<![CDATA[Jezebel: moe]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jezebel.com.png <![CDATA[Jezebel: moe]]> http://jezebel.com/tag/moe http://jezebel.com/tag/moe <![CDATA[Bloody Hell: Menstrual Activists Make Periods Public]]> Today we learned an awesome new word: Menarchy, or menstrual anarchy. This is just one name for the growing movement to make "the curse" something a little more bearable. Or, as the case may be, wearable.

The photograph at left is the work of artist Ingrid Berthon-Moine. It is part of a series of pictures that show women wearing the blood that was only recently inside their bodies on their lips. If you think this is gross, Germaine Greer has some choice words for you: "if you think you are emancipated, you might consider the idea of tasting your own menstrual blood – if it makes you sick, you've a long way to go, baby," she wrote in 1970. Berthon-Moine doesn't create these images to gross us out, but rather to show "what you usually don't see—tampons, blood, all that."

As the Guardian reports, Berthon-Moine is only one out of many modern period activists. Kira Cochrane also cites Cella Quint, the creator of a zine titled "Adventures in Menstruating," Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, author of My Little Red Book, and former Jezebel editor Moe Tkacik for her disgustingly illuminating narrative about exactly what happens to a tampon stuck inside a body for 10 long days. It seems like periods are suddenly hot shit. Cochrane writes:

It seems that menstrual activism (otherwise known as radical menstruation, menstrual anarchy, or menarchy) is having a moment. The term is used to describe a whole range of actions, not all considered political by the person involved: simple efforts to speak openly about periods, radical affronts to negative attitudes and campaigns for more environmentally friendly sanitary products. (It is estimated that a woman will dispose of 11,400 tampons in her lifetime – an ecological disaster.)

Cochrane also humerously mentions the Moon Cup-ers: the extremely vocal group of sanitary-product devotees that have got us reconsidering the cost (both environmental and financial) of tampons.

It's probably no surprise that we think this new found openness is pretty great. Despite the weird name, Menarchists are trying to do for periods what Oprah did for pooping. Periods are sometimes gross, somethings funny, often uncomfortable, but they shouldn't be taboo. I'm not going to trade my lip-gloss in for the au naturel look favored by Berthon-Moine, but the more people talk, write, and think about periods, the better.

It's In The Blood [Guardian]

Related: Ten Days In The Life Of A Tampon

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5372984&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Burned By Real-Life Romance, Japanese Men Turn To Fictional Characters]]> Remember the boyfriend pillow? Well, there's a whole subculture in Japan devoted to pillows with young girls on them — and it's about more than just sleep.

Lisa Katayama of the Times talks to several otaku, enthusiastic fans of anime, manga, or video games. Some otaku content themselves with merely consuming 2-D media, but Katayama's interviewees actually fall in love with the characters. 37-year-old Nisan carries around a body pillow whose case bears the image of Nemu, a female tween character from a computer game. He takes her out to lunch, and on weekend karaoke dates, and he has a backup Nemu in his desk for nights he has to work late. He says, "Of course she's my girlfriend. I have real feelings for her."

Nisan isn't alone. There's now a slang word in Japanese for the love of 2-D characters — moe. Some men balance their moe relationships with real-life ones, while others love only in 2-D. Toru Honda, who Katayama describes as "the guru of the 2-D love movement," was once booed at a convention for admitting he watches porn of real women. He advocates moe as an alternative to modern real-life romance, which he calls "romantic capitalism." He says love in Japan is all about looks and money, and "decent men" like himself get left behind. In one of his books, he writes, "Pure love is completely gone in the real world. As long as you train your imagination, a 2-D relationship is much more passionate than a 3-D one."

Honda's complaints don't sound that different from those of anyone navigating the dating world, but there's something subtly misogynistic about moe culture. "In an ideal moe relationship," writes Katayama, "a man frees himself from the expectations of an ordinary human relationship and expresses his passion for a chosen character, without fear of being judged or rejected." Put this way, 2-D loves sounds like a way to have a girlfriend who never talks back, expects anything of you, or has her own opinions. It's also troubling that most of the men Katayama talks to love characters who are underage girls. Toru Taima, favors a pillow of a naked sixth-grader named Karada-chan. He says he does have sex with her, but that he never looks at child porn, that he has no sexual feelings for the three-year-old niece with whom he lives, and that "I am not doing anything to harm anybody."

