It is the end of summer in the Americas! But wherever you live and whomever you love, you will want to partake in the funnest contest to ever hit the interwebs, Laneia’s Auotstraddle Summer Scavenger Hunt!
In addition, it’s back to school time and we have the hot girls in schoolgirl uniforms to prove it!
+ Arts & Culture
VOGUE EVOLUTION: On last night’s America’s Best Dance Crew, our favorite gay/trans Crew Vogue Evolution took on “The Martial Arts Challenge,” which apparently involved lots of tiger clawing gestures/Kung Fu. AC Slater asks if they can get off the catwalk and embrace their inner tiger. The best part about this is that Shane Sparks & JC Chavez get all flustered afterwards. Watch for yourself:
TRANS-IDOL: Although we have no idea what the judges are saying in this clip of 20-year-old transgender contesant Lívia Mendonça auditioning for Brazil’s version of American Idol, Ídolos, we are guessing that it is both awesome and progressive. (@queerty)
TEEVEE: Glee – Fox Promo with So You Think You Can Dance. (@spoilertv)
COMIC CONFRONTATIONS: Judge Judy vs. Internet Commenters. (@jezebel)
LOHAN/RONSON: “Now I’m fine with Mrs. O’Day declaring herself as declaring herself a lover of the ladies —more power to her—but in this excerpt from Curve magazine (reported on by celebrity mania) she manages to try to steal my (and Lindsay Lohan’s) woman, Samantha Ronson, while also suggesting that Lilo and Sam’s relationship was too much of a tabloid circus making it unable to work out. TABLOIDS CAN’T SPLIT UP TRUE LOVE JUST LOOK AT SAM AND LINDSAY’S TWITTERS! That is all.” [-Intern Lily] (@celebritymania)
GIRLS WITH GUITARS: “Annie Clark sneered at the way Lady Gaga is “rewarded” for writing her own material, dismissed Lilith Fair as “marginalizing,” overly earnest acoustic strumming, and complained about being compared with other female musicians, since “musically, I have more things in common” with male peers.” (@salon)
NSFW: Using Barbie dolls to teach lesbian sex positions? Hey-o, looks like our bedroom floors circa 1985-1995. (@lovegirls)
CHO: Margaret Cho set to perform in Provincetown August 24-31 On the guest stars of her new show, Drop Dead Diva, Cho describes the list as “a gay pride edition of ‘The Love Boat’” (@wickedlocal)
TOPLESS: “Even though I knew the law was on my side, female toplessness still felt like the medical marijuana of the east coast: legal but somehow illicit: I Did it for Science – Topless in the Park.” (@nerve.com
+News & Politics
HOUSTON: An out lesbian mayor in the fourth largest city in the United States? It could happen in Texas. (@change)
MEDIA: Kerry Eleveld is one of those reporters you keep hearing about: Talented lesbians scoring big breaks! – Kerry Eleveld Is Here to Save LGBT News. It’s An Impossible Task. (@queerty)
DOMA: Vote for anti-DOMA students at Stanford to get a $10,000 grant to further their fight against marriage discrimination: The National Marriage Boycott, a student-driven effort to encourage the Obama administration and Congress to repeal DOMA, is one of the finalists for a $10,000 grant from Ideablob – an entrepreneurial Web site that helps small businesses and organizations find the seed money they need to take their campaigns and initiatives to the next level.(@change)
SISTER ACT: The Vatican is worried that American nuns are not on board with its anti-homosexuality policy. They are probably right and should get over the idea that one’s relationship with G-d doesn’t exactly fill the celibacy void. It’s quite fundamentally ridiculous, really. (@politicsdaily)
D.C.: How to win marriage in Washington D.C: For starters; realize that the city is nearly 60% African American, and develop a diverse group of allies that reflects that diversity. (@huffpo)
RIGHTS: Wisconsin Attorney General John Byron “J.B.” thinks it’s best gays just have no domestic partnership rights at all. We think it’s best for John Byron “J.B.” to suck it. So there we have a few things in common. (@ontopmag)
Auto-Straddler of the Day
Intern Lily:
A bisexual female white rapper who was dropped by her Disney record label after a parent of a young tween found her smoking pot? Count me in.
