This week, bloggers found inspiration from Judith Jamison and Lauren Hutton, were outraged when Hillary Clinton was Photoshopped out of the Situation Room, and looked forward to next week’s movie about the summer of 1961 in Mississippi.
Barbara Mangini’s My Dog-Eared Pages.com is always a feast for the eyes. This week, she offers a collection of elegiac holiday snaps and some summer fashion ideas, but this meditation on tented rooms won our heart, including the featured Ottoman drape created for Lee Radziwill by Renzo Mongiardino.
Supermodel Lauren Hutton is an inspiration to many of us, including in Anna Deavere Smith’s impersonation in Let Me Down Easy. Kami Gray Style invokes Hutton at a moment we can all relate to: a dressing room where “a sixty-something woman” is trying on a pair of skinny jeans. “She was filled with apprehension about wearing them in public — that she couldn’t pull them off and they were inappropriate for her. She could literally hear her mother from the grave telling her so.” Gray “gave her an extra nudge by emailing her this photo of Lauren Hutton at age 68 in skinny jeans. What do we think? Is it working for Lauren?” Click over and see what you think.
Speaking of icons, Hello Ladies points us to two at once: NPR giant Maria Hinojosa, at the Simmons Leadership Conference last week, interviewing the ageless Judith Jamison of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Apparently, giants sometimes do chores: “Jamison explains that she doesn’t think of herself as an icon. ‘I mean, I gotta go home and do the laundry tonight. I don’t think icons do laundry!’ “
The blogosphere was understandably aflame today at the news, delivered here by Maya at Feministing: “Hasidic newspaper erases the women from that iconic Situation Room photo.” We found Maya’s analysis of the outrage dead-on: “This is always what happens when you are (one of) the only women in the room (literally in this case!) Your every action, word, expression is subject to gendered scrutiny–and a worried gesture, or a simple cough, can be used to support whatever narrative about women in power others want to write. Clinton’s expression in a photo like this will nearly inevitably be seized upon by some as evidence of the Emotional Female (which, depending on your perspective, is either a flaw or a strength).” The whole story, she says, is “about how uncomfortable we still are seeing women in positions of power.”
Of course, there are multiple definitions of power, and Angry Black Bitch is psyched about one positive expression of it: the PBS Freedom Riders documentary airing next week on American Experience. Blogger Shark Fu, herself an organizer, says the following about the faces in the film: “I find inspiration in learning how normal … dare I say, average … many of the freedom riders were. I look at their mug shots, pictures taken after they were arrested for attempting to exercise their constitutionally protected right to travel without being segregated in the South, and I see people I could know … students, sisters, brothers, fathers, athletes, musicians and so forth and so on. I see you and me … doing the incredible, making history, and triggering a confrontation between bullshit and reality that ultimately made the world a better place.Outstanding … amazing … unstoppable … and yes, do-able.” After seeing the trailer, we can’t wait either.
Last week, we called on WVFC contributors to look back on the high (and low) points of 2010. Then we asked them to look ahead to 2011, and what they think is worth our keeping an eye on in the new year.
Thank you so much WVFC for including my blog in “The Wednesday Five!”