#casey lorne
From Her Body Sprang Their Greatest Wealth by Nona Faustine, 2013.
The photograph was taken at the site of the Colonial Slave Market on Wall Street, which operated from 1711 to 1762. New York had the largest urban population of slaves in North America during the 18th century.
The closure had nothing to do with more enlightened views about race. City Council determined the market was “disagreeable to those that pass and repass to and from the Coffee House.”
Children and adults of African decent continued to be sold, legally and illegally, in New York until the mid-point of the Civil War.
In her White Shoes series, Faustine brings attention to city sites linked to the slave trade.
(Additional sources: Untapped CitiesandThe Establishment)
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One of a series of photographs by Carey Fruth that recreate the rose petal scene from American beauty with models who do not look like Mena Suvari.
Fruth chose a bed of lilacs for the background to represent beauty, pride and confidence.
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The body-positive and sex-positive community that meets on Tumblr may make up one the most important (and delightful) corners of the Internet. It is the place I most want to visit when I’m feeling sad: the beauty, intelligence and acceptance displayed in these blogs restore my sense of hope. Good things everywhere seem to be under attack these days and I know that some visitors come here to inflict harm. Other people are rude or thoughtless, but regardless of intent, the cumulative negativity dims the sunshine this part of Tumblr brings to the world. I don’t want to be a cloud on the horizon so I’m making this promise, which I hope addresses most of the concerns I hear from bloggers. Since I originally set out for this place to talk about the history of sexuality, I’ve looked back in time for a suitable model. Please let me know if I’ve missed something vital in my application for citizenship.
My “Adult” Tumblr oath, in the style of Hippocrates, to do no harm:
I swear by Aphrodite, goddess of pleasure, beauty and love and patroness of sex workers; by Eros, god of attraction and desire; and by Erato, muse of lusty and romantic poets (and by all the multicultural gods, goddesses and spiritual entities of similar character) as my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my best ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.
- That I will show love and respect to people of all abilities, heritages, sizes, orientations and gender identities.
- That I will speak out against bullying and attempts to cause pain.
- That I will remember the difference between equity and equality and not use my privilege to ignore, deny or judge the experiences of another person.
- That I will not follow bloggers who sanction the racism, sexism and anti-LGBT prejudices of the current American president.
- That I will strive to find beauty beyond the constraints and expectations of my culture.
- That I will respect the autonomy of people to make decisions about how they look and the work they do and not provide unsolicited advice.
- That I will not shame someone for being more or less sexually adventurous than me.
- That I will abide by requests attached to images posted by creators and maintain their credits.
- That I will make a reasonable attempt to identify the source of content which is not credited and follow through on requests from copyright holders to remove items not in the public domain.
- That I will not use the work of other creators to promote my blog or my business interests.
- That I will not pass along sexual content which appears to have been stolen or posted with malicious intent, including “doxing” and revenge porn.
- That I will do nothing to perpetuate the scourge of porn bots.
- That I will take a moment to ensure comments I’m about to add are kind, smart and appreciative.
- That I will not submit sexual content to anyone without clear consent nor use an explicit picture as my avatar.
- That I will respect pronoun preferences and acknowledge and correct any errors I may make.
- That I will mark my blog as being for adults and prevent anyone I know to be underage from following it.
- That I will try not to act like a creep or a jerk.
Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain forever reputation among all people for my blog and my comments, but if I transgress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.
Sworn on the 1st day of October, 2017
(Photograph of Cypriot Aphrodite statue, Creative Commons CC0.)
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The Model (After Chaplin) by Paul Peel, 1890
Born in London, Ontario, Paul Peel was one of the first Canadian artists to adopt the subject of the nude. Such paintings were not possible in the early years of the Dominion because it was too cold to take off clothes.
(In fact, the breasts are probably parisienne. Peel often visited Europe to study and show his work.)
Critics complain about Peel’s traditional and sentimental style–too bourgeois, they say. Perhaps later in life he would have been more experimental, but he died of influenza, in France, at age 31.
(The Model is part of the collection of the Ontario Art Gallery.)
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Perhaps because my life hasn’t followed a conventional gender script, I am fond of images that challenge stereotypes–and Katherine Hepburn was so formidable she doesn’t seem out of place at all.
