Filtering by Tag: MAGAZINES
I Read It for the Articles
I bought this Playboy the other day at a vintage store in Atwater Village on the east side of Los Angeles. I had been planning on mentioning this very issue (October 1979) in the novel I’m working on, which I refer to as “The Porn Novel,” and so when I saw it there, on the table, I thought it was a sign. What kind of sign? Who knows. Sometimes you just need to go with them. Anyway, I paid $15 for it, which is a little steep, because I probably could’ve got it online for a little less, or maybe not, who cares. Anyway, I tweeted about it after I bought it, saying that touching this used copy had gotten me pregnant, which was a joke, of course.
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How We Become Who We Are, Porn Valley Edition
My latest newsletter trades in how the things that happen to us change who we are.
“As I recall it, when I asked the porn star about her background, she explained that when she was very young—a toddler, I think—her father killed her mother and then killed himself.”
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She May Destroy You
I love this cover portrait of Michaela Coel by Tim Walker for W Magazine. If you haven’t seen HBO’s “I May Destroy You,” which is terrific, you should.
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America Must Change
An amazing cover from TIME. Art by Charly Palmer. Story behind the cover here.
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The New Playboy
There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times about the new Playboy. It’s intersectional, millennial, and Hefner-less. Personally, I’m looking forward to the launch of Cooper Hefner’s Stag Daily.
“Playboy no longer publishes its financial results, but Mr. Kohn said consumers spend some $3 billion on the company’s products and services each year. Relaunching the magazine, he said, made sense as a kind of ‘brand extension.’ He likened the future of the company to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop.”
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Minaj a Trois
Vegetarians Need Not Apply
41 Likes, 2 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "Meaty. Buying my copy of @recoilmagazine's new #carnivore at #walmart 🔪🐗💀🔥🍽 #meat #magazine..."
The editor of this magazine and I talked about me writing something for the magazine, and while that didn't work out, I was excited to see it on the newsstand. I love the title -- CARNIVORE -- and I love the cover: the chef's coat, the rifle in hand, the slab of raw meat. It's all very visceral. This magazine is for you if you enjoy hunting, you enjoy eating what you hunt, and you want to join the call to arms of the FIELD TO TABLE REVOLUTION. Also: you can learn how to make a wild boar patty melt, and who hasn't been pining for a boar melt lately?
Mr. Weiner
A.O. Scott has a short sort of preview review of "Weiner," the upcoming doc about Anthony Weiner and what the hell goes on inside his head:
"In 2013, as he tried to rehabilitate himself with a run for mayor of New York City, he invited the documentary filmmakers Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg to observe his campaign. They recorded his further self-immolation, and the resulting film has a queasy irresistibility, even as it remains a bit coy about its own motives."
[NYT]
Eye of the Beholder
"Porn, I guess. #porn #Cosmo #magazine"
A Hearst heiress claims Cosmo is porn. But is it? Other than the tops of SJP's tits runningeth over, I didn't find the cover ... pornographic, per se. Inside, there were lots of ads. They may have exhibited the pornography of women, but I didn't find them to be ... porn. The front of the book was mostly: fashion, OMG hot actors, and stuff to do/read/smear on your face. There was a beauty image featuring a Darth Vader mask wearing a pink satin sleeping mask, which some Star Warsians might find offensive, but I don't think they would find it particularly titillating. Questions answered involved: how to style your hair better, how to get tan, how to minimize pores. One two-page spread wondered: "Are you a Kendall or a Kylie?" (Why can't I be both?) The back of the book had feature stories on: a young woman who had liver cancer, a model with vitiligo, the cast of the "hip-hopera" Hamilton. It wasn't until page 163 of the issue's 212 pages that things got, well, randy. In a photo, a hand held a cob of corn aloft. "Long Live the Hand Job?!" the headline crowed, confused. The piece was written by Tracy Clark-Flory, who's a friend of mine, and its point is really about love, not sex. The following pages host a personal essay about a woman who slept with a male model and lived to regret it: "Suddenly, the sight of his well-sculpted body was the last thing I wanted to see." Most of the rest of the sexy content was helpful, seemingly written for those who are still trying to figure it all out. Victoria Hearst is finding success in her attempts to get store copies of Cosmo covered up because, in her mind, it's "pornography." But it didn't seem to be porn to me. It seemed like it was a product that was created to meet a demand. Young women want to understand their sexuality, and it appears there are too few outlets for them to do it. So, there's Cosmo, leading the way.
Write Like This
You want to write like a real journalist? Write like this. That's what I'm thinking. I loved reading this. It's like watching a writer swing from sentence to sentence, hanging by his word choices.
We made our way downslope, to an abandoned mine. The tunnel entrance was twenty feet wide, maybe ten feet high. Ilasaca produced two hard hats and a miner’s lamp from a backpack, and we headed in. “I used to work in here,” he said. “There’s enough oxygen, from old shafts that go to the surface.” He gestured toward the depths of the mountain. As the tunnel narrowed, the air got musty and the darkness, within fifty yards of the entrance, was absolute. Ilasaca was careful to light my way. He showed me mineralized veins in the walls, glittering between rough slabs of black Ordovician slate. When the quijo angled upward, he said, so would the tunnel, and it did. This had all been dug with hand tools and dynamite, he said. “Maybe two metres a day.” Back then, the lamps had been carbide, he said, burning acetylene gas. These nice bright electric headlamps we had, with battery packs that attached to your belt, were relatively new. He stopped to listen to my breathing, which was getting ragged. The tunnel ceiling had been dropping, obliging me to crouch. My thighs were burning from the effort. I was O.K., I said, just altitude weary. More coca, Ilasaca said. I had bought coca leaves that morning, from an old woman on the street in La Rinconada. Everybody here chewed them, I was told, to stave off exhaustion and hunger. I stuffed a wad in my cheek. The leaves were stiff and bitter. Ilasaca also took a wad. The quartz vein in the tunnel wall turned downward, the tunnel followed it, and at a certain depth we found our progress halted by an icy-looking pond. Ilasaca studied the vein, tapping it with his fingertips. I wondered what he saw in its fissures and glints.
