Tag: feminism

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Talking Art, Selfies and Body Image with Petra Collins

I went in-conversation with Petra Collins for the Girls Rule issue of Dazed. You can now read the full article below.

If you’ve ever been on the internet, you’re probably familiar with the artist Petra Collins. I’ve also written about her on this blog many times, and she and I have since made a couple of short films together, both of which (quite serendipitously) are about murderous girl gangs. We also both made T-shirts with vaginas on them, except hers was bleeding.

For those of you who don’t know: Petra made her name creating beautifully nostalgic images of youth in her hometown of Toronto, Canada. Still just 21, Petra’s career started in her mid teens. She’s the founder and curator of The Ardorous, an online platform for girls to show their artwork, and she’s also a staff photographer at Rookie, Tavi Gevinson’s awesome mag for teenage girls. This year Petra made the move to NYC, and has since curated an all-female art show titled Gynolandscape, become a muse to Ryan McGinley, and has started making music videos for artists like Sky Ferreira and Blood Orange. Through her cinematic lens, Petra has become an expert at using the female body as a tool to both seduce and provoke, and never fails to find the humor in both.

Karley Sciortino: We’ve worked together a bunch of times, but I’m only just realising that I’ve never asked you when or why you started taking photographs..

Petra Collins: Well, I hate saying this because it sounds sort of pretentious, but since I was very little I’ve always made art, in some form or another. It wasn’t a career choice; I was just doing it because I needed to, because it made me feel whole. Then, when I was 15 I took this photo of my younger sister’s three girlfriends sitting on my bed, and one of them was smoking, and when I got the image back it really surprised me – it was really interesting in a way that I didn’t expect, with a strange sadness and beauty to it. After that I decided to keep documenting those girls, and so for the past five years I’ve been taking photos of my younger sister and her friends. That was unconsciously my first photo project, and what started everything. It’s really crazy because now all the girls have graduated and are going to university.

Karley Sciortino: I’ve seen some of those photos. Some that stand out in my mind are of them at prom.

Petra Collins: Yeah, I shot them at prom, at parties that they went to, in their high school, them taking selfies…

Karley Sciortino: The other day I tweeted that a better name for our generation than “Millennials” would be “Generation Selfie.”

Petra Collins: Seriously. I think the selfie is really interesting because there’s so many levels to it. In a way, it’s an image that doesn’t hold that much truth, but rather is a representation of how someone wants people to perceive them. It’s supposedly a personal image, but it’s always taken with a second party in mind. It’s part of how we all curate our lives online, through Facebook or whatever.

Karley Sciortino: Yeah, so in a way the selfie is the purest representation of how we want the world to perceive us. I recently wrote an article about how social media has turned everyone into their own brand, and suggested that the people who don’t un-tag unflattering photos of themselves are actually just bad at doing their own PR. 

Petra Collins: Lol.

Karley Sciortino: I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but when I first saw your work and then found out you were so young I thought, “She must have famous parents.” I didn’t think someone could be so cool while still so young without some assistance. But then when I met you I realized you’d actually just taught yourself to be cool on the internet.

Petra Collins: Ha, it’s true. The school of Tumblr!

Karley Sciortino: Yeah, it’s crazy how much of a game-changer that is – to grow up with a catalogue of everything that was ever cool or influential or relevant since the dawn of time. I just missed that, because I didn’t have internet at home until I was 13, and even then we just had like AOL chat and other similar non-cool-making resources, and then people like you and Tavi come along, and are intimidatingly cool at age 15, and that makes me hate you, honestly.

Petra Collins: Uh… thank you? So, when you started Slutever, did you set out to create a feminist blog?

Karley Sciortino: Honestly, that wasn’t my intention. I was just writing about what interested me, and I ended up writing a lot about sex and sexuality, I suppose just because I’ve always been a very sexual person, but it wasn’t until my blog started getting popular, and other people and press began referring to me as a feminist blogger that I sat back and thought, “Wait, is that what I am?” Don’t tell anyone, but I actually didn’t know that much about feminism at the time!

Petra Collins: No, same with me! I feel like we went down the same path, because I just started taking photos to work through my own person frustrations, but I didn’t really know what I was doing, and it was through being defined as a feminist that I discovered feminism. But that was only in my last year of high school, which isn’t that long ago.

Karley Sciortino: What frustrations were you working out?

Petra Collins: Well, in the beginning my images were very sexual, and at that time I was dealing with my emerging sexuality. I remember thinking that my worth as a person was based on my looks, and basically being a sex toy. That sounds bad but it’s really what I thought, and it felt very confusing, and I guess I was trying to combat feelings of the male gaze through my images. I wanted to create images that represented my own sexuality, not a sexuality that was dictated by someone else–like, “How do I make this mine?” But it’s a long, hard process to figure that out, and I’m still figuring it out.

Karley Sciortino: I recently interviewed Marsha Rowe for Dazed – she was the founder and editor of the iconic second-wave feminist magazine, Spare Rib. She told me, “What strikes me about modern feminism is that it focuses quite narrowly on the body. So much anxiety gets centered on the woman’s body, and it feels somehow detached from what other things are going on in the wider world.” We went on to talk about the obvious connection of girls’ obsessions with their bodies, and the unrealistic, airbrushed images of perfection we are bombarded with in advertising, in magazines, on TV, etc.

Petra Collins Yeah, it’s so fucked up. It’s almost hard to realise that those images aren’t real because we see them so much.

Karley Sciortino: Right, so we hold ourselves up to these unrealistic standards. It’s strange because as a society, we look at these super retouched images in the media and we’re angry, because we know it creates unhealthy aspirations for women, and just makes us feel bad about ourselves. But simultaneously, whenever we see an unretouched paparazzi shot of a celebrity on the beach, we relish in the opportunity to criticize them for having cellulite or whatever. Rather than appreciating it as a realistic depiction of a female body, we print the photo in a tabloid magazine and draw a big red circle around any imperfection, underneath a headline like, “Scarlett Johansson’s cellulite beach nightmare!” or whatever. So as a society we are very hypocritical about what we want. We want to see images that are at once aspirational and relatable, and yet we condemn them for being both.

