On The Subject of Photography…

Words on Paper, originally uploaded by emilie79*.

My newest favorite Flickr member. She’s based out of Paris and does amazing things with old Polaroids.

oof.

Today, this is how I feel:

I just can’t seem to get my New Year’s optimism on. Especially not after losing my apartment keys and having to miss 2 hours of work to sort it out with my realtor.

But at least I can get into my apartment now. Good grief.

One of the Coolest Things EVER.

Okay, so everyone knows how Polaroid stopped producing their instant cameras and film since almost a year ago, and will soon stop carrying the film at all (it’s a phasing-out thing). I personally think this was a dumb move (though my brother will argue with me to the death about this), as a HUGE niche market has opened up amongst the analog-loving hipsters of my generation. Bad business decision, if you ask me (though I am in no way qualified to advise on business). I will admit, even I nipped my parents’ old, long-abandoned 80’s model for my own enjoyment, and now treat it like it’s a little nugget of gold.

Now, in the midst of this heightened popularity in the face of discontinuation (which has only served to make Polaroids MORE popular), another trend has opened up: digital Polaroid templates have flooded the internet, allowing amateur photographers to convert their digis to wonderfully low-tech looking fake Polaroids.

I admit, I thought the idea was a bit silly, until I found this program via this blog. Poladroid isn’t just a template, is a ridiculously fun widget that has already provided me hours of fun. It puts a little Polaroid camera icon on your desktop. Then you drag the photo you want to convert onto it. Then –get this– it makes a little Polaroid camera SOUND, then spits the image out onto your desktop where you can watch it DEVELOP.

Okay, I know I’m easily amused, but you have to admit that’s pretty cool. In addition, I have to say the results are pretty genuine-looking. So yeah, if you’re gonna fake it, do it right, I say. God knows we won’t have the real thing for much longer!

I haven’t abandoned this blog, I PROMISE. But as you should all know by now, I’m about 2/3 insane, and on top of that–hoo boy–have the last few months been trying or what.

So yeah. Keep reading, I’ve got stuff to say, y’all. Like Britney Spears. And like her, I believe my fans want me to “strive”*, so I WILL be back. Only with a better vocabulary, and greater understanding of the English language.

*If you saw her documentary on MTV, you know what I’m talking about. If you didn’t, you missed out on a truly great cable-TV experience:

On Female Archetypes and Womanhood

Read: The Petite Sophisticate: Soapbox

Okay, I have some definite feelings about this, but my thoughts are still a little scattered, so here goes.

This is not the first time I’ve seen this come out of the internet… Jezebel did a similar piece on “manic pixie dream girls” a few months back, that I discovered after hearing a segment about it on NPR.

If you read the Petite Sophisticate piece, and especially the comments that follow, you can see this archetype is causing quite a bit of resentment and envy amongst the ladies. A lot of attention is given to the siren-esque attributes of the “Amazing Girl”, or “AG” as Sadie, the author, dubs her. Apparently AGs are out there stealing the men from all the “real” girls, with their mystery and… scarves, apparently (there is a lot of talk about scarves). Unfortunately, Sadie fails to settle on one specific type of girl to resent, as evidenced by the commenters complaints. Sometimes the AG is a creative spirit, sometimes her only talent seems to be “sleeping with artists”. Sometimes what infuriates others is the AG’s generosity and non-judgemental demeanor, other times she is seen as a “calculating” and manipulative woman, who is threatened by the presence of other females. Really, the post simply becomes a place for women to air their insecurity-fueled grievences about whatever female got the guy at the end of the day.

What the hell, people? Do you realize that this is a completely fictional woman?! You know what all the examples of the AG or MPDG have in common? Some guy made them up!

Annie Hall? Penny Lane? Sam, from Garden State? Maude? Clementine Kruczynski? The Mona Lisa, even? C’mon these women are all the creations of men! And these guys are not even good examples of men who are known for their respect of the opposite sex!