Hepburn’s breakout performance came in a 1932 revival of The Warrior’s Husband (a riff on Lysistrata) when she played Antiope, sister of the queen and commander of the all-female armed forces in the Amazonian state of Pontus. For her stage entrance, Hepburn jumped down a flight of stairs while carrying the carcass of large stag on her shoulders.
An RKO scout in the audience one night, Leland Hayward, was so impressed with Hepburn’s physicality that he arranged a screen test. She made her Hollywood debut in George Cukor’s A Bill of Divorcement and by 1933 had earned her first Academy Award for Morning Glory, where she portrayed a young actress who sacrifices romance for the sake of her career.
Perhaps Hepburn had her early successes in mind when she said, “I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.”
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Aleah Chapin’s painting, Auntie, won first place at the 2012 National Portrait Gallery exhibition of recent works in London.
She finds models for her art by persuading her mother’s friends to pose naked.
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Decades before he would take on the Nazis, Cadet Winston Churchill of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst launched his first foray into (politicall) battle as the (self-appointed) champion of sex workers, brandishing his wit against the “prudes” who demanded stricter regulation of prostitution.
It was the Naughty Nineties and Churchill, grandson of the Duke of Marlborough and son of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, was caught up in the excitement of the popular reaction against Victorian Puritanism. The young soldier’s passion was the music hall and his favorite venue was the Empire, which featured a men’s bar alongside a promenade where dollymops and toffers strolled, advertising their services, showing off their wares and negotiating their fees.
When a crusader against prostitution with a name suited for a Monty Python sketch, Mrs. Ormiston Chant, succeeded in persuading local officials to separate the courtesans from their potential clients with a barricade, Churchill mustered his burgeoning skills as a political activist. He hocked his watch for funds to support a protest and on the evening of the third day of November, 1894, three weeks shy of his twentieth birthday, the cadet hopped onto a chair among the tipsy Empire clientele and declared, “I stand for Liberty!”
His first public speech triggered a lawless outburst which culminated in the destruction of the barricade. The sense he could motivate people with his words intoxicated Churchill. “It was I who led the rioters,” he wrote excitedly to his younger brother.
The victory was temporary. The London County Council sided with Mrs. Chant and the barrier keeping the vices of alcohol and prostitution separate reappeared. The Bishop of London chastised Churchill in The Times: “I never expected to see an heir of Marlborough greeted by a flourish of strumpets.”
Unapologetic, the heir of Marlborough wrote to his aunt, “It is hard to say whether one dislikes the prudes or the weak-minded creatures who listen to them most. Both to me are extremely detestable.”
Was Cadet Churchill a personal patron of the sex workers? Probably not, historians say. A music hall girl who spent the night with him reported, “Winston had done nothing but talk into the small hours on the subject of himself.”
In power, Churchill did not pursue formal decriminalization, but he continued to believe that using the legal system to oppose sex workers was, as he once told his father, “coercive and futile.” Prostitution flourished in London during the Second World War; even the streets of posh Mayfair were crowded with businesswomen offering succor to young soldiers. Cabaret star Florence Desmond sang what may have been a typical sales pitch:
I’ve got a cozy flat.
There’s a place for your hat.
I wear a pink chiffon negligee gown.
And do I know my stuff,
But if that’s not enough,
I’ve got the deepest shelter in town.
Churchill later recalled the Empire incident in his official biography. The old warrior said his speech had been “a serious constitutional argument upon the inherent rights of British subjects; upon the dangers of State interference with the social habits of law-abiding persons; and upon the many evil consequences which inevitably follow upon repression….”
(Additional sources: First Lady: The Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill by Sonia Purnell; The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill by William Manchester; London in the Twentieth Century: A City and its People by Jerry White.)
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World No Bra Day is especially popular in Paris. The device, after all, was invented by a German engineer, Otto Keepemfromfloppin, disrupting three centuries of French hegemony over women’s undergarments.
Best wishes to you and your family on this special occasion: No Bra Day, the most important costume-related event in October.
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Reclining Female Nude by Paula Modersohn-Becker, ca. 1905
She is pretty without artifice, strong without giving up her sensuality, at once chaste and fecund.
Her contradictions anticipate the emerging feminism of the early 20th century: an aspiration that biology would not prescribe a woman’s destiny and that success would not require her to adopt a masculine affect.
The artist did not live to witness the effort to achieve her vision. Modersohn-Becker died in 1907, after the birth of her daughter. She was 31.