Petra Collins: Honestly, I don’t think there’s an hour of the day where I don’t think about my body, which is really messed up. I actually find it weird when I meet a girl without body issues. I just think, “Where did you come from?!” And it makes me so sad to see my sister and her friends, who are all so amazing and beautiful, just hating themselves. 

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Petra’s censored Instagram shot

Karley Sciortino: As someone who’s curvier, I sometimes feel insecure about my weight. But then at the same time, because I understand that I’m in a position of even a small amount of influence to young girls, I feel it’s important to project a body-positive image in my writing and in my videos, because obviously I think girls of all sizes can look amazing, but I still can’t escape the harsh self-critique. And then I get anxiety that I’m projecting this confident imagine that isn’t entirely sincere, ya know? But anyway, keeping on the subject of body, your Instagram got deleted recently after you posted an image of yourself in a bikini with a visibly unshaved bikini line. Given that there’s millions of photos on Instagram of girls in bikinis, it was obvious that your photo was censored because of the hair. Quite awesomely, everyone from Vogue to the Huffington Post wrote stories about how Insta censored your pubes.

Petra Collins: Right, the issue was that the image of my body didn’t meet society’s standard of “femininity.” It’s an example of the pressure to succumb to society’s image of beauty literally turning into censorship. I actually did this giant research project about female body hair in my first year at university. I was beginning wonder why I felt the need to remove my hair, ritualistically, almost every day, without ever considering why. So as a little social experiment for myself I decided to stop shaving, just to see how uncomfortable I would be with exposing myself in that way. It was partially about training myself not be affected by what other people think. And now, three years later, I still have the hair. And I still get so many stares. It’s so funny how shocking armpit hair on a girl is to people–they spot it and they just like can’t look away! But I love it now, it’s such a cool accessory. I love the combination of armpit hair and a slutty dress.

Karley Sciortino: That’s hot. Maybe I should stop shaving, both to look more edgy and to just avoid getting ingrown hairs. Literally, sometimes I feel like my life is just one giant ingrown hair. So, who are some female artists that you love?

Petra Collins: I love Lauren Greenfield‘s work. She did that photo series Girl Culture, about girls lives and private rituals, and she made that documentary Thin, about a rehab center that treats women with eating disorders. What about you?

Karley Sciortino: I love Camille Paglia – she’s a very controversial feminist who writes largely about art, sex and pop culture. She’s very pro-sex, pro-porn, and she can be pretty harsh, but she usually just says what everyone else is thinking. And of course, I love Joan Didion, who somehow is able to perfectly articulate everything I’ve ever thought and felt and wondered about, and even some things I didn’t even realize I thought or felt until I read her words. So… should we talk about the fact that we both made shirts with vaginas on them? Mine was a photo of my hairy vaj, and yours was a line drawing of masturbating, menstruating woman with pubes, sold at American Apparel, and it sparked some backlash.

Petra Collins: I know. I find it funny that with all the sexually violent, disgustingly derogatory images we see everyday in the media, that a woman’s period is still something people find so shocking. Menstruation is a natural part of growing up and becoming a sexual person, and yet it’s so hidden, so I really wanted to put it on a shirt and bring the power back to vaginas. That’s what I love about your shirt too – it really demands attention, and calls attention to the fact that the vagina is its own sexual organ. It’s not, ya know…just for dicks.

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Girltalk: Amandla Stenberg vs Tavi Gevinson

head to head1

The new issue of Dazed and Confused mag is out, and is aptly tited GIRLS RULE THE WORLD. The issue is incredible, and I was lucky enough to moderate a conversation between Tavi Gevinson and Amandla Stenberg for its glossy pages. You can read the article below. (More content from the issue to come soon, including a #deep convo between Petra Collins and I.)

At 17, Tavi Gevinson is already the queen of today’s girl-power intelligentsia. She rose to fame at just 12 through her personal fashion blog, Style Rookie. The world watched as she posted daily photos of her eccentric outfits, taken on her parent’s porch in Illinois, and blogged with a touching insight about pop culture, school dances and the emotional landscape of teenhood. Soon she was being seen at fashion weeks dressed like a “grandmother on ecstasy” (her words). In 2011 
Gevinson founded Rookie, an online magazine aimed at teenage girls that resonates with a much wider audience. You’ll recognise her 15-year-old friend Amandla Stenberg from her role as brave “tribute” Rue in The Hunger Games. Born and raised in LA, Stenberg’s most recent role is in Sleepy Hollow, a modern-day TV retelling of the classic tale. 
The actress is also involved with Share Our Strength, which works to end child hunger in the US. Here the friends discuss everything from feminism to Snapchat to the divine organisation of the universe.

Tavi Gevinson: I remember the first time we met, at a Rookie party. You were wearing a pleated green dress and it was super cute. It made me happy because you’re someone who’s part of mainstream culture, but you like all the same stuff me and my friends like and you’re so down-to-earth. 
I don’t mean for that to sound narrow-minded, but it just made me happy that you would come dance at our party.

Amandla Stenberg: Well, Rookie is a publication I really connect to. It was when I first started going on red carpets and that kind of thing that I started reading it religiously, and it really impacted on me, first in terms of fashion and learning how to wear clothes as a form of expression, and then later it got me interested in feminism and that conversation.

Tavi Gevinson: It’s exciting to know that someone out there making waves beyond Rookie’s audience can be informed by the messages we try to put out in the world. I feel like there’s something happening now – a generation of girls around our age, from a similar background of beliefs and ideas, are inspiring and influencing each other, and that’s super exciting to me. A few years ago I would have said, ‘It’s okay if my friends my own age don’t get it, because I have a bunch of adult, professional friends who do get it.’ But that’s kind of sad, because I need friends my age too. And suddenly in the past few years there’s been this rise of community among young, female creatives who understand and support each other – people like Maude Apatow, who I know you’re friends with, Petra Collins and so many more.

Amandla Stenberg: I totally agree, and find it really empowering.

Tavi Gevinson: So, I’m curious – as people often say it’s catty between young actresses – to know if you’ve found a sense of community in that world?

Amandla Stenberg: Well, what’s unique in my case is that there aren’t many young African-American actresses, so I haven’t really experienced the cattiness or competitiveness of the industry to a large extent.

Tavi Gevinson: You mean because white girls are more likely to be considered for the same part?