+
+
Riese:
Every day we get one day closer to the Spike Jonze-Dave Eggers adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are! Here, Dave Eggers is interviewed in New York Magazine’s Fall Preview issue. Other Fall Preview notables include an interview with my favorite author Lorrie Moore and upcoming releases my favorite book critic Sam Anderson is looking forward to.
from Alex:
Hey, you know me by now: 50 of the best typography posters! Helvetica! Bodoni! oh my! Good inspiration and layouts for real.
The lovegirls article was hilarious! I want the author to be my new best friend.
Am I the only lesbian in the world who’s mystified by “scissoring”? I didn’t even realize it was something people did until I was like 24, and I had the real lesbian sex book when i was a teenager and everything.
I thought ‘scissoring’ was a sex-position joke… not an actual sex position. (I just think of Mr. Garrison when he became a lesbian for an episode of South Park and would say “SCISSOR ME!”)
I mean, its hilarious. Just look at that picture. I’d like to see someone attempt that and not be JK-ing about it.
I thought it was a joke for a long time too–it’s too silly to not be.
This thread makes me yearn for a new Scissor Sisters CD
if anyone who reads this has actually successfully scissored in that style please do tell
scissoring is my favorite activity according to all of my straight male friends.
I totally understand the Pope’s discomfort. Italian nuns are much more self-hating and self-loathing than the Americans. And it’s probably true of Italian women as well, compared to many other nations.
barbara has thoughts and feelings and a point of view, guys! based on your blog, i’m assuming you’re italian, so tell me more: why are italian nuns and women more self-loathing?
SHORT ANSWER: because they are afraid to come out!!! To themselves, and to other people. They’ll do anything to convince themselves that they are totally straight and like women only for friendship, where their weird, incredibly socially advanced idea of friendship involves sharing orgasms on a bed. They’d rather fuck you, but their lifelong dream remains getting married to a man and being socially accepted by the majority of Italian bigots.
LONG ANSWER: because Italy is 95% Catholic and we’re raised to think of ourselves as inferior to men. When we grow up, our sex drive is seriously put to test and we have the following 3 options:
1) if it’s low, repress it and stay single;
2) if it’s medium-high and you cannot repress it, take revenge on the men and use your sex drive to hurt them (so that men can agree that women are all sluts);
3) if you’re not a total bitch and don’t want to hurt men but at the same time have a sex drive, marry one and stay with him for life, bearing him 3 to 8 kids on the way (so that everyone can agree that women are just child bearing machines and should stay home to do the laundry).
All other uses / expressions of your sex drive are totally banned / discouraged not just by men, but by women themselves, because they are simply not compatible with the socially accepted idea of a woman’s fate.
Lesbians are (thought to be) either women with a low sex drive who strangely want a relationship they have no right to, or sluts so ugly that no man would touch them, or loving women, pining for a man to marry, who are extrememly unfortunate not having had the luck of finding Prince Charming yet (riding a white horse etc.)
I don’t know why we keep getting so many tourists. Or rather, I do, seeing how many people flock to zoos.
odd; i thought the drag kings in Il Divo were an international sensation.
That is not what they said in Stealing Beauty!
Of course there are niches of normal people, all the weirdos I like and am friends with! But that doesn’t change the global picture, right? An exception does not change the rule. And the rule is still that these “deviations” are not encouraged nor appreciated, even though they are tolerated as long as they are not shown, or shown with too much pride.
Italians are great tolerators. We tolerate anything, but tolerating does not mean encouraging nor appreciating.
I hate toleration and I don’t believe in it. Tolerating is like, I couldn’t care less about who you are and what you do. But it often means “I don’t like you and am just too busy ATM to hate you”.