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Like most photographers from Iowa, Jerry Ranch has a doctorate in genetics.
Someday he may create radishes that are smarter than people.
https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/jerry-ranch.html
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Two Women by George Grosz, 1920s.
Set to go to auction on October 11th, the painting’s estimated value is over $70,000.
If you choose to purchase it, please note that the price does not include my commission. Legally, you wouldn’t owe me anything; ethically, I’d say about 15 per cent would soothe your conscience.
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Former burlesque star Brandi Duran, photographed by Marie Baronnet as part of her Legends series in 2014. She traveled across the United States taking pictures of retired exotic dancers, ages 60 to 95.
If these striptease dancers were pioneers in their field, they are equally pioneers in women’s emancipation, homosexuality and transsexuality. Breaking with the norms of a patriarchal society, they took fate into their own hands, traveling across the United States laden with suitcases and costumes as part of a day’s work. Their stories form part of the American saga and their bodies bear the traces today. Courageously, some of them were able to live their homosexuality and transsexuality during a particularly repressive time, emerging into womanhood by braving the law and the dangers presented by operations and unregulated products. (Source.)
Here’s Duran twirling her tassels as part of a ballerina routine:
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In 1915, Audrey Munson became the first person to appear fully nude in a mainstream Hollywood movie.
Her body was already famous: as a model, she had posed for most of the famous sculptors of the era. You can see her likeness in the lobby of the Hotel Astor and on top of the Wisconsin State Capitol dome. At the Longfellow Memorial, she is Evangeline.
This new thing of nudity on film created a dilemma for the censors. If they decided Munson’s body was obscene, the popular public art based on her figure would also have to be suppressed. A compromise solved the problem of the slippery slope: Munson would always play an artist’s model, thereby limiting any association between nudity and sexuality.
Munson starred in four films, but only one, Purity, survives. In 1993, a copy was discovered locked up in a vault in France.
She actually used a body double–of sorts. Though Munson performed all the nude scenes, a lookalike actress named Jane Thomas stepped in on those occasions when the character wore clothes.
Munson preferred not to cover up when given the choice. She wrote: “Clothes ruined us. They do harm to our bodies and worse to our souls. So few young women of today know what to do with their hands, how to carry them and how to use them in company because their clothes are in the way.”
To an interviewer, she said, “No woman who is conscious of clothing is truly feminine or truly beautiful.” That went for makeup as well, though beauty’s greatest foe, she proclaimed in a column written for the New York American, was the garter belt.
Her life was long but not happy. Scandal broke in 1919 when her landlord killed his wife, allegedly to make himself eligible to marry Munson. She fled to Canada and though police eventually determined she was not an accessory to the crime, moralists perpetuated the scandal by feeding gossip to the tabloids. (Perhaps the garter belt lobby secretly funded their efforts.)
Her reputation ruined, Munson could not find work as an actress or a model. Depressed and impoverished, she drank bichloride of mercury, surviving the suicide attempt but likely damaging her brain. She was institutionalized in a psychiatric facility, where she remained until her death, in 1996, at the age of 104.
(Additional source: The Believer)
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The Sleep of Endymion by Anne Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson, 1791.
A gorgeous man: that’s an oxymoron, right? At least it is in the current iteration of western culture– but the Greeks and Romans had other perspectives on male beauty.
Endymion, mythology’s loveliest mortal, is a young shepherd (not a hunter or warrior) sleeping away a sentence of 30 years for offending Juno. Over this period he will not age, and chaste Diana, goddess of the moon, shines her beams on him, playing the voyeur. Zephyr pulls back the branches of the laurel tree so she can get a better view.
Critics speculate that Girodet has rendered Endymion as effeminate or gay–an odd interpretation for such a vivid portrayal of heterosexual lust. Somehow that must seem less preposterous to them than the idea that a woman, a goddess, might enjoy checking out vulnerable, naked, gorgeous male flesh.
(Additional source: The Louvre)
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Eartha Kitt in 1968, the same year her strong denunciation of the Vietnam War at a White House dinner made Lady Bird Johnson cry. The CIA retaliated by launching a smear campaign that claimed Kitt was “a sadistic nymphomaniac.”
An item from my old blog, but it would be worth sharing again just for the picture. I don’t think I’ve seen a more sultry look than the one Eartha Kitt delivers here. She has such an erotic power that many tears–not just those of the wife of a president–must have been shed over her.
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