While June 21 is officially the first day of summer, we all know the real beginning of summer starts the day school ends. Since I work at an art college, it’s kinda like I’m Matthew McConaughey in the movie Dazed and Confused: “I get older, they stay the same age.” While I’m not hitting on the seniors, I have been known to share burritos with them. When the last day of the semester ends (which is the upcoming magical date of May 10), I get excited at the thought of summer, too. Then it bitterly dawns on me that they’re out in the sun, working on tans and getting crappy homemade tattoos. They’re staying the same age while I am indeed getting older as I sit in front of my computer screen. Summer is happening without me, and probably without you, too.

From Dazed and Confused

Even if you’re not in school anymore or don’t work at a school, the academic calendar determines a lot of variables in your fully employed life whether you notice or not. Certain parts of culture dry up while others get bloated as college kids and families with children plan their sunscreen-soaked vacations. Without large audiences at home, fashion takes a nap, TV shows go on sabbatical and art lays by the pool as collectors who use ‘summer’ as a verb do just that. When it seems like there’s nothing left to do, you go for a walk in the Oakland hills on your day off and every person on the planet is already laying by the lake like a beach full of turds.

I think we have been going about this seemingly unfair, glum ‘summer-for-some’ thing all wrong. Summer is in the attitude, not the time off. It’s what you do during the hours past 5pm that count, and the part of you who wants to go recline in front of the TV in cat jammies must be denied. The part of you who plans on avoiding all outdoor areas for the next three months for fear of large sweaty crowds must also be denied.

My advice is, if you can’t beat em, join em. Let’s look to rock and roll to show us how to dial back our maturity level and jump start our summers by acting like a college kid again.

1. Cut up your clothes: Weezer- “Undone, the Sweater Song”

If there is one season which permits, if not requires, crappy clothes, it’s summer. All those pants you have in the closet are just asking to be cut-offs, which will help you work on your tan-through-the fog San Francisco process of bronzing your legs. As for your fears of a less-than-bikini body, my friend Hilary advises, “If you can’t tone it, tan it.” Also, when you destroy all your clothes, you have a great reason in the fall to go “Back-to-School shopping.”

2. Go to a house party: Jawbreaker- “West Bay Invitational”

As ’90s Bay Area band, Jawbreaker, states at the beginning of this video, there lies a literal great divide between Oakland and SF- the bridge. Whether you find yourself on either side of it, you owe it to your college kid self to talk your friends into crossing it at least once a week this summer. College kids do not bother with excuses like, “How will I get home after the BART closes at midnight?” The answer is obvious– stay up all night. And how could you bother feigning lack of interest when Blake Schwartzenbach is begging you, “We’re having this party/Please come/It won’t be the same without you/Please come”? Plus summer house parties mean BBQs. And sangria. So get over it and go already.

3. Go on a road trip: Iggy Pop- “The Passenger”

If you are still not feeling much like a summer kid on a break from rules and deadlines after you cut off your favorite jeans and cross the bay to drink pony kegs on someone’s porch, a roadtrip is in order, stat! Even if you just drive aimlessly around the city like Iggy in one of my all-time favorite songs (which is equally awesome when covered by Siouxsie and the Banshees), sitting in the passenger seat watching the world unfurl before you is enough to make you feel more alive. Especially when you think of it like this: “The city was made for you and me/So let’s take a ride and see what’s mine”.

4. Make out with someone: Thin Lizzy- “The Boys are Back in Town”

While the grown-up you curses the pestilent descent of kids in skinny colored jeans and dumb t-shirts into all of your favorite places, the new/old college kid you sees this as a gift from the summer gods. What’s more summery than a fling? If you are single, (or into making bad decisions), find one of those younger boys who are back in town and put this song on the digital jukebox. Never mind the lame slow dancing in this 1976 video- Thin Lizzy is sexier and harder than most songs of the new generation, and you can be the one to teach that cute specimen you pulled into the corner all about it. I’ll be your wingwoman on the sidelines, giving you a high-five.

5. Make some new friends: Palma Violets- “Best of Friends”

This new band’s video sums up all the parties you’ve been missing while you’ve been holed away in winter as an adult. Just put your ear to the ground, listen for screaming kids and guitars, and point yourself in the direction of the closest warehouse. With a cheap beer in one hand, and the hand of someone you just met in the other, it’s time to laugh in the face of all the reasons you had for not going out on a Tuesday night. Summer, you find, has in fact been in full effect with unknown bands playing steamy basements all year. Go make some friends and show the crowd in that Thin Lizzy video how it’s done.

By the time the real Summer Solstice comes around, you’ll show up to the party with tan legs, windswept hair, shaky tattoos, and a league of college kids behind you, following your lust for life like a summertime Pied Piper. Enjoy it while you can!

If you haven’t seen the last season, you can stream it on Netflix. AND you can watch new episodes on here, plus do daily fun stuff like Tina Trivia!

from kevincharnas.com

Schadenfreude is a deliciously German word which means ‘taking pleasure in the misfortune of others’, of which, surprisingly, there is no English translation. This is truly surprising given the amount of time we Americans spend taking great pleasure in all the pitfalls of our anointed celebrities. Picture Britney Spears: we grin sadistically when the pictures of her bald meltdown surface, even though it was our original interest in her pop career that made her millions.

We all live for the moment when the Fashion Police are called

This is what Us Weekly was made for. It was created for our own entertainment at the expense of those who unfairly take up so much of our headspace. That, and escapist fantasies of the rich and famous. Strangely, a while ago someone signed me up for a free subscription to Us Weekly, Shape, and Glamour. I have no idea who it was, but I suspect my sister or my mom. They pour out of my mailbox and fill me with revulsion with their baby pics, teen trends, and beach bodies. I pull them out of the mail pile and throw them face down on the floor like I am going to catch a disease from them. Dumbness disease. This whole time I’ve been receiving the Us Weeklys for free, I have never actually read one. I worry mostly about my attention-span and my list of things to do. Us Weekly has been designed to keep you utterly enthralled in idiotic un-news from cover-to-cover, and then has the audacity to show up every week in your mailbox, retraining your brain to think of the things you’ve just mentally encrypted as interesting into yesterday’s news, and you start the whole obsessive process over again.

Last week’s issue- Gotta keep up!!

While I have flipped through a few pages before, as I attempt to really examine my first issue, I thought we might take this uncharted journey into celebrity hate-love-love-to-hate of Us Weekly together, and try to study this specimen as dedicated explorers to see just what these pages really say about us as a culture.

The issue we’re exploring is already outdated

My god, the cover is a real juicy one. Kim K and her enormous boobs just overflowing out of that spandex dress, (that you later learn is loaned from the fat sister), and the tiny British princess, Kate, eaking out her pregnancy ever-so-daintily and covered in plaid like a tartan doily. The main headline is in yellow all caps (a sign of serious importance): BABY WEIGHT BATTLES, second line: TOO THIN? TOO FAT? It makes you immediately wonder if they are battling each other. Then you think, “Yeah, baby battle! Fight, you fame-hungry whores!” Then the subtext grabs at your empathy: “Both six months pregnant, Kate & Kim are constantly bullied and judged. Inside their support systems and how they fight back.” Just who is actually bullying them and advertising their weight “problems”? If pictures like these weren’t published, neither of them would be “fighting back!” The magazine is simultaneously broadcasting their shame and tsking that darn media for creating these dramas. But then…if it wasn’t news to you, the magazine wouldn’t exist because they wouldn’t sell any issues, so inadvertently, we are to blame. Crap!

I love when the magazine completely ignores a celebrity being so clearly annoyed we are looking at them, to talk about their pecs.

The next part is “Who Wore it Best?” with the percentages tallied of a vote which supposedly happened regarding two similar ensembles on different celebrities. My hunch says it’s unhappy teens and moms on sudafed who are doing the voting online. Examining the winner and loser of the same-outfit-OMG-I-wanna-die contest says a lot more about our expectations of our fantasies than it does about who really looked better. Let’s take the easy one: Kris Jenner, (easily 50s +, Kim K’s mom, mega-millionaire media hound), vs Blake Lively, (known on-screen as the super stylish babe on Gossip Girl, young and hot, hasn’t done anything scarring to her image in recent memory). The answer: 10% for Kris, 90% for Blake. Duh! This tells us about the avatars we live vicariously through as we look at famous people: We are a youth-obsessed culture, being thin and trim is an important sign of youth, and WE want to be likable- not media hungry and desperate. We love to hate the media hungry and desperate. What I mean is that when we favor one of them, it’s because they embody something we wish we were, not because they looked ‘better.’

