Reading The Economist’s “The Future of Entertainement: Middle-class struggle” in the evening with my middle-class salad, I thought yes. Indeed, we should start to discuss if Chris Anderson’s long tail came true, but in a different way. The promise of the niche whitewashed that it would take away the thick middle of the tail; the long tail became a small tail. So…
Is this the case? And are you ready to try this?
A couple of days ago, Kate Moss said in an interview that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels is her motto, and I posted the sentence right away on Facebook. I found it beautiful in its own way as it is provocative; pointing precisely to the inner logic of today’s politics of the body.
When the furor of Kate Moss saying that how can she reached Germany, a couple of my friends got back at me asking if I really think posting that was a good idea, because it was always a motto anorectic girls cling on to. However, I think I like the sentence exactly for that reason. It is a dangerous sentence because it is interwoven with this subject. It makes us think about the way we live and understand life. That’s why I like it. And that’s why I always loved Kate Moss. Apart from being beautiful, the way she takes live makes me think.
Yes, there are anorectic people out there, and I had one anorectic among my friends and another one among my acquaintances. It is a horrible disease leaving you and anybody else around totally helpless. A person who is actually clear in his/her head, destroys herself/himself in front of your eyes and is actually willing to starve to death. 20 per cent of anorectic people die. They rather die than let loose the only control about the world they think they have.
So let’s face it, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels first of all describes a certain kind of power you feel when you overcome the inner self, despite of some people who think we shouldn’t talk about it. No. We should talk about it. More as there is a thin line between overcoming and destroying. Being on a diet can be fun, that’s why it is so dangerous.
Now, personally I think you should decide what you want to look like and then go with it. First of all, because a lot of bodies don’t look good when the person that wears it is thin. Secondly, it can be a subversive decision not to count calories and watch the fat and sugar.
That was the other thing I liked about the sentence. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels reveals that Kate Moss is not naturally thin. Well she is, but in a world where you can buy Gü even in a Tesco supermarket, you bet there is always something that tastes as good as skinny feels around the corner. Indeed Kate Moss thinks so, too, as her motto was accompanied by her saying: “You try and remember, but it never works.”
So all this assuring of models who eat normal is a joke. They fight. Yes they eat, but nearly all of them are constantly on a diet, whatever they tell you. Is Kate Moss really to blame for saying that? What is the furor all about? Is a diet an eating disorder? And are we discussing this issue with the same verve when we talk about premier league football players? Why has everybody a say with models while we discuss doping as a medical mistake? Politics of gender anyone?
Fashion is a sphere of beauty. It creates an ideal, and an ideal is never about the real world. As I like ideals, I am actually not sure whether models should look normal, or people should be capable of being more reflective. Fashion creates an image and this is something art did for centuries. Fashion is fiction. It uses real people for it and a lot of photoshop. But its industry is not less brutal than football.
Maybe instead of locating the discourse in the female body, we should consider making the process more transparent. Get magazines to cover the process with every shooting, and consider teaching the mechanisms of media as a curriculum in school. In modelling as in being a professional football player, only some bodies can be part of the production of beauty, and we should deal openly with this situation. This is not about what we all should look like, this is a mean of production.
In fact, I find it interesting that the discourse is ranting about the thin issue all the time while being tall is as important as thin but no one finds that too much of an exclusion. Clearly, the thin issue is where the politics of the body are happening today and meanwhile it reached the male body, too. But whatever. A diet is not going to make anyone more beautiful. Being confident will. Kate, thanks for bringing it up.
Go ahead, change your life if you have the time as MUSICVISION PHOENIX is twenty tracks that changed their lives.
MUSICVISION PHOENIX from Guillaume Delaperriere on Vimeo.
Spotify this:
01-Blue monday people / Curtis Mayfield
02-Can’t let go / Evie Sands
03-Sell your love / Iggy pop & James Williamson
04-Flash forward / Serge Gainsbourg
05-I’m glad you’re mine / Al Green
06-Don’t turn the light on, leave me alone / CAN
07-Mesopotamia / The B-52’s
08-Ruby don’t take your love to town / Kenny Rogers
09-Slow night, slow long / Kings of Leon
10-Leur plaisir sans moi / Jane Birkin
11-In and out of the shadows / Dion
12-Victory garden / The Red Krayola
13-Escape from New-York main title / John Carpenter
14-We almost lost Detroit / Gil Scott Heron & Brian Jackson
15-Darlin’ / The Beach Boys
16-Peace like a river / Paul Simon
17-A song for you / Gram Parsons
18-The fairest of the seasons / Nico
19-Who was that masked man / Van Morrison
20-La smortina / Coro della SAT
+
21-City lights / Phoenix
Let’s face it hipsters, the time of the skinny jeans over. Passé. Nice shoes might save us a bit, but actually it is out for a longer time now, because acutally we look the same for five years now, and in a way that it isn’t even retro. It is just annoying. Ups. Well, most of us hipster got aware of that, but here comes our dilemma: The skinny jeans is out, but there is nothing to replace it. The fashion uniform of the hipster reached a blind end. We wear something that is over. Out. Just not fashionable anymore. But we can’t help it. Brandnew, you’re out! Well, we take it on the chin.
Indeed, skinny jeans are still the internationally acclaimed uniform of the hipsters. Male hipsters, female hipsters and Kate Moss wear them. We can spot each other in New York, Berlin or London easily. Okay, we like to wear funny glasses at the moment, a bit like Ugly Betty. But that doesn’t help us. You think that is a made up problem? Well, style is attitude, and life is hard so it needs some design, don’t you think?
So on a recent evening in the delicious restaurant in Barbican me and my friends aka three skinny trousered hipsters were looking out into the London night getting excited about our fundamental problem. Sure, there are some experiments to replace the skinny jeans with a loose trouser, but let’s face it, they don’t really have a chance on the hipster mass market. They are exceptional hipster fashion, made for moments when we hipsters dress up. Not a choice for everyday hipster life. And the mass market for hipster knows that, too.
I tried to buy trousers today. Two of the pullovers which I stole from the wardrobe of the fashionable mum want to be worn with white trousers. First of all, I thought of the classical skinny jeans, but then I changed my mind to one a little bit wider and maybe made of wool. In fact, I am so out now, that I couldn’t find a light trouser at all. So please, if you have any idea where to get one help me. If you have an idea how we get out of this dilemma help all of us.
Indeed, new technology is changing the world. So it was about time, that Frank Schirrmacher, the publisher of the German newspaper FAZ, enters the discussion with a new book. While a while ago he still argued that everything coming out of the internet was bad, or if it was good, had its origin somewhere else, he has recognized that the digital revolution does affect reality. That is good. Welcome! But let’s see in which ways he argues now with a little help of the internet, because while his book might come out tomorrow, we find an english interview online today. Lovely thing technology, isn’t it?
In principal, I must say I like that he starts a debate. And I like some parts of his argumentation, predictability is in fact a big issue, information overload is a fact, and anyway we need more abstract thinking about the internet since the German media theory gang left us alone with their decision to stay put with the hardware-software-difference which made them ignoring the internet.
But some things are a little bit sassy. To argue “…thinking itself somehow leaves the brain and uses a platform outside of the human body” ignores totally 10 years of theoretical work about the close relationship of thinking and writing as it was done by figures like Jacques Derrida and Gerard Genette.
And “…multitasking — which is quite a problematic issue. The human muscle in the head, the brain, has to adapt.”
Well. Isn’t “multitasking” political as it is now the unwritten part of every job description? So while we were trained to be a machine at the assembly belt of industrial capitalism, now we are trained to be a machine in the dynamic network of the digital capitalism. So isn’t multitasking much more a problem what a political system demands than a problem of machines?
Finally, I miss Luhmann and the discussion of information as something that makes a difference. To confront information overload with the free will skips all the politics of the discourse, sociology and the historicity of thought. I am not willing to let them go.
Technology is not just happening to us. Well, t does happen to us, of course, but there is a double-bound, as we form it, too. And that is a political moment that vanishes too much if you understand information like this:
So you can, in a way, see that the Internet and that the information overload we are faced with at this very moment has a lot to do with food chains, has a lot to do with food you take or not to take, with food which has many calories and doesn’t do you any good, and with food that is very healthy and is good for you.
Frank, in terms of nutrition overload, here in capitalism we just throw away the food. A lot of it. And actually we do it with information, too. But your right, we haven’t figured out waste separation yet. And what will be thrown away and what has to be looked at is the political fight, that just started. And hey, wait for the revolution.
The job is stealing blog time. Twitter is stealing blog time. Facebook is stealing blog time. And by the way, I badly need to go out. After I mutated into a type writer within the last months, here comes a personal selection of the text flow word while reading.
- My favorite at the moment are the 8 ideas about the future of news with 2 of them being really innovative, namely integrated storytelling and a differential display of news.
How news will change in Google’s eyes as Google’s Eric Schmidt gives eight ideas on the future of journalism.
- Linking isn’t always cool.
Is the link economy of UK news sites managing or making abundance? Obviously the ‘link economy’ reached the point where news sites produce information overload rather than managing it
- We badly need a new way of monitoring online advertisement. So do you have any idea who could be the lobby fighting for that? Please get in contact with me!
As sales fall, newspapers must find a way to measure multimedia readership, because advertisers may be swayed with new figures as more readers head online and use devices such as the iPhone and Kindle
- And I try to figure out how digital media changes journalism abroad
How your internet knowledge can help African radio, or using mobile phones, digital technology and social media the SW Radio Africa broadcasts information to the fugitives of Zimbabwe
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