i have a whole manifesto about how sad i think it is that ms. love has spiraled downwards this much.

Ohlord. Looks like someone was taking notes on our extreme dieting discussion yesterday.

Ooh, and rightfully so. Yowza.

She mad me sad long before this pic was taken.

Bless her heart.

Eeek! She looks like she was murdered at her prom in 1988 and has returned from the dead as a zombie!!

18 May 2004

on becoming our cultural icons/ Courtney Love and Frances Farmer

Poor Courtney. It's hard to watch one of the only fierce women in our current popular culture lose her shit so completely. I won't pretend I'm not simultaneously fascinated.

I met her once when I was maybe 14 years old; before she was famous in a way that didn't only apply to suburban teenaged riot grrrls (please realize that this was once a straight-faced thing to be.) She was ecstatic that I knew her name. I was ecstatic that she kissed my cheek, left red lipstick on my skin. The photos didn't turn out. It broke my lunchbox-purse toting heart.
The woman at the photo lab felt bad enough to offer me a free disposable camera. I can't remember if I took it.

There's a level of paranoia to relating to brilliant trainwrecks. If you're not careful you'll start seeing patterns. And even though intelligence, in my opinion, mainly rests on the ability to make connections, there's a level where it just becomes manic. Barcodes interweaved with the Dow Jones (here I'll admit that I don't actually know what the Dow Jones really is in any kind of specific sense; something to do with money, something I'm not very close with) manic.

For Courtney it has always been Frances Farmer. I relate to that. I remember watching that movie with Jessica Lange over and over again in high school. I'd put samples of dialogue from it in mixtapes. Occupation? Cocksucker. That and Warriors come out to play and Motherfucker Foodeater. Frances Farmer, who was first demonized and then lobotomized-she served as a metaphor for what we do to strong women. But with Courtney the boundaries somehow blurred. The chicken and the egg and all that stuff about self fulfilling prophecies. And watching her is like watching the parody that has forgotten the original. In twenty years they'll probably use her as some kind of example of cultural pastiche in classes at East Coast colleges (or self destruction as performance art.)

Maybe we should be grateful; if she'd chosen Marilyn, we wouldn't get to watch it all unravel.

I don't care. I still love her, hot mess that she is. Also, there might just be some unflattering light and angles happening here.

Uh-oohhhhh...Amy, here comes company.

She and Amanda Lepore are slowly becoming the same person.

Is it bad that I kind of liked Ms. Love a few years ago, when she wasn't so scary skinny and had curves? She seemed wacked-out in kind of a charming way, like the past wasn't so haunting for her anymore. Like she was the sort you could get really viciously drunk with, and you'd run down the street in bad cheap flipflops and have horrible blisters in the morning.

Now she looks like Skeletor. I am sad for her.

I feel bad that she's forever lost her natural face. The one she has in Sid & Nancy.

@Archetype: *had

@Noah D: i can see it.

@incurable paranoiac: Beautiful. Sad.

@Archetype: she says she was really puffy back then because she was on cortisone shots.

my favorite courtney love line of all time is: "it is my god-given right to take xanax!"

@Noah D: I was thinking the exact same thing! Both are now so far removed from their former selves that they look just the same.

Oh Courtney. Le sigh. You can do better, honey.

@BAngieB: I'm going to second that. She needs it. Bless her heart.

@incurable paranoiac: Wait, it is?! Fucking A, doggie! Thanks Court! I will begin self-medicating...now.

o.m.g. - i have not seen these... sweet jesus.

I'm glad Frances Bean seems together. Hopefully she'll kick her mum into shape.

@incurable paranoiac: Hey, I love me some Xanax, but she's on a lot more than that!

Guh, look at that creepy bicep muscle. It has a mind of its own.

Dear Gawd.

i love her. she doesnt look as gross in person. she is tinier than you can imagine (in height and build, not in skinny-ness)
as long as she is sober and not breast feeding strange men on the street, she is going to be ok.

Live Through This was my schoolbus jam in high school. And I love her fairy princess hair. And her lipgloss is nice!

Oh, Courtney. Why you gotta make it so hard for me to defend you? Stay off drugs! Eat food! I know it's too late to get your old face back, but that was really cute!

@ineffable.me: Isn't she supposed to be like 5'10"?

Didn't she say something about reversing all of her plastic surgery? Which is something I find ridiculous anyway, you've done it already, just leave well enough alone.

