Posts by Emma Hart
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You know regardless of the made up stat this is a sex education story not an evil online story, online is just the medium.
Stephen Fry on the internet. (Podcast here )
But the internet is a city and, like any great city, it has monumental libraries and theatres and museums and places in which you can learn and pick up information and there are facilities for you that are astounding - specialised museums, not just general ones.
But there are also slums and there are red light districts and there are really sleazy areas where you wouldn't want your children wandering alone.
And you say, "But how do I know which shops are selling good gear in the city and how do I know which are bad? How do I know which streets are safe and how do I know which aren't?" Well you find out.
What you don't need is a huge authority or a series of identity cards and police escorts to take you round the city because you can't be trusted to do it yourself or for your children to do it.
And I think people must understand that about the internet - it is a new city, it's a virtual city and there will be parts of it of course that they dislike, but you don't pull down London because it's got a red light district.
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Corsets take ages to put on, AND ages to take off...
Indeed. And if I'm paying $600 for a corset, you know what I'm NOT doing in it?
Personally I've always been more interested in what's not shown, than having it all out there.
Yeah, me too. Male or female. Same way it's more scary in the movies when you don't see the monster - it leaves more to the imagination.
Okay, maybe not quite the same way.
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And don't get me started on the fucktards that decided Murray Mexted was a suitable commentator for a live Sky broadcast.
A few years ago I wrote a satirical piece that never saw the light of day, partially on the grounds of tastelessness. Let me share...
Sky Sport New Zealand has announced plans to review the pilot program of its new Commentator Feedback system, after a massive electrical shock caused the death of veteran rugby commentator and ex-All Black Murray Mexted.
The system was designed to make Sky's audience feel more involved with the live sport commentary the channel provides. Small hand-held devices in homes allowed viewers to deliver low-level but significant electric shocks through the seats of Sky's commentary teams, providing instant feedback.
Mexted's death immediately followed his uttering of the words "It's not a game of tiddlywinks". His fellow commentators are undergoing counselling, the shock of Mexted's death causing an almost five second silence and the discovery that the commentary box windows would not open.
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There is a long passage in Stephen Fry's autobiography, Moab is my Washpot which gosh I am tempted to type out in its entirety, about how much he loathed games at school, yet loves sport as an adult. The jock stereotype is 'games', I think: forced sport with weird moral overtones. If your school was really into that, it takes a while to be able to really enjoy sport as an adult.
Stephen Fry tweeting about cricket is just one of those things that makes a day all sparkly-happy.
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women will always choose to maximize their beauty with whatever means come to hand, and men like me, will always do their damnedest to see through every disguise to the core, what the woman looks like naked
Whereas the pants on expensive Italian men's suits are cut solely for comfort, right? And when a man works for his massive biceps and six-pack abs, it's in case he has to pick up something heavy.
In both sexes, there are people who work hard to look attractive to the sex they want to attract - which may not necessarily be the opposite one - people who work hard to make an impression on their own sex, people who work to meet the social expectation (srsly, ties, WTF?), and people who just don't give a crap. These may be the same people on different days or in different situations.
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I am now, of course, really curious to know if any of the current fetish whip manufacturers used to make buggy whips.
Back when 'we' all read the same paper (which hasn't happened since varsity, fifteen years ago), we'd all find ourselves talking about the same story. This is community, yes? And now that none of 'us' get a physical paper any more, we still do - because we read it at the Guardian, or it hit Digg. It's just that 'we' have stopped being a geographical community, and become a bunch of communities of interest. News unites me more now with English geeks than it does with the woman next door.
Somewhere along the line, on the recommendation of a very smart and cool friend, I subscribed to the Guardian Weekly. I grew incredibly fond of its onion-skin pages
Massive, massive nostalgia-rush. My grandmother used to get this, and I've always associated that onion-skin light-weight airmail paper with her. She was always desperate for the news from Home.
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Same thing with like 5-inch belts if you're going for the What Would Joan Holloway Wear? look.
I love Joan Holloway. I used to have to tell people I walked like Jessica Rabbit, but now there's Joan.
Researching for this column I ran across a disturbingly likely idea, that wearing tight undergarments and walking like Joan, while generally considered to have been done for the benefit of men, is actually physically sexually stimulating for women.
I confess there remains in me a fascination with the mixture of Art, craft and engineering. Sexy in a very geek kind of way IMHO.
Indeed. And the sub-cultures where corsetry is still popular (Goth, BDSM) are FULL of geeks.
As for me, I remember meeting the the lovely ladies in the back of the shop in the '80's when you couldn't give the damn things away.
I was thinking yesterday that corsetry should have come back in in the 80s, because the fashion had swung back again to structure. I mean, corsets were in in the 18th century, then they went out again for the Empire line regency period (Austen - looks practical, apparently freezing bloody cold), back in for the Victorian period, then out again when the Arts and Crafts movement came along and floaty was back in.
Instead they've sort of ended up down a side-line, and I guess I find that kind of cool, that we can all choose now, whatever's comfortable for us.
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I find not wearing a bra exquisitely painful if I move at more than a stately walk. On the other hand, having anything constricting around my throat I find really uncomfortable - anything with a high collar and I feel like I'm being throttled. So I can certainly understand not liking the feeling of being constricted around the chest.
On the few occasions I've worn a decent corset I've found it more comfortable than the shoes I was wearing at the same time. And to be thoroughly indulgent, there's nothing wrong (IMO) with feeling really shexay at the same time.
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Corsets are awesome, but yes, putting shoes on can be problematic in them. That's when I guess one should use one's womanly powers to get others to put them on for you...
Or skip the shoes altogether... No, even I would wear footwear with those. Boots. Big lace-up boots.
And yeah, I keep looking at Jo's work and thinking, that's not really a frivolous use of money, not really .
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In... 1987, I think, my mother was in a local production of Romeo and Juliet down in Timaru. Kevin Smith was Mercutio (duh). He was huge : even for an actor he had this enormous energy. Yet he was also incredibly sweet and lovely - we used to give him rides home from rehearsals. I'm not a weeper but I cried buckets when he died, because the scale of the loss was somehow bigger than a normal-sized person.