You’re picking out yourself, not their outfit.

And what do I mean by ‘we’ anyway? I don’t mean absolutely everybody- not your dad unless he’s reading it in the bathroom. Let’s examine the demographic of the magazine by looking at the ads and who they are targeting. That is the ‘we,’ and you and I are in it because somehow we picked up this copy. There are ads for quintessentially mainstream foods like Ritz crackers, Orbit gum, and Lunchables. This, plus the Honda and pet food ads, means they are targeting middle income families. And while people in places like San Francisco might find themselves eating Ritz crackers on accident, most over-educated foodie jerks in cities are making their own wheat thins rather than buying anything processed. (More on that in another post). So the ‘we’ are women in suburban neighborhoods with enough time, boredom and dispensable income on their hands to flip through the fantasy lives of others on a whim.

This one is just weird- what the hell is an ‘e’ cigarette, and has Stephen Dorff’s career really not taken off at all since that Sophia Coppola movie?

You know what else is advertised to death in this magazine? Baby products. Holy hell, there must be millions of moms just dying to dare to dream of having that immaculate Cuban romance that Jay Z just whisked Beyonce away on, (we even learn what the two ate for dinner), while they are lugging around screaming brats.

Do you really need to know that she had the chicken?

Every other ad is for a diaper, or in one case, permanent birth control! Moms are the real demographic here, or why else would we care at all about all these mundane baby pics. My god! Who cares that Hilary Duff thinks her one-year-old is “so funny”? Moms who think their babies are “so hilarious,” too- that’s who.

Like it’s hard to read how they are promoting products for babies right next to celebrity babies! Don’t you want one now? Better get Huggies for it!

How about permanent birth control? It’s almost like sterilization!

Or worse, we’re supposed to care enough about stars’ pets to be able to name them in a quiz? Really!? What this says is that we are rewarded by subscribing so devoutly to this deluge of “interesting” tidbits that readers can actually gratuitously pat themselves on the back for knowing the stars so well. It’s almost like you are one! OMG!

Don’t have a baby? They know a pet is practically a baby, so here, buy cat litter just like a star!

Let’s talk about the fat thing. Yes, by comparison, actors and fashion models make us feel fat and so we hate them. Yet we wouldn’t accept anything less than perfection from them. Picture the humiliation of Kirsty Alley as she grew bigger and bigger and couldn’t get roles in anything anymore except for her own self-depricating show, Fat Actress and then that tanked, too. Oh Kirsty. We don’t want to see a fat woman in the lead romantic role. That is, again, where our fantasy selves go, and our fantasy selves are hot. As impossible as the standards we set for celebrities are, the more eagerly we live to see their defeat because the window we gave them is too small on purpose. Jessica Simpson’s chipmunk cheeks: Oh, the horror! And the glee!

“Just keep it up, fatty!” we drool with delight.

They call these women ‘beautiful’ in this spread, but they really know we are dying to pick apart what pregnancy can do to someone like Penelope Cruz.

So when we look at articles like, “4 Ways to Spring Clean Your Workout: Wipe the slate and steal stars’ fitness tips!”, we are gently manipulated into falling into our own small window of hotness parameters we gave the stars. “Yeah! I’ll steal your secrets and be just as hot and then I’ll laugh even harder when you fail as an actress someday!” We’re encouraged to plan a girls’ trip like Reese Witherspoon, Drew Barrymore, and Cameron Diaz did at Bikini Bootcamp. First of all, even though Reese and Drew might look a little round, it’s only the photo comparisons to rock hard athletes like Diaz who make us even see them that way. Second, they have trainers, year round, plus money for a meal-planner and personal chef. Then there’s the fact that they have to look good or they will get fired. If you were going to get fired for having a muffin top, you’d lose it real quick. You can squeeze your thighs in and out as you read this and buy the yoga outfit the stars all wear to make yourself feel better about the fact that YOU are essentially the one who would be firing them by not seeing their movies.

Now after you’re done eating like the stars, make sure to buy some terrible-tasting diet hippy pasta!

Oh geez, we just hit the tip of the iceberg but it’s time to end our explorer mission for the day. I could write an entire column about this magazine. One last thing we must talk about: A red circle splashed on the page with all-caps letters again: “STARS- THEY’RE JUST LIKE US!” This is like the Cadillac of Us Weekly pages because it is at once so ridiculous and yet the most consuming. Why? Why do we want them to be like us? Is it so that we feel more on the same level with the mega-human we created and by that token have just elevated our own status? Or is it the reverse- “If Tom Cruise can drink a Guinness he’s really no better than my drunk uncle Charlie”?

Look at Tom’s pained expression, counting those calories.

And everything has so many exclamation points! “They Tie Their Laces!” We know these are pictures from sub-human cretin paparazzi photographers, and are one of two things: promotional shots for stars’ businesses, or embarrassing moments snared into digital cameras for our future glee. Gerard Depardieu: barely a notable figure in American stardom but fleeing a D.U.I. charge! Golden schadenfreude moment in the subtext below he “rides in a minivan cab!” just like us!!!

Tori doesn’t eat burgers. I can tell you that because I read it in Shape magazine. Sometimes she eats sushi with rice because “you have to let yourself live a little!”

I can’t help but feel someone is condescending to me as I read this page. I’m sure it’s tongue-in-cheek, and perhaps the whole magazine is, really. It’s not made by one person in their living room, after all. This is a mega-business, run by an entire crack team of people to steal your attention and take your money, capitalizing on your desire for runination. But remember what I said before, it’s not really the magazine’s fault for being so stupid. It’s our own, for wanting it to be this way and forking out $4.49 for new un-news every week.

Hello, boys. Frankly, if a man wrote an article attempting to guide my own dressing habits towards a more male-friendly appearance, I would be miffed and dismiss him entirely. What right does a man have to tell a woman how to dress? You’ve been throwing hints at us since the dawn of time, and we already know what you like, anyway. There’s a reason Victoria’s Secret and stores that sell stripper heels stay in business — that’s what you like, not what we like, and we’ll agree to throw you a literal bone every once in awhile. The main thing to remember, however, is that women dress for women, as in, we wear fashion to impress and compete with each other. It doesn’t have much to do with you. You will take us in a sack-like dress, just like Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink, as long as you can eventually see our boobs.

On the other hand, straight men need to dress for women. They might not always do so, or they might not know how. What’s at stake in our whole gender game is that you need to convince us to go home with you in our Molly Ringwald sack dress, so we can show you our boobs. If you aren’t convincing, someone else just might be, and therein lies the scientific process of natural selection, my friend.

Sure, there are other factors in the decision process — I mean, we aren’t completely superficial, you have to be capable of having a conversation, etc, but what you need to understand is that we have a new world order out here. There was a time when women were just dying to get married because it was the only way we could survive. These days we’ve got our jobs and our cake, too. If you want to have a partner in crime, you’ve got to have a crime worth committing, if you catch my drift.

The bad news is that you don’t really get a whole lot of clothing options in contemporary society. It’s sad, but you basically just get the pants/shirt/jacket combo in various iterations. In my MFA thesis research on dress, I learned something important about your clothes. Back in the era of kings and serfdom, power was connoted with leisure. Men and women in high society got to convey their status through ostentatious fancy clothing. However, along came the Industrial Revolution. All of a sudden, power was synonymous with work. Men wore serious, identical suits because they were all of a sudden gettin’ ‘er done, while the wives became the family vehicles to show off. And in one swoop, you got stuck with a suit as your only means of style, and we got all the fabulousness. Sure, it seems unfair, but I think you still own most of the Fortune 500 companies, so whatever.

So, in light of the dating and clothing rules I just mentioned, let’s talk about your dressing options. Here are some gentle guidelines designed to help you get the girls.

 *There will always be exceptions to the rules. I just want to point out that this is a subjective and personal list designed to illustrate what girls like me will like, not all women.

There are a few celebrities that I would take in any form. Joaquin Phoenix, for example. Even in his crazy phase, with the disheveled hair and stoner scat-speech, and/or because of his harelip, I would help him make a full recovery to normalcy and hotness. Or Eric Northman from True Blood. Sure, cut your hair, fine. Sure, wear my tank top. I don’t mind.

*If you are not a celebrity, but could pass for either of these men, dress however you want — be my guest.

Hot viking vampire god, Eric Northman, a.k.a. Alexander Skarsgard, can dress in a pashmina for all I care.

Joaquin Phoenix can go crazy if he wants to.

