At the risk of putting the blog on fem-overload, I urge the “Yay femininity!” crowd to consider that casting Helen Mirren as an expensive sexbot for the cover of the planet’s mainstreamiest design catalog effectively reduces her from accomplished actor to whore (and overstuffed furniture salesman) in a single stroke. I know this because my mom, upon viewing Mirren’s hottt covergirl turn, remarked sadly, “I’ve lost a lot of respect for her.”
In other words, not even my mom, who wears lipstick and Manolos and believes femininity to be innate, can tolerate girly behaviors when taken to their logical pornstitutional conclusion.
By way of illustrating the absurdity of feminine affectation, I will perform the usual exercise, this time by substituting Taylor Hackford’s dudely visage for Helen Mirren’s hookerly one, whereupon the pose instantly becomes silly and the subject undignified.
Addendum: Several blamers have voiced objections to my use of the word “whore” in what appears to be a pejorative manner. I posted my response in the comments, but re-publish it here to de-confuse:
The point is valid. The post was hastily-written and poorly-worded. I allude to the ‘reduced-to-whore’ scenario in an (apparently failed) effort to convey a sense of the popular, dominant-culture disdain for prostituted women. The dominant-culture view of women is distinct from my own.
It is, of course, the position of this blog that prostituted women are human.
I sometimes forget that not everybody is a regular reader; you remind me that it is necessary to consider, when I write these things, that (a) the audience might be unfamiliar with my general worldview, and (b) I should write good.
Et tu Helen? Darn, she was so convincing in Prime Suspect.
Reason number 842 why we should not look up to celebrities. I feel your mom’s disappointment. While I cannot seem to keep myself from pouring over People magazine at each dentist visit, I always come away with the feeling that these people are just complete idiots.
That picture just needs a thought bubble that says, “Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir?”
(Hey sister, go sister, soul sister)
We’re supposed to feel grateful that an older woman can still be viewed as an object of sexual fantasy. Am I right? Do I win something?
Mirren had a photo spread in some publication recently in which she dressed as a “hooker” of some nature. The author was careful to stress that the costume was Mirren’s idea. I’m trying like the dickens to find it; I’ll post it when (if?) I do.
I also remember reading an interview in which she said that when she saw her costumes for The Queen, she burst into tears. Because they weren’t sexy. Cuz ain’t no sexay like House of Windsor sexay! Woo!
She’d look just as “silly and undignified” in his clothes, no doubt.
I’m a stolid feminist but I’d hate to be part of any revolution that deprived us, female or male, of our frou frou. Sometimes frou frou is just fun. Dame Helen looks like she’s enjoying wearing that dress and posing for that picture, and she’s old enough to do what she fucking well likes.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Hey, you know what looks like fun?! Pole dancing! Oh my God, and they say it’s really good exercise, too!
Well, is there any magazine more acutely directed towards stroking the egos of white patriarchs more than Architectural Digest? At least magazines like Forbes are functional.
This is absolutely nothing new for Helen Mirren (random google link) — for most of her career she played half-naked seducers in film.
Well, she was in “Caligula” so no big surprise. She’s a legendary actress, but even her career has been punctuated by the T&A reduction of womanhood.
Pity.
“Fem-overload?” How could that be?
Maybe we need more critter pictures. Or some victuals. Or some ugly bathrooms.
You could post about your Roomba. I just got one and I can’t believe I can still watch the thing putter around like a cute little trilobite eating our dust for dozens of minutes at a time. You inspired me to buy it and I love it so!
I don’t know, a woman in a pantsuit can be very dignified and striking. However, even if that dress was cut to flatter Taylor Hackford’s figure and the colour chosen for his skintone, most people would still find it silly and undignified.
It’s not that froufrou isn’t fun, it’s that froufrou is considered only suitable for us silly, empty-headed female objects.
Roombas look like trilobites when they’re in action? Dude. I’m so getting one when I have to move out of my dorm. I wasn’t convinced before, but that description just sold me on it.
Eeeeee, trilobites!
Also, if Taylor Hackford was hot in the first place, he’d be even hotter in that dress. But he ain’t, so he ain’t. A pity.
” I urge the “Yay femininity!†crowd to consider that casting Helen Mirren as an expensive sexbot for the cover of the planet’s mainstreamiest design catalog effectively reduces her from accomplished actor to whore…”
Consider it considered, and rejected. No magazine has the power to reduce someone to a whore. Interesting that we wouldn’t refer to a dressy male celeb as a whore for the same magazine, which has sported many such male celebs in glamor wear. Mirren’s attire is in good taste, and if she was paid for this assignment, it doesn’t make her a whore even if it does sell magazines or furniture.
As NK Shapiro says, hanging all kinds of “serious AC-TOR who cannot have fun with fashion and/or get paid for it without disappointing women everywhere” expectations arround Mirren’s neck because she’s an intelligent woman in the media of a certain age whom we need to be perfect and beyond reproach doesn’t do woman, let alone the movement, any favors.
I love Helen Mirren, but even I have to compartmentalize her: her love affair with “lust” (read: I am not human but merely a glorified blow-up doll so do with me what as you will) versus the bold and daring actress in her interviews (plus a dash of her character, Jane, the from Prime Suspect, minus the guilt over her abortion). Is it that sad, that I have to dissect an actress (and her seemingly femininst character) just to create a person that doesn’t cause distress and heartbreak? Yes, yes it is.
I’m still shaken by the overwhelming female acceptance (and defense) of America’s Next Top Model (the slaughtered models as “sexy” episode; everything from strangulation to knife wounds to a severed breast and other mutilation). The excuses range from “Who are we to define art?”, “They weren’t necessarily advocating violence, ” and my personal favorite: “The photos show that even beauty can shine through ugliness.” (I swear it’s true.) Why does labeling something “art” exempt it from criticism? Apologists cry “censorship” to censor freedom of speech that they find offensive to their dogma. I believe Triumph of the Will was a cinematic masterpiece yet it had that whole “Nazis are glorious! Death to Jews!” vibe about it, no? And normalizing and eroticizing hate crimes does advocate it since it only presents the POV of the violent bigot. Mind you, these are women and girls (with strong femininst tendencies, even on the afterellen blog) saying this. This hit especially home b/c a young woman I went to school with was found killed just a month or so ago after missing for several months (I still can’t believe it. She was just a year younger than me). Her body was decomposed so badly they had to wait for dental records. Foul play is suspected. She was so studious, sweet, shy, goofy–and cautious (She never wanted her parents to worry). You read those articles about an Immette St. Guillen (born just a month earlier than me) or any young woman (or girl) and you start feeling like it you could be next or someone you love, and then this happens–and you still feel shocked. I found out as a car was blaring some “Bitches Ain’t Shit” out its window. Typical.