Upsetting as some of its aspects are, moe love may be more about innocence than about pedophilia. Of men who love only 2-D characters, slightly less gung-ho 2-D aficionado Takuro Morinaga says, "These guys don't want to push ahead in society; they just want to create their own little flower-bed world and live there peacefully." And many of them may want a human girlfriend but have difficulty finding one. Love is tough in Japan: over 25% of Japanese people between 30 and 34 are virgins, and half say they have no friends of the opposite sex. Nisan says,

I'm pretty conflicted inside. People say there are some otaku who don't want to get married, but that's not true. Some have so little confidence that they've just given up, but deep inside their souls, they want it just as much as anybody else.

Moe lovers may be making real-life relationships more difficult for themselves by falling in love with characters who will never argue, fight, or have feelings of their own. But, its upsetting aspects aside, the desire to give up on the rat race of romance and live in a "flower-bed" is a little sad — and a little sweet.

Love In 2-D [NYT]

Earlier: It's Getting Serious: My First Week With Brendan, My "Boyfriend Pillow"

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5321027&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Moe Better Blues: Requiem For A Dream Blogger]]> Today, as many of you know, is Moe's last day. What to say? Well, for starters, it's the end of an era. As my first hire, I have worked alongside Moe longer than anyone else, and the two of us have seen one another through every stage of the site's evolution: planning, plotting and brainstorming (God, that was fun, wasn't it?); two months of test blogging; the launch... the list, of course, goes on. But one thing that has remained constant this past year and a half is that Moe has stayed — at times, stubbornly — true to her singular point of view, bringing an entirely original voice, breadth of knowledge, and formidable intelligence to almost everything she's done.

The depth of her curiosity and the amount of energy she brings to the table constantly astound me: her contributions have made laugh harder than I ever thought possible when sitting alone in front of a computer and also moved me to tears. She has challenged some notions, and solidified others. Her ideas are never predictable but always provocative. Of all the writers, editors and bloggers I had the pleasure to know over my professional career, she is one of the most consistently exciting.

But let's be honest here: there's no reason to make this into some sort of eulogy; Moe is not going very far. Starting next week, she will be found over on Gawker, where she will have the luxury of having a broader range of subjects to write about and a (somewhat) new audience to get to know and love. And she'll continue to do a few of the features she created for Jezebel on Jezebel ( yes, that means more Crap Email From A Dude, occasional Crappy Hours, and hopefully, more rants against women's magazines) although I doubt she'll ever let me convince her to attend NY Fashion Week again. Until that time, please join me in reliving (in chronological order, no less) the past year and a half of everything from pop culture to politics, tampons, and Paul Janka...below. (Your additions welcome, in the comments.)

  • May 27, 2007: Lindsay Lohan does blow, causes blow up.
  • July 15, 2007: Angelina Jolie, Mariane Pearl, and blowjobs.
  • July 16, 2007: Pregnancy scares and Plan B.
  • July 17, 2007: Boozing it up with Obama Girl.

Ed Note: She was really on a roll in mid-July.

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5031792&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Announcements]]> Sad but also exciting news: Our own Moe Tkacik, who was my first hire and has been amusing, educating and provoking Jezebel readers since we launched in late May of 2007, is, in early August, making a jump over to Radar Online moving over to Gawker. Hopefully, this will give Moe the opportunity to flex some different muscles, leave the ladymag-reading and other Crappy and onerous tasks behind, and train her eye on targets that are a little closer to home. (Of course, I'll be demanding that she continue some of her most beloved, well-known Jezebel creations, like CEFAD, in her free time.) More on this — and from her — sometime soon, but please do give her your sincere congratulations in the comments.

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5027642&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Savage Hate]]> All week, readers have been writing in about advice-giver Dan Savage's latest column, in which Jezebel — specifically our response to that awful 'Dear Abby' feature from last week — gets a negative mention. Personally, I didn't care one way or another about Savage's slam, but Moe sure did! With every email from a reader that came in, she shot off a response to the entire staff. Click on Savage's picture to read her increasingly-irate responses!