Here are the obvious ones: 

1. No pajamas in public. I know, just like us, you have days off and you don’t feel like putting in much effort. But never, under any circumstances, are you allowed to cruise around town in your pajamas, unless you want everyone to know you are a homesick college student, or perhaps a crackhead.

This is Robert Downey Jr. and his son walking around in pajamas from www.posh24.com

This goes for sweatpants, too. As Jerry Seinfeld can back me up, you basically just gave up on the world.

 2. No white guy dreadlocks. If you have to spend a lot of time making your hair into a textured, smelly mess, it’s probably not meant to be. Everyone has always known this, except for Winona Ryder, who made an unfortunate error in judgment by dating the lead singer of Soul Asylum in the ’90s.

Winona Ryder and her Soul Asylum boyfriend

3. Dress like an adult. Also, if I can’t see your ass, I can’t see you.

Original Vice “Dos and Don’ts caption: The true New York look is totally indistinguishable from the true well-behaved-toddler look. If a day-care worker saw them standing there at the museum he’d make them hold on to the rope and go, “Come on, you two. Get with the group.”
www.vice.com/vice/dnd/736

 4. Speaking of pants, avoid “jeggings.” Please leave something to the imagination. Wearing girl jeans this tight tells me all I need to know and more about your chicken calves.

From the Sartorialist.com

5. Obviously, no. We already talked about how I feel about these goth pants.

www.vice.com/vice/dnd/1098

And here are the not-as-obvious ones: 

1. Wear a suit.

I know it’s been the same for 200 years, but we women still like the way you look — just like that Men’s Warehouse commercial — in a suit. We don’t really want you to change. Which is why this image from redcarpet-fashionawards.com is so funny. The awards ceremonies, like weddings, are not really for you — you just have to show up and hold a purse for someone else.

 2. Don’t be a douchebag. All I had to do was Google flip-flops. Fine, if you live in an ocean community, you can wear flip-flops. But somehow jocks got it in their head that if they combined baggy designer jeans and a guido-style button-up shirt with flip flops, it would be like catnip to us. Guess what? It’s not. And we don’t really want to see your feet.

I don’t know how ‘N Sync ever made it- there’s only like 2 1/2 cute ones. And their stylist should be arrested.

Look at this guy I found on denverpost.com. Doesn’t he just look like he is convinced he’s living out some “Scarface” fantasy on his honeymoon while mountain climbing and wine-tasting?

3. There are limits. Even for two of the hottest men on the planet, you just can’t ever wear a college-dropout scrubby beanie or a thin, patchouli-scented hippy scarf. Ever. David Beckham and Johnny Depp should know better.

What’s worse is that David Beckham is at a Lakers game, so it’s probably not even cold out. From fanpop.com

Johnny has been a pirate for a little too long, I think. From usmagazine.com

4. You can’t groom yourself more than we do. We don’t like it when your hair looks better than ours, or when you use our fancy, expensive shampoo.

From the Facehunter.blogspot.com

 If you’re going to wear your hair long, it has to be a little unkept and ratty, a la the Grunge days.

Pearl Jam from stereogum.com

 5. Try going to an actual hair place and getting them to give you a real haircut. That means somewhere besides Supercuts and you will probably have to pay more than $10. Just do what we do, pick a celebrity, and copy them.

Morrissey just found a style and stuck with it for the last forty years. It works — he looks as good as ever, and a little salt and pepper is the real catnip for us. From mhpbooks.com.

6. You have to at least attempt to look like you have a job. That might make it seem like we are gold-diggers, but we just don’t want to have to pick you up from your warehouse you share with six roommates and have to get the tip for you every single time.

How much you wanna bet this girl buys him groceries? From the Facehunter.blogspot.com

7. Brand-whoring doesn’t work, and please stay away from anything Kanye wears, ever. What does it even mean to have a Fendi logo on your head? Did Silvia Fendi come over and shave it in? I sort of understand the hip hop act of appropriating the culture of wealth as antagonism, but it still just makes it look like you are giving a label power over you. And it also makes you look like a billboard, like you’re essentially wearing a Budwesier t-shirt. If you want to convey you have money, you should wear things that are obviously well-made. Those who are in the know, will know.

Look, Will Smith understands understated. It’s probably Ralph Lauren, but who cares? He’s the boy, we just want him to look ‘money’, not wear $$money$$. From starpulse.com

Kanye is the worst. From TMZ.com

8. If you don’t have money, you can still fake it with a little swagger, a thrifted suit, and some crazy socks. Like these guys who call themselves “Smarties” in South Africa.

From the Sartorialist.com

9. Keep your clothes on, even if you go to the gym. Ok, so you’re not into suits. Fine. You don’t have to show us your muscles to denote masculinity instead of money. Muscles to me say one thing: you spend all your free time at the gym, which is both boring and intimidating.

Look how much better Henry Rollins looks in a black t-shirt and pants, compared to his naked performance below. If all else fails, go for black jeans and a t-shirt, any time.

I always thought it was really weird that Rollins performed in these short-shorts with Black Flag. Original image probably by Glenn E. Friedman.

10. You don’t have to be a muscle man to win our hearts. We are OK with you being super skinny or a little rotund, because it makes us feel better about ourselves.

The fine Mr. Adrien Brody, while sort of muscle-y, is probably made to be that way by his handlers since he is a movie star, after all. But I get the sense he is naturally super skinny. From universeactressportal.blogspot.com.

I kind of have a sweet spot for the teddy-bearish working man, Stan Larsen, from “The Killing”. From blogs.amctv.com

11. Have confidence.  Just look at Prince. He’s a tiny man who wears ruffles, but I wouldn’t trust myself alone with him. He is the definition of confidence, to a panty-dropping T.

Or, take Lemmy from Motorhead. Not the most attractive man, especially with the moles, but you can just look at him and tell he knows exactly what he likes and who he is.

Lemmy likes black and cowboy hats, and has been wearing the same thing for forty years. He also has too much speed in his veins to ever safely detox or he’ll go into shock, but we don’t have to talk about that.

12. Speaking of Lemmy, be a bad boy. I mean, if you have those tendencies. If not, don’t fake it. Until we get older, bad boys have their time and place as a great distraction from our boring lives.

We’ll forgive Keith Richards for wearing the same kind of stinky hippy scarf as Johnny Depp, above. It was the ’60s. It was a different time then. From guardian.co.uk

Sooner or later, we grow out of bad boys. Probably because they don’t age well. And if they’re not rock stars, they have a high chance of becoming the homeless alcoholics that live near your dumpster.

I don’t know what happened to Keith, but if he stopped watching Pirates of the Carribean, he’d be on the right track, even at 60+.

13. Did we talk about how hot tattoos are? OK, I know it’s such a cliche, and I am outing myself big time right now for being so superficial, but tattoos totally work. As in, on my wild, wild heart. But the reason is not that they signify tough guys, cause yeah, I know that they do, but because to me, they say that you don’t take yourself so seriously. Why does your body have to be a temple? Can’t it just be some thing you write dumb things on? It’s especially refreshing when you’re not afraid to get stupid tattoos, like Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and his elephants.

Flea and his dumb tattoos = fun guy. From metalsucks.net.

Hello, Bob Harper from “The Biggest Loser”, you amazing specimen. Without those tattoos you’d be just another muscle-y nordic-blooded jock, but you’ll do. From fitnessmagazine.com.

14. Let’s talk about shoes. If you are one of those guys with a sneaker collection, you’re just showing the world that you are an over-paid infantile computer programmer who plays video games with internet strangers every day of the week instead of spending your money on a few pairs of classy shoes that you could wear to a nice restaurant. You think your day-glo sneakers express how “funky fresh” you are, but they don’t.

Just get some Vans. From melroseandspaulding.com.

Maybe you could take a cue from this guy and his sophisticated way of pairing Red Wing worker boots with a clean Rude Boy aesthetic?

From the Sartorialist.com

15. I’ll respect your authority occasionally. These boots touch on another slightly underplayed style trait that girls like to secretly dig: Authority is hot. While his pants might be just a tad too jegging-ish, tucked into these boots they both remind me of a punk and a cop and I am pretty into it. Let me state for the record that yes, of course, cops are lame, but, just like your “madonna/whore” complex, girls are equally into boot-wearing authority figures and soft-spoken boat shoes kind of boys.

16. Enough with the beards. Seriously. Did you hear me, San Francisco? Enough. Look, I know that shaving is probably really annoying, but please think about shaving. If everyone grows a beard, does that mean everyone has to dress like they’re a carpet-bagging snake oil salesman like this guy, too?