I can’t believe we’re having a conversation about vacuums here, but I MUST know: have the Roomba engineers solved the fringe problem? Because I can’t get a Roomba until they teach them not to choke on the fringe on my rugs.
Because I really, really, want a little robot trilobite to roam around the house sucking up cat fur with no effort made on my part, but I’m not willing to give up my fringed rugs.
Wait. This woman’s falling onto the second-ugliest bed in the world* while she’s being engulfed and devoured by a disembodied mass of mutant gills (or are those chorionic villi?) and this is sexy?? Did I miss another memo?
Guess I’ve wasted too much time actually having sex instead of being sexy. Oh well, too late to revise my bio now.
* Nominations open for the first-ugliest. I’m still fairly um irrepressible? undistractable?, but if anyone propositioned me in the same room with that mess I’d go frigid for months.
The roomba we got my MIL was the life of the party for weeks in her hi-rise waterfront apartment ziggurrat. Instead of cleaning for company, she had company for cleaning! Seriously! People came over, put their feet up, and set the durn thing loose to frolic and hoover.
Did her neck and shoulder a wonder to cut out the heavy work - now she uses a little wand to get the places the trilobite doesn’t cover well.
I joked when my husband bought it that if it were bright blue with a yellow strip and purchased at a Swedish furniture store, would it be an IKEAroomba?
BTW, I like the “trilobite” description, although I’m partial to limulus (horshoe crab). How long until you can by roomba costumes on the web?
HM has long been rendered as an alterna-sexbot, basically her entire career, but some of that alterna-ness has been from the fact that she looks like someone who is not in the top 0.3% of the aestheticarchy, but she consistently is cast in parts where she acts like that is not important to her having some sort of functional sexuality. What this says about the acceptance of women as fully human upon crossing some sort of “sexuality” threshold versus some “higher” aesthetic one (in which the “sexy” threshold is crossed at the same time), I don’t know.
Her Jane Tennison of Prime Suspect fame is enough to make me love her no matter what, and while I feel that Prime Suspect 3 is the darkest of the bunch, it is also my favorite. You can watch it as a stand alone, and I feel it has the most depth. A masterpiece of the genre.
Must
Have
Roomba
Trilobite
Limulus
I am forced to agree with NK Shapiro and Octogalore. I think feminism is about freedom and choices. I think she looks elegant, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. She is entitled to do as she pleases without judgment. That is her choice and if SHE likes it then I think she has every right to do it without being condemned for it.
If I like the way something looks on me, then why not wear it? I don’t want to be told I am not a feminist because I like to wear dresses and high heels sometimes.
This whole femininity conversation has me thinking about the fact that I think I look like a boy. I mean, if my hair is short and I don’t wear make up, I think I look like a boy. Everyone to whom I’ve confessed this denies that it’s true. They say, even without makeup, I am clearly a girl. They make the duh face.
Now, when I look at Helen Mirren up there on that bedestal, I think, even with a shaved head and no make up, she is clearly female. She has facial features that I recognize as those of a woman. But when I am putting on the stupid eyeliner and mascara in the morning, I think, time to makes sure everyone knows I’m a girl.
What’s up with me? Am I the only woman who thinks this way? Is it that the patriarchy has me brainwashed to think that without the proper dressings, I am actually not a woman? Is it that I perceive my features as gender neutral or boyish but no one else does? Am I delusional? What would Helen Mirren do?
Off topic:
I remember a while back some people mentioned they’d be attending the Wheelock College pornography conference–If you went and happen to have a blog or opinions (to share else where–dont want to hijack thread!) I’d love to hear them.
I think it is a well-meaning but misguided attempt to suggest that women over forty or fifty are still human and they still matter. The problem is that too often, women matter because they are decorative.
I’d say that looking at that picture would make someone like my mother feel better, with the reasoning that “hey!! Helen mirren is four years older than me and she’s not being treated like a granny!”. Whether that is a good thing, is another question.
Well, I think Jennifer Aniston kind of looks like a dude, so maybe I’m not the one to ask.
Anyhow, I haven’t been able to bother looking further, but is it possible Mirren has been done up like some famous painting? It looks even more ultra staged than these things usually are.
In a dudely effort to put you down a notch or two I condescendingly point out that the link in the post is broken.
So there!
Kind regards,
gzur,
a too-too-tool of the patriarchy.
You know, I can’t say that cover really bothers me very much. Person whose career is all about dressing up, dresses up? OK. Whatevs.
I wouldn’t really see Helen Mirren as a feminist heroine. If I remember correctly, she made a point of wearing similarly frou-frou frocks to most of the awards shows this year, and told everyone who would listen that it was a relief to get out of the Queen’s dowdy dresses and into something foxy. Not that I mind her doing this, but it also means that I don’t feel the same anguish I might if, say, a woman who *is* a thinker, *does* hold feminist principles and *does not* have a career which is about her dressing up in frills (Germaine Greer, Hillary Clinton, Shulamith Firestone) sat on the cover of Architectural Digest in a well-structured raspberry pavlova.
‘Tis pity she’s a whore. But Helen Mirren has rocked my world since before I knew what that meant. I should probably blame the patriarchy, but instead I just marvel at the wonder that is Helen.
Bou
I think it’s the fact that she’s dressed in a ball gown while posed in a coy, come-hither manner, on a bed, on the cover of Architectural Digest of all things, that’s causing some of the cognitive dissonance. What does a coy, come-hither pose on a bed have to do with architecture? Or is it a whole “New Orleans” French Quarter bordello thing? It still seems sort of strange. Is it her bedroom in a place she owns in New Orleans? Is she reproducing a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire. Inquiring minds want to know. Not enough to actually acquire a copy of the magazine, though.
How long until you can by roomba costumes on the web?
One Roomba-as-Helen-Mirren-on-A-D costume coming up!
I saw that mag in the checkout line at Lowe’s yesterday and thought it was tacky, not because of the femminess but because the cut of the dress, the furniture and the pose called to mind the simpering-white-girl meme from Gone With the Wind. I may be the only person on earth who reacted that way, though.
