A few weeks ago I mentioned that I would be posting only intermittently, on subjects that nobody cares about, for a while. And I did not lie. To wit:
This huge abstract pain is totally overpriced. Considering how easy it is to construct your own for free, out of practically nothing.
Speaking of free pain, Etsy really is an excellent source. Awesome!
Computer-generated list of quasi-related posts:
- Spinster aunt biffs off; leaves link in stead “I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would...
- Heads up! Art Week starts on Monday Now that Science Week is over [and what did we learn? That you can't get...
- Please enjoy this open thread while I do something more interesting than write a blog post When this remark Yup. This is the only place I don’t comment under a male...
- In which the author reads a blog Few writers, whether for free or pay-per-view, so consistently deliver the goods as Amanda Marcotte;...
- Blamers, coddle the dudes so I don’t have to If you’re contemplating sending me an email about how my Dear god what about the...
Loading tweets...
51 comments
ambivalent academic
March 8, 2010 at 11:54 am (UTC -6)
The “sex pot” is “Complete with sexy high heels and striped stockings ;) lol” according to the write-up. The remind me more of the wicked witch’s feet sticking out from beneath Dorothy’s house post-tornado. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t meant to be “sexy”.
Judi
March 8, 2010 at 12:35 pm (UTC -6)
That Huge Abstract Pain is actually quite distinctive: huge pains are almost always firmly in the Realist mode.
vinoveritas
March 8, 2010 at 12:37 pm (UTC -6)
Have you seen Regretsy? http://www.regretsy.com/
Pinko Punko
March 8, 2010 at 12:41 pm (UTC -6)
How about this as an alternative that might be worthwhile?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trJy0gsbjh0
Antoinette Niebieszczanski
March 8, 2010 at 12:59 pm (UTC -6)
Ah, jeez, here I was hoping for a pair of homemade underpants.
For $700, I could make my own Huge Abstract Pain.
Jezebella
March 8, 2010 at 2:57 pm (UTC -6)
Thank goodness it’s a quiet day at the office. I let out an involuntary whimper of pain upon viewing the “Sex Pot”. Ayiyi.
veganrampage
March 8, 2010 at 3:05 pm (UTC -6)
Quit hinting around. Which one do you want? All of ‘em?
veganrampage
March 8, 2010 at 4:28 pm (UTC -6)
Or:
Gag gifts that actually make you gag.
That’s all folks.
yttik
March 8, 2010 at 7:04 pm (UTC -6)
Liking that Regretsy site. “Where DIY meets WTF.” Too funny.
Sarah
March 8, 2010 at 7:06 pm (UTC -6)
The Sex Pot’s toesies look strikingly similar to those of the Wicked Witch of the East’s.
Comrade PhysioProf
March 8, 2010 at 7:50 pm (UTC -6)
Jeezus fuck, somebody’s trolling for an intervention.
Frumious B.
March 8, 2010 at 8:16 pm (UTC -6)
Dang, two people already noted the likeness between the sex pot and the Wicked Witch of the East. I could use a Wicked Witch pot. Maybe I’ll just start wearing stripey stockings and red shoes.
Katie Peek
March 8, 2010 at 8:18 pm (UTC -6)
vinoveritas, Regretsy just made my day. Thanks.
Alex
March 8, 2010 at 9:22 pm (UTC -6)
Regretsy is hiliarous, and seeing it here made me realize that while the overwhelming majority of the crafters they mock are women, they manage to mock them without resorting to casual misogyny*. (The comment section, as per internet, can be a different story.)
* I can’t swear up and down that the main posts are 100% misogyny-free–no counter-examples are springing to mind, but someone else may have one–but it’s definitely less misogynistic than average for snark sites. (People of Wal-Mart, for example–my sister thinks they’re funny, but a good third of the posts are mocking non-beauty-2000-compliant women for the crime of leaving the house.)
Pinko Punko
March 8, 2010 at 10:20 pm (UTC -6)
Bumper car pinball people- it is the opposite of the Etsy PAIN. Somebody on Etsy wants to charge me 300 dollars for a piece of my childhood- and now its gone. Let us embrace the good instead.
Sabina
March 9, 2010 at 4:20 am (UTC -6)
Dear Jill, why are you not posting about more serious feminist issues?
Sarah
March 9, 2010 at 9:40 am (UTC -6)
Oh drat. My Wicked Witch observation is not original. That’ll teach me to comment all willy-nilly.
SKM
March 9, 2010 at 12:02 pm (UTC -6)
Triple awesome!
The seller used to have a naked woman in the image, but he changed it to an implied-naked man. Not much better, really. Rohypnol is never cute.