From the facehunter.blogspot.com

And another thing about beards: Let the bears have their culture back. I’m sure they are annoyed and confused.

17. Wear clothes that fit you. Look at this guy — take the tie away and he’s just some regular guy, but he looks great because he is actually wearing the right size. If you are confused, ask a salesperson to help you. That’s what they are there for. Or take a gay or a girl along. That’s what they are there for.

From the Sartorialist.com

18. When in doubt, go nautical. Never underestimate the appeal of a sailor outfit or a grandpa cardigan.

From the Sartorialist.com

19. Dress like a normal person. Look at this guy. He’s just a dude, wearing dude clothes.

From the Sartorialist.com

So I should probably tell you that my boyfriend is European, so I have it easier than most, and maybe he has raised my expectations. He knows how to wear a pair of pants that fit, but that doesn’t mean he is a walk in the park. Every time he agrees to go shopping, we spend an hour on his clothes and then he’s too tired when I want to shop for myself. That being said, it’s opened my eyes to your potential, boys. So, remember what we talked about — there are things that girls like and things that we don’t, but above all else just remember…

20. Be yourself. But try a little.

Poor Vivian in “The Slums of Beverly Hills” didn’t like her boobs, either.

1.  The Age of Boob Enlightenment

Having big boobs is humiliating. If you don’t believe me, you’ve probably never had them. Big boobs get in the way, they make your clothes fit weird and worst of all, they draw a lot of the wrong kind of attention for a young girl. Just because they’re there, people assume you put them out there on purpose as an invitation for commentary. Just try wearing a bathing suit in public and not getting stares. Worse yet, try running. (For fun, watch gravity meet boobs in this art video, but be warned, there’s nudity- duh).

Compared to the busty babes of the ’50s who would have, like in a bank robbery, taken the boobs and ran (literally), while I was growing up Heroin Chic was flaunting those sad, black and white haute junkies in my face and my rapidly growing boobs and I hated it. I did what I could to deal with the boobs. I wore two bras at all times. I wore a Condoleezza Rice-conservative bathing suit. I avoided construction sites. Then my mom came home one day and told me she was tired of her boobs that having kids had warped and wrangled. Well, I don’t think she said it like that- she said after every kid, they had shrunk and shifted a little lower. After kid four, she was down to low-hanging fruit. Ba dum bum.

2.  Barbie and Me 

Barbie’s corvette

By this point in my life, at age 21 I had chosen other ways to control my image. To my mother’s dismay, I had tattooed large portions of my body. In doing this, I felt I could reclaim some lost power. I felt stronger, more aggressive, and people stared because of how I had chosen to look. I wasn’t the inadequate, disrespected, slutty dumb girl the boobs turned me into. I was Xena, the Tattooed Princess. With my new-found self-confidence, I decided it was time to quit thinking of burning bras. It was time for cutting off the boobs.

So when my mom told me she was going in for a ‘lift and an implant’, I just had to come along. I said, “Fine, do what you want, but don’t give me any crap for what I do to my body anymore. And I want new boobs, too”, and we were off for our consultations. The irony was not lost on me, but mostly it spoke to the fact that we came from different generations. My mom grew up with icons like Cher and Suzanne Sommers and even drove a corvette like Barbie. She prescribed to a completely different set of gender values, including, “Women do not ask men out”, and boobs=good, whereas I believed the opposite.

3.  It’s All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye 

Nadine from “Twin Peaks”

People think it’s funny we had the same doctor. And the joke about how I should have given her my excess boob is pretty played out. She got her surgery first, a little before mine. I was supposed to help take care of her, especially since after a boob surgery, you can’t lift your arms for a few weeks. A ‘lift and implant’ consists of pretty much what it sounds like: lift ‘em up, stick some stuff in. Surprisingly, it was an outpatient procedure that our gray-haired, slightly lecherous plastic surgeon could do in his office. All I had to was swing by in the minivan, put her in the car and take her home. I will never forget what I saw when I got there.

The nurses cooed softly, telling me, “Your mom was so brave,” and handed me all the prescriptions with stern directions on how to take care of her. Slowly they wheeled her around as I hopped out of the car in the loading zone, ready to pop her in the back. As they leaned over to gingerly help her up, I burst out laughing. She was drugged out of her mind, barely coherent, with a blanket over her lap and an eye patch on her face. What the hell happened in there? She went in for a fairly routine suburban vanity procedure and came out looking like an old pirate. It was too much. I felt bad, laughing as the nurses scowled at me. They explained that she was so sedated that she scratched at her face when she woke up and hurt her eye. They also explained that I would basically have to carry my six-foot-tall mother’s body up the stairs as she would not really be able to walk. Now they tell me, I thought.

I managed to get her up the stairs and into the bathroom, but I will spare you the rest. I thought, This is what it will be like when she’s really old. The whole thing seriously frightened me. Putting her in the bed, spooning soup up to her mouth and dabbing her chin, telling her when she could have another vicodin… my future of older-daughter-taking-care-of-mom was flashing before my eyes. The rest of her story is pretty unremarkable*, but all of a sudden I knew what I was in for, both in the distant future and also with my own surgery.

*Though, sadly, my mom’s boobs broke during a routine mammogram, which the hospital doesn’t cover, and she never got new ones.

4.  Huge 

When I went in for my breast reduction consultation, my plastic surgeon made me take off my shirt and informed me of his medical opinion of my condition. My breasts, he said, were “huge”. He told me, “We should have no problem getting the insurance company to pay for the operation.” Great. His nurses came in and took headless photos of me, making sure to play up my sloping shoulders and terrible posture. What a fascinating job someone at the insurance company must have, approving or denying surgical proposals like mine.

We then had a concerned rap session on what I was getting myself into. Most people who get breast reductions, it turns out, are fat ladies and old women. This was a big decision. Sometimes on a big lady when you take off only a portion of the excess, he explained, there can be weird gaps, or fat-back flaps, where once your boobs sort of smoothed everything into big curves. There were pictures, and it was fascinating. Luckily, I was not in danger of fat-back, or the other things I saw in those photos, like a half-missing tattoo, or scary instances of skin falling off of the smoker patients. Lastly, we discussed the ‘ideal breast’. He drew me a scientific picture of a line with a perfect cone placed jauntily above it, like the one below. Then he drew a line with a droopus magoopus, sad ‘U’ shape that hung past the line, like so. The former, he explained, was a perfect breast. The latter, you guessed it, was mine. The objective was to have a boob that defied gravity by its own volition, but mine were “waaaaay below the line”.  We decided to go for the all popular cone-shaped C cup, which would keep my ass from looking like an out-of-place pear-shaped balloon.

After I was approved for a free surgery, all I had to do was come back the day before for the operation and have the surgical marks put on. I’m sure you are wondering- no, they don’t cut off your nipples. They cut around them, in a sort of anchor pattern, open the boobs up and scoop the fat out. The opposite of my mom’s surgery, basically. My friend once saw this operation on some surgery channel and it scared her so badly she had nightmares. I chose not to look it up.

The surgical marks, amazingly, are hand-drawn dotted lines that the plastic surgeon makes with a marker where he is planning to cut you. It’s incredibly weird, and also kind of remedial. I got back in the car as it started to snow, ready to go ahead with everything, with sharpie drawings on my boobs under my clothes. As I drove up the hill to the house, I noticed that the snow had gotten pretty heavy and all of a sudden I was fighting to keep my car on the road. The next thing I knew, I was desperately trying to dig my tires out of a snowdrift-covered ditch. When I finally made it home, and got ready to put my pajamas on, I realized that the whole time I had been sweatily shoveling snow outside, I had been erasing my surgery lines. It was just a black fuzzy mess. No! I was so excited to have the operation- it represented a new, improved me and I simply couldn’t reschedule my transformation. So I got out a sharpie and started frantically redrawing the lines in the mirror. I looked at my reflection and noticed I was doing a pretty bad job. The exact lines my surgeon would follow were now some child-like backwards jaggedy scribble. I nervously laughed, bit my lip and set my alarm for the next day, anyway.

When I got there, he was confident my chicken scratch surgery guidelines weren’t a big deal. I breathed a sigh of relief. Unlike my mom’s outpatient surgery, this was a five-hour intense operation in the hospital, and I would have to stay there for a few days. The anesthesiologist showed up and I counted backwards. I woke up on a gurney with my catheter being pulled out on my way out of the operation room. Every hour while in my hospital bed, a nurse would come to check and make sure my nipples hadn’t turned blue. Other than that, it seemed pretty great, but I was definitely blitzed out of my mind on pills.

