A Design, An Alignment, A Cry

Fashion Friday: Pinup Style Edition

(Yet another installment in our sporadically-updated series. Tune in for the next episode sometime in the fall!)

Speaking of the unrealistically skinny appearance of most models, I found this article about a trend in which girls take inspiration from pinups from the 40s and 50s, saying “to women who have grown up with the spray-tanned, skinny models as their beauty ideal, this look is new and refreshing, and even groundbreaking” and that it “'is a way of being feminine without looking like a little girl in pigtails and ruffles. Wearing stockings and high heels, there’s something fundamentally adult about that'...They draw on a pervasive nostalgia for 'more innocent days when sexuality wasn’t portrayed as so hard core and in your face.'”

It's certainly interesting, but at the same time I'm more than a little meh about embracing something that was originally about the objectification of women, even if it does involve a far more realistic approach to women's figures and a much more classy/glamorous way of dressing. You can dress in a chic and classy way without necessarily taking your inspiration from pinups. Thoughts?

College Teaches You More Than Math

(Now that finals have blissfully faded into the past-that-is-no-longer, I feel like I can finally post this)

One thing that college has taught me is that there are very few woman who are truly happy with the way they look. I am by no means thin, and I start seeing red a bit whenever somebody pats the fashion industry on the back for being "realistic" and including "curvy size eights" ::eyeroll:: When I was in high school, I looked askance at all of the thin girls I knew and thought bitterly that surely they must be happy -- they were thin for crying out loud!

Then I got to college, and listened to first my roommate, then the rest of the dorm moan about how fat and ugly they were. How could this be? This group of girls moaning about their weight included a beauty who ran a mile every day, my roommate who is curvaceous in the absolute best sense of that word and an assortment of sixes, eights and tens who were all perfectly healthy, curves and all. Maybe we weren't all in the best of shape, but we could hardly be labeled overweight, let alone obese. Seeing these girls (whom I regarded as pretty-near-perfectly-sized) just as unhappy with their figures as I was with mine astonished me.

Honestly, I don't have anything else very profound to say. We've all been sold a bill of goods* by the people behind the checkout glossies, and I can't imagine that attaining the nigh-on impossible ideal body that they present would make me (or anybody else) happy. As cheesy and trite and cliched and banal as it sounds, who you are on the inside really does matter more.

(No, duh, disclaimer: losing weight for reasons of health is a different kettle of fish from losing weight for the sake of societal pressures and conventions and fitting into the popular clothes)

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*You don't suppose the fact that fashion magazines are at least half advertisements has anything to do with this, hmm? Buy this face cream, that sweater, those boots, and be THIN! PRETTY! HAPPY! It's almost like they're businesses... ::le eyeroll::

The New Noblewoman

An intriguing look at a new online site, The New Noblewoman, which features posts on diverse topics ranging from Lars von Trier's Melancholia to the difference between high and low teas. It looks to be most inspirational and lovely.

Breath of Fresh Air

Brand new online magazine Dignitas looks like a nice rebuttal to the fashion magazines of the checkout lane. Go thou and check it out!

Prayer Before Study

Reblogging because FINALS.

Prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas before Study

 O ineffable Creator,

Who, out of the treasure of Thy wisdom,

hast ordained three hierarchies of Angels,

and placed them in wonderful order above the heavens,

and hast most wisely distributed the parts of the world;

Thou, Who are called the true fountain of light and wisdom,

and the highest beginning,

vouchsafe to pour upon the darkness of my understanding,

in which I was born,

the double beam of Thy brightness,

removing from me all darkness of sin and ignorance.

Thou, Who makest eloquent the tongue of the dumb, 

instruct my tongue, 

and pour on my lips the grace of Thy blessing.

Give me quickness of understanding, 

capacity of retaining,

subtlety of interpreting,

facility in learning, 

and copious grace of speaking.

Guide my going in, 

direct my going forward, 

accomplish my going forth; 

through Christ our Lord. 

Amen.

Shakespeare's Birthday!

Today, April 23, is the 447th birthday of Shakespeare. Here are some interesting facts:

1. There is no absolute evidence that today is Shakespeare's birthday, but is accepted as the correct date, based upon the day of his Baptism. This information came from my Shakespeare professor (aka a valid source).
2. Today is the Feast of St. George, patron of England.
3. Shakespeare is also thought to have died on April 23rd!
4. Isn't that fitting....
5. And, it is speculated that Shakespeare was Catholic.

Just thought you'd find this an epic coincidence!

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them."
"All the world is but a stage"
~William Shakespeare

undressing modest dress

An interesting article, with an interesting perspective.