FWIW, neither of my sons gave it a flicker of attention. They were drawn in by the mag just below it, featuring a cover shot of a woman in safety goggles and a flannel shirt operating a router.
Yeah, I thought the composition of the photo was odd, too, but put it off to my unsophistication. There’s so much a that crap that I just do not get. Vanity Fair covers do that to me too. I guess I just ain’t arty enough.
I want a roomba! In a housekeeping frenzy this past weekend, I dropped the dining room table on my left foot whilst trying to hoover under & around it. It hurt too much to even swear, my foot resembles an especially colorful Caribbean sunset, and I’m still hobbling. I’ve heard there’s a roomba cousin that does a crackerjack job on linoleum and hardwood floors but can’t remember what it’s called. Anyway, I want one a those too.
The cover says “New Orleans” so I presume that this AD’s “French whore” line. That explosion of ruffles is completely over the top. Couldn’t they get a more flattering color or a better fit?
On the plus side, at least she doesn’t have Dallas hair.
I love my little trilobite roomba, and love the horseshoe crab metaphor, too. I’m a midwest boy and have seen more trilobites than horseshoe crabs in the cheesey encyclopedias of my far-off and heavenly youth.
The little critter wreaked havoc on a bunch of extension cords and laptop cords under our bed, though. He’s so industrious you just can’t get mad at him, though, chugging around sucking up dust and almost wagging a little bit.
I can’t tell you ow much my three-year old loves that ‘little guy.’ She hates vacuum cleaners, too.
Twisty, I am sorry that I have inadvertently hijacked this serious thread about something as silly as a tiny roomba.
Antoinette, I think the robot you’re thinking of is the Skooba. It’s by the same company.
I should invest in a Roomba. My avian overlord likes to produce a lot more debris than I have the time to vacuum up. Can it be programmed to automatically go out at a particular time of day to vacuum?
My name is Josquin and I wear tight clothes and high heels from time to time. Alas, I do.
But I do it with the rueful knowledge that it’s NOT for me. It’s for him, for them, even for other women in order that they see me as a woman “in the game” of sexual appeal.
Oh ye women who claim to dress in a feminine fashion in order to please yourselves: if you knew in your heart that men’s approval was not linked to your uncomfortable shoes and bras and and gooey make-up, would you really still wear that crap?
(When I ask myself that question it’s always HELL NO to anything which is even slightly uncomfortable. I think I might wear earrings, for self-pleasing decoration, but that’s about it. No dresses, never a bra unless I’m running or jumping, and high heels would be a mere, bitter, distant memory.)
Imagine yourselves on the desert island with no men around - would you bring the frou frou and the high heels? Would you bring the push-up bras and the tweezers?
Ask any man: he would probably bring about the same clothes to the island as he wears every day, minus the tie.
As for men looking foolish in women’s clothes and “feminine” postures: come on y’all! You know it’s true!
And the reverse is simply not the same - women in men’s clothes do not look silly, childish, simpering or debased. They look less “feminine”, and it can be an odd look to those of us used to women in a chronic state of feminine drag, but that’s about the only difference.
OK, back to roombas.
Yay gang rape femininity!:
http://loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org/offensiveads.html
Is Esquire interested in selling clothes to women or selling gang rape?
Jane Awake,
I think that reading Helen Mirren’s features as inherently female is a mistake. I read her coy look as “female”, her vulnerable posture, the taunt of her bare shoulders. The invitation writ on her face is where her female/femininity is. Part of the problem with imposing Taylor Hootie-Who on her body is that he’s not even trying to look coy. Also, she’s thin as an effing rail without a five o’clock shadow.
Make-up doesn’t make you look more like a woman, it makes you look more heterosexual and desirable. I had a similar fear when I cut all but an inch of my hair off and bleached it, but not that I’d be read as a man but as a lesbian. (Sadly, no one was taken in by this subterfuge, probably because I continued to wear heterosexualizing make-up.)
Man-o-man, am I bothered by femininity. I know that the trappings of femininity are not really to be enjoyed by me but by those who view my performance of it, but damn, how I feel like an ugly unfuckable hag unfit for human company without it. I’ve been truly, thoroughly indoctrinated.
I like the dress, and if Ms. Mirren was posed by a dining table with a glass of wine or some such, masked and obviously enjoying the party, it would have been a much better picture.
I think Mirren’s dress looks like it’s made from the pelts of dead muppets.
And what’s so fucking architectural about a woman on a bed anyway?
…”effectively reduces her from accomplished actor to whore”
I get this. And yet I can’t shake the resonance that a few hundred years ago, most accomplished English women actors *were* whores. I can’t help but admire these women when I read about them and thank them for getting the stage back for us. You could argue that Charles II just wanted to see women like he had in France, but still, these women were smart and ambitious and skilled and yes, a lot of them also whores. Is it naive to think women actors enjoy goofing with this image sometimes because it’s a part of our history we don’t quite know how to deal with?
I don’t know where I’m going with this. Just puuting it out there.
Yes, Virginias: That is an actress dressed for the bordello. The New Orleans bordello scene, sadly, was a big part of New Orleans history. She’s an actress playing another part, this time for a cover of a magazine. Since that issue is about New Orleans her getup makes perfect sense, but could they have picked an uglier dress? Egad.
The cover bothers me on a whole ‘nother level: That bordello work is frequently depicted as “glamourous” makes my stomach churn, because I know that what those women probably went through wasn’t fun or glamorous at ALL.
I just don’t understand how any thinking person would lose respect for an actress for dressing up as a prostitute for a role that makes sense in context. Because prostitutes are tacky and low class and should not be discussed in polite society? As if the “good, religious” women of New Orleans weren’t equally consumable as sex objects? Isn’t that attitude kind of patriarchal?
My head hurts.
I want a Roomba.
“putting” rather.
Josquin & Aireanne,
Thanks for your “reality cheques” - - they’re a welcome deposit to my memory bank.
There is certainly a precipice over which we dare not allow our centres of gravity to wander.
The deletion of all forms of het signalry is that precipice.
Something bothers me about the tone of the word “whore” in the post.
Usually I’m happy at the way whore is spun on this blog: deconstructing its violence and going against it. But this time it resonates too well with mainstream condemnation.
Maybe it’s too little wax in my ears.
Re: Anti-Porn Conference In Boston
See the post about it at Heart’s.