Besides her bit part in Sid & Nancy, you can check out the old Courtney in Straight To Hell, also by Alex Cox, I believe. She looks so very different, and young.

Is that a shadow, or is there a stain on the front of that dress? Some things never change.

@Alohamaid: i thought that too! shes tiiiiiiny. unless she shrunk?

Who re-heated death? See now she is walking amongst us...

She deserves every hateful thing she does to herself.

I think the stain on her dress is making me saddest of all. Why does that break my heart?

Courtney is a survivor, she'll be ok.

i just re-watched "the people vs. larry flynt". she's gorgeous in that movie. i can't believe what's happened to her. so sad.

@Trashtastic: Not to put too fine a poin ton it, but you think she's never gotten over Kurt's death?

Girlfriend likes to look ghastly.

@tscheese: She said she wanted to fit the sample size. I don't think she succeeded as it is now hanging off of her...

At least those bangs are growing out.

I can't believe how many people were fooled by her. As a Seattlite, I've watched Ms. Love's career from its inception. She's always struck me as a fame whoring phony. There's nothing punk rock about conforming to Hollywood's dictates re: body weight, endless, unnecessary plastic surgery, designer clothes, etc. She's not unlike any of those other ass clowns who stumble and slobber all over themselves in order to pictured in the front row of some bullshit fashion show. You simply can't be punk while you simultaneously beg the fashion industry's elitist twats to accept you. She embodies a high-school style/ popularity contest. She's such a fucking fake. As John Lydon once said, "she's condemned to eternal bullshit." I hope she's miserable in her quest for starvation. Punk rock my ass. She can go suck a cock.

I was her for Halloween once.

@Nude_Hose: Is this one of those "She murdered Kuuuuurt" references? Those crack me up.

@andrine: wow.

@Archetype: How ironic considering how badly she really wanted to play Nancy Spungen. Although Mr. Cox was nice enough to put her in the movie.

courtney love? that's not britney spears? =]

I accidentally saw Hole while helping a friend do some political tabling at one of the Lollapalooza's. All these teenagers were in the audience wearing pink plastic heart-shaped barettes that had "Hole" printed in script on them. They got them at the merch table. That was when I knew she was never punk rock to begin with. And she had a personal fan (an electric one) for when she put her leg up on the monitor and wanted her hair to blow back dramatically during her rhythm guitar solos. I give her an "A" for Ambition.

in the mid 90s she used to call up my house and leave insanely crude and degrading messages for my roommate regarding parental incest and anal sex. they had never met.

not funny or fun. scary and mean.

I don't get it. I think she looks like every other Hollywood size 00 celeb, so what's everyone freaking about? She looks a million times better now, than she did the night she took over Madonna's interview at some awards show. She looks really buff. The dress is a little questionable, but so what? She marches to her own drummer. I respect her for that. Not all of her choices, but definitely for that.

i've never been able to get past the desperate image i have of her since seeing the documentary "Kurt & Courtney." except, i don't think she had him killed (the film explores this theory). maybe she didn't exactly give him reason to want to live either. cringe. anyhoo, with her, self-love is not what comes to mind.

I have fond memories of her refusing to finish her set and leave the stage when she opened for Jane's Addiction at the Hollywood Bowl. She sat down on the lip over the orchestra pit while a few fans leapt about in an asinine, Hare Krisha kind of way and ostensibly played guitar until she was physically removed by a group of roadies.

That was an $85 ticket for god's sake; have a care, woman.

I saw her in person winter 2006. She was plump, professional, SMART, witty. I hope she's ok now. God knows, there are a lot of young sleb girls who need her to be a sober, wise den mother (someone's got to inherit that crown from Marianne Faithfull)

@Alohamaid: I'm 5ft 10 and she was considerably shorter than me. That's the thing about meeting slebs when you're above average height. They all turn out to be tiny, no matter how much "larger than life"

i still kinda love her. for some reason the new courtney (skinny, designer clothes) really appeals to me. i guess i like the idea of a wolf in sheep's clothing

She's fucking gross--full stop

courtney love is the reason i don't relate to kurt cobain. he seemed so smart....yet he had a woman like this in his life. her right arm reminds me of the old chicken mcnuggets at mcdonalds.

@LisaMc: The fan thing makes me love her that much more. That's so diva.

Say what you will but I think looking like a tranny with no style sense whatsoever is better than showing your privates to the world every time you go out. At least looking this bad took more effort other than just opening your legs.