Call For Entries:
Body of Work is the working title of a small group exhibit that will take place in Providence, Rhode Island in September of 2008. Focusing exclusively on art made by sex workers, the show will attempt to shatter common myths about what it means to be a sex worker, while also providing much-needed gallery space for talented artists who may lack other means of showcasing their work.
With Providence quickly becoming the center of a national prostitution debate, it is vitally important to remind people that sex workers have minds as well as bodies, who should not be reduced to simple stereotypes. Because of this, work submitted to the show need not necessarily be sex work-related or even sex-related. Sex workers are a diverse group of people with diverse talents, interests, and skills, and this will be reflected in the final exhibit.
Submissions by hookers, strippers, rentboys, sex educators, porn stars, burlesque performers, dominatrices, go-go boys, and more are encouraged, though due to time and space constraints it should be emphasized that Body Of Work will ultimately focus on work by a small number of artists. If the quality of work reaches beyond the scope of the gallery, a larger exhibit may take place in a different venue at a later date.
If you are interested in submitting your work to the show, more specific/logistical deets are after the jump:
Wallpaper, the guiltiest of guilty-pleasure magazines, pays homage to the tart card in their new issue. The calling cards, stuck in phone booths by London prostitutes advertising their wares, have gained something of a cult appeal over the years, particularly as phone booths are on the wane. So the magazine asked a boatload of designers to come up with their own cards, with the added design-nerd twist that each one is hawking a different typeface.
Some of them are funny, some are sort of clever, and as usual I feel like there’s something really fundamental that I’m just not getting about the stylings of Daisy de Villeneuve. The whole thing would be sort of entertaining, in a dorky way, if the sidebar didn’t suggest that every single London prostitute is being trafficked against her will.
Designer Mike Dempsey, who works with trafficked women in London, wrote a response to the project, and I honestly can’t say that I know enough about the lives of London’s sex workers to judge what he’s saying. However, I’m guessing it might be an exaggeration on Wallpaper’s part to say the whole project evokes “the sinister world that lies beneath every card.” (Also, if they’re going to look at every woman as a victim, then the whole project is pretty tasteless, isn’t it?)
[above: Jeff Leak's ode to Cooper Black]
Filed under: copouts, gay, heterosexuals, hookers, magazines, music, not hot, personal, porn, shameless self-promotion | Tags: hookers, pride, sarah palin, books, porn, drake, rubber soul, punk, marketing, records, paris hilton, dubai, bikinis, tender morsels, y?n-vee, terrible band names, kerry washington, transsexuals, crack, chairs, self-promotion
I didn’t have enough links on Sunday for a wrap-up. But boy is there a lot to talk about now! Sorry about that!
Romance novels can be written by smart women! This article made me want to try my hand at it, too, even though, you know, I’m a man and don’t really read romance novels.
AAG responds to a letter by a guy concerned about the ethics of watching porn. Nothing new to people that read about this all the time, but pretty interesting anyway. I like the idea that some people think of it as performance art. [via Debauched Domestic Diva]
Drake, the Degrassi star/rapper/general annoyance, is (thankfully) doing his part to revive the jimmy-wrapping era of hip-hop. [via Idolator]
Punk. It’s a lot like social media, you know?
A Russian woman can lift 14kg with her vagina muscles. That’s one of those articles that make me wonder about how, exactly, the newspapers got wind of the story.
FiveThirtyEight mentions Sarah Palin’s resignation, commenters start hurling insults.
Bitch Magazine continues to be really juvenile and irritating. Now they’re offended because Paris Hilton hired Middle Eastern cultural experts before she started filming her new TV show in Dubai, as though that’s a bad thing. Also they don’t like that she wore a bikini to go swimming. Which, since Dubai is 82% foreigners, is actually both legal and fairly ordinary common (and probably got the OK from her cultural advisors.) [via Natalia Antonova]
Australian writer Margo Lanagan’s new Tender Morsels is causing a big to-do in Britain . The updated version of Snow White and Rose Red, which is actually intended for children, includes a gang-rape scene, a detailed description of a miscarriage, and in its very first paragraph has a sex scene between a witch and a dwarf. [via Bookslut]
UPDATE: The second I hit send The Book Bench also posted about this. Apparently the book’s been out in the US since October and nobody here paid it any mind at all.
At some point in my complaining about stupid 3oh!3 and their stupid name, I remembered early nineties r&b girl group Y?N-Vee, who weren’t really any good either but who at least didn’t make Helen Keller jokes in their songs. Though the chorus to their song Satisfaction did have a really awkward line about how “it melts in your mouth and not in your hands.”