On what planet is a quinceañera dress on a 50+ year old woman “elegant” or “in good taste?” Oh, that’s right, the planet of “I do it for meeeeeeee.”
I completely agree with HPS’ point that this is meant to invoke the delightful tradition of bordellos in New Orleans. Rape and slavery, red lace and gilt, it’s all fashion.
One of the reasons I “do it” - to the extent that I do femininity - is that I’m fat. Being fat means my womanhood (as in fuckability) is suspect, so I compensate with skirts and grooming and unclumpy shoes. Perhaps Mirren has something similar going on, she’s an age at which her fuckability is suspect, so she compensates. Plus she’s an actress, so has been beaten down with judgment her entire adult life. I still like her though.
The number of jokes about people wanting to fuck Mirren at the Oscars is not because she’s still attractive at her age. It is just Hollywood patting itself on the back that they might want to fuck her, you know, after they fucked all the 25 year olds.
Jane Awake, I have been mistaken for a man since I was 16 and passed six feet tall. Somehow people would immediately assume because of my height, I was a man - (even with long hair and dresses, store clerks invariable started with “can I help you sir, um ma’am?”).
So I gave up trying to blend, came out of the closet and dress in shirts and slacks - cheaper and last longer, and the most surprising side effect? Men immediately treat me with greater respect, assuming I am one of them, and when they figure out I’m not, I watch their silly facial expressions as they realize they’ve been respecting a woman as they do one of their own.
It delights me regularly.
But really, IBTP, women shouldn’t have to “pass” to get the same respect out of the gate that a man does.
yeah, frou-frou is fun. Frou-frou is awesome. When I wear frou-frou, I get tons of attention. Attention is fun when I don’t think about it too hard. When I don’t wear frou-frou, I’m invisible. Most of the time I’m just shopping for groceries or something so invisible is awesome. When I’m trying to interact with other human beings, invisible sucks, big time.
Still, no guy who hits on me while I’m wearing make-up has any chance at all. I’m not so far gone that I mistake approval of my conformance to the mainstream, heteronormative fuckability mandate with some sort of actual interest in me as a person.
She looks like a big, red meringue cookie.
Keep in mind that a lot of successful actresses are already people who have opted to cave in to patriarchal demands, and moreover are people who watched the same shitty, insulting, damaging garbage that most of us struggled against as kids and said, “Wow! That looks GREAT! Just the way I imagine life to be! I want to help participate in making images like that and carpeting the planet with them!”
I mean, who in their right minds goes to a movie about:
1) A serial killer who stalks and slaughter naked blond prostitutes,
2) An explodorama where teh heros woman gets raped (always rapeD) and murdered and it gives him an excuse to go on a bloody rampage,
3) A “comedy” where the lead female character might as well have “fuck me lie to me treat me like dirt $8.50″ written on her chest,
4) Yet another “coming of age” movie about a little boy who discovers the wonders of wanking,
5) Yet another moviea bout a crippled, mentally damaged, or otherwise fucked up man and the Beautiful Woman Who Believes In Him,
and wants to help MAKE images like that? Actresses who are willing to make the philosophical tradeoffs needed to work in this industry apparently do. These are not radicals by definition. They watch crap like the shit I’ve outlined above and come out of the theater smiling instead of feeling punched in the gut.
I’d like a roomba, but when you have hair past your butt cheeks, vaccuum cleaners are pretty much disposable. The thing wouldn’t last one day before self-strangulating.
I love you LMYC.
Plus, I hope everyone reads Britta’s post on the Anti-Porngraphy Conference in Boston. It might be that it is worse than you even think out there.
That’s why whenever anyone asks me what I would do to start a feminist revolution I always say “We have to ban pornography in all media. Freedom of speech is not a license to degrade women sexually any way you think fit.”
You know, I just remembered something about at least one older, cool actress who did all that pouty horseshit when she was younger — Joanna Lumley. She’s a fucking goddess now. And not because she poses on beds in dresses that look like a kleenex flower.
She’s conventionally very pretty — tall, thin, blond. Very attractive. She did a lot of that bullshit. And thank GAWD she doesn’t work int he US, because nowdays, she skewers that shit mercilessly. She had to do it for so long that she’s not propping it up anymore. She stabs that crap right through the eye nowdays. I LOVE her for it, too.
And since she had to do it for so long, she knows precisely how to skewer it with surgical precision. The blow-job face that ALL ACTRESSES MAKE, she does it. To the Nth degree, so you see how fucking STUPID it looks. The poses, the whole thing. God, one episode of of AbFab is liek a feminist manofesto watching her rip that garbage to shreds.
I remember an interview with her where she said that nowdays, when she gets yet another script that calls for a tall, icy blond, she throws it the hell out. She’s done it long enough, she said. Now, she wants to ACT. And now she does! She does REAL stuff, where she gets to move her fucking FACE. One time, she was playing a role that called for her to get angry, and she actually (I remember how annoyed she was about this in the inteview) got told off by the director for scowling! She was like, “I’m supposed to be ANGRY, damn it! How the hell can I do angry without moving my face?!”
Ever wonder why actresses are so wooden-looking? Even if they WANT to act, they are told not to.
I love Joanna Lumley. She’s done that shit for long enough, she’s sick of it, and now she can skewer it like a fucking brain surgeon, and does. THAT’S infinitely more fun to watch and more powerful than an older woman who’s trying to prove she can still MAKE a blow job face at the camera.
Fascinating. Seems that the cover photo is special for an issue of regurgitations: In light of our April cover Helen Mirren’s recent Oscar win as Best Actress for The Queen (2006), we take a look back at eleven other similarly awarded actresses whose homes were featured in the pages of Architectural Digest.
In other words, just been so busy that they’re taking this opportunity to cut and paste some old articles.
And, so:
Architectural Digest revisits actress Helen Mirren and director Taylor Hackford at home in New Orleans. Although they have since sold their property in the French Quarter, Mirren was originally seduced by the “decadent, romantic, slow sweetness [that came] over [her]†each time she returned. For Hackford, he was attracted by the “sultry, seamy, mesmerizing city.â€
I guess NOLA’s slow sweetness of rot and mold isn’t as seductive anymore. Even death, destruction and utter ineptitude lose their appeal quickly. Perhaps, the red dress is a metaphor for new urbanism . . .
Oh come on, not even Taylor Hackford wants to see Taylor Hackford.