I agree with the author's main point, which is: modesty comes from transcending concern about our appearance and our body. When we are truly modest, we don't worry about whether or skirt hits exactly at the knee (or at the ankle--whatever your personal modesty rules entail), nor do we concern ourselves that our shirts are too low or high or sleeves are too see-through or cut right. I believe that an undue concern with modesty rules is detrimental. What I believe many modest fashionistas have proved is that truly fashionable and stylish clothing is always modest. Focus on being a beautiful dresser, and you will be a modest dresser.

Also, modesty, as a fruit of the Holy Spirit, is automatically present when other virtues shine forth. Cultivate virtues such as love, courage, humility, purity, and prudence, and modesty will naturally follow.

Wingless Chickens

Flannery O'Connor about knocked my socks off with her letters. I'd read four or five of her short stories before coming to this book, and, while they were interesting enough, none of them really sparked my interest until we read "Everything that Rises Must Converge" for a seminar class last semester. The symbolism and wry humor intrigued me enough that I trotted down to the library and picked up, not her other works of fiction, but her collected letters. It was the greatest of fortune.

The book opens with letters written during her time in New England -- letters to her mother in Georgia, an exchange with Elizabeth McKee who became her agent. There wasn't anything particularly extraordinary or gripping in the first hundred pages or so. O'Connor's wry, biting humor, turned against herself as often as against others, definitely was there, and there was some talk of her writing and her thoughts on the literary figures and works of her day, but it wasn't until 1955 that the letters really began to pick up. Because, you see, in 1955 Betty Hester (known only as "A." in the collection; her identity was revealed after her death in 1998) wrote to Flannery, asking about her short story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find. Flannery's curiosity and interest were piqued from that very first letter. 

You were very kind to write to me and the measure of my appreciation must be to ask you to write again. I would like to know who this is who understands my stories. 

In the following letters, Flannery's delight with finding someone with whom she could engage in intellectual conversation as an equal is startlingly palpable. Letters to Hester form the bulk of the remaining collection, although not even all of these were included.

Reading her letters is to peep inside Flannery's head, and the portrait painted by the letters is extraordinarily life-like. Flannery's sense of humor, her impatience with sentimentalism, and her deep and tenacious faith all spring off the page with a fierce vivacity. After reading the nearly 600 pages of the book, I feel as though I know her, as arrogant and cliched as that may sound. Flannery wrote on a myriad of topics, informing friends of happenings on the farm (Flannery's mother kept cows and Flannery raised fowl of various kinds, including peacocks and swans), her reactions to books she'd read, tart commentary on goings-on in the world and not least of all, exasperation with the stubbornness of misinterpretation of her work. Her work is often (if not universally) labelled grotesque and "Southern Gothic" (whatever this may mean), and, not having read much of her writing, I feel disinclined to pass judgement on those labels. But, having read her own reflections on her work, I know that she saw herself as a sort of prophet (if I may use that term) to a world that had lost much of its sensibility of sin, its consciousness of the fallen state of man. She succinctly (and memorably) summarized this loss to Hester:

The moral sense has been bred out of certain sections of the population, like the wings have been bred off certain chickens to produce more white meat. This is a generation of wingless chickens, which I suppose is what Nietzsche meant when he said God was dead.

Her blunt forcefulness acted as a two-by-four to the head of a world that was losing, and in many ways had already lost, its ability to judge between good and evil. Flannery's writing is shocking in the way that smelling salts are shocking.

All is not a bitter crusade against evil and its minions, however, and Flannery is equally captivating when relating hilarious farm news or defending the Catholic faith to various correspondents. There are, of course others beside Hester, and I particularly enjoyed O'Connor's exchanges with Dr. T. R. Spivey, Cecil Dawkins and Maryat Lee. The last letter Flannery wrote, a short note to Lee, was found on her bedside table after her death and mailed by her mother. It refers to an anonymous phone call Lee had received, and counseled her to call the police, telling her that

cowards can be just as vicious as those who declare themselves -- more so. Don't take any romantic attitude toward that call. Be properly scared and go on doing what you have to do, but take the necessary precautions.

It seems a very O'Connoresque note to end on: don't take a romantic view of the situation, and do what you need to do without fuss or emotionalism. I get the feeling that this would have been her approach to death as well as nasty anonymous phone calls.


Obligatory bio-snippet: Flannery graduated from Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College & State University) in 1945, then attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Flannery spent time in New England, both with friends and at the Yaddo artists' colony before being diagnosed with lupus in 1951. Other than excursions to give lectures and a pilgrimage to Lourdes (and stints in the hospital), O'Connor spent the rest of her life living with her mother Regina on their dairy farm, Andalusia, in Milledgeville, Georgia until her death on August 3, 1964 from lupus.

Dust unto Dust

The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.

The men of the East may search the scrolls
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.

-- G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse