Quien es mas macho?

 

Like the writer of the blog, The Rawness, it took me a second to realize that the swaggering stud in the blue jacket above is a woman.  And, following the Rawness' lead, I've juxtaposed that photo with the typical hipster couple below. The male below doesn't have a fraction of the bravado or force of the woman above. He's literally in the shadow of his mate, and despite the stubble, seems emasculated -- neutered. Mild as warm milk.

As Ricky Raw points out, it's rare in bobo or even boho crowds to see any guy exuding the cock-of-the-walk insouciance and traditional masculinity of the woman above (let alone the style). He goes on to say:

I have no proof to back up this claim, but I bet that Allison Michael Orenstein, the dapper dan butch in the first photo, is the more hardcore lesbian while her mate, kissing up on her cheek, Simone Saint Laurent, was probably straight for much of her life and got ”turned out” by Orenstein or a butch similar to her.  The reason I assume this is because of what a butch lesbian who excelled at “converting” straight women once told me: that metropolitan straight women, living in this world of feminized bobo whimpsters, are getting so starved for traditional masculine swagger to activate their primal lust triggers and make them feel safe to be a submissive woman that they’re even increasingly willing to turn to another woman to get their dose of macho swagger.  This butch claimed to me that the sensitive wuss has been the biggest boon to her lesbo recruitment game, and looking at the two pics I believe her.

He ends up with some advice for his male readers -- basically, butch it up like the lesbian and learn a few skills every man should know.

This is good as far as it goes. And if more boho/hipster fellows took the recommendation, the world would be a better place.


I'm all for trying on masks and poses.  When it's done consciously, with originality, it can be wholly artful and stuff of true rebellion against the conformist mass. I think of the public poses of Quentin Crisp, Gerard Nerval, Patti Smith, Robert de Montesquiou and so on. What people mistake for sincerity or naturalness is often just an excuse for laziness. "I am who I am." Right -- putty in the hands of your parents, your friends and the milieu you never thought to question.

The poses, once adopted, harden into habits.

I haven't thought much about gender behavior for a long time. For one thing, I'm butch enough -- not butch as in bullfighter/boxer/bouncer/ macho, but within the narrow context my day job and my filmmaking, I'm macho enough.

For another, self-presentation becomes less of an issue as you age.

But: Is it masculine to worry about looking masculine? The real men I've known tended to focus more on character or moral qualities rather than presentation. That is, they were focused on mastering skills, on demonstations of bravery, on stoicism. On humor, too -- you'll never hear more jokes than on a blue-collar worksite.

Essentially, it's a question of virtue -- virtue in the old Roman/Latin sense of the word, which my dictionary tells me is "virtūt- (s. of virtūs) maleness, worth, virtue, equiv. to vir man (see virile )."

So, to amplify rather than dispute Ricky Raw, I think anyone who wants to butch it up should focus on qualities like bravery, chivalry, and toughness and let the swagger extend from that. Remembering, too that you tend to become what you pretend to be.

Male. Or female.


(both the photos are from New York magazine).

RIP JD Salinger

"I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can."

How to pick a lock

Lesson learned

Iggy

Heart of a dog

Moscow's stray dogs exhibit signs of returning to their wolvish origins. The strays are smarter, stronger, and tougher. They ride the subways, knowing which stations to board and where to get off.

Moscow’s strays sit somewhere between house pets and wolves, says Poyarkov, but are in the early stages of the shift from the domesticated back towards the wild. That said, there seems little chance of reversing this process. It is virtually impossible to domesticate a stray: many cannot stand being confined indoors.

Read the full story from the Financial Times

The wit and wisdom of George Best

One of the all-time soccer greats, Belfast born George Best was as nimble with his words as with his feet. He was fond of booze, smokes and women.

I’ve stopped drinking, but only while I’m asleep.

In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.


People always say I shouldn’t be burning the candle at both ends. Maybe they haven’t got a big enough candle.

It’s a pleasure to be standing here. It’s a pleasure to be standing up. (On being made Footballer of the Century, 1999)

Because I saw an advert on the side of a London bus inviting me to “Drink Canada Dry” (On going to play for Vancouver Whitecaps)

They say I slept with seven Miss Worlds. I didn’t. It was only four. I didn’t turn up for the other three.

Reporter Sue Mott, taking Best’s mobile phone number: “God, do you realise half the women in the world would pay good money to get that number?”
Best: “Half the women in the world have got it.”
 
I used to go missing a lot…Miss Canada, Miss United Kingdom, Miss World.

via

Small Victories

Sarah Sharp's Small Victories  via

Showtime

Russian soldiers mounting a performance, 1916

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Folies Bergere, 1881

by E. Manet

I never quite understood what's happening in the right side of the painting -- is it a memory or a wish?

Folies Bergere, 1940

 

You can hear the murmurs from the audience, German-accented French whispered in voices rendolent of  Veuve Cliquot and blood, elle est jolie, nicht wahr?

These pictures beg to be framed by a b-movie story. The comic is fatally in love with a dancer. He joins the resistance to get her attention. When the Gestapo takes him away, she finally realizes. Alas, too late. Guest appearances by Paul Morand and Coco Chanel.

Or, a dancer has a lover in the Resistance on the side, but the Colonel has his eye on her. Hijinks ensue involving wardrobes, pissoirs and corsets. In the final scene of this movie, she is shorn by the mob who thinks she collaborated -- but little do they know she kept secret documents for the red orchestra safe up her ass (and was nearly discovered by a kinky captain with a taste for sodomy).

Or, an innocent country girl who loves Ste. Jeanne d'Arc, and is only there to make money to save her family's goat farm in the Massif Central is seduced by an older woman. The older woman, is, of course, an admirer of Germany and learned awful things in Berlin. When her money starts going for ether and morphine instead of to home, her aged grand-pere tracks her down.. She sees him on the street, outside, the Boche spitting on him and making fun of his beret. She realizes in an instant the errors of her ways, and goes home to join her old boyfriend in the macquis.

In all of these movies, veryone is screwing everyone, of course. It's not only show biz, it's the end of everything normal, so why not?

Robert Bothner (1899 - 1967). Paris under occupation.
Images of revue and cabaret shows in Folies Bergère, Paris. 1940
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See also, David Foster Wallace:

"T2" is thus also the first and best instance of a paradoxical law that appears to hold true for the entire F/X Porn genre. It is called the Inverse Cost and Quality Law, and it states very simply that the larger a movie's budget is, the shittier that movie is going to be. The case of "T2" shows that much of the ICQL's force derives from simple financial logic. A film that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make is going to get financial backing if and only if its investors can be maximally -- _maximally_ -- sure that at the very least they will get their hundreds of millions of dollars back [11] -- i.e. a megabudget movie must not fail (and "failure" here means anything less than a runaway box-office hit) and must thus adhere to certain reliable formulae that have been shown by precedent to maximally ensure a runaway hit.

Read the rest of  his essay here