A scholarly friend of mine is at the conference in Boston, and I can’t wait to hear what she has to say about it.
I’m a hypocrite, too. I have long hair. I frequently wear makeup, p-hose, and underwire underwear. It just weirds me out that people treat me like a completely different person when I do. Why do I have to be in drag to be taken seriously if I’m giving a presentation at work? I think people should hold doors open for each other regardless of gender or age (it’s just good manners), but they’re more likely to do it if I’m tarted up.
It’s because once we’re no longer fuckable we no longer have any value. I am certain Helen Mirren is hip to this.
AN, if you’re in drag, you’re still not taken seriously. They dismiss you are useless no matter what — you’re either ugly and worthless, or a worthless bimbo. *shrug* Might as well be comfy if they’re going to roundfile you either way.
LMNC I love your post! I was watching a really old Brit Com thing the other day when I saw a 20 something Joanna Lumley - so brilliant, but constrained by, as you say, that pouty horseshit. Lumley rules today, for all the reasons you nailed, and I’ll go looking for that interview.
You may be right that a lot of sucessful actresses “are people who watched the same shitty, insulting, damaging garbage that most of us struggled against as kids and said, “Wow! That looks GREAT! Just the way I imagine life to be! I want to help participate in making images like that and carpeting the planet with them!†But not all of us are. Some of us grew up watching Catherine O’Hara and Zero Mostel and the Marx Bros. and thought damn that looks like more fun than the crappy painful trap of a planet I’m stuck on.
It’s not ’til you try to work in mainstream tv and movies that you run up against crap more evil than you could have imagined. For all the sexist stuff in the theatre, it is a freer finer workplace than any I’ve come across, nature excluded.
When I saw that cover a couple of weeks ago, what I thought was, “Isn’t there a little more going on in New Orleans than that?”
Agree with HPS — fuckability value is inversely proportional to age.
If as we age we develop other ways of finding meaning in life that increase over time, this becomes less important, as long as the people we love still think we’re fuckable.
I’ve raised the “inversely proportional” issue to my husband many a time. He brought up an interesting point — while it’s true that in the patriarchy, this affects women much more, there are only a few ways men can keep their fuckability up as they age, usually having to do with money and power. Poor old men are perceived as just as (un)fuckable as poor old women.
I’m not sure I completely buy this but I think there’s some truth to it.
I also think that for women, the power/stature/smarts as an aphrodisiac thing may have its day, someday. Not now. But maybe someday.
Quick clarification: I mean, of course, PERCEIVED fuckability value.
Penny, ITA — the best actresses I’ve ever seen in my life were in an all-woman version of “Othello” that I saw one time. “Successful” was for me (a non-thespian) a shorthand for “has made it big and raked in money.”
Every single one of those women could have run RINGS around ANY woman of the same age who’s ever been on the red carpet at the Oscars that I’ve ever known. The woman who played Iago was a goddamned GENIUS — she held herself like a paring knife. She was fucking BRILLIANT. Desdemonda improved by leaps and bounds once she wasn’t doing the “fwightened widdle doe” crap.
But the only ones we ever see of women in large (keep in mind that movies and TV are the only windows into acting that most people ever have) are the ones who have fellated the patriarchy and found it either fun or an acceptable tradeoff.
Damn it, those women in the rep theater fucking rocked. Cassio was magnificent. She did that whole scene where she’s drunk and goes overboard, then realizes what’s happening like a genius. Some of the best acting I’ve ever seen. I bet she’s the sort who would watch shit movies and not think, “Yay, mommy! I want to do that for a living!” but “I can do that better, I know it.”
But she’s not the sort to “make it big.” The best women actors never do.
Octogalore, I do agree that fuckability is inversely related to age — but it’s inversely related to a lot of things, such as “perceived brains and worth as a human being.” For any woman with any intellect at all, fuckability is nothing to take refuge in at any age, so you learn to ignore it early on.
And while poor old men are as unfuckable as poor old women, poor old men can also go to strip joints, pay for someone, and (for some reason related to something I can’t fathom) bullshit themselves into believing that she really does think he’s hot.
Poor old men are also able to identify from a distance with rich old ones and think, “Yeah, yah, that’s me up there with the 20 yar old chippie trophy wife!” No it ain’t, buddy. Trust me. That rich old bastard would spit on you if he saw you, you know that?
Men are just better at lying to themselves about sex. Women are more accurate.
Octogalore, tell your husband all a man has to do is live long enough for the fact that women live longer than men to kick in and automatically restore his perceived fuckability factor. As long as he doesn’t insist on a 30-yr-old with pneumatic boobs, he’ll have plenty of company.
Thanks for the links to Heart’s response–well said, I hope to continue reading feedback on this.
DO NOT TRUST HELEN MIRREN.
That’s all I have to say
Octagalore, do you ever stop to ponder that so much of what you write pertains to men, men, men and, yes, men, and women’s relationships with men?
Please ponder this a bit. When you say things like:
I also think that for women, the power/stature/smarts as an aphrodisiac thing may have its day, someday. Not now. But maybe someday.
Realize. This applies only to het relationships.
Heart
Heart- I think that’s all octogalore can really discuss since she is in a het relationship.
I don’t particularly like the constant mentioning of her hubby and what he thinks, since I don’t give a toss about a single thought that goes through a man’s head, but at least her agenda is clear, she doesn’t try to speak for non-hets.
Octo- I’ve had various old men try to chat me up, and by old I mean 70+. I’m 23. They obviously have no problem believing they are fuckable. Funny how I don’t think this is the case for women of the same age group.
I liked ron sullivan’s comment about spending more time having sex than being sexy. Being sexy dries me up.
LMYC - I sure wish I’d seen that Othello. Can you let me know where it was?
I’m glad you love the theatre. Sometimes I wonder if anyone’s coming besides people who work in it.
The more abstract and less naturalistic the style, the better chance for some good cross casting. I thought I’d never get to play M. Cassio - but you never know. Thanks for giving me a lift.
Penny, some of the most moving moments I’ve ever had with art have been at live theatre productions. I wish more people would get out and support real performances, not packaged movies/music/crap that we’re fed by the mega-media machine.
But I live in a city with a huge, thriving Fringe festival and an actual theatre district—not bad for a place with a population of about a million people in a province that everyone thinks of as Redneckland.
LouisaMay,
How else am I going to find a dude to impregnate me? (that’s a joke.)
And actually my precipice is eating babies. (another joke.)