Kerry Washington will be playing a cracked-out transsexual hooker in Life Is Hot In Cracktown, and it may or may not be the first time a black biological female actress plays a trans character on film. (On TV it’s happened a bunch of times before, oddly, at least according to the comments on that post.) [via Clay Cane]
Studio 360 came up with some ideas for a new Gay Pride flag. My favorite was the squares one, because it re-instituted the turquoise and pink–symbolizing art and sex–that were taken out of the real Pride flag in the past. Also, it reminds me of the new Pet Shop Boys album.
Charles and Ray Eames debuting a new chair on NBC in 1956. [via Joe Gebbia's Posterous]
And, finally, my 1000th Tumblr post went up about fifteen minutes ago. Trying to do something memorable/milestone-y, I went with a photo I shot myself, though it’s not a self-portrait so don’t get your hopes up.
Filed under: books, gay, hookers, hot, music, people from rhode island, personal | Tags: art, rhode island, pride, kate bush, a newfound interest in massachusetts, solange, bearapalooza, stonewall, michael jackson, the coup, chuck barris, flickr
Two years after a hatchet-and-gun attack in a gay bar, New Bedford, Massachusetts, had its first-ever gay pride event last Saturday. New Bedford used to be one of the world’s major whaling ports, and it’s still a very surly, very Portuguese Catholic, city. (If you’re curious, it’s also the city where I bought the cutest pants ever, as it’s also become kind of an antique/vintage haven.) Here’s a tedious photo montage thing of last weekend’s events. I don’t mean that in a mean way, and I’m glad they’re doing it. But really, what a tedious photo montage thing.
San Francisco Pride, happening tomorrow, is bound to be infinitely more exciting, though.
Speaking of festivals, in the unlikely event that you happen to be near Longfork, West Virginia, next weekend, it’s Bearapalooza. (And, if you do get there, I’d like to see pictures!)
Joe.My.God reports on the fortieth anniversary of Stonewall riots and incudes a really condescending Daily News article from 1969.
With so many people rushing to their blogs to broadcast their love of all things Michael Jackson, I’m glad that somebody remembered to mention “Lisa, It’s Your Birthday.” [via Art Fag City]
As I’ve noted before, both anti-prostitution bills in Rhode Island might stall, with the legislature wrapping up before its summer break and spending some of its last hours debating whether or not we should be allowed to have Yankees license plates. (On a brighter note, they might finally legalize MMA fighting in Rhode Island.)
Irish Kate Bush fans attempt to co-opt James Joyce’s holiday, for some reason. (Okay, that happened two weeks ago, but still, why?)
For some reason this song, which appeared on a mixtape someone made me about ten years ago, started running through my head the other day.
Chuck Barris, former game show host, alleged former CIA agent, and inspiration for the wonderful, wonderful Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, has a new mystery novel out.
Check out the Nudie Blues, as pictured above. I’m not sure who made them; the Flickr profile just says it’s a male in Berlin who is taken. I’m assuming his name is Alain, but I don’t know anything beyond that.
Filed under: hookers, people from rhode island | Tags: prostitution, rhode island
The House is out for their summer recess, which means that they won’t be around to pass Sen. Paul Jabour’s anti-prostitution vote. This is good, because even the state police and the attorney general thought it was a bad idea. The Journal article is actually pretty interesting, and I just woke up so I don’t think I’ll be able to do much more than link to that right now.
Filed under: hookers, people from rhode island | Tags: prostitution, rhode island, the law
The Senate passed the bill.
Now, either Paul Jabour’s bill (which fines prostitutes and their clients equally) needs to pass the House, or Joanne Giannini’s bill (which is theoretically more lenient to victimized women) needs to pass the Senate. Or they can come up with some sort of compromise. Which may or may not happen, given Jabour’s tone in the Journal article: “Representative Giannini has done a tremendous amount of work on this,” Jabour said Thursday. “If she wants something passed, I want Joanne to consider amending her bill.”
This bill wasn’t even on the Senate’s calendar yesterday. Another one, aimed at human trafficking, was supposed to be voted on. That bill was sponsored by Rhoda Perry, who opposed the anti-prostitution bill until yesterday but ended up voting for it anyway. I have no idea whether her bill was voted on, or what the changes were that led her to change her mind.
I’ll let you know more as things develop, although I’ve got an article due today for someone else and at 11:30 I have a press conference to go to. So we’ll see.
A potentially very alarming blog comment about tonight’s anti-trafficking legislation:
“It just passed, but the -entire- text of the law was replaced with different wording that seems odd to me, sentences are dramatically reduced, and the wording is possibly unenforceable. Is it -legal- to require STD testing of criminals? I was unaware that people forfeit their bodies to the state unless they’re incarcerated.”
I wasn’t there, unfortunately, so this is all I know right now.
Filed under: hookers, people from rhode island | Tags: prostitution, rhode island, taiwan
Tonight the Rhode Island senate is going to be voting on the anti-prostitution bill. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to pass, which is a good thing, and it also doesn’t seem like people are even that interested; the Providence Journal article about the senate hearings mentioned that six of the ten senators on the committee didn’t even stay to hear all the testimony.
That didn’t stop URI professor Donna Hughes from calling the event a circus, though. In an editorial published yesterday she describes the “outrageous appearance” of people who didn’t support the bill, mentioning, basically, that one had tattoos and the others were Asian (!). Megan from Oh Megan–the one with the tattoos pictured above–responded with a letter that’ll be published in tomorrow’s Journal:
Putting quotation marks around my profession was insulting. And yes, it is not “made up” that I am a contributor to the sex-workers magazine $pread. Is it so shocking that sex-workers can read?
It’s true, Hughes does like to use quotation marks, even referring to sex in her editorial as “it.” If she were my grandmother, that would make sense and be fine, but this woman teaches women’s studies and was presumably raised at some point after 1930. You’d think her views of sex would be a little less spinsterish. But no. At least the editorial has a bright side, in that she’s pessimistic about the bill actually passing.
In other news, Taiwan today (or yesterday, I guess, or maybe tomorrow–I don’t understand time zones) opted to decriminalize prostitution, thanks to sex workers advocating for their own rights.
Filed under: gay, hookers, lists, movies, music, not hot, people from rhode island | Tags: abortion, amber rhea, bloc party, blogs, geneology, hiv, hoaxes, mcsweeney's, michelle rhee, movies, porn, the 700 club, the gays, timbaland
Former Rhode Island senator/current gubernatorial candidate Lincoln Chafee came out in support of gay marriage this week, with an editorial in New England gay rag Bay Windows.
Speaking of Rhode Island, our ridiculous governor made an appearance on The 700 Club the other day.
The Washington Post had a pretty fascinating report on Michelle Rhee, who heads the DC school system. (Not particularly relevant to this blog, but worth the five-page read nonetheless.) The most disturbing part of the story, I think, is the part about how lots of kids can’t graduate each year because bureaucratic nonsense prevents them from getting the credits they need.
Audacia Ray guest-posted on Feministing about the HIV scare in the porn world.
Amber Rhea is done, uh, being.
Timbaland’s getting sued for unauthorized sampling.
McSweeney’s is looking for new columnists.
Bloc Party just announced a new non-album single, which will be out in August.
Al Capone’s possibly-grandson has a website that came across my path last week. I don’t even remember how.
Anti-abortion website April’s Mom was, it turns out, a hoax. Allegedly created by a woman pregnant with a terminally ill child, social worker Becca Beushausen eventually birthed a doll. In a fit of crazy, Beushausen says that the had originally created the site only for a few of her friends. Because, I don’t know, who doesn’t think it’s a lot of fun when their friends make websites devoted to their imaginary terminally ill fetuses?
Unreality came out with a list of the ten most polarizing movies of the last decade. The list is all Hollywood, so Demonlover and Irreversible aren’t on there. I’m pro-Eyes Wide Shut and anti-Moulin Rouge, for what it’s worth.
David Archuleta’s dad was caught up in a sting at the Queens of Reiki massage parlor in Utah this past January.
Finally, if you’re looking for something else to follow on Tumblr, I really like Nashville Needs More Metaphors.
Filed under: hookers, people from rhode island | Tags: prostitution, rhode island
The history of prostitution in Rhode Island is highlighted in today’s Providence Journal, starting with the 1976 lawsuit by COYOTE against the state. Back then, prostitution was a felony with fines of up to five years in prison.
The whole thing is interesting, because it includes lots of wheeling and dealing, the Catholic Church, and the 1980 decision to reduce a conviction from a felony to a misdemeanor. I also liked how, in 1998, the State Supreme Court ruled that the anti-prostitution law was “primarily to bar prostitutes from hawking their wares in public” and couldn’t be applied to what people did in private.
(I’m actually writing a similar article for a different publication, which I actually have to hand in tomorrow.)