Amandla Stenberg: Well, yeah. Most of the time directors and writers have very specific casting intentions, or there’s a family and it’s already been decided that the parents are Caucasian. I don’t want to sound bitter or anything, because I know it’s hard to find great roles for any actor or actress, but being a young African-American woman definitely narrows my choices. That’s why it’s been so refreshing working on Sleepy Hollow, because my character is really complicated emotionally. And also, there’s two main characters – Ichabod and Abbie – and they’re played by a Caucasian male and an African-American woman, and that doesn’t really exist anywhere else on TV. Sleepy Hollow just unintentionally has a cast filled with people of colour and that’s really cool.

What the f?Tavi Gevinson by Ryan Lowry

Tavi Gevlinson: When you’re looking at scripts and choosing what to audition for, what speaks to you?

Amanda Stenberg: Well, I intentionally pursued The Hunger Games. I’d read the book and realised, ‘Wow, this is a young African-American girl who has a really powerful story,’ so I was emailing my agents non-stop, trying to get into the audition room. Even now I have moments where I’m like, ‘Whoa, I got to be in The Hunger Games, that’s insane.’ I wanted to ask, since this issue deals with feminism, what you think of your work being labelled ‘feminist’?

Tavi Gevinson: Well, I am a feminist – I just think the label reflects my beliefs – but, you know, we say Rookie is a website for teenage girls, not a feminist website for teenage girls. That’s not because I’m not proud to call myself a feminist, but when you’re calling attention to a project, you can very easily be pigeonholed by choosing certain identifiers. And while 
I’m happy to talk about feminism and I’m happy that I’m a girl, I do sometimes feel like, ‘Why does everything I do have to be viewed through a lens of ‘feminist or not’?’ Like, can’t I ever do or create anything just as a person? That’s a privilege that men have over women and white people have over people of colour. There’s an interview with Patti Smith in which she says something like, ‘People have always asked why I don’t say I’m a female musician, but you wouldn’t say Picasso is a male painter, he’s just a painter.’ So it’s definitely difficult finding the line – I want to remove the stigma around the word ‘feminist’ but also feel integrated into a community that’s larger than a group of likeminded feminist bloggers. For example, I was so happy about the review of Rookie Yearbook Two in Slate where they said, ‘People say Rookie is good for teenage girls, but it’s actually just good.’

Amandla Stenberg: Yes, I read that article and thought it was fantastic.

Tavi Gevinson: I feel like maybe in the 90s Rookie would have been shamed for trying to reach a lot of people or trying to be ‘mainstream’, but I’m so pleased that our readers are happy to see me promoting the Rookie yearbook on TV or whatever. What feels most productive to me isn’t to think so much in terms of how I can be alternative, but how I can be subversive in a way that feels organic, how I can connect with people, and how I can just be myself, which may be the hardest thing to be.

Amandla Stenberg: Okay, I’m about to get real deep.

Tavi Gevinson: Please do!

Amandla Stenberg: I’ve never been a super religious person, but I went through a phase around the time I did my interview with Rookie when I was checking out lots of different religions. And I realised that 
I don’t believe in a specific god or religion, but my own religion is believing in the divine organisation of the world and how things ultimately work out how they’re supposed to.

Tavi Gevinson: Yeah, I think the point isn’t necessarily that you have proof, but that you choose to live by a set of guidelines. I mean, I was raised Jewish and had a batmitzvah and everything, but I do struggle with the idea that someone is in control of all of this. But I relate to the idea that there’s a way things just work out, and it can be extraordinary whether there’s some kind of organisation behind it or not. Does that make sense?

Amandla Stenberg: Totally.

What the f?
Amandla Stenberg by Hae Ran

Tavi Gevinson: There’s this biologist named Stephen Jay Gould who spent his whole career writing about evolution, and at the end of his life he wrote this book that said something like, ‘Even if I talk about evolution, I think there’s something holy about it.’

Amandla Stenberg: Any way I say this it’s going to sound pseudo-intellectual or something, but I feel like even though the world feels big and intimidating, it’s almost calming to realise that even within the smallest thing, like a cell, there’s an infinity. And you’d think that wouldn’t be calming, that it would be disconcerting, but actually it just makes me feel that there’s an organisation between everything in the world.

Tavi Gevinson: Totally! The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about this. He says you can look at the scale of the universe and choose to be depressed about it, like, ‘Oh, I’m so small, nothing I do matters, I’m insignificant.’ Or you can decide, ‘I’m small but I’m significant because I’m part of the universe and the cosmos and this crazy large thing.’

Amandla Stenberg: There’s magnitude in even the smallest things, basically.

Tavi Gevinson: Yeah. Oh gosh, I’m so inspired right now!

Amandla Stenberg: I just realised that I’m on my period right now. Maybe 
I should re-evaluate everything I just said.

Tavi Gevinson: No, oh my God, you’re so optimistic for somebody being visited by Aunt Flow. I’ve been wanting to tell you, you’re really good at Snapchat! You do really creative drawing-tool things where you add rays of light coming from your head and stuff.

Amandla Stenberg: Really? Actually I was so inspired by your Snapchats that I felt like I had to up my game! You sent me one the other day saying ‘poop’ and you had the ‘o’s in your nostrils. 
That was original.

Tavi Gevinson: Yeah, I’m good at utilising body parts as letters.

Amandla Stenberg: Have you ever felt embarrassed by a blogpost or article and wanted to delete it?

Tavi Gevinson: You know, I’ve never done it on Style Rookie, but I did go through my Tumblr and was like, ‘No, awful, stop,’ and deleted some things. Although I do think part of the appeal of the work of someone who creates things online is that there’s a trail left behind. Lena Dunham talks about that – how leaving a trail of work behind can be a generous thing to do as an artist, even though you might be embarrassed by it, because you never know how it’s going to affect other people. Maybe the key to being in a place where you’re putting out work that you’re proud of isn’t to continually be perfect, but just to keep doing it, keep trying. So I’ve come to see my older work as something that doesn’t have to be embarrassing.

Amandla Stenberg: I think the internet forces you to be okay with your mistakes, and the things you’ve done in the past, especially when you’re in the media. Personally, that helps me to stop self-editing or being self-conscious, and instead realise that my previous mistakes have allowed me to grow.

