Jezebel: baggage

Can Barack Obama Unite The Country's Skinny And Fat?

Moe — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:00:02 EST

Were you aware? Oprah Winfrey's endorsing Barack Obama. And it kind of looks to be working! He's leading in Iowa, and almost leading in New Hampshire. And in South Carolina, the state of the mulatto lovechild rumors that sunk John McCain not eight years ago, demand for tickets to an Oprah-Obama appearance has been so strong they had to change venues from an 18,000-seater stadium to a bigger one. And here's something also weird: according to the Economist Obama is actually the favorite Democrat candidate amongst Republican voters. What now? According to all the major news sources, it's all part of the Oprah effect. Why all this fuss over what a celebrity thinks? A Nation story inadvertently explains why:

She to many people Oprah embodies a comforting sort of motherly everywoman, whose embrace has been perhaps too comfortably nonpartisan. If some part of her audience felt betrayed when she lost more weight than the average soccer mom, it stands to reason that they'll feel betrayed when she takes an overt stand in the political realm.

Um, okay, but who really felt all that betrayed when Oprah lost the weight? And that's when we remembered: as a recent New York Times story explained, running for president is sort of like being Jennifer Love Hewitt; the public is constantly shoving trans-fats in your face, then mocking you when you eat too many of them. It's a vicious cyle! You can never win! Someone's always going to be judging.

Senator Barack Obama, who was chubby as a child, refers to himself as skinny in speeches and barely touches fatty foods — except at events like the Iowa State Fair, where he ate caramel corn, pork and a corn dog for the cameras.

What's this?! How very Nicole Richie of him. And yet, no one cares. And yet, somehow, he transcends the barriers segregating thin and fat, Panera Bread and Pilates patronizing. Can another candidate make that claim?

I think we've hit upon an historic moment, folks!

Where The Votes Are, So Were All Those Calories [NYT]
Related: Obama Nominated For Grammy Award [Billboard]

My Week With A $4000 Snakeskin Handbag

Moe — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:00:05 EDT

Perhaps you recall: I own one handbag. Which is why under normal circumstances, I might have glazed over today's Daily Mail story on the booming python handbag industry, wherein poor Indonesians venture into the jungle and risk being eaten alive by the 20-foot long endangered snakes they are trying to trap so they can nail them to trees, peel off their skins and toss their still-living carcasses into piles where they eventually rot to death, then repeat the process so they can sell them for a few bucks a yard to middlemen who sell them for a few more bucks a yard to luxury goods companies who sew a yard or two into $4,000 purses. Because, you know, there are dogs dying in Iraq, and I can only take so much bad news in one day, and it takes a lot of brain power to process how $4,000 + willful participation in such an orgy of pointless cruelty to serve the same function as my admittedly gross $20 canvas bag could possibly be worthwhile. Well, meet my status bag! It's a python skin Lambertson Truex (yours for $3,995!) and as a special treat for being such a good blogger, Anna borrowed it from Bag, Borrow or Steal, so I wouldn't humiliate myself at Fashion Week... Did it help me? Hurt my enemies? That's what the jump is for, guys!

Okay, seriously, I was going to do this as a "diary" but it would be the most pointless thing ever. No one fucking noticed. And the thing is, everyone at Fashion Week is in a frenzy of fake compliment-showering; I fielded literally eight separate compliments at a single party on my black Moleskine notebook. The one thing I can say for the bag is that, while carrying it in line for the Diesel show, I slyly cut in front of a few clumps of people, and no one told me off, and then a few minutes later when another girl attempted to do the same, two other ladies totally took her to school. Big whup. I didn't get into the show. Finally on my last day with the bag, I went on a date at a fancy restaurant with a banker. We had an animated conversation about income inequality and the Beijing Olympics and the Turkish economy, when finally he blurted out, "Your bag kind of scares me." Yeah, the feeling is mutual.

Python Skinned And Left To Die [Daily Mail]

Somehow, swastikas slipped into a floral...

Moe — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:45:00 EDT

Somehow, swastikas slipped into a floral print used to make purses at Zara and now Zara's recalling them. If apparel retailers weren't so divorced from the people who actually make their shit we would be skeptical someone along the Zara supply chain thought of this as some sort of subversive joke, like back when we lived in Hong Kong and someone made a killing selling red T-shirts with huge swastikas and fake Helmut Lang logos on them. You would see teenagers skateboarding around town wearing them and just think to yourself, "Man, kids are fucking stupid no matter how innately good at math they happen to be." And yeah, yeah, Buddhist symbol, we know. [Telegraph]