The thing is, in Jezebel’s post I was surprised to see that most of the MPDGs listed existed in movies that I’m a huge fan of. So my disappointment stems largely from (surprise!) a feminist standpoint: Once again, we have men making up a perfectly innocent female archetype that then ends up pitting women against each other in order to attain what? That Which Makes Us Whole, of course: A man.

Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking, “Oh Erin, you and your man-hating ways.”

I’d like to set the record straight and say I absolutely do not hate men. Unfortunately, my reasons for feeling impassioned enough to write this post have to do with a man, yes. It’s a really personal issue, and I’ll tell you why. For years, I was in love with an artist. Head-over-heels. My ultimate wet dream was for him at any point to refer to me as his “muse”. I tried desperately to fill the role of “Amazing Girl”, even though she was as vague in my mind as she is in The Petite Sophisticate.

Then, the artist and I broke up. He found another girl, and wasted no time in letting me know of her existence. She was awesome. She was creative. She was wiry, philisophical and yes, she was a poet.

I fell apart. How could there be another girl, more special than me, for him?? I am being completely honest when I say, I never knew what jealousy felt like until that period in my life. My insecurity became crippling. I learned what panic attacks feel like. And I hated her for it.

Of course, the artist and I reunited, and you would THINK that would solve my insecurities, but it didn’t. His amazingly manipulative manner in pitting us against each other totally worked, and my entire being was in the palm of his hand. I struggled against my feelings of wanting to get to know such a girl, and wanting to make sure she never came between us again. I became someone else, really.

We remained together for another year and a half, desperately holding together a wounded love that became dependent on my emotional, well, dependence (this is exactly what the professionals refer to as “co-dependence”).

Luckily, over time, I found it in myself to take care of my psyche, recognize my compliance in a sick relationship model, and to try to right the wrongs that had been going on for so long. This included reaching out to the girl who I’d hated in place of hating the man I loved, the man who taught me what jealousy feels like. It was perhaps, the biggest step I took in reclaiming myself, and to untangle my self-worth from my ability to hold the artist’s attention. Which I didn’t. The less I needed him, the deeper he buried himself in his work.

The irony is that, as this girl and I got to know each other, it was revealed that all the time I felt so insecure about her, she had been feeling the same way about me. We had both observed similarities in our characters and dubbed ourselves inadequate, somehow. The kicker came when I revisited a poem she had written about the artist, and suddenly realized I was in it, at the end. I was the ethereal, mysterious love. Perhaps to her, I had been the AG. I can’t speak for her, of course, but perhaps.

So, having been on both sides of this, I can safely say that the AG and the MPDG are both exemplified perfectly exactly where they belong: In fiction. In the movies. So why are we women hating each other over it? Women have spent so long trying to prove that we are not possessions, not prizes to be won. We are so much more. When are we going to wake up and realize that men aren’t prizes or possessions either?

At the end of the day, everyone’s doing the best they can. Even those manic pixies. And if “doing the best you can” means you wear scarves and read poetry, fine. If not, that’s fine too! Will doing the best you can and being yourself score you the guy in the end? Who cares? The guy is not for scoring! Your self-worth has nothing to do with that!

So yeah, women, lets all put our hackles down and remember we’re not on teams, we’re actually all on the same team: Team Humanity. And if that sounds corny, fine. But I have to be honest, I am much happier as a person once I realized this and embraced another woman I had thought would be the ruin of me, than I was when I “had” the man. And while, at the time, I may have been trying to fit the description of an “Amazing Girl”, I can tell you that during that period, I never felt less amazing.

And Speaking of Being a Geek About Fashion…

Alexander McQueen will be designing a line for Target.

*Excited squeak*

A Texted Conversation Between Two Fashion Geeks…

My Friend (we’ll call her “Mo”, because she secretly likes that): Keffyehs are dead they’re selling them at hot topic

Me: I figured as much. Vintage silk scarves are where it’s at, i’m telling you.

Me: also, what were you doing in a hot topic?

