Poor modifier placement from the E! headline writers; thanks to Prof. Geoffrey Pullum (Language Log) for the pointer.

Note that I’m not claiming the headline is “grammatically wrong” in some objective sense — but it’s jarring and potentially confusing.
But we knew what she meant.  It appears to be a new "movement" is coming.

American Apparel Mannequins Now Sporting Full Bush
As the NY Times noted in their piece last year regarding the return of pubic hair, "For centuries of artistic tradition, the absence of pubic hair was merely an illusion. Renaissance artists depicted the female pelvis in smoothed stone or oil-painted shadow." And now, Brave Artist Dov Charney is taking that taboo on with his latest window display... or maybe he just needed a new way to sexualize young women. UNISEX PUBES MADE IN AMERICA $49.99!
This week the American Apparel on East Houston Street put up a new window display, featuring a more natural looking mannequin. We called the shop up this morning and the employee who answered told us that the mannequins just went up last night, and he had never seen them before... "not in this configuration" (a.k.a. full 1970s porn bush showing through a high-waisted white panty). While leaving nothing to the imagination, at least this mannequin looks like she's of a more... legal age, than say the models used to sell the clothes online.
I don't even remember bushes quite that extravagant in the old Playboys from the fluffy 80's. (NSFW link). It's interesting that pubes are in a fashion cycle much like short skirts?  Does their presence, degree of grooming, relate to the economy? It must mean something.

Yet here I am, month in and month out, dropping my pants for a stranger, letting her slide hot, green, organic wax along my vulva, around my labia, and across my lower abdomen with a thick, pale wooden popsicle stick just so I can feel “clean.” How can I subject a part of my body with such a complicated narrative to this hedonistic ritual and still call myself a feminist?
No, but it does make you a rich bitch; a poor girl would do it herself.

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