Celebrity breast reductionist: Drew Barrymore, from http://plasticsurgerystar.com/drew-barrymore-before-and-after-breast-reduction

Celebrity breast reductionist: Soleil Moon Frye (before). Poor Punky

5.  Free Bird

My mom picked me up and took care of me, naturally. Once I had worn the mummy bandages and drainage tubes, (yes, gross), for two weeks, I got to take out my small, perky, Frankenstein-stitched and greenish bruised boobs and slip them into a triangle-shaped little girl bra. It was the best thing I have ever experienced, like holding a soft kitten under a rainbow.

Celebrity breast reductionist Soleil Moon Frye (after). Image from a revealing boy perspective on the dreaded breast reduction.

I wish that I was a better feminist. I wish big boobs were something I had been able to righteously declare as something that made me, me, and commenters be damned. I also wish we were like birds, and that the males were the ones with the plumage who strutted around attracting mates with their unpractical accessories. I can’t change the way we are as a sexist society or how men treat women or how women treat women, and I don’t have the energy to try. I just want to wear a tank top in public.

I love it on Siouxsie Sioux, too

I always loved this Vivienne Westwood boob shirt, on Sex Pistols’ guitarist, Steve Jones

Lena Dunham of Girls

Tavi Gevinson- Gray hair looks great if you’re only 14.

A Girl Renaissance

Girls are having a moment. A Girl Renaissance, filled with frumpy young girl directors singing their autobiographical swan songs like Lena Dunham and Miranda July, doe-eyed, gray-haired ingenue Tavi Gevinson taking street style blogging and turning it into an empire, those girl-women of SNL fame writing pee-your-pants movies and TV shows like Kristen Wiig’s Bridesmaids and Tina Fey’s 30 Rock, and of course, Zooey Deschanel’s media siege with her lame old-timey vocals in the band, She & Him, and her pretty good show, New Girl. But wait, how could we forget the other girls dominating our airwaves? The CW TV network is a girl party on crack including the sensationally guilt-pleasurable Gossip Girl. Then we have Lady Gaga, and those other weirdos, Nicki Minaj, Grimes, and Lana Del Rey. Talk about a take-over.  I don’t even know where the men are anymore. Oh wait. They’re combing their beards and wearing flannels, curing meat at home and occasionally resurfacing from their woodland-decorated apartments to eat at restaurants they read about in the NY Times. Girls, the airwaves and internet are yours to command.

Gossip Girl

So what is a ‘girl’ anymore? Something between a little girl and a lady? As a post-teen non-woman, I feel the need to keep the title of girl probably well past its original expiration date because I’d rather be a girl than a woman. Between my anxiety and my jealousy at being only a fringe element of the Girl Renaissance, I have been looking back into the girl culture of my past. I am by no means an authority, but I have put together an incredibly subjective History of Girl Culture (the last 33 years) for your amusement and nostalgia.

The Last 33 Years of Girl Culture

Since I was born one year shy of the 1980s, I have no idea what the late ’70s were like. I can imagine it sucked as the fight for women’s rights continued from the ’60s, (well, really the ’20s), and you wanted that whole Murphy Brown thing that you didn’t know about yet, but you also just wanted to burn your bra and drop acid and tell your uptight housewife mom to leave you alone. I can only include what I learned about in retrospect about cool girl culture since I was hanging out in utero. Let’s leave out disco and roller skating and Three’s Company and focus on the amazing punk subculture of the ’70s.

The only thing that was a bummer about Joan Jett’s all-girl band, The Runaways, was that they needed to dress slutty to get attention

Punks and Vixens

Vivienne Westwood, Patti Smith, Bow Wow Wow, The Slits, Exene Cervenka, The Runaways, and Siouxsie and the Banshees should all make you embarrassed to be so unoriginal and passive. Between the English punks and the American ones, they had it covered. This documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization, was directed by punk girl Penelope Spheeris, and captures the gritty, sneering, yet slightly self-conscious and heavily made-up Exene of the band X.  As the odd sex out most of the time, girls like her and Siouxsie Sioux were both iconic feminists and potent sex bombs, paving the way as disheveled girl originals of the Courtney Loves who would follow.

Funsters Who Live at Home

As we enter the early ’80s, I still can’t tell you much from my perspective as a girl unless you want to know about The Smurfs. But who didn’t know about Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, or Pat Benatar, (though “Hell is For Children” was particularly alarming)? I mostly remember the “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” video from Goonies, but the message had broad appeal, even to a six-year-old.

We also had other iconic all-girl bands like The Go-Gos and The Bangles, and a overriding sense of fun and pop. The songs from Lauper and Madonna still reference their fathers, i.e. “Papa Don’t Preach,” as if the hardened girls of the punk movement had lent their over-the-top style but not their tough girl message of staking out territory with the boys.  It was girls on one side of the dance floor and boys on the other, and then there were the geeks.

Geeks and Bimbos

Martha Plimpton

Ally Sheedy

Somewhat strangely, a geek story plays out in almost all ’80s teen culture. Nerdy girls like Martha Plimpton in Goonies or Ally Sheedy in the Breakfast Club serve as comparison shots to the hot girls and never get the guy, or get him only after a hot girl takes her under her wing. They are often seen literally comparing their boobs to the other girls in shower scenes, as men were probably the only ones writing the scripts. All girls in this era, it seems, want to be blond, busty, and heavily shouldered, like the girls in Valley Girl, Seventeen Magazine, and Blair on the Facts of Life. Enter heavy metal and the hope we had for self-respect went out the window with Kelly Bundy and groupies everywhere.

Kelly Bundy on Married with Children

As we approach the later end of the ’80s, i’ts more and more apparent that girls are trying to be women. The big hair, the big boobs, the way everyone talks about themselves as if they were really serious about everything. It all just made me feel extremely self-conscious. I don’t know what happened to the feminists of the ’70s. They were probably building communes to get away from all we had done to our own girlhoods, but everyone else was rocking out to dudes who looked like girls and checking out models we had actually learned the names of on the covers of magazines. There were a few anti-heroes like Winona Ryder in the movie Heathers, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Sarcastic yet Politically Correct 

Enter the ’90s now, and boy is it a girl’s paradise. We all know how grunge killed metal, at least if you find yourself watching VH1 documentaries on Saturdays, and grunge also killed chauvinism, it would seem. Suddenly we forgot about Axl Rose and Stephanie Seymour and even Janet Jackson and Lita Ford. We did tolerate 90210 (Ok, I was 11 and I loved it), and the cooler cult classic Twin Peaks, but there was a storm brewing and it’s name was Girl Power.

The Spice Girls invasion

Do you remember “Girl Power” when it was screamed from the stage of this British Goody-barretted monstrosity? Despite how ridiculous they were, especially in all those flared polyester pants, their message was delivered in good faith. “Girl Power” was a mantra echoed from these cheeky British mouths to all young girls across the world. As cheesy as that was, in the face of the metal years we had just gone through, we needed it.

Bikini Kill

Of course, while this was going on, we had another form of “Girl Power” known as Riot Grrl, like Bikini Kill screaming “Suck my left one!”, among other things. Riot Grrls were mutli-tasker extremists, staying up late to make zines, create record distros, and bake cakes. We also had Riot Grrl Lite like No Doubt’s “Just a Girl.” One thing was certain: absolutely everyone was in thrift store clothes.

I could go on about the ’90s for a million years. It was the decade I lived through as an adolescent, so each moment was recorded in my developing brain as important and mind-blowing. All I know is that I can remember grunge and Courtney Love, the 4 Non-Blondes, L7, a new general sarcasm with shows like My So-Called Life and Daria and movies like Reality Bites, nerd-heroine Jeanane Garafalo, angry songstress PJ Harvey, weirdo Bjork, Drew Barrymore flashing David Letterman, and Fiona Apple losing it and yelling at everyone at the MTV awards show. Correct me if I’m wrong, but looking back it seems like it was a good time for girls, but an angry time. And everyone was skinny and on drugs, highlighted by Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting, heroin chic and Kate Moss. On the other hand, we had Lilith Fair and the woman warrior weapon of choice: the acoustic guitar. Suddenly everyone was ‘PC’, and it seemed like everyone had also recently become bi-sexual. Weirdest of all, dreadlocks enjoyed a rise in popularity, with Ani Di Franco as a poster child for basically all of the above.