March 25 (10:35 am): "Hahahaha so true. Of course, our POST was about Dear Abby's advice, not that weird fucking letter."

March 25 (10:41 am): "It's also really weird that he's calling us for NOT spotting a fake when we spotted the fake who was plagiarizing all his (purportedly real) letters because they seemed so fake. Whatever, dude. Yeah, it was a super phone sex sounding scenario, but...um...nastier true shit happens every day on TV. Jesus fuck, there's a decent chance someone with this selfsame story winds up on Moment Of Truth by the end of this season."

March 26 (9:54 am): "Yeah, Dan Savage can suck it. He just hates blogs. Sure, the letter was a little porny and Penthouse Forum-y — but you know what happens sometimes? People ACT OUT THEIR PORNY FANTASIES. Weirder shit has happened. Seriously, Dan Savage, fuck you."

March 26 (10:28 am): "What annoys me is just that, hello, we are the ones who spotted his plagiarized letters in that NYPress lady's column. We spotted them because they sounded suspiciously fetishy. Because they had been sent into Savage Love, which is a repository of that sort of thing, okay. But then he went and defended the dumbass plagiarist, and I am assuming that's just because he hates blogs, which is annoying because we work fucking hard, and it's weird to imagine fetishists emailing Dear Abby, but she gets points for giving them exactly the sort of response the average incest orgy rape fetishist wants to hear!"

March 26 (10:29 am): "I bet he is one of those queens who is so sweet and fawning to your face and catty behind your back."

March 26 (10:04 pm): "Aaaack! Fuck fan [sic] savage! Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld."

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=372802&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[First Impressions: Catherine Malandrino's Big Sleeves, Feminine Frocks Make A Pretty Woman Out Of Moe]]> Moe's over at the Chelsea Art Museum for the spring/summer 2008 Catherine Malandrino show. (That's Catherine at left.) Moe may be hungover (she texted us something about 9/11 conspiracy theories at 1:30am last night, so it's likely). And Jennifer is there too, sitting next to Mena Suvari. Here's what Moe has to say. 12:41: "It is very hot. A man next to me with a Jeffrey bag who weighs approximately 110 pounds is wearing colossal sunglasses, white plaid pants with black trim at the bottoms, a pale pale yellow tank top, and a short little black half jacket thingy, with a white peter pannish collar and short, puffed sleeves. Think he's gay?" 12:48: "Princess Leah buns on models. White and cream sure are popular colors for spring! With beige a close second. Malandrino is all about gigantic sleeves. Like sleeves as the new hoopskirts. Sleeves that say, I defy you to try and tap me on the shoulder at a party while I am talking to someone more important, and gayer, than you." 12:50: "A man in front of me has an actual Chinese fan with which he is fanning himself. ALEK WEK." "Or wait, not Alek Wek." (Click through for more)

12:53: "There is one model with the most self satisfied smirk. As if she couldn't, at any minute, fall right down on her clavicle and die. Yeah, so your dress is pretty guess what you CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU!" 12:56: "And I would be lying if I said the dresses weren't almost universally gorgeous. I would be telling you sweet little lies. Because they are. These dresses are disgustingly beautiful. This is where the dilemma would come in for me, I guess, if I had gazillions of dollars. The pallette is very Crayola markers "bold" collection, which have always been my favorite colors, and the detailing is gorge. Ok, now over. Heavy sigh." 12:58: "Malan is here. He's gotta be creaming himself over those sleeves." 1:00: "Half the seats have Japanese names. Malandrino is Japanese! It makes so much sense now. Wow. You really can't begrudge the Japanese their painstakingly beautiful clothes. They gave us the fuel efficient car! And the Nintendo Wii." 1:08: "Kidding of course. I don't think Malandrino is Japanese. Is it? Looking at front row seat names. Irina Mikhailovskaya of Elle Russia... Nikolaus Albrecht of German Glamour. The world = so small! Ok, one more thing. I forgot to mention the music. It is super dramatic orchestral, reminding me of Bjork's "Homogenic" album, the only music that ever made me think I could become a pothead. It is rich and dramatic and perfect for the dresses, so you feel sort of like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman when she watches the opera scene: Like, oh! I get how people think this is EMOTIONAL and shit. Like it is ART. Because it is art, when you forget how it all gets corrupted and huckstered by the whole commerce thing."