Tavi Gevinson: Totally. Joan Didion’s essay ‘On Keeping a Notebook’ talks about this, and that essay was super-important for me when I was starting Rookie and moving on from writing train-of-thought blog entries to expressing opinions that I stood by. 
I’ll read you a great quote from that essay. It goes: ‘I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4am of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, 
forget who we were.’

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Pussy Power

Me, naked with a gun obvs

My friend, the fabulous Petra Collins, directed this new video for Purple TV. I’m in it. You can watch it below <3 We filmed it partly in Toronto, where Petra is from, and partly in an amazingly beautiful town called Tobermory, which is about four hours drive from Toronto, in Ontario, Canada. We stayed in Tobermory for three days, in a lovely cottage that belongs to Petra’s boyfriend, Avery. It’s way out in the middle of nowhere, and there was no running water (aka you have to wash your vagina in a literal lake and go to the bathroom into a hole, like Amish people) which was an interesting experience, especially considering we were six incompetent, easily grossed-out girls. Also, there was no cell phone service or wifi, which was so traumatizing that I literally can’t even remember what it was like, because my brain blacked the experience out in order to protect itself.

Below the video are some behind-the-scenes stills from the shoot, taken by Petra!

Pussy Power:  shot and directed by Petra Collins; music by Prince Innocence; edited by Lauren Dillard; written by Petra and me; clothing provided by American Apparel


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Dating 101 with Marsha Rowe: Cheating Questions

Pic by Coco Young

Last week I published an interview with feminist icon Marsha Rowe, where she and I talked about the history of feminism, body image and porn. However, during our original conversation, Marsha and I also talked a lot about relationships, specifically about cheating and non-monogamy. I didn’t include that bit of our convo in the original edit, just because the interview was already really long (Marsha, being very wise, just said too much good stuff to fit into one blog post!), but I thought it would be a waste not to share it with you all, so I’ve posted it below. If you’ve ever cheated or been cheated on, or if you’re considering experimenting with an open relationship, I suggest you read on!

Rowe: In a recent blog post of yours, you made a comment that it was alright for someone to cheat in a relationship as long as the person handled it properly. When I read that I thought, “Hang on, if you really cared about someone and they cheated on you, how would you feel?” Yours seemed like quite a detached, male attitude. If relationships are about vulnerability and trying to open up, then I think the idea that it’s fine to cheat is sort of glib, and I don’t like it personally.

Sciortino: I see what you mean. I think what I was trying to say was that, for example, if someone in a relationship went to another country and had sex with a random person in a one-off experience, and he/she didn’t brag about it or discuss it with friends, then that was a condonable act. I don’t know… maybe I’m just being realistic about the fact that whether or not a couple acknowledges that this type of behavior is sometimes “OK,” it generally happens anyway.

Rowe: Well that’s something you deal with if it happens, isn’t it? As far as I know, in every relationship where someone has cheated, the relationship hasn’t lasted. Although it may have been because it was never meant to last.

Sciortino: It’s hard. This is my issue: say you’ve been monogamous with one person for a long time, and after awhile you get the urge to sleep with someone else, but ultimately decide not to because you want to stay committed. In my mind, this is likely to lead to resentment within the relationship, or you becoming unhappy sexually, when maybe a better alternative is to just get the random sex out of your system and move on. But then again, I know cheating can be a slippery slope.

Rowe: I think it depends on what stage the relationship is in. I’m sure early on someone could stray without it causing too much disruption. My case would be for maintaining trust. That if you tell the partner, even beforehand, then you can modify the potential for jealousy. But if this is happening later on, maybe the person cheating is actually frightened of being too intimate or vulnerable within their relationship, and sleeping with somebody else is just a diversion from it all.

Sciortino: That’s true. And there are obviously different levels of cheating as well. Like if I found out my boyfriend had been dating someone else for a year behind your back I’d obviously be like “OK, too much!” But if I found out he’d slept with someone else once or twice, and it wasn’t someone close to us, I could probably get over it. It’s really subjective. And I’m talking as someone who is nowhere near being mentally ready to get married or have kids. I think when you enter marriage, or consider having children with someone, the rules change.

Rowe: Well, life in general is much more fluid now. Half the time people don’t marry, and relationships are a bit more vulnerable to change.  

Sciortino: I know a lot of people, myself included, who are now experimenting with open relationships–the idea that you have one main partner with whom you’re emotionally monogamous, but you both have the freedom to sleep with other people occasionally, so long as it’s not gratuitous or disrespectful.

Rowe: Well in the 60s and 70s, because we were against the whole ‘nuclear family under capitalism’ thing, at times we thought it was alright to have multiple relationships or partners, so long as we were open about it. For example, I would be good friends with a woman who was with one of my partners, and vice versa. But in a way, looking back it was quite cold, you know? There wasn’t a lot of care in the matter, and even when there was a lot of love, actually, it wasn’t workable in the long run. As for the idea of sex divorced from feeling, I suppose I did have a few partners where that was the case, but it wasn’t what I wanted in the end. Ultimately I realized that if I was with someone, I didn’t want to be, well… fucking someone else, really.

Sciortino: I go through cycles. There are periods where I really crave and enjoy having detached, “meaningless” sex, and times when I don’t. I know that a lifetime of just anonymous sex would not be fulfilling for me or most people. But I think there’s a time in everyone’s life where free sexual experimentation is fun and probably a good thing, because if you don’t have it when you’re younger then maybe you’ll regret having missed the opportunity later on.

Rowe: That’s true.

Sciortino: What do you think about certain modern pop stars, like Ke$ha and Lady Gaga, who are open and unapologetic about being promiscuous?

Rowe: Well pop stars always behaved this way, except they were mostly men. They didn’t talk about it that much, but it was always assumed. But now women are doing it too and it’s like, ‘So what?!’ Does that make them a role model? Well, I don’t really know what a role model is anymore, but at least they’re being open and honest about it.  

Sciortino: I think it’s potentially positive. I don’t think young women should feel like they have to sleep around to be sexually progressive or a feminist, but I think it’s good to have people in the media relaying the message that if you do decide to have multiple partners, it doesn’t mean that you’re a slut or that you’re just trying to please men. It’s never degrading to do what makes you feel good.

Rowe: Yes, yes, yes. I mean, where is the male equivalent for the word ‘slut’? There isn’t one. There is no term for putting a man down because he sleeps around. Slut-shaming is a very old and sexist form of abuse. The ideal of virginity and being chaste is what we were against in the 60s, and it’s why we claimed our sexual freedom.

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Talking Feminism with Spare Rib editor Marsha Rowe

Marsha Marsha Marsha

Marsha Rowe is a feminist icon. In 1972, she and pal Rosie Boycott founded Spare Rib, a feminist magazine based in the UK that went on to become a bible of second wave feminism. Marsha was the magazine’s first editor and oversaw all of its radical glory; it was the first magazine to talk about female sexuality, it was frank, funny, intellectual, and it had the mission of making living conditions better for women. Spare Rib (get it?) ran until ‘93, but it will potentially see a revival, if editor Charlotte Raven gets her way. 

I was obviously beyond excited by the opportunity to speak with Marsha, and to discuss the modern feminist movement, how it differs from feminism of the past, and lots of other fun stuff like body image, porn, and Pussy Riot. Read our convo below. This article was originally published in the wonderful Dazed and Confused magazine.

Marsha Rowe and Rosie Boycott

Slutever: I wonder what Spare Rib would look like today, in the context of modern women’s magazines. Obviously, when you guys started out, Spare Rib was one of the only outlets for this type of information for women. However now there’s almost an excess of websites who write about feminist issues, but which I feel often lack intellectual content, and instead feel like a bunch of girls getting together to talk about what makes them angry, alongside celebrity news. It becomes a combination of: “Who’s Lindsay Lohan dating?” and “I felt oppressed because my postman looked at me in a sexual manner.” It can become trivial.

Rowe: Well, the point behind 70s feminism was the idea of the personal as political. It wasn’t just about liberating ourselves, but about ourselves in the context of society; it was about the economic situation and wider political situation. And what strikes me about modern feminism is that it focuses quite narrowly on the body. So much anxiety gets centered on the woman’s body, and it feels somehow detached from what other things are going on in the wider world.

Slutever: And feminism in the 70s was less concerned with the body?

Rowe: I mean, women’s rights here in the UK had four demands: equal pay, equal education and opportunity, 24-hr nurseries, and free contraception and abortion on demand. And then two years later it was for financial and legal independence, and for end of discrimination against women. And there was an explosion of new legislation in that period. So the female body was an issue, but in terms of one’s own health, control or knowledge over one’s body.

Slutever: Perhaps now that we’ve won much of the larger war, we feel it necessary to fight a personal one.

Spare Rib 

Rowe: On the topic of the body, what do you think of the thin-ness of fashion models? It was interesting–I looked at an interview you did on your blog with porn star Bobbi Starr, and she was saying that women with flesh on their bodies are celebrated in pornography. There seems to be two versions of male fantasy: the super thin fashion object, which is like some male projection of transcendence, and the luscious, bigger woman, who could be associated with the old ideas of female-ness. Although to me, neither seem to me to meet what women want themselves. 

Slutever: I feel like it gets so confused–there’s so much anxiety today over how are women supposed to look that maybe we don’t even know what we want to look like, it’s more about what we feel we should look like. I do an advice column,  and a lot of the questions that girls send me are like, “Should I shave my crotch or not?” And ultimately it’s like, “Who cares, do whatever you want.” But it seems like women have this idea that there’s a right way and a wrong way. Although I don’t know if that’s necessarily a new thing. Actually, I remember my mother–who has quite large breasts– telling me, “I grew up in the 60s, the ONE time when it was trendy to be flat! I’m so unlucky!”

Rowe: Ha, that’s so funny! Actually, we ran a piece on that for the very first issue of Spare Rib. Angela Phillips, who took the cover photo, was complaining about having that same problem while at school.  I remember Germaine Greer marching into the office and seeing that piece and saying “It’s trash!” So yes, it’s nothing new that girls’ insecurities focus on their bodies. What do you feel when you answer these reader advice questions? 

Slutever: Well, it’s hard because from a neutral point of view I want to tell girls that they shouldn’t worry about  being so thin, and that natural curves are sexy, and that there’s a difference between being healthy and looking aesthetically a certain way, and that what we see in magazines and on TV are the result of airbrushing and extreme dieting. But when I look in the mirror, I can’t help but compare myself to these same standards. I’m not above it.

Rowe: Well in the 70s we went for this idea of the “natural woman.” It was reclaiming whoever you were. Four of us in the office had curly hair and we stopped straightening our hair, and it did feel so liberating. I remember not shaving my armpits, and there were arguments over whether you should even shave your legs. And we never shaved down there very much. Men used to think it was sort of sexy anyway. But then, why should sexy be the criteria? In those days we were saying, “Why are we dressing for the male gaze?” Although I do remember feeling self-conscious because I sometimes wore terrific, bold dresses and high heels, and gradually that started to become less acceptable in some areas of the women’s movement.  So even though it was a moment where we really felt we could say no to fashion, even within the counter-culture we had our own fashion.

Spare Rib 

Slutever: Well it seems the fashion was a specific rebellion to the left-over 50s ideals of dressing for a man, being hyper sexualized, etc., right? 

Rowe: Well we weren’t trying to dress unsexy, just different. You know when we were in school, as teenagers, we had to wear stockings and corsets; in a way it was our armor. So the 60s was about throwing that off. We wore mini skirts, jeans and T-shirts. When I started wearing t-shirts they only sold them in the boys department, and jeans were always made for men too–to get them to fit you had to shrink them in the bath.

Slutever: I think some modern feminists still struggle with the same idea: “Is it OK for me to want to dye my hair and wear makeup, and look according to the oldschool idea idea of female beauty?” In my opinion, this is fine. I follow the idea that women gain a lot of power from being sexually attractive, and to intentionally lessen your beauty is to lessen your power. You know what I mean?

Rowe: It sounds as though you’re talking about pride? Yes, I think pride in your body is good. I’m not sure I know any woman particularly like that. Although I’m reminded of Pussy Riot and FEMEN– these girls are brazen about using the body in a political way, in order to turn, as it were, the poisonous dart that is used to attack them back onto their attackers. They’re using their bodies to make their own feminist politics, and to talk about things like sexism, the patriarchy, arranged marriage, and I think they are fascinating. Did you see the recent news about Inna Shevchenko, the founder of Femen in the Ukraine? Basically every year in France they create a new stamp with the image of Marianne – the figurehead of the French revolution–and this year the stamp’s artist said the design was based mainly on Shevchenko’s image, and afterward Shevchenko was quoted as saying: “Femen is on a French stamp. Now all homophobes, extremist and fascists will have to lick my ass when they want to send a letter”. 

