Don't Believe The Hype

Audrey gets in on the "Redefining Beauty" debate

Just a few more days to go on the road.....

Happen to live in Greenwich, CT?  Then come on out this WEDNESDAY November 1st at 4pm to hear me give a reading and sign books.  I'd love to see you! There's more info HERE... or call (203) 622-7900 and speak to Margaret Walsh, the Teen Services librarian....

And in other news: A great article on whether or not there's a cultural trend emerging that's attempting to redefine beauty came out in the Hartford Courant newspaper at the end of the week.  Stephanie from the Back in Skinny Jeans Blog (who's also a frequent reader of Don't Believe the Hype) was quoted....as was I.  Check it out HERE.

Talk to you all soon!

xo Audrey

It's raining in NYC today....

Hi again from the road....

Just wanted to check in and say that I've been reading some of the comments posted here (about NOT getting caught up in the hype; about body acceptance) , and I think they're inspiring and great.  Keep 'em coming!

I also wanted to point out the news that I'm sure you've heard about in the past few days: that Nicole Richie has entered a "diagnostic treatment center" to find out why she's not gaining weight and if it possibly has something to do with a rare blood disorder.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  Wow.  considering she used to be a totally normal weight, that sounds like a really wild excuse to me.  I just don't understand why NONE of this h'wood actresses  (lindsay with her whole "no, I never said to Vanity Fair magazine that I had an eating disorder.  I'm gonna sue them for saying that!  Oh, they have it on tape?  Hmmmm....)  will bite the bullet and be the one to come out and say 'I GOT CAUGHT UP IN THE HYPE BUT NOW I"M GETTING HELP."

Think of how they'd be embraced and how their image would improve in the court of public opinion.  It's good publicity waiting to happen.... so I just don't get it.

OK...
One more week of school visits, church youth groups and libraries... then back to normal.

Stay well everyone!

xo Audrey

news from the road....

Hi All..

just wanted to check in from the road (Today: Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and Trinity College in Hartford, CT...Friday: a private middle school on Long Island...).

Meeting lots of interesting people who are into the topics we discuss here on DBTH.  Concerned parents, Women's Center staff members at the various colleges, students who tell me they feel helpless and hopeless in the face of the media juggernaut they're up against when it comes to beauty ideals and celebrity worship, students who worry about their younger sisters etc etc etc.

An impressive number of guys showing up at the talks too...and a few fathers, too.  Good stuff!

Anyway.... as I feared, limited email access for me means not so many posts these days...but please do root around the archives, comment on threads and raise lots of interesting questions.  I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things as soon as I can.

Bye for now!

Audrey

The end of an era?

One last thing for today:

hipster clubs in NYC and LA are apparently tiring of celeb clientele who booze it up and expect things for free just because they show up and generate some buzz.

According to the New York Post:

"LINDSAY Lohan, Paris Hilton and their pals in the trashy young Hollywood set are going to find it difficult to go out soon. The trend in New York and Los Angeles is towards "low-key" places for "more mature crowds" who "actually pay for things and don't cause obnoxious scenes," said one nightclub owner. Places like the Tower Bar in L.A. and the Gramercy Park Hotel here regularly turn away customers who are deemed immature. The latest in the adult pool is Peter Famulari's lounge, Boulevard 3 on Sunset Boulevard. Members will pay $8,000 a month for a suite in the club, and the rep swears no wild child will be allowed in."

Hair dye... for hair down there

There are no words for how infuriating I find this product.

File this under I'M OUTRAGED THAT WOMEN ARE ENCOURAGED TO SPEND SO MUCH TIME AND MONEY AND EFFORT ON REMAKING THEIR BODIES.

Betty Beauty has launched hair dyes for pubic hair.  So that it can match the hair on your salon selectives head... or be totally different.  Cool!

Now I'm not against beauty products in general.  I don't live in a cave; I don't shun all rituals.  But yet I'm uncomfortable with new products that make us feel like what we've got isn't good enough.  Some might call that hypocritical, but I call it a 21st Cenutury reality.  Because feminists CAN wear lipgloss (Hi, Money Miss) and it's tough for girls/women to decide how much of the game they want to play and how much to resist.

So while I do like to shampoo daily and put on some under eye cover up cause I'm tired, I'd really rather live in a world where women are fighting for world peace that worrying if their pubic hair matches... or if it's time to jazz things up a bit down there with some color!

It was the copy on the website that really pushed me to post about this stuff:

"I hadn't planned on starting a cosmetics company. 
But sitting in a hair salon in Rome a few years ago, I made a discovery. As I saw women leaving the salon, I couldn't help noticing that some would linger by the door. After a few minutes, their colorist would come back with a little paper bag, hand it to them and send them cheerfully on their way.

When I inquired about this mysterious ritual, the receptionist said: "Per sotto, per farli combaciare," meaning: "For the hair down there... to make it match." I thought, "How genius... A home coloring kit for the hair down there!" I knew there were no specialized products like this in America."

*****
"Genius"

Wow.

I can think of some other words I would have used....

Sorry I missed posting yesterday!

I'm about to leave on part two of my book tour for All Made Up: A Girl's Guide to Seeing Through Celebrity Hype and Celebrating Real Beauty, and things are getting a little hectic as I get ready to shove off.

I'll be mostly at schools, libraries and a few conferences on the east coast for about three weeks, and fear that my posting will get a kinda sporadic starting the end of this week because I just don't know if I'll have internet access regularly.  But I'll keep y'all updated.