Ani DiFranco

Soft-Spoken Harpists and Fame-Chasers

I can hardly remember anything about the 2000s. I guess once your personal preferences are formed, and your personality cemented, you are free to go about looking back into history to find your tribe. This is when I discovered the Runaways, X, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Twin Peaks and old horror films. Since I became a punk in this time period, my memory doesn’t recall much of the current traditional girl ‘pop’ culture of the time. I remember that rockabilly had a resurgence, with amazing sculpted girl pompadour beehive things that I wished I could do. Also, there was the band, The Distillers, who took the angry feminism of the ’90s and made it more explicit, referencing Susan B. Anthony in their lyrics.

Mostly what I remember, however, was the bipolar culture of a new way of keeping up with all kinds of the coolest things, amplified by the fact that basically everyone now had the internet and MySpace and a way to broadcast themselves.  There was also a very quiet indie culture of soft girliness, like Lula Magazine, which I think was a reaction from the more sensitive turtles of girl culture. We had the Cobrasnake and New York disco pop trumping everything like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Glass Candy, but we also had the Virgin Suicides and Cat Power and Joanna Newsom, (which was weird because she is from my hometown). There was Sex and the City, lest we forget, and a constant push to spend money and keep up, with reality shows like The Hills and a strange cultural obsession with Paris Hilton. In the end, I think as girls we lost our way again, just like we did last time we had too much money, in the ’80s. Girl culture became about labels, the possibility of fame, and the weird alternative reality of Facebook.

Paris and Nicole

The New Girls

Enter the economic bottom dropping out. Suddenly we’re depressed and we want fantasy. We want crazy outfits and supernatural creatures crawling into our beds at night so we don’t think about our chances of finding employment. But we also have taken matters into our own hands and created what we were looking for and hadn’t found in the fast-fashion reality mega-plex of the 2000s. Sisters are doing it for themselves, from the cheesy-as-they-might be Twilight and Hunger Games writers to the genius comic relief we really needed in the form of Poehler and Fey, the self-made videos of Lana Del Rey to the self-produced albums from Gaga.

So here is to our smart girl writers, directors, bloggers, singers, and everyone in between. Please keep making awesome things, even if not everyone likes you. We need you so that one day when we look back we’ll remember our 2010s as the Girl Renaissance, and not think of the Kardashians and Ke$ha.

Weirdo South African band, Die Antwoord

How was life worth living without Grumpy Cat memes?

I was talking about someone with my friend, and she wrinkled up her face and said definitively, “That girl reeks of grad school.” I laughed because I knew exactly what she meant. Now that I work in the same school where I earned my MFA, watching other young grads across the street is a strange experience. It’s like going back and reading your diary from age ten and cringing at the sheer embarrassment of what a naive ass you were, except that you’re discovering the naive ass you were mere semesters ago. It’s also horrifying as you begin to see how the sausage is made, like the part in Soylent Green where the guy realizes they’ve been eating people, except it’s where you realize the information you willingly signed up for was making you more annoying and less and less interesting to everyone around you.

We should be clear here that when I say grad school, I mean a major in the Liberal Arts. Fine Art, Writing, Curatorial Practice, Visual Studies, and let’s throw in other majors that don’t qualify you for anything useful when you graduate, like History, Rhetoric and Philosophy. I’m not talking about people who attend higher education to study Medicine, Law, or Social Work — people who actually might make a difference in someone else’s life in the future. And even though I was in a Fine Art program, I still don’t know anything. So before you get your panties in a bunch, you might want to just take off your underwear while you read this. The opinion of lil old me is nothing more than a comment from the caustic peanut gallery of the old men on the Muppets and if you can’t take it, leave it.

SMELLY GRAD SCHOOL TRAITS

If you are in grad school or recently got out, no amount of perfume is going to cover up the reek that everyone you know and love finds a little revolting. It will only stop festering when you learn to recognize your particular bouquet, made up of some or all of the following personality traits you picked up while doing your time inside. I’m not saying that I’m immune or cleansed of any of these, but I am in a self-help program called reality, and I’m doing my best to wash regularly. Also, I found a bunch of cartoon personalities to make it easier to recognize similar attributes in yourself.

The Glad-Hander: Your friends have come to the conclusion that they cannot take you to events. When a friend extends an invitation to something, you will make them rattle off who else will be there to network with before you consider going.

Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons

The Know-it-All: No one would ever want to be stuck in a conversation with you alone at a party. You will proceed to tell everyone that any idea they’ve ever had has been done before, and where and when. You will then start referencing theory no one cares to listen to, and everyone around you cries ‘yield’ and slowly walks away backward.

Lisa Simpson

The Star: You boldly boast of all the things you’ve been doing lately, all your latest and greatest achievements, and name-drop who you’ve been working with in every social media outlet available. Even worse, most of your news is mediocre at best, but you will put it all in a monthly newsletter clogging inboxes around the nation anyway. You announce your birthday in the same way, as if it were the only birthday known to man.

Gene’s girlfriend on Bob’s Burgers

The Unsolicited Advisor: Someone somewhere gave you the idea that you know more about life than anyone else. You proceed to cut people off mid-sentence to tell them how to handle their stress, money and other people giving them advice, oblivious to the fact that no one asked you for help. You might even go so far as to explain feminist theory to a woman in your stupid dude voice. Mmkay?

Mr. Garrison from South Park

The Morose Bummer-a-thon: All you talk about is how you wish you had more pills and the better school you wish you had gotten into and the fact that everyone is against you. You forget that you’re not in high school anymore and this is art school and everyone is a weirdo too and no one is judging you for being gay or socially handicapped.

Daria

The Frantic Busy-Bee: You flit around telling people dramatically about all the things you are doing, the show you’re in, and how you are just SO BUSY! You’re so stressed! You forget that no one cares about your group show/reading, etc. and that everyone around you has the same exact deadlines.

Francine Smith from American Dad

The Idealistic Child: You’re one of those weirdos who never took a break from school, from Kindergarten to your first year of grad school. You forget how soon this insular bubble will pop and you’ll have to start paying back your loans with something you’ve never had and are not qualified for: a job. It hits you a month before graduation and suddenly your face is permanently twisted with fear.

Butters from South Park

The Snobby Pisser: Because you have the gift of dropping impressive and obscure theory at the drop of a hat, and peddling it into show proposals at major museums, you end up with a free ride to a school where everyone else has to take out loans worth more than they will ever make in their lifetimes to attend. You insist on pissing on your school at every opportunity, making everyone who was dumb enough to pay for what you got for free feel like kicking their education down the road like a can full of poop.

Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons

The Political Fist Pumper: You shame everyone with your work, smugly chastising anyone who does not share your political beliefs. You make everyone feel bad about everything, and it wins you award after award because establishments are all filled with guilt. You never acknowledge the fact that if you were interested in truly changing anything, you would have become an environmental lawyer or something useful instead of back-patter.

Haley Smith from American Dad

The Hand-Biter: You get into grad school knowing the price tag only to complain constantly about the cost, as if someone higher up in academia will say, “You’re right!” and throw money down from the sky for you.

Roger the Alien from American Dad

L’Enfant Terrible: Even though you are lucky enough to have a family that pays for you to dick around in art school, you pretend you can still be punk rock in a major institution by literally pissing on the walls of your studio. Sucks to be you, next door neighbor!

Peter Griffin from Family Guy

The Prince: You assume that, since your advisors are being paid to talk to you, everyone else on staff is, too. You delegate to the guards, the janitors, and the receptionist, as if paying for school buys you slaves. You don’t realize that you are paying a fortune to BE the slave to your education.

Mr. Burns from the Simpsons

The Friender: You forget that almost everyone in your studio is getting paid to talk to you and you won’t quite come to terms with the fact that none of them want to hang out with you when you graduate. In fact, the door will leave a huge bruise on your ass on the way out.

Craig from South Park

I really tried to find grad movies to illustrate my points, but then I realized that there are hardly any movies about grad school. I did, of course, find a bunch of memes made by sad and angry self-obsessed grads stuck in dark computer labs across the world. It’s because even though it seems really fascinating and dramatic to complain about not getting enough sleep, it’s only mildly noteworthy to those stuck in your class with you. When you get out and have real problems, the drama of writing your thesis simply does not prove interesting to anyone. You’ll always have to suffer the fact that Mariah Carey’s movie, Glitter, was deemed to have more production value than your life in grad school.