Things I Learned in the Hospital

So this weekend has been the craziest I’ve had in awhile, namely because I fell ill and had to be admitted to the hospital for a few days.  Let me tell you, it was wild.

Since late August, I’ve been waging a losing battle with my tonsils, in which they develop tonsilitis to torture me.  I fight back by going to the doctor and zapping them with antbiotics.  Then they bring out their signature move: tonsilitis again, after the antibiotics are done.  We were neck-and-neck until I went to an ear, nose, and throat specialist who took a CT scan and revealed a devastating surprise move from the tonsils: an abcess that had to be drained. Oh snap.

I won’t go into the gory details of that, since having your tonsil drained of infected fluid is exactly as gross as it sounds.  Suffice it to say they were one up on me after that.  I plotted my revenge, and took the new different type of abcess-fighting-antibiotic the doctor perscribed me.  Only, one day after taking it, I started having a reaction to it, and was so sick that on Thursday, I had to go to the ER and be admitted to the hospital for a few days.  Double-crossed by a doctor… and a specialist, no less!  This was getting dirty.

Now, every time I’ve explained my predicament to anyone, their first question is, “Are they going to take your tonsils out?”

Of course not, I’m having too much fun battling them as it is.

I’ve actually wondered that myself, but the truth is, every time I’ve seen a doctor, their response to that issue has been, “Well, if this happens ONE MORE TIME, we’ll take them out.”  Yeah, okay.  Their argument is that getting a tonsillectomy in your 20s is much harder than when you’re a kid (when I had absolutely no problems with them, thanks guys), and requires at least two weeks of recovery, and what 23-year-old can afford to miss 2 weeks of work?

But as a wise friend pointed out to me more than once, with all the work I’ve ALREADY missed, and all the money I’ve spent on antibiotics, that argument is pretty much moot.  And by moot, I mean ridiculous.

With all that said, and the recent developments being what they are, I’m not exactly dying to jump back into the hospital for surgery.  So instead, I’m laying low for now, voting for Obama (yes that’s relevant), and mostly contemplating the lessons I learned in the hospital:

1.) Doctors and nurses are more obsessed with poop than I am. If you saw the following video, you should know it is not just a cute song, it’s the golden truth:

2.) When you get admitted, you are tempted to think, “hey, I am going to lay in bed for a few days and watch TV… this will be relaxing, maybe like a vacation!”  IT IS NOT.  Getting poked with needles every few hours, having to wheel an I.V. stand into the bathroom with you every time you go, and knowing that a whole team of people are VERY INTERESTED in what goes on in said bathroom, are not generally considered vacation activities.

3.) I love The Cosby Show.

4.) My mom was right: nurses really are awesome.

Anyway, I’m out now, and I’m on the mend… hopefully, I won’t ever have to do THAT again, but these are wiley tonsils, you see, so I’m still being cautious.  Stay tuned for further developments in the case Erin v. Tonsils.

Where Do I Go From Here?

I was going through the archives of this site and I realized that I totally breezed through the anniversary of the creation of this blog: August 29.

I admit I’ve been having trouble with this lately, as this blog was created primarily to keep friends and family members abreast of what I was up to in school.  Now that I’m not in school, I have to dig up ideas ON MY OWN, from my OWN BRAIN, as to the content of this blog.  Geez.

At times I’ve considered retiring this blog, but I can’t bring myself to do it, as the experience has been so rewarding.  Only now, I feel like I need to pick an idea and stick to it.  But how can I do that, when my regular, everyday musings are all over the place?

Anyway, stay tuned, I’ll be feeling out the destination of this here blog.  Feedback is certainly welcomed, as always.  But yeah, I guess this is the time in which the title, “Pursuing My Niche”, REALLY comes into play… since now, that is literally what I am doing.

)

Check It.

via Tuesday Ten: Feminist Stereotypes – Feministing

I probably qualify for many of these.

#4 is my favorite.

And yes, sadly, #10 is COMPLETELY TRUE.