Oh, and um, weird to plug myself and all:  but anyone here like the CNN Headline News show called Showbiz Tonight?  It airs daily at 11pm ET... and I'm gonna be on it on Friday night!  So set those TiVo's, y'hear?!

Women who look good vs. women who do good....

Apparently I'm not the only one who's concerned with the topic:

Someone wound up at Don't Believe the Hype today because they googled this expression:

"Do supermodels take away the fame from accomplished women?"

Pretty interesting!

Shakira building a school for homeless kids

I don't know much about Shakira... except for the fact that her hips don't lie.  Plus that girl can DANCE.

Today, I also learned that she'll be donating the proceeds from a concert in her hometown to build an arts school for 1,800 children forced to flee their homes by Colombia's civil war. The school will be located in La Playa, a poor suburb of Barranquilla where 45 percent of the residents are minors, only about half of whom attend school.

I've gone off on this tirade before... but I ask you: How HARD would it be for more celebrities to do something like this?  I mean, why isn't Britney all over creating some new program in post-Katrina New Orleans? It would take her like, what, a 2 day appearance to do it--and she'd get so much good publicity she wouldn't know what to do.  Instead, she hires Matt Lauer to come over, and snaps the gum all night as she boo hoos how hard it is when the press give Kevin a hard time.  Thinking out loud here, Brit:  Get KEVIN to head up your efforts back home, then he'll have something to do beside get cleaned  up from time to time to pose for men's magazine shoots that no one reads anyway.  AND he'd stop making pretty rotten music, improve his image and earn hisself some good karma since he left his pregnant GF for you back in the day.  (LORDY he's got a lot to make up for!)

... I just think more celebs should do more to give back. It would be SO EASY for them, would earn them great public image points, and sadly.. make a difference in a way that people who aren't in their positions can't.   Instead... they just pull in those $15 million dollar checks and do, um... diddly squat most of the time it seems. (ahem.  Sorry!  They're "reading scripts" and always being admitted to local hospitals for "exhuastion".  Right!  Single moms with two jobs deserve to be admitted to the local hospital so THEY can recover from exhuastion... not entertainers who party all night and then have to do some scenes on a closed set with their trailers and the craft services truck nearby.  Sheesh.)

So to wrap up: YAY to Shakira for her efforts.  I hope they're a success and that others follow her example.

Sienna Miller disses Pittsburgh

Nice dress.  Gorgeous color.  Fly hair extensions... but um, Sienna, sounds like you believe in your own hype a wee bit too much, lass. 

Apparently she's in Pennsylvania shooting a new film called "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," and has been going around calling the city a name that sounds like Pittsburgh, but contains an expletive.

She's quoted in the forthcoming issue of Rolling Stone saying:

"Can you believe this is my life? Will you pity me when you're back in your funky New York apartment and I'm still in Pittsburgh? I need to get more glamorous films and stop with my indie year."

Eeee-yah.  Wooo. You DO have it bad, girl!  First your BF cheated on you for the whole world to see and you took him back, then you dumped him and took him back again... Which might be how real life does go, but it did make ya look kinda spineless.  THEN you got that HORRENDOUS hair cut for whatever "Indie" movie of the month you were making... and now THIS?  I really don't know how you make it through every bloody day.

Here's what I suggest:  Why not walk around town, trying to get into restaurants etc by saying something like "Don't You Know Who I Am?!".  That seems to always go over well.

Or you could just pull yourself together and realize that you have it pretty good..and stop your prima donna bellyaching.

Just a suggestion!

A feminist defense of strippers

My man Ran sent me a really interesting email about a controversy that involves women, stripping and men commenting on women's bodies.

A little more risque than my normal content... but bear with me for a sec and you'll see why I've decided to include it on this blog.

The nuts and bolts:  In San Francisco, there is apparently a place called the Lusty Lady, which is a unionized peep show that is owned and operated by its workers.  Apparently, it's often held up as a successful paradigm for empowered sex work because the dancers perform behind glass to prevent unwanted advances from customers, the workers call the shots and the standard of beauty is more "girl next door" than blow-up doll.

(Stay with me here... we're getting to the bit that relates to DBTH!)

Now, the  Lusty Lady has a rep for displaying a diverse range of body types onstage, however recently a few customers walked out at the sight of a stage commanded by full-figured ladies.  Subsequently Davide Cerri, a male cashier at the club, sent an e-mail to the Lusty Lady's board of directors complaining that they were employing "unwatchable girls."

Now hold on there pardner....


Some of the email text: "People comes [sic] asking for refunds, because they do not want to see girls that they would not want to have sex with even if they were completely drunk.  This is reality, not question of options. We sell fantasies, not nightmares."

In response, a female employee posted the email in the dressing room, got fired for creating a hostile work environment... and now there's a big hullabaloo happening about beauty standards imposed on strippers.

*****

Interesting conundrum, no?  Because personally, I'm not a big fan of stripping.  I understand that expressing female sexuality is important, and that's the vehicle that some women choose...but for me, it's too close to the stereotypes of exploitation that femininists battled for years to dismantle.

HOWEVER, I also don't consider the natural female body a NIGHTMARE.  If women are going to strip, I certainly think it's the authentic female body that should be involved... NOT some plastic fantasy that's been subjected to every expensive beauty product and service ever created in order to whip women into some fantasy for men.