“het signalry” is the problem. Patriarchy and “het” men shame women of all sorts into acting “feminine” and then they get token women like Helen Mirren to also shame and embarrass those women who are too fat, too queer, too “colored”–whatever. But are “het” women who perform some sort of femininity “good germans” or something? I’d go with no (and not because a good portion don’t eat babies), something about which I think a fair amount of readers of this blog would disagree.
Of course, that’s in part because my favorite feminist is Cynthia Enloe. Hope you’ve all heard of her! Helen Mirren she is not.
100 words - what?
as an actual real live, been there, old whore ex-sexworker i think its a load of middle class feminist crap to suggest that someone could be “reduced ” to a whore. as though we are subhuman.
capitalism is whoring…no way around that.no matter what you do for money.
step off the high horse and show some respect.
peace.
erin ambrose, saltyC, et al: Good point, and apologies for the hastily-written and poorly-worded post. I alluded to the “reduced-to-whore” scenario in an (apparently failed) effort to convey a sense of the popular, dominant-culture disdain for prostituted women. The dominant-culture view of women is distinct from my own.
It is, of course, the position of this blog that prostituted women are human.
I sometimes forget that not everybody is a regular reader; you remind me that it is necessary to consider, when I write thse things, that (a) the audience might be unfamiliar with my general worldview, and (b) I should write’em good.
I also think that for women, the power/stature/smarts as an aphrodisiac thing may have its day, someday. Not now. But maybe someday.
Realize. This applies only to het relationships.
Surely you’re joking.
LMYC: to some degree, there are stigmas to intellect, but also a number of people, male and female, who think someone like Catherine Keener, who’s definitely attractive but not in a “fembot†way, or Janeane Garofalo before she lost the weight, or Jill Conway, who was President of Smith, are hot in part BECAUSE OF rather than DESPITE their intellect. A number of guys at my law school would’ve been THRILLED if Katherine McKinnon, who guest taught for awhile, had given them the time of day. I am not saying this is remotely often the case, just that it’s not completely unfathomable that intellect could be a major enhancement of fuckability for people of either gender.
You’re right, men are better at lying to themselves. Nothing to dispute there.
Heart – to the extent I write about men, it’s usually in a context that directly involves them, like “men hate you†or “this is what is fuckable to men.†So, of course my response is going to invoke men. My friends are female, my daughter is female, my closest family members are female, the books I read are primarily by or about women, and my closest work relationships are also female. I do have a man around, whom I fuck and occasionally mention. Relax, and please try to avoid a patronizing tone.
Also, so what if I’m talking about het relationships? (although, in point of fact, in my very limited experience with lesbian friends and in lesbian bars, I wouldn’t say those relationships are entirely free of objectification, but I really can’t comment intelligently on this). As Yeny says, this is all I know. And as het relationships have been more at issue here as problematic, it seems to be of some relevance.
Yeny said “I don’t give a toss about a single thought that goes through a man’s head†and suggests I “constantly†mention my hubby. I would doubt that’s the case; in fact, last time he came up, someone else dragged him into the conversation, but let’s not get into that again. Many people here have invoked significant others to demonstrate some point about men not getting it, hating us, whatever. My fairly brief mentions of my dude, who while not perfect isn’t the enemy, seem to upset or annoy folks. My intent isn’t to say “I can’t stop talking about the MENZ!” but “here’s one data point.” Just like, if this were a site about a cat-run world and I had a cat at home, I’d probably occasionally mention something my cat did.
That said, I will try to be sensitive to over-mentioning of this if it offends anyone. That isn’t my intent.
twisty…because you generally rock it and i fancy your gorgeous brain…i accept the well written apology. phew.
cheers
Lawbitch, ha ha! Dallas hair. The New Yorker?
Aireanne, you said, “I think that reading Helen Mirren’s features as inherently female is a mistake. I read her coy look as “femaleâ€, her vulnerable posture, the taunt of her bare shoulders. The invitation writ on her face is where her female/femininity is.”
I was actually talking more about the shape of her face, its structure. I was thinking that even blank-faced and bald I would recognize that she is female. But maybe you are right, maybe she would look androgynous if she was not dressed and made up in a certain way.
You also said, “Make-up doesn’t make you look more like a woman, it makes you look more heterosexual and desirable.” I think you’re right, definitely. Why have I internalized that that is also what it means to be a woman? Oh! I blame the patriarchy. I am with you on feeling bothered. (I do still think my features are somehow inherently boyish, though.)
Tpurplesage, I know what you mean about men being more respectful of people they assume to also be men. No one but me has ever described my features as masculine, but very few people (but me) see me in a state in which I think I look masculine. I do have a fantasy of going out that way, though. Cutting my hair really short, wearing no make-up, wearing boots, jeans and an undershirt. Still, the breasts would give me away.
To the commentator who wrote about being on desert island and not bringing the tweezers…
This is true for my life…it was winter, and I didn’t shave my legs for the whole freaking winter. My pants rode up and I didn’t have knee socks and my friend said, “you don’t shave?” and I said..”nope, I am not sleeping with anyone right now, so who the frack cares?”
But, I do work with special needs kids in their homes and at their country club pools a very “judged on appearances” suburban area. I am not kidding, but some people don’t hire me because even though my cuticles are pushed back, and I buff my nais to a natural shine, because I like it, the dads don’t want to hire me becasue I am not “femmy” enough to paint my nails. So, since I know that “appearances” and exposed shaved legs are very important to these people, I shave my legs when I know that I will be in an exposed leg situation in my clients’ homes.
You know what though? the kids don’t care if my legs are shaved or not..in fact, one little three year old and I were playing a game on the floor and once again I had “short socks on, and my pants didn’t cover my hairy legs. The little guy looked at my legs touched them and said-wow, your legs are hairy like a cat’s and I was like-”Hey, thanks for coming out of your world and noticing, maybe I will be a cat, and then we worked on his pretend play skills and played like were cats for a bit. at the end of the session, he came and sat on my lap and nestled his head in my shoulder and said-”I want to be hairy like a cat just like you Yem.” No judgement from the kids on my legs just realization of a fact that my legs were hairy. Instead, the kids judge me on what’s really important, do I make them feel loved, appreciated, wanted and safe? If I do that, then who the hell cares if my legs are hairy or not?
Sadly, my little innocent client won’t stay in that nonjudgmental cloud for ever(he’s high functioning asperger’s) and will be socialized into an perverted view of what a perfect female will look like.
