Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Thanks to Fabulous V. & ever-fab Jezebel, I have a link to a Daily Mail article about how much man-cleavage (or “he-vage") is enough. Now, on a romance cover? You bare it all, baby, yeah!

But an actual person? Not sure. I see plenty of he-vage that I could live without in the summer thanks to pectoraly men in tank tops and chains. And if you ask me, David Beckham looks like he’s channeling an elf in the picture in the article and not so much like a sex god. But it’s more the hair and ethereal glow that’s odd rather than any chesty pecs.

So how much man-valley do you like to see on actual men? 

Bitchery reader plainjane sent me this fascinating link to “good girl” comic art, where the impossibly arched feet and giant perfectly circular breasts make them all look like “Katy Keene fights crime” - how DO they walk in those overly-arched feet, anyway?

Even more fun is the Gangster & Gun Moll comic - nice shooter(s)!

Either way, it’s nice to know that absurdly-proportioned women are as always not exclusive to the romance genre cover art.

We talk a good bit every now and again about how our cultural perception of romance has changed, especially as pertains to rape scenes, secret babies, or even the careers of the heroes - are cowboys on the way out?

Similarly, thanks to the fabulous V., here’s a link: David Brooks from the NY Times (Motto: “We won’t print the title of your Bitchy website, but we’ll publish pictures of corpses whenever we want. Because we are a ‘family newspaper.’") compares the perceptions of Kerouac’s On the Road now that the book is 50 years old. Now, instead of a book about wild celebration and savoring the enjoyment of life, it’s a book about “loss,” “death” and the melancholy of life.

Brooks’ column is largely a WTF? directed at the aging Boomers who he blames for “the great geriatric pall settled over the world, before it became illegal to be cheerful.” Seems On the Road no longer sucks the marrow out of life, to mix literature quotes, but instead wants life pureed and boiled into mush because the readership no longer has the teeth to chew it.

Brooks predicts that the over-safety-belted culture in which we now live will produce another revolutionary piece of literature: “Someday some hypermanic kid will produce a moronically maxed-out adventure odyssey that will spark the overdue rebellion among all the over-pressured SAT grinds, and us grumpy midlife critics will get to witness a new Kerouac, and the greatest pent-up young-life crisis in the history of the world.”

(Dude. I so hope it’s a romance.)

Aside from predictions of what rebellious literature will emerge next, I am fascinated by how time and aging of the audience changes perceptions of literature, and the condemnation of that which was celebrated and the celebration of that which was condemned come circling around each other time and again. The Flame and the Flower was reissued shortly after Claiming the Courtesan - and both ask readers to reexamine rape and the sexual power plays that occur in every romance novel (though not always through rape). The passage of 30 years of readership between those two books, for example, creates an entirely new attitude toward the balance of sexual power, but no shortage of controversy. 

Brooks’ opinions on our over-professionalized society I’m going to have to think about some more, though. It’s also feeding time, so Baba says “Get off the computer already, woman.”

Janet Mullany sent me a fascinating link to the the Shenis, and I have to ask: why is it 12” long, and WHY is it GOLD? A goldmember purely to assist women with peeing? I could do without the uber-permed ladies demonstrating the Shenis’ powers of pee projection, but the unit does have its uses.

On vacation with Hubby a few years ago, we drove from San Francisco to LA & Palm Springs, and of course we stopped at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. We weren’t there to eat, sleep, shop, party or visit - we were there to pee.

Imagine my disappointment when the ladies’ room was boring boring boring, while Hubby got to pee in a freaking waterfall. NO FAIR. NO FAIR.

The worst was that we’d visited the Good Vibrations store in San Francisco a few days prior, and I’d seriously thought about buying a soft pack. I don’t have any predilection for gender switching personally, but it looked from the sample that I could potentially pee through the soft pack. I couldn’t verify that possibility, but hey, we were on a road trip, and being able to pee on the side of the road without worrying about the anatomical difficulties of having to do so as a girl was quite a temptation. But alas, I didn’t buy it. And if I HAD, I could have peed in a waterfall.

But now that I think about it, we might need to do the road trip again, and stop at the Madonna Inn again, because a giant 12” gold pee-wand would totally fit in with the uber-kitsch of the Inn’s decor, don’t you think? Or was this whole entry WAY too much TMI for you this morning? What can I say - I’m profoundly sleep deprived. I’m lucky I’m still typing in English. 

Graceful curtsy to Lorelie for sending me the link that will keep my sleep-deprived self amused for days: LOLBabies. I can has breastmilk?