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Cleavag Redux
I wrote a silly thing about cleavag for Men's Health.
"Sure, her face is beautiful, her breasts are impressive, and her hips are pleasing, but what draws your eye downtown is the barely-covered area between her bellybutton and her crotch. The top of her bikini pulled low, she practically demands us to gaze upon this year’s newest trend: a daring flash of vagina cleavage."
Feeling Smart
Image credit: Tom Gauld
I got myself a subscription to the New Yorker. Digital only. Kottke and Maud kept linking to it, and I kept not being able to read it, so I went for it.
From Rebecca Mead's "A City Run by Children":
"As we walked through the pedestrian streets, we passed bronze statues of inspirational eminences represented as children—Martin Luther King, Florence Nightingale, Mahatma Gandhi—while real children darted around us with fists full of kidzos. 'You go to Disneyland, and you see all those kids walking with their parents, very tired,' López remarked. 'There is two minutes of magic—the ride—and then they see the Disney characters, which no one can surpass. But here, most of the time they are running, engaged, happy.' Occasionally we came across an adult wearing the costume of one of KidZania’s RightzKeepers—anime-like cartoon characters who represent the six rightz of children. They are KidZania’s equivalent of Mickey and Minnie and include Urbano, a green-haired boy, who represents the 'right to know,' and Chika, who has purple hair and cat ears, and represents the 'right to share.' López said of Chika, 'She’s all about meeting people—her biggest ambition is to get a million friends.' López greeted the Zupervisors and other staff with 'Kai!' and a splayed hand to the heart. In the town square, there was a golden statue modelled on a celebrated one in Mexico City depicting the Angel of Independence. 'That one is a naked woman, but ours has to have clothes, because it is for children,' he said. It was like being in a reimagined Las Vegas, with the celebration of virtue substituted for the celebration of sin."
Cleavag Is the New Cleavage
Image credit: SI
My god, Jennifer Weiner is fucking annoying. She's made a career out of writing crappy books and carping about how men are to blame for her lack of being taken seriously when the reality is that her books are what cause her to lack being taken seriously.
Most recently, she crawled out of the ooze to weinerwhine about how pubic hair or something: "Great! Another Thing to Hate About Ourselves." She wordclutters on for a while before getting to her point:
"This year, the hot new body part is the formerly unnoticed span of flesh between the top of one’s panties and the labia majora, currently displayed on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition by the model Hannah Davis."
Reference: This is the Weiner. This is the Davis.
In other words, Weiner says, the SI cover is POORRRNNNN:
"With hard-core pornography available to anyone with a laptop and a credit card, Sports Illustrated has to raise the stakes if it wants to stay relevant."
Followed by this HILARIOUS admission:
"(Disclosure: my gentleman caller edits books for Sports Illustrated and is the author of the oral history of the swimsuit issue that appears in '50 Years of Beautiful,' a coffee-table book of swimsuit shots. #Awkward.)"
#Indeed.
The rest is a fuzzy blur of complaints against Hannah's "mons pubis" and some sort of garbled defense of a vagina area that is hirsute and fat. Or something. I was left weinerized. #Confused.
(See also: FUPA.)
Personally, I was more excited by SI's half-crotch shot because I was like: TREND. What the image makes us look for is ... what to call it?
I settled on cleavag.
Let's celebrate it.
Unretouched Cindy Crawford
SwimCity
"Body Ritual Among the Swimsuit Models in the Horny Hell of SwimCity":
"Although it was founded on the breezy idea that city should be swim, SwimCity is not a free-for-all vacation destination, zoned for the pursuit of happiness. It is a regimented, horny hell. The most famous models like Twitter phenom Chrissy Teigen and Real Housewives daughter Gigi Hadid are sequestered from visitors by stages and roped-off lines. Lesser-known swimsuit gals pose for photos on the floor with the men who have come to see them in the middle of a work day. Gray-suited bodyguards flank them, sometimes correcting visitor behavior. No hands! Don't lean! Move it along!"
[Gawker]
Wait, What?
Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
"Nobody believes me when I say this but Playgirl readers really cared about those hunks. Similarly, Mental Floss readers really care about the facts. Which is to say that both brands have very enthusiastic audiences. The difference is that at Mental Floss we hear from readers in droves on the rare occasion we get a fact wrong. The correspondence we got at Playgirl was … different."
Rihanna Swims with Sharks
Image credit: Harper's Bazaar
That's Rihanna hanging around in a shark's mouth for Harper's Bazaar. The side-by-side homage to "Jaws" is here. Video of Rihanna swimming with sharks is here.
Nice Eyes
The Cover Strip
The next issue of V magazine features Kate Upton on the cover. It's a double cover, really. The top cover is a semi-transparent sheet with Upton's clothes on it. Peel it back, and Upton strips for you. The cover headline reads: "Why Can't Kate Upton Keep Her Clothes On?"
WWD:
"When asked about the cover’s title, i.e. why she 'can’t keep her clothes on,' the model offered: 'Because I don’t want to!'"