This new video from FeministFrequency’s Anita Sarkeesian applies the Bechdel Rule to the 2012 Academy Award nominees. Woody Allen gets spanked for his treatment of Gertrude Stein in Midnight in Paris… and there are some good movie tips, too.
There are more commentary videos at FeministFrequency.com. While you’re there, consider making a donation – if only because we hardly ever get to hear “feminist” and “pop culture” linked together.
Posted in Culture
Girl gamers offer a manifesto to bring equality to gaming. Let’s bring it to real life, too.
Coming to us from Norway, self-described “pin-up performance band,” The Hungry Hearts offers up this lesbian anthem, “In Your Face”. The video includes instruction in an accompanying dance. The lyrics are a little hard to hear through the electronica, but it’s part of what makes it so much fun, when you figure out what they’re saying!
(Far sexier than any of the anthems mentioned on this blog before!)
The Hungry Hearts consists of six permanent members, five of which are from Norway and one of whom is Portuguese and lives in New York. Together, they create and produce performances, concerts, films, music, texts and photography.
The six members continuously develop alter egos who live their own lives in the films and performances we develop. The Bride of Christ, Rosita Lonelyheart, Anatola Twins, the Pantyhose Lady and Betty Ballbreaker are so far the most prominent ones. Sometimes they give wild speeches where they indulge in their obsession with the female body.
Thanks to @addycat for the introduction!
Posted in Culture
Julianna Margulies and Kyra Sedgwick play a lesbian couple in "What's Cooking?"
I’ve come to consider these three movies a trilogy. If I break out one during the Thanksgiving weekend, I have to watch all three.
These aren’t inter-related movies, except that they share a Thanksgiving theme. Two of them have strong gay/lesbian subplots. All of them have funny, joyous moments. All of them are tender, too.
Pick these up to round out your holiday experience:
When 10-year-old Laure moves to a town where no one knows her, she introduces herself as “Michael” and spends the summer exploring what it’s like to be male.
The beautiful coming-of-age film Tomboy follows this 10-year-old girl who — for reasons that aren’t quite clear — resolves to make the other kids believe she’s a boy.
As played by Zoe Heran, she completely looks the part: Soft-featured, perhaps, but lean and flat-chested, with a boyish physicality and a Shaun Cassidy mop of light-brown hair that always looks freshly mussed.
Her peers may sense something a little different about “Michael,” but he’s a deft striker on the soccer field. He’s taller and stronger than the other boys, who haven’t hit their growth spurt, and he can spit for distance. No one questions that the new kid is a boy. Read the rest on NPR.org.
Posted in Culture
Recently, when I packed to move, I found a copy of Katherine Forrest’s first novel, Curious Wine, on my bookshelf. Published in 1983, the novel about two women sharing a room in a Tahoe cabin is still considered the classic lesbian romance. It was given to me by my first girlfriend, who said it reminded her of my own coming out story. She, in turn, had received it from another lesbian.
Before the days of the internet, the lesbian community could only find literature that reflected their culture in women’s bookstores. You were lucky if your community had one. Or, you were gifted books passed hand-to-hand through friends. Continue reading
Deadline is reporting that HBO has made a deal to develop the Oscar-nominated movie The Kids Are All Right into an hour-long series. (Deadline calls the movie a comedy. Was it supposed to be funny?)
Lisa Cholodenko, who co-wrote and directed the movie, will write the pilot script.
From a lesbian standpoint, I think the movie was a mess. This new show promises to do for lesbian credibility what The Jeffersons did for black people 25 years ago.
It’s rumored the show will continue the adventures of the five main characters. They were the same-sex partners (played in the film by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore), their son and daughter (played by Josh Hutcherson and Mia Wasikowska) and their sperm donor bio-dad, who surfaces and tears the family apart (played by Mark Ruffalo in the film).
On-going lesbian drama, lesbian family drama, and the random man… sounds a lot like The L Word with wrinkles and an estrogen patch.
Posted in Culture
A recent news story about San Jose’s spreading rash of coffee shops featuring scantily clad, sometimes nude, baristas tells me I don’t get out enough. Or maybe I’m missing the all the action because I don’t drink coffee.
This gives a whole new spin to Coyote Grace’s Ingrid Elizabeth singing “Do You Like Me? (I Didn’t Come Here for the Coffee),” backed by fellow band members Joe Stevens and Michael Connolly:
Watch for the song on Coyote Grace’s next CD, in production this summer.
Posted in Culture
I couldn’t be happier to make my 700th blog post one with Neil Patrick Harris, my gay man crush! In case you missed the opening of last night’s Tony Awards:
Baby dyke singer-songwriter Dani Shay, 22, rocked the internets with her America’s Got Talent audition – “What the Hell,” a song addressing her uncanny resemblance to Justin Beiber (or rather Justin Beiber to her).
Watch her audition below and try not to think about the possibilities for twin porn.
I saw this video called Любовь к велосипеду (bicycle strip) by Entropy on Tiny Nibbles, Violet Blue’s awesome blog, and it is just too hot not to share. This video is decidedly not safe for work, but it should be the first thing you click on when you’re alone. Be forewarned: You’ll want to ride your bicycle. The music is Tito and Tarantula’s “After Dark,” but now I’m humming Queen’s “Bicycle”.
Pakistani actress Venna Malik was a cast member in the mega-hit Big Boss, a Big Brother-type reality television show, produced in India. During a news show interview, she was ambushed with a counter-guest – an Islamic mullah who criticized her. In this incredibly powerful segment, Malik not only held her own, she took the opportunity to school the mullah in his own faith. (Recommendation: Turn down your volume.)
(Thank to Boing Boing.)
Posted in Culture
Palicki as Wonder Woman
Latex fetishists everywhere will get a little thrill when Wonder Woman returns to television. Producer David E. Kelley is working on a pilot that will revamp the 1970s show that made Lynda Carter a beloved icon to lesbians and geeks everywhere.
Wonder Woman will be played by Adrienne Palicki in a new, shiny, redesigned and sexed-up costume, and the pilot will include bonus female hotness in the form of Elizabeth Hurley, who plays the villainous boss of a pharmaceutical company creating drugs to make people stronger.
Oh, Wonder Woman, tie me up in your golden lasso of truth. I’ll tell you anything you want to know!
Many lesbian hearts will always belong to Lynda Carter...
Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams get down and dirty in this commercial for a fictional perfume, Greed by Francesco Vezzoli.
Directed by Roman Polanski, the mock commercial is part of a proposed gift from artist Francesco Vezzoli to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). You can read more about Vezzoli and his project on the museum’s website.
The (mostly) girl band, Those Darlins, celebrates their inner boys in this song, “Be Your Bro,” from their new album, Screws Get Loose.
Those Darlins – Nikki, Jessi, and Kelley, all with the shared stage surname Darlin – also include male drummer Linwood Regensburg.
While the focus of the song and video is straight – record label PR said the girls “land somewhere to the left of center on the Kinsey Scale” – there’s plenty of grrl-power eye-candy in the video to enjoy. The sentiment of the song is tomboy bonding, which I appreciate, even if these girls won’t grow up to be the dapper butches I love.
In fact, the song reminds me – in spirit, not style – of Dar Williams‘ “When I Was a Boy,” a song that always makes me cry a little.
Posted in Culture
Hickok, left, and E.R., right
Although the most famous illicit love rumor associated with the White House may have been JFK and Marilyn Monroe, there was another that people are still talking about today.
Lorena Hickok, popularly known as “Hick,” was the friend and confidant of Eleanor Roosevelt. It appears they had a passionate romantic relationship that evolved into a life-long friendship. It should be noted that Roosevelt was far from naive about lesbianism. Biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook, the author of Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One 1884-1933, wrote that after 1920, many of Eleanor Roosevelt’s closest friends were lesbians. She has said Roosevelt both honored their relationships and their privacy. Continue reading
Target plans to sell an exclusive edition of Lady Gaga’s forthcoming album, Born This Way, with remixes and three additional studio cuts. The release is scheduled for May.
However, the love between Gaga and Target is dependent on Target’s good behavior.
I admit it. I have an irrational love of “Single Ladies” videos.
We’ve already determined that I’m not in favor of the superfluous use of the word “ladies” and Beyoncé is not my favorite artist – far from it. Continue reading
 | Lyn on Protected: Bridging the G… |
| Lyn on By the Numbers |
| Lyn on Steam |
 | tammy b on Steam |
 | single lesbian on Butch-throb! |