I am not too fond of acceptance, either. Accepting is like, ok, I have no idea who you are, but you are not too bad and you don’t seem to do much damage to me.
What I like is understanding. Which usually leads to encouragement, appreciation and support :)
Italian women having 3 to 8 children really?, I know that the birth rate in Italy is 1.29 for the period 2000-2005 (wikipedia) and the estimated 2009 population growth rate -0.047% (CIA fact book)), which is actually really low and means that even if people are getting married they are not having more than 1 child. Just saying.
Don’t know about the other stuff because I’m not italian nor italian-american
Jeez , I mean that even if people are getting married/live together to have children, they are either deciding not to have children or just having 1.
I did not say they actually HAVE 3 to 8 children. But fact is, the mainstream Catholic culture encourages and supports large families and women staying at home to look after husband and children. Go check the stats on Italian female occupation rates, (among) the lowest in Europe and the West.
In terms of lifestyles available to women, it’s either family or career. Both together are very difficult to maintain, because of the doubled expectations and the lack of social or affordable market services for children care. (check the stats on kindergartens).
In short, the low birth rates come from the impossibility of looking after your children without the help of social services or of affordable market services. In other countries women have careers AND children (hence the higher birth rates), while in Italy it’s career OR children. And some of them, yes, choose careers (hence the low birth rates).
The Catholics have long opposed the expansion of welfare state family policies because that would have liberated women from staying at home and looking after children.
Anyway, I don’t care, I’m learning Swedish! Yay Scandinavian countries! = High birth rates + oceans of social services + liberated & empowered women + tons of HOT lesbians :)
My InDesign instructor this summer actually showed us several of those typography posters as examples for our own poster assignment. I did mine on Trebuchet.
When I got my issue of Curve with Aubrey O’Day on the cover I asked twitter who she was and why I should care. Two people just responded that I should be excited/love her, but they didn’t say why…
I must not be subscribed to Curve anymore ’cause I didn’t get it. I guess I will go to B&N and buy it so I can yell at people about how it exists and I want it to be better than it is when I’ve read every issue they’ve put out (HA PUT OUT) since like mid 2004.
I love Trebuchet. Like in a very sentimental way. Like a perfume I don’t wear anymore. I guess that would be Tommy Girl.
tommy girl perfume!
who the hell is aubrey o’day? clearly she is not aware of lindsay and sam’s twitter breakthrough the other week!
i want to have a room plastered with all of the typography posters.
I have absolutely no idea what so fucking ever who Aubrey O’Day is. I suppose when/if my Curve magazine arrives in the mail in its porno black packaging I will find out. Possibly I don’t subscribe anymore. I will um see.
I think that means its ok that we don’t know who she is.
Especially as I just googled her and I still don’t know who she is apart from it appears she is possibly some kind of actress/singer. Maybe. And that she likes to watch porn as a hobby. Hmm.
that auto-straddler should not be wearing open-toed shoes while operating that demolition jack hammer on that beach.
I appreciate that you are looking out for the health of her toes
loved the nun article!
—
also i have this to say:
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARRRRE!! saw the extended trailer @ the theater Saturday and almost cried. that’s right! do not judge me! can we have a countdown party?
I cry every single time I see that trailer. Not even almost cry–actual tears.
I can’t wait to see it!!!!
I’ll have to bring an entire tissue box to keep up with my emotions though.
I’m hiring judge Judy for all my life confrontations. That is all.
I feel a little like Annie Clark is being a little unfair? Slash cutting down other female artists unnecessarily? Part of me hopes she will stop talking and make more music that I like. But then that is a super unfeminist thing to say! I don’t even know what I want anymore
omg today at work people were talking about America’s Best Dance Crew. and the were talking about the gay/trans Crew. and they were saying very not nice things that i refuse to repeat on here… or ever. and… i could do NOTHING about it. i just had to keep my mouth shut and listen. it made me kinda sad. just fyi….
Re: Barbie
and to think, if I had just let you have Barbies how different your life might be …