Jill
March 9, 2010 at 9:43 pm (UTC -6)
“Oh drat. My Wicked Witch observation is not original.”
Il n’y a plus de nouveau sous le soleil. Originality, as the poet said, is a romantic disease.
Maguire
March 10, 2010 at 12:22 am (UTC -6)
Why do people still try and sell abstract art at such ridiculous prices? You are right, it is a simple arts and crafts project, and you to can have your own abstract art. Unless it is a painting from one of the founders of the movement, like Kandinsky, then it really isn’t worth spending so much.
I am going off topic, but you may enjoy this interview series of professional women in online journalism.
http://www.ourblook.com/Table/Gender-Studies-and-Media/
It was conducted by the University of Iowa Gender and Mass Media Class this past fall and offers some unique perspectives and insights to the future of online journalism.
Free Pain
March 10, 2010 at 2:01 am (UTC -6)
My art’s not for everyone, but it does pay the bills.
Thanks for the traffic. :)
PandanCat
March 10, 2010 at 2:07 am (UTC -6)
How is huge abstract pain not a serious feminist issue? Oh, and three cheers for Regretsy.
yttik
March 10, 2010 at 10:46 am (UTC -6)
Is there anything that is not a serious feminist issue? Something as inane as breakfast cereal leads to questioning factory farming, melanine tainting, the FDA, male athlete’s faces on the box..
Plastic yard flamingos? No, that leads to the impact of plastics on the environment, breast cancer, child labor in foreign factories..
I once attended a cocktail party and dedicated myself to speaking of nothing but oven cleaner comparisons. I did my part, but the conversation evolved into a discussion of domestic violence, misogynistic doctors, and ended with one woman coming out and announcing her divorce. I didn’t do it, I would have been perfectly content to simply relive my love affair with Mr Clean Magic Erasers.
Josquin
March 10, 2010 at 11:21 am (UTC -6)
i like etsy
(That all-lower-case is supposed to represent a small tentative voice, not a hip disregard for typographic convention )
It is the coming together of all crafters, builders, thingamajig-makers, obsessive painters, glue-ers, decorators, constructors, bakers, sparkle-appliers, sculptors, from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the laughable, hideous and grotesque to the simple, delightful, and original. It’s truly a free market, without filters. Although I do not have a shop on etsy, I still count myself as one of the above-mentioned throng, and I’m glad that the site exists.
kristyn
March 10, 2010 at 1:51 pm (UTC -6)
Josquin, likewise. It is really good for the environment as well as for small businesses; as long as we have to live in capitalism, we may as well do it this way.
That being said, etsy — like every damn thing on this earth — still raises a lot of issues. Class, race, gender, etc. For example, the vintage resellers, people who buy stuff from the Salvation Army and then sell it to rich people for ten times the cost. It’s a good way to make easy money, but it also privileges people of means above poorer people such as myself who still want to have nice, secondhand clothing.
- Anyone else notice that vintage clothes are not only typically sturdier, but also are less P2K-compliant? It depends on the garment, of course, but for example I prefer my slacks high-waisted and my blouses full-coverage. Even without the added layer of contributing to sweat-shop culture by buying new things, you just can’t get new clothes that look like that. They all seem to have ”sexyfun” twists. High-waisted slacks … that are extremely tight in the ass and/or accentuate the supposedly male-ideal ”hourglass figure”! High-collared blouses … that are cut to hug your tits or show your cleavage! And fall apart after one washing! Nope, not for this blamer.
So etsy, for all of its good points, is also a microcosm of social and economic concerns. Like everything else is, from ”art” to oven cleaners.
westwood
March 10, 2010 at 4:35 pm (UTC -6)
Best thing about Etsy… finding cool things someone else made cheaply and easily, and figuring out how to cheaply and easily appropriate teh design for yourself.
agasaya
March 11, 2010 at 1:25 am (UTC -6)
We don’t have capitalism here in the U.S. We have corporate gangsterism. Under capitalism, the marketplace is driven by consumer demand where people reward the best vendors of superior products and services – at various tiers of cost – with their dollars and the worst guys go out of business.
Not so here. Associations of vendors peddling equally bad products and services band with price fixing to ensure no one undercuts them but ensuring they can drive anyone out of business who attempts to provide better at the mid to lower end of the cost scale. In fact, they drive many wholesalers out of the marketplace by their profit margins which ensure almost none for their suppliers. That means American sources for raw materials, factories etc. go out of business too.
Everything is based upon relative value – set by the amount of profits desired – with no reality based standard other than ensuring every last cent is wrung from consumers. Just look at the cost of a hotel room. It doesn’t change in terms of overhead from one day to the next but the rate on it alters daily based upon how many are empty that night.