But ooh, put me on a deserted island with just a volleyball for company and yeah, I would tell gillette where they could put their freaking 24 blade VENUS razor.
Penny, it was in San Diego, the San Diego Women’s Rep. I think the woman who played Iago was Gayle Feldman-Avery if I remember the name right. I hope I do. She fucking ROCKED. Othello was Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson, pretty high up.
I usually find Helen Mirren quite watchable but that dress is too frilly for me to take. It looks like someone put Elmo through a pasta machine and turned him into a dresslike object. Whoever posed her needs to be shot and that bed looks like it wouldn’t hold a child. The whole picture screams amateur night.
That cover picture would have been vastly better and more appropriate if they had panned out and not made Helen into such a ghastly pinata, instead incorporating, well, some architectural details of the room perhaps?
I am not saying this is remotely often the case, just that it’s not completely unfathomable that intellect could be a major enhancement of fuckability for people of either gender.
So it’s “not saying this is remotely often the case” along the same lines as I’m not remotely saying that it’s often the case that people get struck by lightning, but …
LYMC where’s that blog of yours again? TP get in line. I loved her first.
Isn’t Katherine McKinnon a bit of a “babe”?
I’m sure the male law students would have been thrilled had she given them the time of day.
I’m not so sure it was because of her intellect.
Find a really smart woman who is not beautiful surrounded by men clamoring for her attention, and I might be more convinced.
p.s. I love Yemaya’s “hairy cat” story. I love to witness children’s perceptions and observations before the insidious socializations kick in.
Hello all, I came here via Feministing…
As a dyke, I have no desire to appear fuckable to men. I’m self-employed right now, so I don’t need to “dress up” to keep my job or anything like that. But I still on occasion wear lipstick, jewelry, etc.
I think of it more as theatre than anything else. Just like a gay man might wear feathers, heels, wigs, fishnets. I realize that it is all a performance, but I like performing, and making it obvious. I think a lot of queer femmes who do burlesque (not for men, but in the context of gay/lesbian events) may feel this way. We put our own campy spin on femininity, one that doesn’t cater to the male gaze. It is intentionally exaggerated and artifical.
My partner doesn’t care whether or not I dress up, and when it is just the two of us I am fairly low maintenance, but in public I like to do my high femme drag queen act (think Mae West) because it is a fun role to play. I know femininity isn’t inherent or natural, and I like that it can be turned on or off.
But I suppose I have the privilege of looking at it this way, since many het women are told they HAVE to dress up in order to secure a man or even have NSA sex. I don’t mean to come off as more exalted than everyone else, just sharing my thoughts.
I see a lot of defending a woman’s right to wear skirts and heels around the blogosphere lately. I’ve yet to have a hairy second-waver confiscate my lone skirt and lip balm, but I’m on the lookout.
Also: What about men’s right to wear dresses and heels? Da menz are missing out on all the fun!
And, pardon my ignorance: what’s “NSA sex?”
If I was on a desert island with no men I would bring the following, which may seem conventional but I see as pragmatic or benign: wax (I can’t stand leg or armpit hair on myself nor on potential male suitors; tried it once during a hiking extravaganza and it was awful. To me it’s practical, as it’s easiest to use deodorant and I like smooth skin); bikini (with no men I can freely frolick w/o fear); tampons (of course); tweezers (eventually I will hit menopause on this island so I’d like to remove chin hair); a wardrobe including dresses and skirts (I love the way skirts feel in the breeze, especially on a hot day, and think dresses look fabulous on a woman. I may be foolishly trying to reclaim dresses in my subconsious, I know, but I rarely wear them now b/c of catcalls and even threats so I’d like to just enjoy myself, for once).
I would not bring: make-up (hate it–all of it); earrings (don’t understand the appeal and I always manage to lose one anyway); heels (even now I refuse to wear those damn traps-for-feet); and nail polish (what the hell?).
P.S. On the hot-or-not theme, consider the case of Valerie Plame. This woman is not only undeniably brilliant and accomplished but also courageous, honorable, and dignified. However, the whole media (and blog) coverage of her trivialized, if not openly mocked her, not only as a person (fuckability) but also the damage done to her career and the legal ramifications of what was done to this once-covert agent (Compare coverage to the current Attorney General scandal). She is the ultimate example of how even a powerful and significant woman can’t withstand the thumping dehumanization of sexism–from even her own side let alone the right-wing, which used her gender and attractiveness to “prove” she was nothing but a glorified secretary.
Yem, what a beautiful story.
Children so beautiful, I can’t believe what they grow into.
al, NSA means “no strings attached.”
(not attacking AlicePaul, or queer femmes. critiques of behaviors sometimes get taken as an attack on the person, so I thought I would get that out of the way up front.)
Doesn’t cater to the Male Gaze? At the risk of becoming inflammatory, boy is that naive. The Male Gaze is there whether men are present or not. Unless you are doing burlesque in sweatpants, you are catering to the Male Gaze.
Femininity is already campy, exaggerated and artificial. Women who do not think of themselves as filling the Fuckbot role who perform burlesque are merely stating publicly that even they are not Fuckbots, they can be counted on not to challenge the Sexxxay Fuckbot Script. That goes not just for queer femmes, but for queer dykes, smart chicks, old chicks, fat chicks, hairy chicks, and any combination of the above. When a gay/lesbian audience responds positively to burlesque, it just tells me that even the gay/lesbian audience gets off on heteronormative femininity. Claiming it for your own, are you? You can try, but you don’t get to choose the subtext of your actions. Society defines that for you, and the subtext of pasties and g-strings says “Look at me! I, too, can be a Fuckbot!”
I know femininity is fun (see my comments above). It’s fun like crack is fun. Just don’t stop thinking at the fun part.
Yemaya, I have two brothers with Asperger’s, and I love their responses to the world. Even as adults, their take on things is surprising and often provokes a “wow” reaction in me. They just seem to see things in ways that the rest of us don’t because they stand that little bit outside the world.
Thanks for the story. Made me smile a lot. And take heart: he may not totally lose his non-judgmental side when it comes to women. One of my brothers is very much in love with a funny, smart woman who has thrown the trappings of femininity to the winds. But he’s never really seen men and women the same way as most of the world and has always chosen his lovers based on personality, not gender or appearance. It’s led to a lot of hurt for him, though, for which IBTP.