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=297798&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[ Moe almost died at the Max Azria show! 2:43:...]]> Moe almost died at the Max Azria show! 2:43: "I'm in line with a woman in sleeveless sheath wearing glitter on her arms and also, moss green gloves. Is this normal? Snoopy is here and the approaching Snoopy show, which some attendees mistakenly assumed would be a dog fashion show, is being discussed. A short girl with a large yellow bag explains it is actually a show featuring ensembles by different designers inspired by Peanuts characters. 'Who designed Pig Pen?' I wonder. No one knows. 'It's going to be the best show here,' I say. 'You mean because there's so many different designers?' asks the girl with the yellow bag. Now there is a rush, an exodus. EVERYONE CHARGING IN OPPOSITE DIRECTION END TIMES END TIMES. Max Azria is at capacity and allowing no more guests in. Drat!" (BUT THERE'S MORE! Ever-resourceful Moe discovered a television screen and reviewed the show anyway! Click the tag for more...)

2:53: "Ah! There's a screen outside. Why can't there be a CSPAN channel for this so I don't have to leave my hotel room? It would be like C-SPAN 2, only more boring. Look, Carine Roitfeld! My she has poor posture. Just like us! Clothes are meh. Silky shiny white cream white white beige... Belts, wide leg pants, flowy flowy all the trends blah blah. All the details are subtle and silhouettes clean, clothes I would wear if I wore white. Or bought clothes. All models look same and white as BCBG models with 90% less makeup, hair in ponytails. "wow that was really minimalist!" exclaims a spectator. OMG I'm envisioning a C-Span of fashion shows with a call in program. What would they say? 'That was so minimalist! That model needs Proactiv!' Only fashion week can make you appreciate the crazies who call up C-Span..."

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=297624&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[First Impressions: Ports 1961 Fashion Show Smells Better Than Our Hotel Room]]> Moe decided to break her self-imposed ban on non booze-involving fashion week events to attend the Ports 1961 show because of a unique globalization angle: the brand is based in Xiamen, a Chinese city renowned mostly for being the home base of the country's thriving human trafficking industry. The designers used mostly black models, an interesting choice, but an insight into the method behind their madness: 6'1 black women can make anything look expensive, even clothes that scream "flagrant appeal to former communist bloc!" Which half of these dresses were. Here's what she had to say: 9:28: "Standing room again. This morning when Briana came into the hotel room her first words were 'Oh it smells gross in here!' I am dying from pneumonia and could not smell anything though I had noticed a meatball sandwich had been left on the desk overnight. Anyway, right now, the floral smell is overpowering. Fashion has such wondrous abilities to sharpen the senses. Ivanka Trump has an awe-inspiring rack, if that is her..." (Click through for more)

9:39: "Also in standing room: Sharon, Kitty and Winki, all designers for Ports. Do designers usually stand in standing room? I guess they don't need to be up close to appreciate the fine detailing of the clothes they just designed. They all live in Xiamen. Um, African music and first two models are black. Make that first THREE! It is the anti BCBG." 9:43: "Okay, so these clothes are predominantly for Chinese customers, as this is, as far as I know, the leading luxury brand in China or something. And there are totally some chintzy looking if expensive fabrics and retarded details I can see going over well in China. But on black models, and most of them are black, they look super classy." 9:47: "Now music is Moroccan. All colors are neutrals, which is nice. China can be a little florid color happy on account of all those years in navy and army green. ALEK WEK?!" 9:51: "Oh man, ugliest dress ever. There's a definite line between dresses where someone laid down the law and said "enough with the cutesey little details" and the ones where they were just like, "eh, fuck it, the last time we covered a dress in pom poms and rosettes it sold HUGE in Hong Kong." 9:52: "Wow. Show ended, and when lead designer came out, the crowd went wild. That didn't happen at Nicole Miller."