The marketplace isn’t free for honest vendors or for consumers who remain in the dark about what they paid for since labeling isn’t mandated. An MSDS may contain information about a mere 10 percent of a product, especially bad for women who need to know about all the estrogen being pumped into us through our products.
If that’s capitalism, it’s not the kind I studied in school.
drsnacks
March 11, 2010 at 9:52 am (UTC -6)
@kristyn
They’re not P2K-compliant only because they’re pre-2K, they’re easily P1.9K. They were designed to emphasize femininity and the “hip chicks” modeling vintage stuff on etsy and buying them are still tying to be sexy with a twist.
One of my favorite illustrations of a regressive mindset trying to reconcile trendy retroness is this woman (http://eco-chick.com/2008/12/1864/how-to-rock-an-ugly-christmas-sweater-eco-chick-style/) giving tips on how to wear “ugly sweaters” (for ugly sweater parties) and still look cute. Without the slightest bit of self-awareness she points out:
IOW they look equally hilarious but miss the point of being a woman.
kristyn
March 11, 2010 at 10:15 am (UTC -6)
agasaya — true, very true. I just don’t know a word to describe the extant system; corporate gangsterism works well, though, so now I will use it if I may.
drsnacks — oh, I know. Burlesque, anyone?
And that leads, of course, into the gender/sex portion of the slippery etsy equation, which I don’t need to go into because I’m sure you all recognize already.
That being said, I do find, at least with the styles I choose (”balloon trousers”, for example, are great at being comfortable and at failing to hug my body in any major way), that by virtue of falling outside of the current ”sexy”/”unsexy” stereotypes and norms, pre-P2K styles often come right back around onto the other side of dudely attention and become as close to ‘just clothing’ as a woman such as myself can get.
Simply put, I don’t get sexually harassed as much on the street when I’m swaddled in layers of voluminous tweed with knife-edged pleats, and nor do I get threats about being ”a dyke.” For my choice of dress, anyway.
Of course, I’m not inveterate enough to think this means I’ve in any way escaped the patriarchy, and nothing about this constant tightrope walking is in any way sexyfun. Please don’t take my comment in those, er, fashions.
Having to choose between dressing to get men to stop threatening your life over your presumed gender identification/sexual preference, or dressing to get men to stop threatening your life over your presumed sexual availability, is (to paraphrase Nine Deuce) ”just choosing the least shitty shit sandwich.”
And now I’m going to stop typing ”I” and using run-on sentences on Jill’s blog.
Jezebella
March 11, 2010 at 10:36 am (UTC -6)
Kristyn, your description of the best shit sandwich regarding clothing in the P is brilliantly spot-on. Nicely done.
Sarah
March 11, 2010 at 7:38 pm (UTC -6)
The fact that a pithy, 5-6 sentence post on a seemingly innocuous topic has resulted in a discourse on corporate gangsterism, the evils of capitalism, and rich hipsters’ second-hand clothing covetousness (someone please come up with a succinct term to describe that one), not to mention their stupid sweater parties, using words and phrases ranging from “inveterate” and “extant” to “shitty shit sandwich” and “thingamajiggers” is enough to make a small nerd’s heart skip a hap-hap-happy beat.
kristyn
March 11, 2010 at 8:10 pm (UTC -6)
Just another day at IBTP, y’all.
An oasis of sanity in a desert of sewage, that’s what this blog is.
And thanks, Jezebella! You should thank Jill and Co. for seasoning me, I keep writing that and I really mean it.
Also, Sarah … mine too. Oh, mine too.
slythwolf
March 11, 2010 at 10:41 pm (UTC -6)
Oh Flying Spaghetti Monster, why? No, no! The Girl Who Loved Love’s giant balloon head is about to snap her twig-like neck!
slythwolf
March 11, 2010 at 10:43 pm (UTC -6)
I think this is cool, though.
CF Oxtrot
March 15, 2010 at 2:06 pm (UTC -6)
“…and rich hipsters’ second-hand clothing covetousness (someone please come up with a succinct term to describe that one),….”
Your wish = my command. As a good man who isn’t named Goodman Brown, and as a firm believer in continuing the patriarchy, I hereby solve your problem, man-style.
http://www.lala.com/song/576742244701122501
(link to “Junk Shop Clothes” by The Auteurs)
Ron Sullivan
March 19, 2010 at 11:33 pm (UTC -6)
Why are there only ever 31 comments on this post?
(sound of two hands carping)
kristyn
March 20, 2010 at 10:01 am (UTC -6)
Yes, where have all the blamers gone?
Blamety blame blame blame.
Sarah
March 22, 2010 at 9:08 am (UTC -6)
The blamers have taken up residence on the street and begun spray-painting things!