LMYC: OK, point taken, I’ll be more clear. I think all other things being equal, intellect enhances appeal for a number of men and women.
Josquin – yes, Catharine MacKinnon is very attractive; however, she’s 60 now and 50 at the time I referenced. The men in question were half her age. As babe-like as she was and is, there were plenty of 25-year-old women around who ranked higher on our culture’s national ranking of babe-ness who did not have her “je ne sais quoi†to these guys. It was because of her stature, her accomplishments, her power – factors which usually are the province of older men to use as aphrodisiacs – that the guys, and some of the women, were so enthralled.
“Find a really smart woman who is not beautiful surrounded by men clamoring for her attention, and I might be more convinced.â€
Grandma Moses.
I’m not smoking anything here; clearly the extent to which women can benefit from the “intellect enhancement†is not equal or fair. And it can seem more worthwhile to try to address this than to point out that it’s not always the case. I’m doing the latter because I think it’s a launch point for the proposition that if women had more overall power, even in today’s flawed structure, we’d be able to reap various advantages that stem from this.
Find a really smart woman who is not beautiful surrounded by men
clamoring for her attention, and I might be more convinced.
Even if you are both, they generally like you up until you criticize them in public or point out that they personally have made an error. Then, you go frmo the exotic, fascinating space-alien creature with a brain and a body to the Man-Murdering Menace Which Must Be Destroyed. It takes very little.
The simple fact of the matter is that they do not see that which they wish to fuck as human. They might find your intelligence vaguely appealing for a bit, but as was observed on an earlier post, it’s because, deep down, they still think they’re smarter than you. When this is disproved, they become very, very angry and threatened.
I can’t stand leg or armpit hair on myself nor on
potential male suitors …
Miller - do they wax or shave their armpits and legs for you as well, then?
I’d never bring tampons to a desert island. No one’s around. Tie a rag on or even bleed down my leg rather than deal with those little paper pricks.
“As a dyke, I have no desire to appear fuckable to men.”
I am not a dyke, but I still have no desire to appear fuckable to men. If my primary appeal to a man was my fuckability, I would do my best to avoid him. I prefer respect, admiration, and affection as the basis of attraction.
LMYC – who’s “they� “All men� “Men whom I know� “Men whom I’ve read about�
Yeah, there are a lot of assholes out there, and many of them have Y chromosomes. But to speak about all men this way is just stupid. There are many female CEOs, litigators, teachers, etc., who are known to have surreal smarts and who get shit done because of it. There are some hugely threatened men who feel the women “must be destroyed†or who come up with reasons why they (the men) are smarter. And there are other men who say “how high?†when these women ask them to jump.
One of them is Patti Glaser who is a well known litigator. She is not babular by popular standards. And yet she inspires respect and admiration, and yes, in some corners, crushes by both men and women.
I’m not disagreeing with you that the tendency you mention is out there, but your universalizing it is incorrect and actually harms the efficacy of your argument.
Octogalore, I think that it’s close enough to 100% that making a huge fuss about the epsilon who are not like that is disingenuous in the extreme.
Hello, longtime lurker and occasional attempted-poster/victim-of-the-spamulator and constant Twisty-idolator here.
At the risk of derailing the thread, Architectural Digest has always been something of an a) elaborate semantic practical joke, b) aesthetic horror, c) fawning tool of the megaloindustriamilitatheocorpocracy, Gilded Interiors and Celebrity Worshipping Division, or d) most if not all of the above. Witness here: http://www.tias.com/cgi-bin/google.fcgi/itemKey=1922884863. (Sorry, but my HTML skills are not up to embedding the link or what have you.) But that certainly doesn’t make the Mirren, er, spread any less disturbing.
Regards,
Pontiste
Pontiste:
My eyes! My eyes!
Oh my god! Rod’s sitting in a near-replica of the student union at one of my alma maters. Darken the colors up, and he’d have nailed it.
I wonder if he’s read any of the books on the wall behind him. Does he have a framed photo of Polykarp Kusch, because if he does, then it is my old student union, with a lighter-colored remodeling.
When I was 20, with long blonde hair, slim firm bod and golden tan from my body-surfing days, lots of men admired my wit and intelligence.
At a more advanced age, sans hair, firm bod, and tan, I have lost neither my wit nor intelligence. Funny how men don’t fawn over those qualities nearly as much as they used to.
Octogalore I understand that there are men inhabiting the tail ends of the bell curve. I honor and welcome them. But their existence makes a very tiny splash in the reality of most women’s lives.
Josquin, I hear ya — what I’ve noticed is that most men claim to admire my wit and intelligence, but if I watch them, I can tell that they consider them annoying obstacles that interfere with their ability to get to my cunt.
Men never admired your wit and intelligence, nor do they admire mine. “I love you for your mind” is one of the world’s biggest lie, possibly the biggest ahead of “I promise I won’t invade Czechoslovakia.”
LMYC and Josquin: I guess we have different life experiences and contexts and we’re all sure ours are generalizable. I have various older female friends and relatives, none who are skinny or dress babaliciously, but who are witty and wise, who have been able to meet men who are attracted to them, and presumably the cerebral factor plays a big part. Their ability to do this, of course, is not like that of their male counterparts. But because I’ve seen this happen, not once but a number of times, it would seem MORE disingenuous of me to pretend I buy in to the absolutes.
Josquin: I understand what you’re saying. I think the splash is a little bigger than you do, but I hear you.
One thing I’m curious about: we’re in agreement that the package the brains and wit are in is a big factor and sometimes the only factor in the “fawning over” that we get for those qualities. Am I the only woman who operaterates similar to the way we are criticizing? I’ve had crushes on both men and women, though I’m het and have primarily been with men. And I must say, physical attraction has always been a gating factor for me. There are some people whose wit and just general coolness have made the difference for me, but there has to be a baseline physical attraction there.
Any takers?
Perhaps the affection, admiration and respect make an appearance later on in the relationship, but I’m fairly certain it’d never get that far unless the guy (pick a guy, any guy) was physically attracted first. The same applies to wit and intelligence. He may come to appreciate a woman’s finer, less visible qualities eventually (maybe), but if he doesn’t find SOMEthing about her hawt, she’ll never register on his radar.
Apropos Pontiste’s link: I wonder what Roddy boy would look like in a hawt and sexay off-shouldered red dress made of the pelts of murdered muppets? He’s got the coy look and the background, but I don’t have Photoshop.