A Usable Past

Neal Schweiber: The dance is tomorrow. She’s a cheerleader. You’ve seen Star Wars 47 times. You do the math.

“Freaks and Geeks“, produced by Judd Apatow, 1999-2000. Possibly the best portrayal of 1980s high school life since John Hughes. An amazing supporting cast (Linda Cardellini, Jason Segel, Joe Flaherty, Dave ‘Gruber’ Allen, Thomas “Biff” Wilson, Jason Schwartzman) + killer retro soundtrack (Joan Jett, XTC, Styx, The Who) = comedy gold.

Mr. Weir: She’s hanging with a bad crowd. She’s lying and cheating and next thing you know she’s Patty Hearst with a gun to our heads.

Kowchevski: Ladies, this is just for tomorrow’s scrimmage. This isn’t the last chopper out of Saigon. Can we please just crank down the drama a notch?

Millie: You’re high!
Lindsay: How could you tell?
Millie: I know what high people look like. I went to a Seals and Crofts concert last summer.

Harold Weir: Everyone’s a Democrat until they get a little money. Then they come to their senses!

Neal: Everyone looks cool in turtle necks. That’s the point! We can’t both wear them; we’ll look like the Smothers Brothers!

Bill: Stop looking up my shorts.

Neal: Why would we? There’s nothing to see.

Sam: Just keep climbing, Wonder Woman.

Bill: There is something to see.

Inspired by “The Real 90s.”

Perhaps one of the most recognizable women in America, it’s time this Ms. got these props.

From Feministing.

Life Magazine has put together a slide show of photos called “Che: Symbol, Paradox, Global Brand” that visually examines how the image of Che Guevara has been used in the public.  Lots of them are interesting (and some kind of disturbing – the Che bikini?), so you should check them out here.

No, not the throwing-a-fit kind of stamping.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, early 20th century suffragists were quite adept at using visual media to support the cause of women’s enfranchisement, producing postcards that challenged the idea of gender inequality.   These women activists also produced a number of stamps that could be and were affixed to envelopes to promote the movement!  While the western states were generally supportive of the move for equal suffrage (see image above), suffragists extended their activism to focus on the heavily-populated eastern states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts and New York in the mid-1910s to generate support east of the Mississippi River.

After the 19th Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution in 1920, the federal government took up the cause of supporting women suffragists, producing stamps of their own, including this 3 cent stamp featuring Susan B. Anthony on August 26, 1936.

From Ms. Magazine.

FOUR women in space!!

Transgender Porn Love

Caroline “Tula” Cossey, the first transwoman to pose for Playboy.

(from bitches get shit done)

Radical Feminist Group The Redstockings

Ellen Willis’ daughter, Nona Willis Aronowitz, created a fantastic online archive of her mother’s work.  Ellen Willis was one of the co-founders of the 1960s women’s liberation group The Redstockings and the first rock critic for the New Yorker.  Aronowitz has archived a number of her mother’s writings on the topics of sex, religion, and rock criticism (among others) that are a fabulous view into the mind of Willis and other women in the 1960s and 1970s.  From her humorous piece Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life (The Village Voice, 1979):

There are two kinds of sex, classical and baroque. Classical sex is romantic, profound, serious, emotional, moral, mysterious, spontaneous, abandoned, focused on a particular person, and stereotypically feminine. Baroque sex is pop, playful, funny, experimental, conscious, deliberate, amoral, anonymous, focused on sensation for sensation’s sake, and stereotypically masculine. The classical mentality taken to an extreme is sentimental and finally puritanical; the baroque mentality taken to an extreme is pornographic and finally obscene. Ideally, a sexual relationship ought to create a satisfying tension between the two modes (a baroque idea, particularly if the tension is ironic) or else blend them so well that the distinction disappears (a classical aspiration). Lovemaking cannot be totally classical unless it is also totally baroque, since you can’t abandon all restraints without being willing to try anything. Similarly, it is impossible to be truly baroque without allowing oneself to abandon all restraints and so attain a classical intensity. In practice, however, most people are more inclined to one mode than to the other. A very classical person will be incompatible with a very baroque person unless each can bring out the other’s latent opposite side. Two people who are very one-sided in the same direction can be extremely compatible but risk missing a whole dimension of experience unless they get so deeply into one mode that it becomes the other.

Go read more here!

Sufferin’ Suffragists

Amazing National American Woman Suffrage Association postcards from 1910.  Note how even the NAWSA depicts women as children in their illustrations.  Amazing.

(from Ms. Magazine)