I hope this means that revolution is not far behind. I also hope this means I get to use the word “foment” more often.
kristyn
March 22, 2010 at 10:26 am (UTC -6)
Awesome, Sarah. Truly awesome. I will come back to your blog and tell you what I blame at some near point in the future.
Good find with that tag, too. It’s one of the only things made better by the fact that it’s pink.
Sarah
March 22, 2010 at 10:33 am (UTC -6)
I actually didn’t even notice it was pink until you pointed it out. It now gets +10 awesome points, at least.
kristyn
March 23, 2010 at 10:16 am (UTC -6)
CF Oxtrot — that was effin’ ridiculous.
You actually came to I BLAME the FUCKIN’ PATRIARCHY to tell us that you wish to CONTINUE THE PATRIARCHY?
Fail.
Sorry for all-caps-ing on your blog, Jill, but the all-consuming mind-boggling rage had to find some outlet before my eyes popped out.
ashley
March 23, 2010 at 2:07 pm (UTC -6)
his blog is pretty hilarious, though.
Sarah
March 23, 2010 at 2:18 pm (UTC -6)
Egads, how did I ever miss this reply to my query? I appreciate the effort, but I don’t think a link to a song counts as a succinct term, and therefore does not solve my problem in any way, shape, or form. Nor does not having a succinct term to make fun of hipsters really count as a problem needing to be solved in the first place. Perhaps this Oxtrot person is hoping to make a point about how mansplaining works by offering inaccurate and irrelevant links and making obscure Goodman Brown references?
I second kristyn’s fail.
kristyn
March 23, 2010 at 2:30 pm (UTC -6)
Yes, Sarah, let’s look at it as a piece of performance art, lest the anger take us over and ruin the fun of this Huge Abstract Pain.
yttik
March 25, 2010 at 10:59 am (UTC -6)
Well, while we are awaiting Jill’s return, I have discovered that “vegan” is viewed as too soft and girly, while also being too militant and hostile, so from now on it will be referred as being “he-gan.”
Men leave their own mark on veganism
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2010/03/24/men_leave_their_own_mark_on_veganism/
kristyn
March 25, 2010 at 11:28 am (UTC -6)
Yes, yttik, just as the word ”feminism” is both too harsh and too soft.
Someone else has said, and it rang very true, that women MUST be the more powerful gender/physical sex, since they/we can be firmly on both sides of pretty much every artificial binary ever created by mankind (word used on purpose).
And no matter what we do, no matter what ”side” we’re on, we’re always either too much, not enough, or both. No matter what, we can never, EVER get it right.
But men get to have it both ways, up and down and side to side too.
Sarah
March 26, 2010 at 8:49 am (UTC -6)
There is a long and glorious history of gendered food, most amusingly presented on one of my favorite non-IBTP blogs, Sociological Images: Veggies are for women; meat is for men; gendered cupcakes.
veganrampage
March 27, 2010 at 5:00 am (UTC -6)
“Your wish = my command. As a good man who isn’t named Goodman Brown, and as a firm believer in continuing the patriarchy, I hereby solve your problem, man-style.”
Oxhole you jagoff- you obviously did not read the FAQS before commenting here.
I know, you’re special,and male, and privilege is yours, all yours, no matter where or what the circumstances may be and you are above following rules on another person’s blog, amirite? Especially a woman’s blog, you don’t have to follow mere female rules, right dumplin’?
I have three guidelines/rules for idiots like you. They are- A)Fuck you.
B)Shut up.
C)Shut the fuck up.
If you can’t, or won’t, while Jill is away and therefore cannot moderate the comments and stop fucktwits like you from crapping all over her blog, go to Thus Spake Zuska’s site and comment under the post “Men Who Cannot Follow Directions From Women.”
There, you can join the other mansplainers in getting your head ripped off. They won’t be as pleasant or tolerant as I have been.
It is pure theater and a real pleasure to read, and re-read,so hie, hie away now diddums. Man-style that is.
kristyn
March 28, 2010 at 4:22 pm (UTC -6)
Veganrampage — what you wrote over on Zuska’s thread was amazing. It was,
”[...] living at large in the great unwashed patriarchy is tantamount to living in an insane asylum where everyone else is psychotic, yet screaming at you all day and all night how crazy you are. The P invalidates all your experiences, from the largest to the smallest, until you begin to doubt yourself.”
Indeed. Indeed.
ashley
March 28, 2010 at 5:01 pm (UTC -6)
‘”everyone else is psychotic, yet screaming at you all day and all night how crazy you are”‘
preach it.
where the f- is Twisty? I miss her.
speedbudget
March 29, 2010 at 6:11 am (UTC -6)
Let’s get this party back crackin’ up in here.