Slutever: That’s amazing.

Rowe: Isn’t that so good?

Slutever: So, one of my personal feminist heroes is Camille Paglia–very pro-sex, pro-porn, pro-Madonna, all the good stuff. Do you know her?

Rowe: Well I do, but she was part of the anti-feminism backlash that came in the 80s and 90s! She said some great things, but she was also completely ignorant in a way. She said the second wave feminists were puritanical, and it was just so not true. Did she ever read all those articles about orgasm? Did she ever read Germaine Greer talking about the power of the female libido, and how we had to harness that energy? We talked about non-possessiveness and new forms of intimacy. She said the 70s feminists thought of themselves as victims, but that’s narrowing it down to just a tiny part of the debate. 

Spare Rib

Slutever: Well, I think obviously a lot of what she said she was able to say because the second wave feminists before her had been so successful in their ambitions. In my mind she was essentially saying, “Hey guys, we’ve basically won the battle, so now we can afford to be a bit more relaxed, and create new goals that are potentially different than the original ones.” She was saying that it’s ok for women to be sexy and for men to be uber-masculine. Some second wave feminists, like Gloria Steinem etc, were anti-porn, anti-stripping, anti-prostitution, because they felt these things degraded women. But Paglia sort of said, “Well actually, in this new world I think differently.”

Rowe: Well, we didn’t think it was up to us to say if working as a prostitute was degrading. The idea was to change the language–you find out whether the prostitute actually chose that profession, or whether there was social pressure, or if they had no other way to earn money. You’re right, there were moralistic strands in second wave feminism. There are always moralistic strands. What I find horrible now is the pornification of nearly everything we buy–it’s everywhere, the sides of buses, store windows. Women’s bodies are used to sell more than they ever were back then.

Slutever: Personally, I don’t think that porn by definition is degrading to women. Now more than ever there are lots of outspoken feminists in porn who speak about female sexual empowerment and pleasure. So I think there are some positive things coming out of the world of pornography.

Rowe: I have nothing against it. If someone chooses to work in porn, that’s fine by me. I’ve never been moralistic about these things. I mean, I grew up in the 60s during sexual liberation.

Slutever: So if you were to re-launch Spare Rib, what are some issues that you feel are relevant now? What do you feel could be better for modern women?

Rowe: Well, I think the childcare situation is appalling. We had wanted 24 hr nurseries– a bit of a dream idea. Under Thatcher in the 80s, it was more like having to defend nurseries. But now that my daughter has two children, I’m aware of how nothing has changed. Bringing up children is a massive part of life and yet it’s just not catered for in society. How can society change if childcare is just pushed away into a corner? And equal pay is still absolutely not achieved. We still only have about 20% women MPs in parliament, a small number of women in the boardroom, and a massive number of women in low-paid part-time jobs, and they’re lucky they’ve even got a job.

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Getting Dirty with Bobbi Starr

Yum… :)

“Pornography allows us to explore our deepest, most forbidden selves. Porn dreams of eternal fires of desire, without fatigue, incapacity, aging, or death.” – Camille Paglia

Bobbi Starr is one of the best and biggest porn stars today. She’s also an intelligent, funny, sex-positive feminist. Duh, all the best post stars are! You may remember that I interviewed Bobbi in the “Orgasms: Where R They?” episode of the VICE Slutever show. Bobbi also does a lot of work with the fetish porn Mecca Kink.com, and directs porn films for Evil Angel. She and I recently chatted about butt stuff, girl-power and emotional breakdowns.

Oh hey just hanging out, nbd

Slutever: You’ve said that your butthole is what made you famous. How so?
Bobbi Starr: Well, just because of the mass amount of work I’ve done that has involved my butthole. I think some people recognize my butthole before they recognize my face.

Last year you won the XRCO award for best “orgasmic analist.” What does that mean, exactly?
Who knows. I don’t understand a lot of the awards I win. I also won “orgasmic oralist,” but last time I checked your clitoris isn’t in your throat, so…

When I was younger I had a boyfriend that genuinely thought I should be able to cum from giving him head. Although he also thought that all girls store breast milk in their boobs from childhood, and didn’t understand that the absence of a period is a sign of pregnancy.
Wow, you dated winners.

Tell me about it. But anyway, can you actually cum from anal sex?
Yeah. Actually it’s way easier for me to cum from anal sex than vaginal sex. I just like the intensity of it. I think it’s because my butthole is sensitive. I’m not saying that my butthole is more sensitive than my vagina, but I don’t know… maybe it is? I’m at the point now where if I want to cum fast I just stick something in my butt.

How much stuff have you had up there at once, like multiple dicks?
Two. I did double anal twice.

Is it good?
It’s crazy intense. I don’t know if it’s good yet, I haven’t done it enough. Like, you know how the first time you try anal sex you’re like, “I don’t know if that was good, but I want to do it again anyway”? Well that’s how I feel about double anal. I think if I did it more, I would probably figure out a way to relax my body into it and enjoy it.

What about people who aren’t porn stars but want to be double anal’d? That seems like it would be a difficult thing to orchestrate.
True, that seems hard. Do you just stroll into a bar and say, “Hey guys, wanna DP me?”

There’s always OK Cupid.
I once tried to get these two Italian brothers to do double anal on me, but they weren’t really into it because they were brothers, so they didn’t want to sword fight my asshole, unfortunately.  

That’s a perk of being a porn star: you can have experiences that normal people fantasize about but can’t actually make happen.
Right! People always ask me, “What made you want to do porn?” and I say, “Well, it’s the safest environment to participate in extreme sex acts.” In the real world it’s hard to bring the party back to your apartment for an anal gangbang. And even if you could make that happen, you’d be taking a huge risk. In the porn industry people are tested frequently, and you know who you’re fucking, so it’s a special environment.