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=297427&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Moe just got seated at the Nicole Miller...]]> Moe just got seated at the Nicole Miller show. Unfortunately, the instant messaging function on her phone is not working anymore. (Sabotage? Or a spilled drink?) Fortunately, her email is! Here's what she has to say so far. 7:42: "I have a seat this time. I have realized that we rank somewhere between Life & Style and Glam.com and one row ahead of a fifty-something man in sunglasses entirely dressed in camouflage with neon accents. It does seem unfair. Omg I think I see Emily Weiss! Yes!! She is staring so intently!" 7:44: "Clothes much more tailored, less vomitously pretty. I'm still not seeing how these shows are supposed to 'tell a story'." 7:47: "I'm always torn when clothes are pretty, and smart looking, devoid of stupid extraneous flourishes, obviously beautifully tailored, and yet I know anyone who would wear them I would, like, hate. It's like the way I felt in high school about J Crew. These women all work in marketing."

7:55: "Outside I ran into a girl from Boston Magazine who recognized me. She reminded me it is now Boston Fashion week. We would be so front row at that."

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=296849&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[First Impressions: At BCBG, Belts, Bodices Are In]]>

MoeBCBG5.jpg
MoeBCBG3090507.jpgImages from the show coming soon.

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=296593&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Women: Fuck. Multitasking. Already.]]> Hey! What are you doing right now? Nothing? Everything? Writing an email? Running your tongue over your teeth and wondering if your gums are receding? You should probably call a dentist! But remember the last time you were at the dentist? When they just said you'd have to return to the dentist? Shit! Maybe you should call your mother! She certainly thinks that should be more of a priority! And she's right! But maybe you should finish that post you were just writing first! Maybe you should finish writing that email you were writing on your Blackberry, only on your laptop this time? Maybe you should call your bank and see about getting those overdraft fees waived, and call a doctor about the weird patch of burst blood vessels on your thigh — did the laptop do that? Should you buy your dad a Father's Day present, or oh shit that wedding present, but WHY does your little IM icon keep bouncing I WONDER WHO IT IS (NOT)... And you volunteered to see about movie times, even though movies are just an excuse to aimlessly click through old emails in a cool, quiet place.. but wait a second here's another article on multitasking, and how women are sooooo good at it, and how they think it's SUCH an asset in their ability to handle the demanding modern workplace, and to that we would just like to say, excuse me but NO IT IS NOT!!! "Multitasking" is actually more like being called "curvy."

Sometimes it's a statement of fact, but more often these days it's a euphemism for "what you do when you possess the attention span of a five-year-old." The patina of tech-savvy well-roundedness only makes it seem more like another way The Man is trying to force you into mindless fembotry.

Here's a quote from the story. Did we read it? Let's just say we skimmed it thoughtfully, because that's how the author meant for us to read it when he was writing it while checking his email and bidding on those Bose speakers and listening to Stern. It's about a survey of women as to what they feel their competitive advantages over men in the workplace might be.

The first query was: What intrinsic qualities do women have that give them a competitive edge over men?
By an overwhelming margin, the trait they touted most was their multitasking expertise."I challenge any man to talk on the phone, send a fax, reply to an e-mail, change a diaper, get a toddler a snack, monitor what your school-age children are watching on TV and add to the grocery list — all at the same time," wrote Heather Lawrence.
Yeah, and we challenge Heather to perform two of any but the most thoughtless and repetitive of those tasks at the same time with any sort of proficiency. Multi-tasking should be a point of pride for computer operating systems, but for women, it's a necessary evil that should be minimized at all costs, precisely because men don't have to do nearly as much of it and are thus better-equipped to focus on individual complex problems long enough to occasionally solve them. (Or let greed and testosterone fuck them up royally while we're making the trains run on time and handling the damage control.)
Study after study has proven what you should know intuitively anyway about this, about how doing "everything at once," as Bonnie Fuller advocates in that book we're not going to do her the service of linking here, actually accomplishes nothing at all, except maybe to send people clicking on paparazzi photos, so yeah thanks for the traffic, but go read a book when you're done and tell us what's in it. We don't have the attention span to do it for ourselves.

Wome Take Off The Gloves And Come Out Multitasking [NY Times]

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=279976&view=rss&microfeed=true