“I respect strippers of all forms, because I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t wandered into a strip club and wanted to know more about striptease history.”

“The great seductresses in history knew that it isn’t just about trying to look sexy or pretty; it’s an art and one becomes skillful in it when she realizes that there are all these conflicting elements that all come together to make something magical. So, what I’m saying is that you don’t need to choose, you just need to understand that all these different things come together to create sexy, and your mind and your personality are a massive part of that.”

“Glamour is about creating illusion.”

“Regarding cosmetic surgery, it’s nothing new. After all, the first nose jobs were done in the 1700s… The problem is that a lot of people don’t know how to use it gracefully.”

I’m very sensible with my money. Even when I was working in a strip club in the early 90s, I was saving 15 percent of every dime I made. I was also investing, even though it wasn’t much. I have always told myself it doesn’t last forever.”

The Rumpus

“beautiful Cannes & young Brigitte Bardot in a spectacular display of seaside glamour”

In a 1999 interview with Digital Journalist, photographer Ed Clark described how in 1950 he received a call from a friend at 20th Century Fox about “a hot tomato” the studio had just signed: Marilyn.

See more photos: TIME

(Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about “to what do I measure my worth”? As my ruminating swirls amok, and sometimes (more often than I’d like) chases its own tail in circles, trying to suss out just what the fuck choices I’ve been making over the past few years, I can’t help but wonder: what is my god? What do my choices mean, and what have I meant to the people for whom I’ve been “choicing” all over?

Is my god peace, purity, drama, fun, violence, sexuality, rebellion, health, my family, my facebook friends, my goals, my downfalls, my accomplishments, money, wonder, curiosity, other people’s words and choices?

I can get very lost in trying to decipher why people do the things they do, and in the midst of analyzing somebody else, I quite literally lose myself.

They say alcoholics drink, and Alanonics think. Sitting on my couch for an hour analyzing a situation is tirelessly easy for me. What would seem arduous for a “normal” person (I hate that word!) is quite simple, and even enjoyable for me. However, part of my recovery is to stop sitting around analyzing and thinking the shit out of shit. I will never know the mysteries of another — especially because, as Dr. Gregory House says — everybody lies! Judging my insides against others’ outsides is an exercise in futility. And when the shit hits the fan, you don’t want a futile mess to clean up on top of it.

I used to have a post-it stuck to my computer that said “my god is peace.” Whenever drama ensued, or if I was flirting with disaster, I would look at it (or rather, my roving eyes would find it by will of something greater than myself) and time would sort of envelop me. Time and grace. “Shhhh. Stop,” it would say. “Relax.” And thus, I did.

Lately, I’ve felt happiness in ways that I have prayed for for a long time now. To be seen and revered for who I truly am, rather than some gazey perception or provocation or projection of another’s sexual fantasy. (Not to say I don’t like that from time to time — because I most certainly do. But, I really want to work toward wholeness, and toward somebody knowing me fully, and from that fullness, I can sink into being “objectified” if that makes sense.) I’m looking forward to seeing where this new space that’s being held for me leads. Perhaps, the space was always there. I have a feeling it was. Now that I recognize it, god will maybe reveal more.

The tattoo on my wrist came at a time when a girlfriend and I had broken up after seven tumultuous months. It was our third breakup. Our sex was incredibly hot, but we couldn’t tame the fire on dry land. She had an apartment in WeHo and so, I trekked to a tattoo shop on Santa Monica Blvd. with a piece of tape across my wrist that said “faith” with a butterfly with one antenna aside it. The one antenna was significant for reasons you can probably figure out. I was walking the fog, and the belief that something somewhere saw more than me, with clearer perception, the whole picture and not just the minuscule image I partook, would lead me out from the tunnel and into the light of future better times. The guys at the parlor said, “oh, she wants a butterfly. haha Another butterfly.” But, I didn’t care. I knew what it meant. And they were doin’ their thing. I waited an hour for the tattoo artist I wanted to arrive. A hairy dude with a long beard and thick arthritic fingers. He looked like Billy Gibbons. He stuck a blunt needle into my wrist, without asking how thick I wanted the word “faith” to wrap around me like an eternal ribbon. My pulse pushing out a heretic’s lucidly emphatic intention with each hallowed beat. When I saw Sharpie-like letters etched onto my skin, I nearly shrieked. “No,” I thought. “This is good. I need this. This is a declaration.” I expected a fine little frenzy to mask my fear. Instead, I got a fucking real estate sign.

My writing is going well, and by the grace of Pele, I will erupt in a slow surmounting wave like a force of nature onto this world. Careening into the veins of the literary world and celluloid, like an unbreakable spell.

I had a wonderful conversation with a new friend yesterday, and we reminisced about our exes. For so long, I was immersed in the gay community and the trans community and the queer community, and just like I do, one day, I went DONE. Or rather, ‘now I want dick!’ And like a jack rabbit, I humped. But, they were not fulfilling and the change was polarizing. The loss of a community, coupled with the sudden ‘straight world’ and the changes in my body – letting a real dick inside me after so so long, and without them loving me or knowing how intense this transition was and is, has left me, well alone. With this feeling that I am truly alone if I don’t speak up. Men move fast and hard (no pun intended, or maybe?) and you guys are fucking intense. Not that women aren’t. But, I’ve come to realize that I need gentleness. And, I need somebody who forces me to open up and be gentle. Obviously, not through force, but through charm and tenderness and legitimate passion. Persistence, tenacity, respect, and love! Because, if not, I will give you exactly what you want, and then I will go away. Or you will and I really won’t care. My audacity toward all that I want can also, thankfully, make it incredibly easy for me to shut down my feelings. But, I also attract men that can do the same. And, the last fucking thing I want is some shut down dude who doesn’t illicit anything but resentment from me. Because, that stoic, icy, “it’s all good” demeanor is very attractive to me; a child pulling at her daddies sleeve to see her and hear her and moreover, listen to her. Pleading is not acceptable, though, and I was desperate once for a man, and sorry, but he wasn’t worth it. Not because he wasn’t great, but because he wasn’t invested in any real way, and suffering for somebody’s footprints as they glide out the door and onto their next shallow lay, is a tired way to repeat womens’ all-too-familiar wounds.

So, today I will celebrate my ability to: open up, be vulnerable, be honest, be kind, be me, be literary, be scared, have shitty boundaries, make mistakes, embrace others without judgement, judge myself, love with an open heart, be a good mom, and friend, and have eternal wonder, even when the world feels jaded. To kinship and kidship. And my incredible niece, who makes me giddy with gratitude.

Your girl forever,
Darrah xx

By Lindy West

Sluts. They’re the worst, right? Always having sex for pleasure and walking around with visible ankles. Thank god we came up with this foolproof slut eradication technique, where we treat women like garbage for doing totally normal (but gross!) stuff that everyone on earth does all the time! Remember how we used to slut-shame Madonna? That totally worked out. Nobody ever had sex ever again. UNTIL RIHANNA.

Curses! Rihanna (and her vaganna) must be stopped! Fortunately, Drake and Chris Brown are on the case. Michael Arceneaux has a great piece in Ebony this month (somewhat in response to a Russell Simmons piece titled “Get Off Rihanna’s Dick“) detailing the latest wave of Rihanna-shaming, in which the aforementioned famous men, who have famously put their penises in Rihanna, rap about how gross it is that Rihanna lets men put their penises in her. Cool story, bros! (Brown’s lyrics have the tasty bonus of alluding, it seems, to that time he savagely smashed the shit out of her face: “Don’t f—k with my old bitch, it’s like a bad fur/ Every industry n—— done had her/ Shook the tree like a pumpkin just to smash her/ B*tch is breaking codes, but I’m the password.”)

Arceneaux writes:

Meanwhile, as for everyone else so fixated on this notion that there’s a problem with the way Rihanna carries herself and brought this attention on herself: grow up. She could have Mother Teresa’s sex life and would bring about the “starlet or streetwalker” debate from any man with a certain attitude about women and sex.

To “slut shame” is to perpetuate the idea that sex is dirty, and in particular, dirty and dangerous for a woman. That rigid mindset is problematic as it is unrealistic and does little in the way of advancing the way we discuss consensual sex between adults. You know, any day now.

Weirdly, men manage to stick their penises into stuff all the time without slut-shaming themselves into oblivion. Drake isn’t releasing a track about how many chicks Colin Farrell has dropped his panties for (although I WISH HE WOULD BECAUSE HAHAHAHAH). But the problem with slut-shaming goes way beyond the problem of a double-standard. It’s not just that men and women both engage in slutty behavior and therefore no one has a right to throw stones—it’s that there is nothing wrong with slutty behavior (or, as I like to call it, behavior) in the first place.

So why do we target Rihanna’s sex life so aggressively? Well, first of all, she seems to be truly having an awesome time—and women owning their sexual pleasure veers dangerously close to women wanting to own their bodies. And we can’t have that! The more sexual agency you possess, the less of an object you become. That’s threatening to a lot of people. Rihanna’s not even some delinquent heiress with a sex tape whose only job is commodifying her sexuality (although that’s fine too)—she’s an incredibly successful artist who works hard on her craft and in her free time does whatever-the-snatch she wants without apology. And isn’t that exactlywhat we want women to do? Whatever-the-snatch? It’s almost like there’s a right kind of slut (Kim Kardashian?) and a wrong kind of slut (our dear RiRi), and the difference lies in exactly how many fucks you give. Kim Kardashian’s entire job is giving fucks (it’s called maintaining her brand). Rihanna is just whoever Rihanna happens to be that day.

But more importantly, Rihanna is very famous, kind of bonkers, and completely unfiltered. She behaves exactly like any average 24-year-old does (plus a million billion dollars) and she has the nerve and the platform to do it right where we can see it. Most celebrities are so buttoned-up and micromanaged that as far as we know they’re all smooth as a Ken doll down there. Not RiRi! And shouldn’t we be happy about that? There’s an entire INDUSTRY devoted to prying open the dirty little corners of celebrity life and digging out the nuggets that prove the stars are human, Just Like Us. Rihanna just hands it all over, shame-free, and now you’re mad? Is it just the cycle of illusion/hunt/exposure that we like? Gross, you guys.

Whatever the reason, here is my rallying cry: CUT IT OUT. We need to stop shaming celebrities for having sex when celebrities having sex is obviously our favorite thing. Freaking out about Rihanna every time she Tweets some crazy shit about fucking a leprechaun or whatever doesn’t make you hilarious or grounded or moral. It makes you just a couple of clicks above Chris Brown. Because what you’re saying, essentially, is that women’s sexual behavior is shameful and should be hidden and/or mocked.

No. Women’s sexual behavior needs to be accepted so that women’s sexual health can be protected. So slut it up, Rihanna.

Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably. Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.
Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die–
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all. Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

I found this in a journal from March, and will share it with you.

I am so groggy and out of it. I took a Tylenol PM last night to help me sleep, and it knocked me out! One pill! I guess all the healthy eating, and drug abstaining has rocked me into a state of hyper-sensitivity to anything chemical. Although, I’ve always been very sensitive to chemicals or anything that I put into my body, mind and spirit. I just tried to “rough it” for a long time. I hate when I feel shut down, and that’s how I’ve felt for a long time. Since I fell in and out of love, and since universes became congruent in my life: dreams and reality, and yet never fully realized. It’s like everybody tells me how amazing I am, except for me. I mean, I believe I am very special, but I have a strong self-destructive streak, and it hurts me to even type that! But, I do, and I always have. My danger-seeking, adrenaline-junkie, pushing things to the limit to see what happens; my desire to live splayed open is just as strong as my secretive self, who longs to be left alone. To hear her own voices and truths, and to not feel the pressure of another’s gaze. I’m a natural archivist and always saved scraps of things (the foil peanut bag from an airplane ride, an empty taffy bag from a family vacation, letters from friends, love letters never sent). My mother got me a scrap book that resembled a cardboard accordion when I was twelve, and my sister teased me to no end. I didn’t care. I filled it up to the point that I needed two rubber bands to keep it from spilling the contents – my twelve years. Mine.

Now, I am a shape shifter, a peeler of the metaphorical onion, stripping away, pushing off of me anybody who tries to cling too tightly. Crowd my space. Except my dog.
I keep things simple, and while I still have journals, and scraps, I’ve donated or sold many fabrics that once defined me.
And all else, has a special place, albeit, at arm’s distance. And that’s OK. Or rather, it has to be. Those who’ve maintained a place in my life have done so by being patient, pleasant, forgiving and persistent. But, I test them (unintentionally) and I will continue to. Because your place here is hard-won. My faults and sexuality come forward first, because the soft, kind, gentle, sensitivity sits drawing in circles on the inside. And life serves up the main course after the appetizer. I watched my grandmother go from sick to dead and I know that if a man can’t handle a girl who’s late once in a while; who won’t have sex until she’s ready, who is frightened of flying, but will take a swift slap on the backside, who says what she means, but will also crawl into bed purring and give you every fantasy you’ve ever dared to dream up, and the next day cry watching an Intervention marathon drinking red Table Wine and push you out the door, then you will never be able to handle what life serves up. And just in case it’s sickness, poverty or death, you should be strong.
Hopefully, it will be love, travel and interdependency, but if not, I got enough scraps to fill my armoire of happier days, when all that mattered was that I could sing and pick daisies and one day you might come to save me.
I wear a crown invisible and need a cape to crusade before. My skin is dull and numb these past few days. I think I’m just invincible to feeling.
I spoke at my Al-Anon meeting last night. Ugh. I’ve never led a meeting before. It’s my first time in all 8 years I’ve gone, on and off. It sucked and when I got home I was in my usual panic. The relics of the past, when they are what happened to you, and not the orchestration of your accordion, feel like kryptonite.
Today, it’s strong coffee, and maybe some more writing, and dreaming of New York.

Today I will love with an open heart and mind, as though, I’ve never known pain and always just delivery. In those moments of flight, the surge of freedom is enough to suffer the shot, but we won’t remember anything but goodness, in fact, it will all be obsolete. In the kingdom of heaven, nothing matters except unity. And in unity, there is no pain no parting no fracture no fighting no suffering. Only you, me, god, birds, flowers, the ocean, clouds, and life. Strumming and dancing – never fleeing, but flowing. And I will love with an open heart. Forever. With you.

In wholeness.

“I’ve always thought it as something that was still holding the country back,” said iconic rapper/music producer, fashion designer, and bagillionaire Jay-Z during a CNN interview recently.  Not only is he married to one of the fiercest ladies in music history, with a smokin’ body, powerful lyrics and a killah voice to boot, but he’s also pro-gay. Who knew?

Born Shawn Corey Carter, the now 42-year-old CEO of Def Jam Records, is no stranger to oppression. Raised in the Brooklyn projects by a single mom, surrounded by drugs and violence, he found a way out from the mire to live on the pulse of the ever-changing roller-coaster-y shark-filled music biz. Oh, yeah, he is worth an estimated $450 million.

Wanna know something even cooler than cash? Jay-Z also enthused that allowing same-sex couples to wed is “the right thing to do.” Given his tremendous following, this was a brave and intelligent move that should help energize young voters come November. (Are you registered to vote? If not, go here NOW!)

Currently, same-sex wedding ceremonies are performed in only eight states, and by two Native American tribes.

Watch the rap mogul detail why President Obama, as a person, made the right choice in publicly acknowledging his evolving views about this subject, even if it costs him votes (it won’t).  

Also worth mentioning, many detractors point out that Jay-Z has made a ton o’ cash selling homophobic rhymes, laced with misogynistic lyrics and of course, sold drugs in his past.  I’m absolutely willing to be wrong here, but it’s always been my feeling that the hip-hop community, like factions of people, and various other subcultures, oft have a singular fight until they’ve established enough opportunity and equality to begin hustling for another’s.  That’s not to say it’s A-OK to bash anybody, ever.  However, we are all (hopefully) evolving and the altruist in me chooses to honor his fluidity rather than opportunism. I know for a fact that Beyonce has made statements that would lead one to believe she had religious objections to lesbianism (you’re missin’ out B).  After skirting the Madonna/Christina/Britney/Missy Elliot MTV kissy-face performance, she then starred in a wonderfully homo-erotic Lady Gaga video.  Hopefully, between she and Jay-Z, they’ve opened their minds and aren’t just gay-for-pay.  

What do you think?  Should the hip-hop community be held accountable for their homophobic lyrics?

[itheewed]