Category: Babes

Rainbow moon heart ache!

September 25th, 2012 · Babes, Books, Musings 10 comments
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I’ve been feeling like a big cry baby lately, so I need to talk about Sailor Moon!

Usagi Tsukino, is a big cry baby but always manages to get up, wipe off her tears and kick ass! I feel the same overwhelming negativity or powerlessness Usagi is often confronted with, so lately I have been channeling Usagi to remind myself of my inner princess, and in turn get up on my feet again like a Sailor Soldier!

At its core, the premise of Sailor Moon is about women banding together and determining the fate of the universe. It’s about women literally drawing power from community with other women and being the most powerful in the galaxy and growing up to lead the world into peace and happiness. The celebration of women and showcase of girls developing, growing up and forming their own identities is enough to make the series great, especially considering how it influenced other media to take a closer look at female heroism and relationships. But I actually want to focus on what Sailor Moon means for queer women (and other queer people) in particular and what I feel the rebooted anime should do about queer representation.

Why Sailor Moon Matters – The Untitled Mag

All the Sailor Soldiers fight evil and darkness with pretty jewellery, glitter and girly outfits. It’s a beautiful thing that I recognise in myself; I often try to kick away overpowering bad days with pretty dresses, lipstick, a pair of unreasonably high heels and all-around regal or glitzy sartorial vibes. Glitter is what keeps me afloat and makes me feel stronger and ready to kick ass some days. It allows me to channel the princess in myself and armour myself against evil outside and inside myself! Naoko Takeuchi knows what’s up and I am so happy it’s a readable, watchable, glorious franchise.

There’s this one part in particular, in volume 7, in which Usagi is all alone, trapped in overpowering darkness, but ends up realising she can channel her friends’ power through her and kick ass. I cried like the little child I often am and I am getting teary-eyed just thinking about it again. It’s corny and simple and so, so on point.

Woman of Pupation

February 21st, 2012 · Babes, Music 5 comments
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“There is a feeling I’ve had ever since childhood: that there exist many different “worlds” and I was born in the wrong one, a world I don’t quite fit into. I’ve felt this strong feeling of wrongness all through my life. There is no space for me in this world. Every time I believe I’ve finally found my place, someone comes to me and says “Go away! You’re not supposed to be here.”

I am so obsessed with Jun Togawa. Whenever I try to write something about her, I inevitably end up flailing and my words seem painfully meaningless and inept to even faintly describe how much I love her, let alone describe the being of greatness she really is. She uses insect imagery to describe that gross out of place feeling, she applies weird dances when wearing cute outfits with insect wings, she parodies the Japanese popstar imagery, she has made a toilet commercial. She is perfect. None of these things can describe her, only her work can. I have dedicated a website to her in order to catalogue and track alllll translated lyrics and then some, and you should check it and Jun Togawa out if you like weird Japanese pop songs from the eighties that are also catchy and sometimes ethereal and sometimes elegant and daunting and sometimes ugly, or if you like women like Björk and Kate Bush who also do interesting and beautiful and great and more superlative things concerning the imagery of women while simultaneously being deeply personal.

People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats.

February 12th, 2012 · Babes, Books 6 comments
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My morning tempers often transcend into day tempers and eventually in unadulterated pure magical hatred towards the mere existence of other human organisms if left untreated. I remember walking down the isle of a supermarket (true — a really dreadful place to be) and seeing someone standing right in the middle where I couldn’t pass. What this person did, this defiant act of just standing, got under my nails and skin and right through my head and set my hair on fire in a moment’s time. I realised how ridiculous I was feeling so all there was left to do was curl up into a ball and read. That day, I finished reading The Hearing Trumpet in a variation of last post’s outfit, in a patch of sun with my mother’s eighties sunglasses on because the sun was so perfectly bright and then all was brilliant and beautiful.

The main thing that lifted my spirits was obviously Leonora Carrington’s writing.

via Flickr

I think the internet should love this book. It features a ninety-two year old with a beard, a deep love of cats and a best friend who makes up fantastic fantastical stories and who dreams of machine guns and helicopters. As the story revolves you get to read about more beautiful nonagenarians, crazy nuns, witches, unicorns all in a majestic nursing home that has bungalows shaped like cake and mushrooms and other perfect things. I imagined the ladies very akin to the beautiful babes over at Advanced Style. I don’t want to mention more because delving into it with hardly any knowledge was such a trip. The language was fresh, always funny and the mere fact of reading about ninety-year olds generally kicking ass is such a welcome change to any and all protagonists I have ever read about. So anyway READ IT.