Wednesday, February 4, 2009
वहत इ'म थिंकिंग अबाउट
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
words of the day
n.
a transformation, esp. a major one
"The summer I turned twelve, I graduated from kids’ camp to teen camp. I was still terribly innocent and very much a child. I don’t remember paying attention to my appearance until my counselor’s boyfriend singled me out in front of the other girls and told me I had beautiful eyes. I was stunned, embarrassed, and excited. It must have been my first compliment from a man, because I remember it vividly. It reinforced the lesson that attention, on which there is such a premium for girls, is bestowed because of beauty. It also made me see myself through someone else’s eyes, another step in the awakening of my self-consciousness. It was a sea change from my camp experience the previous year, when I had won the title of “dirtiest camper” and wore the superlative with pride, as the public acknowledgment of my ability to play hard."
-Lauren Greenfield, From Girl Culture (Chronicle Books, 2002)
© Lauren Greenfield. Lily, then 5, shops at Rachel London's Garden, where Britney Spears has some of her clothes designed, Los Angeles, California.
palimpsest [pal' imp sest΄ ]
n.
[ L palimpsestus < style="font-style: italic;">palimpsē stos, lit., rubbed again < palin, again (see PALINDROME) + psē n, to rub smooth < style="font-style: italic;">bhes-, to rub off, pulverize > L sabulum,SAND]
a parchment, tablet, etc. that has been written upon or inscribed two or three times, the previous text or texts having been imperfectly erased and remaining, therefore, still partly visible
"In this work, I have been interested in documenting the pathological in the everyday. I am interested in the tyranny of the popular and thin girls over the ones who don’t fit that mold. I am interested in the competition suffered by the popular girls, and their sense that popularity is not as satisfying as it appears. I am interested in the time-consuming grooming and beauty rituals that are an integral part of daily life. I am interested in the fact that to fall outside the ideal body type is to be a modern-day pariah. I am interested in how girls’ feelings of frustration, anger, and sadness are expressed in physical and self-destructive ways: controlling their food intake, cutting their bodies, being sexually promiscuous. I am interested in the way that the female body has become a palimpsest on which many of our culture’s conflicting messages about femininity are written and rewritten. Most of all, I am interested in the element of performance and exhibitionism that seems to define the contemporary experience of being a girl."-Lauren Greenfield, From Girl Culture (Chronicle Books, 2002)
© Lauren Greenfield. Allegra, 4, plays at being a pop star.
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© Lauren Greenfield. Fina, 13, in the tanning salon, Edina, Minnesota. |
Monday, February 2, 2009
May the Wrath of Hanuman Descend upon You
Monkey with a mission
Reuters, Jan 30 - In India's southern Karnataka, a monkey prevents the authorities from demolishing a roadside temple by attacking officials who venture near the temple premises.
The bizarre incident saw the monkey defending the temple dedicated to Hindu monkey god 'Hanuman'.
The authorities in the Kolar region of the state are planning to demolish the temple to widen the national highway on which it is located.Locals said the monkey normally does not harm anybody but surprisingly turned hostile towards the officials who came with the intention of demolishing the temple.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Lonely
Barren city street.-g.
Lamplit, lean, coyote waits.
We are lonely, proud.
“Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.”
-Joseph Conrad