I was actually pretty anti anal for a long time, because I tried it as a teenager and there was a minor shit situation, which was obviously my worst nightmare, and after that I didn’t do it for six years. But then recently I tried it again and I realized that I like it because if the dick is in my ass, it means it’s out of the way enough that I can masturbate without interference. Because sometimes when the dick is in my vaj, it’s just too up in my grill to be able to touch myself efficiently.
I agree with that–it’s a serious added advantage. Like, get that thing out of my way.

Exactly. So, I know you often talk and write about being a sex-positive feminist. However, some people, including many feminists, think that porn degrades women. Thoughts?
First of all, any industry can be degrading toward women, if the woman is allowing herself to be degraded. Also, what the general public needs to understand is that what they see in a porno is the edited version of a scene, not what happens on set. When a girl walks onto a porn set she has all the control in the world. She can stop the entire production, because if she leaves, there is no vagina or asshole to fuck. I have never felt degraded on a porn set, I have only felt powerful. I participate in porn for my own enjoyment and exploration.

I think that’s why it’s important to have porn stars like you, Sasha Grey and Kimberly Kane–girls who are perceived by the public as being intelligent and sex-positive, and who love their job. It’s changing the mainstream perception of the porn industry.
I think this has a lot to do with the current wave of feminism, which is a very personal wave. The previous waves of feminism were very public. They were about protest, fighting back, and going out into the streets. Whereas this particular wave of feminism is like, “This is the way I want to live my life, and I don’t care if you think it’s right or wrong, and no one is going to convince me otherwise.” It’s about living by example.

Yeah, that’s so true! Also, modern feminism can get a bit whiny at times. It’s like, stop complaining and just do something cool instead yo! Don’t talk about it, be about it! But moving on, do you think porn presents an accurate representation of female pleasure in sex?
I think the porn industry gives an exaggerated example of all types of sex, including female pleasure It’s kind of like in theater, where the actors have to give performances big enough to reach the people sitting in the last row of the theater. It’s the same with porn–everything is exaggerated, everything is bigger. That doesn’t mean the representation is necessarily inaccurate, I just think it’s sensational.

I’ve said this before, but when I was a teenager, watching porn helped me to have a more positive body image, because I realized that I preferred watching the curvier girls have sex, because I was turned on by the way their bodies bounced.
That’s something I find really amazing about porn–the girls aren’t rail thin, they are real women. Porn stars don’t starve themselves. Porn stars think, “Maybe if I eat this piece of cheesecake it will go straight to my ass, and then I’ll get hired for more butt movies.” And actually, the girls who are super skinny don’t sell well, because people want to see bodies bounce. They want to see flesh–something to grab onto and suck on. Like, I don’t want to stick my face in somebody’s bony ass, because it will hurt my face, you know?

Totally. So, you do a lot of work with the fetish porn empire Kink.com. Is dominance and submission something you’re into IRL?
I wouldn’t say it’s something I’m specifically into, because the sex I have isn’t very specific. I’m more in the moment. If I find a partner who is submissive, then I know I can pull out my dominant side. Generally I don’t like to use terms like ‘switch’ or ‘dom’ or ‘sub, or even terms like ‘gay,’ ‘straight’ or ‘bi,’ because honestly, my sexuality goes with  the wind. One day it’s one thing, the next it’s completely different.

Sometimes you’re in the mood for pizza, and sometimes you’re on a no-carb diet.
Sometimes you want sausage, and sometimes you want a taco.

That’s so true Bobbi. So, do you think BDSM allows for a heightened emotional connection with your partner?
A lot of people who participate in BDSM on a regular basis are looking for an extreme high. For them “subspace” is a sexual goal. It’s kinda of like an orgasm–once you have one, you want more. So once someone who is into BDSM achieves subspace, all they can think about is getting back there.

Can you explain what subspace is?
Subspace is what I consider an orgasm for a BDSM sub. It’s basically a very intense emotional reaction to something of an extreme nature that’s being done to you. This could be being beaten, or verbally humiliated, or pissed on, and so forth. There’s something that is triggered in your brain when you’re going through an extreme experience–you have to give into it, physically and emotionally. But subspace is different for everyone, so it’s a little ambiguous to describe.

So at the Kink.com armory do you see people experiencing intense emotional breakdowns through S/M where they like cry and stuff?
Yes, we see this on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s a very healthy release, and sometimes it’s not so healthy. For example, some people will allow themselves to go into subspace when they don’t quite understand the intensity of going through an emotional experience like that, or other people are just so desperate to achieve the state that they are reckless with the trust they give out. That being said, Kink are very familiar with this, and we have a BDSM protocol that we go through. We make it very obvious to performers that we have a safeword and they need to use it. Our crews are allowed to stop a production at any point if they feel something unsafe or unhealthy is going on, and we allow for aftercare if someone has broken down. Our talent department will even follow up with the talent a few days later, just to make sure they’re still alright. Kink.com wants to provide an experience not only for the members of the website, but also for the models who walk through their doors. That being said, negative experiences do occur, both in BDSM and vanilla sex, and there’s nothing you can really do about it.

Do you think BDSM is a form a therapy for some people?
Oh, completely. I have friends who do pro-domme sessions that say the job is one third dominatrix, one third business, and one third therapist. People will walk into their dungeon and say, “I have this and this going on in my life, and I need you to beat it out of me.”

I suppose that’s just as a fine a way to deal with something as any. Some people drink, some take Prozac, some pray, some see dommes. I guess.
I think it’s admirable and healthy, as long as people understand what they’re getting into. S/M is not for the weak of heart :)

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Huff-Post Live: Sluts Have No Friends

Blah blah blah, something insightful, blah blah blah…

Today I had the pleasure of being a guest on Huffington Post Live for the second time, this time to discuss a new study showing that everyone hates sluts, basically. The study came out of Cornell University, and found that women who have had 20 or more sexual partners by their early twenties have a much harder time making friends with other women, even other promiscuous women. Huff-Post wanted to know, “Why are women continually punished, even by each other, for enjoying sex?” On the panel with me were Zhana Vrangalova, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University and author of the study under discussion; Ella Sage, author of imnotyourgirlfriend.com; and Joanna Silber, a student at the University of Essex and the head their feminist organization.

The conversation was really enlightening. You can watch the 20 minute segment HERE!

