2012 January - The Pursuit of Harpyness

Betrayed By Our Allies: A Guest Post by ...

Posted by The Harpies in Guest Post on 01 31st, 2012 | 10 Comments

Right now, I am trying to bring my blood pressure back down to something close to normal. A little while ago, I read a story, now in wide circulation, in the Washington Post: “Why Komen Defunded Planned Parenthood.” The Associated Press reports that Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation’s...

Tuesday Teasers: Stuff I’ve Been R...

Posted by annajcook in Linkaround on 01 31st, 2012 | 3 Comments

brought to you by people who read naked in bed (click for source) annajcook @ the feminist librarian | Booknotes: Clover Adams. A bit of shameless promotion here for my friend Natalie Dykstra’s first book, out in February from Houghton Mifflin. It’s a biography of photographer Marian “Clover”...

Hotness, Then and Now...

Posted by BeckySharper in Thoughts on 01 30th, 2012 | 23 Comments

You’ve probably seen this photo array posted on Tumblr or Facebook in the last month or so with some comment like “hell yeah!” I saw it posted by both men and women, with everyone extolling the curvier, fleshier virtues of the starlets from the 50s (even though it should be pointed...

Poetry Saturdays: Seamus Heaney...

Posted by BeckySharper in Thoughts on 01 28th, 2012 | No Comments

Seamus Heaney, born in Northern Ireland in 1939, has been called the most important Irish poet since Yeats, and is also famous for his translations from the Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon. He won the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature. Act of Union I To-night, a first movement, a pulse, As if the rain in bogland...

Let’s Talk Images: “Single B...

Posted by annajcook in Let's Talk Images on 01 26th, 2012 | 7 Comments

Web version of Boston Magazine's cover (Jan 2012) Image Caption: The image is a full-color photograph of a young woman on a cheerful yellow background. The woman, on the left, is visible from mid-torso up, and is dressed in a black, form-fitting top. She’s slim, olive-skinned, brunette, with...

Booknotes: The Lives of Transgender Peop...

Posted by annajcook in Harpy Book Club on 01 24th, 2012 | 2 Comments

I was super excited to get my hands on an advance review copy of The Lives of Transgender People by Genny Beemyn and Susan Rankin (Columbia Univ. Press, 2011) a couple of months ago. Lives is being touted as a unique and much-needed large-scale study of the identities and experiences of trans* individuals...

The Iron Lady: A Guest Post by Not Mr. B...

Posted by BeckySharper in Guest Post on 01 23rd, 2012 | 8 Comments

There’s a novel called The New Centurions by Joseph Wambaugh that came out in 1971. It was the first cop novel to portray cops as more than guys in trenchcoats who walked around saying, “Just the facts, ma’am.” These cops were humans. They had lives. They drank, swore, fornicated, cried. In one...

First, We’d Have to Find a Pro-Cho...

Posted by annajcook in Feminist Food for Thought on 01 22nd, 2012 | 7 Comments

For my previous Blog for Choice posts see 2011, 2010 and 2008. Thanks to all the Harpies who contributed to the discussion that led to this post. The theme for the 2012 Blog for Choice action day is “what will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?” Which frankly is something...

I Had To Share This. You’re Welcom...

Posted by BeckySharper in Culcha Vulcha on 01 21st, 2012 | 4 Comments

Real live TV footage of Lord Voldemort—disguised as his human pajama-wearing avatar, Ralph Fiennes—reading erotic Harry Potter fanfic.

Poetry Saturdays: Li Po...

Posted by BeckySharper in Thoughts on 01 21st, 2012 | 3 Comments

Li Po, also known as Li Bai, was an 8th century Chinese poet, considered one of the greatest poets of the Tang Dynasty, China’s “golden age of poetry.” This poem was translated by one of his devotees, the 20th century American poet Ezra Pound. The River-Merchant’s Wife While my...

Live-Blogging: Caitlin Flanagan on WBUR...

Posted by annajcook in Culcha Vulcha on 01 20th, 2012 | 4 Comments

via I got home from one of those days in which I was dashing hither and yon doing work-related stuff and found what I really wanted to do was listen to Caitlin Flanagan fulminate in front of Tim Ashbrook and the ever-articulate Irin Carmon on On Point (WBUR). Basically, I listened to the episode...

Snake Oil and Badvertising: FatGirl by B...

Posted by BeckySharper in You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me on 01 19th, 2012 | 8 Comments

Somehow I got on the mailing list for Bliss Spa & Beauty, I suspect because I cashed in a gift certificate for a facial there a few years ago and now they own all my information. The products they sell are way too pricey for me, so normally I just recycle the catalogue. But today when I glanced at...

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