I recently wrote about the preponderance of bald women in 90s pop culture for the website Neon Splatter. Here’s a brief blurb:
“The unisex and gender-neutral styles circa the ’90s…squashed gender into a singularity – a futuristic monogender made for an efficient tomorrow. It was an attempt at hurdling over gendered codes and modes by disregarding them. The consensus there could be read as: ‘We’re all basic in the future.'”
Whoa. Where did 2018 go? I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s nearly done now. To celebrate, here are ten of my favorite stories from ICYI over the past twelve months, in no particular order.
Brett Kavanaugh’s Drinking Problem
Join, or Die, America’ First Meme
All the LGBT Books Around My House
Lyndon Johnson Hated The Graduate
16 Posters By Graphic Great Lester Beall
The Incredible Arthur Ellerman
Found in the LOC: A Cat’s Autobiography
In case you’re interested, the first vampire novel was 1872’s Carmilla, by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu, and it had a distinct lesbian bent: The titular character is a succubus-esque creature who tries to seduce and feed upon a young woman, a plot perhaps informed by eons-worth of patriarchal anxieties.
Predating Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 26 years, Le Fanu’s story first appeared as a serial in The Dark Blue, a literary magazine, before being published as a single volume illustrated by D.H. Friston, the same man who first illustrated Sherlock Holmes.
Above, one of Friston’s images from that collection depicts Carmilla making for her prey, Laura.
Pride month ends today, and I still haven’t penned anything LGBTQ-related. Considering so much of my career has been in gay media, that seems wrong. But what to write? I’m pretty out of touch with queer politics and culture at the moment, so I guess I’ll just keep it simple: a cruise through lavender-tinged titles around my house.
Starting in my office, where I spend most of my time, the top row of a tall brown Ikea Billy bookshelf holds many homo-related hardbacks: Leo Lerman’s diaries, The Grand Surprise, abut Between Me and Life, Meryle Secrest’s biography of lesbian painter Romaine Brooks, which are next to the equally Sapphic Selected Letters of Willa Cather, which is pressed against The Days of Anna Madrigal. Theoretically the rest of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series should be up here, but those paperback copies are elsewhere.
On that same row you’ll find Tim Murphy’s Christadora, about the lives, loves and losses of people in the East Village apartment building of the same name, and Cathers’ collection of short stories, Obscure Destinies, which I’ve never read but hope to soon. Speaking of, I’m not sure where my copy of O Pioneers! moseyed off to; I do know My Antonia was abandoned on a Brooklyn stoop — I didn’t care for her. Meanwhile, a few titles over from Destinies, are three EM Forster tomes: his realist and oh-too-relevant political collection, Two Cheers for Democracy; the heart-breaking Maurice; and a collection of the English author’s short tales. (Howard’s End is elsewhere.)
Finally, off to the right, a recently acquired paperback of John Rechy’s raunchy Rushes lays on its side, appropriately removed and aptly aloof.
The group that would become the Girl Scouts turns 106 today. In honor of the organization, here are six quick facts about the Girl Scouts.
I wrote a piece on the immersive queer artist Jon Wang for my old colleagues at Out magazine. Please check it out!
On the occasion of the 133rd birthday of Sinclair Lewis, Nobel-winning novelist of works like Babbitt, Elmer Gantry, It Can’t Happen Here and Arrowsmith, all of which deal with the tension between rote-loving mainstream society and unique thinking, here is an excerpt from Main Street, which I originally cited in 2011 at the LGBTQ news site Towleroad.
This blurb deals with a small town reaction to a man who doesn’t fit gender norms:
“Mrs. Dyer was bubbling, ‘Oh, have you folks heard about this young fellow that’s just come to town that the boys call ‘Elizabeth’? He’s working in Nat Hicks’s tailor shop. I bet he doesn’t make eighteen a week, but my! isn’t he the perfect lady though! He talks so refined, and oh, the lugs he puts on–belted coat, and pique collar with a gold pin, and socks to match his necktie, and honest–you won’t believe this, but I got it straight–this fellow, you know he’s staying at Mrs. Gurrey’s punk old boarding-house, and they say he asked Mrs. Gurrey if he ought to put on a dress-suit for supper! Imagine! Can you beat that?
‘And him nothing but a Swede tailor–Erik Valborg his name is. But he used to be in a tailor shop in Minneapolis (they do say he’s a smart needle-pusher, at that) and he tries to let on that he’s a regular city fellow. They say he tries to make people think he’s a poet–carries books around and pretends to read ’em. Myrtle Cass says she met him at a dance, and he was mooning around all over the place, and he asked her did she like flowers and poetry and music and everything; he spieled like he was a regular United States Senator; and Myrtle–she’s a devil, that girl, ha! ha!–she kidded him along, and got him going, and honest, what d’you think he said?
‘He said he didn’t find any intellectual companionship in this town. Can you BEAT it? Imagine! And him a Swede tailor! My! And they say he’s the most awful mollycoddle–looks just like a girl. The boys call him ‘Elizabeth,’ and they stop him and ask about the books he lets on to have read, and he goes and tells them, and they take it all in and jolly him terribly, and he never gets onto the fact they’re kidding him. Oh, I think it’s just TOO funny!'”
If you haven’t read this work, or anything by Lewis, I really suggest that you do.
In Case You're Interested 