Love, Serena a.k.a. Cartman

In January I tried to host a holiday party but panicked at the last minute and desperately un-invited everyone via email. Not only did I not have a Christmas tree, but I suddenly noticed my pathetic apartment was not worthy of hosting a party. My molding windows, the stacks of magazines piled high and leaning on the floor, my sad plants and IKEA furniture just didn’t cut it. Even though my friends all said it didn’t matter, it seemed criminal asking them to come eat some food on mismatched, unremarkable plates, knowing everywhere else there were apartments lovingly decorated and equipped with hip, space-saving ideas, or at least full of unexpected displays of ironic found objects. I couldn’t let anyone know just how mundane my lifestyle really is. And I blame The Selby.

This is photographer, Todd Selby, from theselby.com. I hate this! His whole outfit in dripping with irony, from the cat shirt with purple pants to the funky socks with loafers. I would wear the same shirt with LOVE.

From The Selby: Artist, Hunt Slonem’s, uniquely quirky NY interior.

The selby.com is a lifestyle blog. It’s basically beautiful photos of interesting people’s interiors, a photo blog shot by Todd Selby in the vein of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” for the creative set. Like The Sartorialist meets MTV Cribs. On top of the regular shoots, it also features videos and corporate collaborations with companies like Zara, Coach, Louis Vuitton and Hennessy, using Todd Selby’s light-infused photography, his knack for eyeing details, and his wacky little watercolor drawings, to take the fantasy of someone else’s life and apply it to a brand. It’s fantasy on fantasy- pictures of fascinating people wearing buyable clothing. You might have seen the book published recently, The Selby is in Your Place, or the articles Mr. Selby does for the NY Times on food porn now, but that is for another article.

From The Selby: Fashion designer, Wolfgang Joop, in his AMAZING Potsdam mansion, flanked with Rineke Dijkstra photographs.

From The Selby: Berlin artist Nona Pohl’s modernist nightmare. Where does she put anything? Does she have a junk drawer?

I’m not into home decor. I know my apartment building is crappy. Looking at amazing loft spaces is not going to change where I live or make me feel better about what I can’t afford. Also, I think of home decor as sort of a sad woman’s activity. As in, “I don’t have any creative outlets, so I’m going to spend the weekend painting my living room vermillion”. Somehow, though, I keep going back to The Selby. Because the photos often feature people I admire, or am vaguely fascinated by, the voyeuristic appeal of seeing what someone like publisher Angelika Taschen has in her fridge makes me put away my “I don’t do curtains” manifesto.

From The Selby: Restauranteur, Stephan Landwehr’s, Berlin home featuring a jail-style open toilet. Is this true design? Does he just like pooping in front of his friends?

From The Selby: Even the poor stuff looks cool (from NY artist, Hrafnhildur Arnardottir).

From The Selby: The home of New York artists, Gray Foy and Joel Kaye. I can put a bunch of crap on the wall, too.

There are also people my age featured, young artist-stylist-model-musician types who do have creative outlets and their houses are still photogenic. This is what upsets me. It gets me looking around, sipping my morning coffee, looking at my half-assed walls hung with art in the wrong size frame on a random place on the wall. My lack of creative organizing. My lack of tchotchkes. Where is my wall of records? I only have enough for one shelf-full! I start pulling out hooks and nails and trying to think how to better organize my jewelry while I’m still holding my coffee mug. I go into a panic.

From The Selby: New York graffiti artist, Curtis Kulig, in his unbelievably well-lit loft. Do you know how much that must cost in New York? I can’t take you and your terrible art and your Cannibal Corpse t-shirt while you burn sage in your beautiful loft!!  Ahhhh!

From The Selby: Auckland stylist, Charlotte Rust’s, awesome metal rooftop home makes me wonder why I’m not cooler.

Charlotte Rust’s candle decor particularly set me over the edge. Why couldn’t I think of that? I’m going to burn candles everywhere and just make a mess like I don’t “care”.

Then I think, I don’t want to be impressed with your adult toy collection. It’s annoying to look at the walls covered with band fliers and stolen street signs, or your obsessive way of ordering your books in color combinations. And then I hate myself for worrying about it in the first place, and I put all my tools away and let the magazine pile stay slumped over on the floor. I also look at these two amazing antidotes to the cool-kid ironic decor, and I feel better about myself and my lack of decor-inspirado.

Unhappy Hipsters

Just knowing this exists makes me feel better.  All the images feature modernist architecture photos from sources like Dwell Magazine with new, better captions.

Caption from the site: “Her letter to Santa read four simple words: Bring me a door”.

F*** Your Noguchi Coffee Table

I know, there’s serious swearing on this site. Don’t go there if you’re a kid. Like Unhappy Hipsters, this blog features more home decor images from interior design sources and then angrily captions them, pointing out their annoyances to people like you and me. The best part is the way these seemingly original home decor efforts are categorized, as in “Terrarium Tuesdays”.

Caption from the site: “F*** your bossy decal”.

Caption from the site: “F*** your birds nests on cake stands”.

So I’ll invite you to my party, but you better not look disappointed when you get here.

I know what you have been thinking while you are with your slow-food Social Practice friends, talking about sustainable craft and the amazing documentary you saw on PBS, Alone in the Wilderness, about Dick Proeneke. Or when you’re squatting with idealistic, pensive punks in an abandoned warehouse, reading Walt Whitman or Thoreau and thinking about how you wouldn’t have to pay any taxes or have a job if you lived like the link you saw on Facebook of the guy who camps in the Canadian forest and makes a new shelter out of the stuff around him everyday. You’re probably thinking how easy it would be to be truly D.I.Y. if you lived way out somewhere, but not too far. You’re also thinking, once you go ‘farm-to-table’, after all, the next logical step is to go ‘back to the land.’ So, I think we should talk, because moving ‘off-the-grid’ is not a joke, it’s a terrible thing to do to yourself and anyone you love, and it happened to me. And since it seems so unbelievably hip to live in a reclaimed wood shack on a sustainable farm decorated with succulents these days, I really need to warn you about your ideological hippy fantasy before you make a serious mistake.

The scene of my tortured childhood

The short version is that I rolled out of the womb blithely rollerskating in the San Jose suburbs, until my mom remarried a man who lived like a rugged Tom Selleck-buddha on the top of a mountain. Our house in the Santa Cruz mountains burned down, and we bought 800 acres in the middle of nowhere in the Sierra foothills, where I suddenly became an L.A. Gear child in an off-the-grid nightmare. When I was older, I moved into ‘town’ in Nevada City, CA and I spent my late teens living in various houses in the woods with roommates which were not exactly off any grid anymore, but remote just the same, (out of a lack of real estate more than for more rugged experience). 

Here are some reasons not to move to the middle of nowhere. 