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Hanging with Kimberly Kane

OMG, Kimberly Kane in a Slutever T! Photo @ Driven By Boredom

I recently had the pleasure of hanging out with one of the hottest and coolest porn stars on the planet, Kimberly Kane. I’ve been a fan of Kimberly’s for a long time, but I really fell in love with her when I saw her on Chris Nieratko’s VICE series “Skinema”, because I realized that not only is she really good at sex, but she’s also extremely funny. Check it out:

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Fun fact about KK: that’s her crotch on the cover Taschen’s infamous Big Book of Pussy. Along with acting, Kimberly also directs porn, and she’s a photographer too. Actually, the reason she recently came over to my apartment was to take some sexy pics of me. Here’s a sneak peek…

…but you can see more on her photography Tumblr. During the shoot, KK and I had a casual girltalk about porn, cumming, and (of course) our moms. You can read some of our convo below. Enjoy!

Slutever: How long have you been working in the porn industry?
Kimberly Kane: This year marks a decade in the industry. It’s been a long time! I started when I was 19.

So I need your profesh advice. Should I act in porn, or no?
No, I don’t think so. Here’s the thing: it’s not a good time to start doing porn, because you’re not 18, so you know too much. I think you should keep practicing working as a Dominatrix. Also, you know people in the porn industry and have access to it, so you can make money just from being a porn insider. Also, there’s not a lot of good porn work in New York, and there’s not even a ton of work in LA anymore. It’s feast or famine. Although I might suggest doing clips-for-sale, because you can do that without even getting fully naked.

What’s clips-for-sale?
It’s basically Domming online, so you create 5 minute clips of different scenarios: cumming instruction, humiliation, foot fetish, etc., and then your slaves buy your clips. I do a lot of them on my website. It’s a good way to make money if you’re curious about doing porn, but you don’t want to go full gangbang :)

Thanks for the tip! So I know you are friends with Andrew Richardson, who publishes Richardson magazine. I love Richardson because it looks at sex and the porn industry in an analytical and academic way. Are you a fan?
Yeah, I really dig that dude, and he has a great vision for his magazine. Andrew is really into psychology, to the point where he’s constantly psychoanalyzing everyone around him, whether they want it or not. At first I was like, “Who the fuck does this guy think he is?,” but when you spend more time with him you see that he’s really honest about his own problems, too. And what’s cool is that same energy comes across in his magazine–it’s like an investigation into the unconscious of the sex industry.

Totally.
Actually, in one issue of Richardson there was a photo spread by Leigh Ledare, whose photography I love. They printed a series he did of highly erotisized photographs of his mother.

Yeah, I love those. They’re so sexy, largely because they’re so “wrong.”
I met Leigh in real life, and he’s very soft spoken and adorable and shy. You just know that he’s a mama’s boy, ya know? I’m sure it might have been difficult watching his mom fuck his friends, but the result is incredible.

Yeah. And his mother is clearly very open-minded to want to be involved in creating those photographs.
My mom is very open minded and weird too, but I ended up hating her for it. I think at some point, despite how most children claim to want “cool” parents, what you really want is a parent. And if your parent is acting like your friend, or in his case, your fuck buddy, I think it can do weird things to you.

My mom is religious and (as far as I can tell) sexually conventional. She’s very loving and supportive, but also essentially pretends that my career as a “sex writer” doesn’t exist. What is your relationship with your parents like, in regard to your work?
With my dad it’s kind of a ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ situation. And my mom, like I said, is open minded. She’s actually a stripper. But I found out through doing porn that my parents are pretty chill about a lot of things. Also, they’re not religious.

I had a similar convo with pornstar Bobbi Starr about parents recently, and she said that her parents are pretty OK with what she does too, even despite the fact that in the past random creeps from the internet have emailed her mother at work with photos of her being gangbanged.
Yeah, she has told me about that. But here’s the thing: Bobbi and I run our own shit, we direct, we’re in control of our careers, we don’t do drugs. If your daughter was in porn and was really messed-up, then you might have something to worry about. But I think our parents get it.

Also, the world of porn seems to be different now than it was in the 70s and 80s–the perception of the intelligent, feminist porn star has crossed over into the mainstream. I’m sure the original porno starlet archetype still exists, but I think people now understand that there are alternatives to that.
I totally agree!

So I’m sure you get asked this a lot, but do you ever actually cum during scenes?
I have a couple times. I know that a lot of girls do cum, and that their main goal is to orgasm because it makes them feel like they are giving a good scene, but I don’t feel that way. I cum in my bedroom with the person I’m dating. I tend to really separate my personal life from my work. I can compartmentalize, as my therapist would say :) But also, I don’t cum during sex in general, I have to use a toy. I love my Hitachi Wand!

Yeah, cumming during sex is hard. Penetration can be so distracting!
Yeah, I can only cum from using my Hitachi. What I like–and I realize this sounds very vanilla–is to be with a guy, and either just kiss him, or have him fuck me, but really slowly, no pounding–because, like you said, penetration is distracting–and then I use my wand at the same time, and then I cum.

Are you the relationship type, and do you believe in monogamy?
Yes and yes. I’m not promiscuous outside of work. I’m actually a serial monogamist.

So how does porn work, money-wise? Is it like most other careers, where you make more money the longer you have been in the business?
No, it’s the opposite, because new girls are in very high demand, because everyone wants to shoot them first, or have them do a certain sexual thing for the first time in their movie. So when you’re new you tend to work more. But lately the business is not what it used to be; there aren’t actually that many people working in mainstream porn. There are lots of people who do porn–amateur and whatnot–but as far as mainstream porn goes, there’s only a couple thousand people working on a daily basis and making a living out of it. Or maybe even less.

And lastly, what do you love most about working in porn?
I really enjoy the performance aspect of porn. Some of the best sex scenes to me can be poetry, and I think sexuality can be an art form. Sasha Grey always used to say that she was a performer, and I feel that way too. When I first got into porn, I thought, “This is amazing!”–I loved the lights and the cameras, I loved putting on a show, I felt safe, I was being recognized and getting awards, and I really felt part of a community. But I’ve also tried to learn as many life skills as possible while in the business, alongside all the fucking. Porn is where I learned about photography, and it inspired me to start taking my own photographs. And I learned how to direct and edit too. Some people get into porn and just fuck and that’s fine, but I want a retirement plan, and one that doesn’t involve being a prostitute, which is why I think it’s important to learn as much as possible.