1. There’s nowhere to pee. Whether you’re visiting a new construction site or a god-awful yurt, there are no bathrooms. As a girl, you’ll find this a problem when you go out into the woods and accidentally piss all over the back of your pants. The cute guy you are with will lay out newspapers on the front seat before you can get in his car so you don’t ruin his upholstery.
2. You will get tired of each other like in The Shining. No matter who you move into the wild with, this will happen to you. You’ll think deciding to live away from other people is a good idea until you throw an ax through the door when your partner locks you in the closet because you were talking to your finger.
3. Your weak city arms will not be able to start the generator and you will live in fear of getting caught for using all the solar power to watch 90210. Okay, maybe that was just me, but it could still happen to you when you try to stream Portlandia.
4. You’ll run out of firewood and start cutting up everything around you. Once you use all the viable dry wood around the house, you’re going to have to cut and “season” your firewood. If you can’t use a chainsaw, you’ll find yourself chopping up your roommate’s dresser in the garage with an ax and lying to him when he looks for it.
5. Crazy people are your neighbors. You know who else wants to move away from the rest of civilization? Tweakers, cult members, pedophiles and escaped convicts. That’s who goes bump in the night, not wolves.
6. Mountain lions and bears are also your neighbors. My mom used to leave really early to go to work and I would have to walk by myself a mile down the road in the dark with mud boots and a flashlight to catch the 6 a.m. school bus. She would just say, “If you see a mountain lion, stick your hands up really high in the air and yell at it.”
7. There’s one pizza place in the single-street ‘town’ and it sucks. 
8. Growing weed will seem like a good idea until the Feds raid your house and seize your property. This actually happened to a family member recently. It’s easy to think the government is just a likable black guy president, but it’s good to have a healthy amount of distrust for those in power who can claim to be searching for a ‘meth ring’ and raid your house. They can take your land because of a couple weed plants even with a ‘script.’ Remember, weed is not actually legal on a federal level, and boy do those mountain cops know it.
9. You might get lice or worse from the trailer park kids. I can’t even believe I am telling you this, but we all got scabies. So grossssss.
10. You’ll forget a thousand times that they call it “fool’s gold” for a reason.
11. All your things will lose their cultural capital. Do you think anyone you invite over will be impressed with your Bose speaker system or your Stone Island parka? No one understands what the difference is, and you will start shopping at the JC Penny one hour away like everyone else.
12. Old man bars lose their ironic appeal when it’s the only watering hole around and everyone inside smells.
13. If you can’t get the internet, just imagine what that means. No really. You’ll shop from catalogs, you’ll listen to the same records for the next 40 years, and you’ll be dead to everyone because you didn’t reply to their emails.
14. The neighbors all believe in the coming apocalypse and will look at you as a fertility device to re-procreate civilization.  I once lived above landlords who believed so completely in Y2K’s impeding social collapse that the only reason they rented to me and my guy friend was so we could repopulate the planet.
15. Do you even KNOW how far away the doctor is?  One evening, my friends and I got drunk in the middle of the woods and decided that we should operate on my friend, Robin.  This was because someone had shot him with a BB gun and it was lodged in his scalp.  In a wine stupor, we cut it out with a razor blade.  But, if we had nicked an artery at all, and actually needed to take him to the hospital, he’d be lucky if he didn’t end up bleeding out in the car.
16. After your relationship doesn’t work out with the tiny pool of romantic options around you, you just might start importing Russian brides, who will all leave because even Russia is better than living off the grid.  That’s what happened to my step-dad.
17. Are you really going to home-school your kids? Do you even understand algebra?
18. You’ll run into a bobcat or another large protective female animal with a cub while walking down the dirt road to your house.  They will stop in your path and stare at you for an hour and no one will drive by because you insisted on living in isolation. You decide you have a death wish and finally scare them into the bushes, but not without leaving your heart beating outside of your chest on the side of the road.
19. I bet you think things would be easier if you lived communally, like Mormons or hippies. Well, there’s a reason why more people don’t all live together. People are annoying. Also, eventually there is bound to be one alpha dude who will decide the women should stay and take turns making babies with him, while the other men and boys are run off or chained up outside.
20. When you come back to the city, I will say, “I told you so.”

We also need to talk just a little about the video which Gawker posted recently, aptly titled “Wilderdouches”.  While Gawker basically said most of what needed to be said already, I would just like to add that only a San Franciscan Zynga-programming nerd would be convinced by  the narrator’s Ira Glass-esque voice gently urging them to forget all the times they were picked on in gym class and decide to spend the weekend “reclaiming their manhood” while soft indie music lulls in the background. This trip will include not only throwing axes at trees from the side of the highway, but also catering to those who are unable to go even two days without artisan cheeses, with a private chef and gin and tonics.  It’s a shame because it’s the only way you could get me to go camping, and if it weren’t for the bad-hair-and-polar-fleece tribe that I recognize from their lunch hour descent into my work neighborhood, I would consider going to learn to “be a man,” too.  Well, that and the $3,000.

For single people, Valentine’s Day is basically a reminder of what is missing in your life, not really a celebration of the happiness of others. Valentine’s Day is Rubbing It In Day.  But this year, instead of being depressed, I’m proposing that the lonely hearts and I take a much simpler and healthier approach to compensating for a lack of a hand-holding by hitting the bar at noon on a Thursday. Come with me, take the day off and put your jammies on and experience your entire relationship run its course as you live vicariously through these six movies. By tomorrow you’ll feel free and alive and glad to be alone to drink the last of the coffee in the morning.

Act I, The Stalking: Sixteen Candles

The reason we are starting with stalking is because, if ’80s movies can be believed, that’s how most relationships begin. Also, extreme crush-stalking is actually sort of enjoyable in its painful pining, and it builds character. We need to remind ourselves of just how hard it is to find someone who like-likes you back. Just don’t expect anyone you have been stalking to sit on a table filled with cake and kiss you. There will probably be some sort of a restraining order involved instead.

Act II, The Revelation: Clueless

It was bound to happen — you’ve been following/stalking the wrong person all along!  You’re in love with your ex-stepbrother, of course! Just like in every other story that exists featuring a girl and boy who start as friends (like the literary classic, Emma, that Clueless is based on), you were bound to kiss. The lesson in this revelation is that you have to come to terms with an appropriate dating pool. Instead of stalking the swingin’ hot gay dude, Cher needed to focus on the slacker college guy already in her life. You want to try to date someone a tiny bit below you so that they are always grateful to have you sitting around in your unflattering flannel pajamas and they won’t care if you can’t make the house smell like home-baked cookies.

Act III, The Fantasy Self: Beginners

You are suddenly Ewan McGregor. You meet someone, you present your best self. They in turn, (a hot French girl), are their best self. The beginning of your relationship is built on tiny white lies, as you drag yourself to a party dressed as Sigmund Freud when you’d rather be at home in front of the TV. In the first few months, you are smarter, funnier, sexier and more daring than you knew you could ever be. You roller skate down hotel hallways and do crazy dance moves. This is why everyone pines for the beginning of their relationships later. We miss the crazy person we were trying to get away with being, before our real boring self came out and called the bluff. But eventually you realize you were pining for a lie, and you fall in love with your real person more, anyway.

Act IV, The Fight: Say Anything/High Fidelity

I couldn’t decide between the aching fights in Say Anything or High Fidelity. Then I realized they both involve an emotional relationship with music-obsessed John Cusack where he calls you from a payphone in the pouring rain. What? How is it possible I never noticed how similar these movies are!? Your choice is between losing your virginity to a sweet boy in sweat pants and telling your dad about it before you break up with him and give him a pen, or the more realistic version where you have a long term relationship with a downer guy who runs a record store and you just get tired of his face. Either way, you go through a terrible fight and make up in the end, which feels so good since the fight was so painful and wet and cold.

Act V, The Bed Death: The Kids Are Alright

You have been together so long you just don’t exist to each other. You focus too much on your kids, and worst of all possible calamities, you have succumbed to lesbian bed death. Sooner or later, it’s a matter of time before one of you cheats, even going so far as to consider another sexual orientation. And Mark Ruffalo is pretty irresistible, but also kind of annoying with his bike-riding organic farmer routine (yeah, you heard me, San Francisco!). However, who could resist Julianne Moore? By the end, you learn how to make it work and how to love each other more. But, as we embark on the final stage of our relationship, you have a choice to make.

Act VI, Choose Your Own Adventure
Now the choice is up to you, since this is your vicarious relationship. Do you choose:

1. Ultimate Romance: The Young Victoria

You’ve suddenly become quite in love with your first cousin, with whom you bear nine children. Your romance is sickening, in the best possible way, and the fact that you are monarchs who are waited on hand and foot helps. He dies 20 years into your marriage and afterward you go into serious mourning and you refuse to leave the house for the next 40 years of your reign as the Queen of England.

2. Heroin Addicts: Sid and Nancy

After the lesbian bed death and a little couples therapy, you both decide to take up heroin.  You run around in hippy dresses and leopard print underwear in the street shouting you’re Stevie Nicks, with bruises on your arms. Everything feels alive, everything seems possible, until you start coming to terms with your drug habit while living in a crappy hotel and you beg your boyfriend to stab you to death.

3. The Lonely Epiphany: Gone With the Wind

If there’s one thing about human nature that can be learned from Scarlett O’Hara, it’s that we always want what we can’t have. It turns out that this whole time you’ve been married, you’ve never really loved your husband. Until the minute he leaves you. Then you are painfully, hopelessly in love with the one man who wants to see your head on a spike in the front yard. You crawl away to your childhood home and try to cheer yourself up with a fistful of dirt.

4. The Saddest Conclusion: Blue Valentine

You have reconciled and gone to counseling, and come to terms with loving each other a little less than you used to. You are trying to raise your child with your drunk husband, Ryan Gosling, while he wears pedophile-style ’70s sunglasses.  It’s true he loves the kid and you, too, but you hate his hair, and nothing can ever bring back the good old days when he sang to you in a silly voice with a ukulele. You have the loneliest, most painful attempt at a sexy evening and your relationship crumbles into a million little pieces. Yours is the saddest divorce in the history of the world.

There, now. Don’t you feel a little relieved? It’s better to have loved and lost… and you did a lot of loving today. You survived Valentine’s Day without ever having to be alone. Now you can go take over the entire bed by yourself.

For KS <3