Agyness Deyn goes tough and fragile

Agyness Deyn is probably one of the only models who can really express stereotypical tough masculinity in some photos and  alabaster-like femininity in others. I love these pictures play with the idea of gender and how it can be such a fluid construct...

The last matriarchy

I don't know if many of you have seen this post, it was one of my first. But I really love it! In a series of amazingly beautiful photographs, Italian photographer Luca Locatelli documents the lives of the Mosuo tribe. They are often described as one of the last matriarchal societies in the world. Where women see this as their kingdom.

Here,  women are in charge. There isn't even a word for terms we describe as "father" or "husband", Luca says. This place is known as the "Kingdom of Women". Throughout China, 40,000 Mosuo people live in a series of villages around the lake.

Women here, are the ones who make most of the household and political decisions in the community; they control household finances, have the rightful ownership of land and houses, and full rights to the children born to them –this is very different to the arranged marriages that are practiced in other parts of China.

From the age of 13, the women may choose who to marry, take as lovers, having as many or as few as they desire over their lifetime, without being branded a 'slut', as they would be in many other cultures. The men living in these villages have jobs such as fishing and animal rearing, and visit the a woman's home at night.

I find this place and the women so beautiful. It seems like such a mystical and different world. Not to say that women in South Africa or in other countries aren't in control of their lives, but it is to say that patriarchy is still the order of many cultures. Women are often in charge of most of the decisions made in a household, it's just that these decisions are often not highly valued. How can we effectively move towards a society that does not have any gender hierarchy?

More info @: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/dec/19/china-mosuo-tribe-matriarchy

For the whole article go to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/dec/19/china-mosuo-tribe-matriarchy?intcmp=239

Cool TUSH Magazine Covers

The politics of touching

This morning I was presently surprised to see people holding FREE HUGS placards in the Cape Town train station. They were handing out, well, free hugs of course. I always loved this idea, and almost forgot about it, I must say. But I love the way something like hugs or smiles can surpass all those boundaries that exist between people. That is race, gender, class, etc. So maybe we'll call this the politics of touching. Touching others have a long history, especially in South Africa, where say interracial marriage, gay-marriage, etc. has been taboo for many years. Beaches and park benches were divided between whites and non-whites, because people were, and still are, afraid of touching each other. If we can find a way to solve  the many conflicts people have with race, gender, etc. and to engage with the politics of touching. People have to realise that we are much more similar than we are different and that we can start to change the world by getting closer to each other.

For more visit Free Hugs

Plus-sized models' biggest feat

This cover made news yesterday as the Italian Vogue (one of the holy grails of fashion) featured plus-sized models on the cover. Below, Candice Huffine talks about the shoot and her surprise when she heard that she was going to be on the cover. This is really great for body politics, I really think these girls are all beautiful. I just really hope that this starts to push people further and further away from the norm of skinny modeling, transforming the abnormal and bringing it into the mainstream...

Gender speak

Penny Wong, Australia's Minister for Climate Change and Water and a Senator representing southern Australia, was "meowed" by Liberal senator during a debate. Why do some men think they can speak this way to women?

Lea T in swimsuit campaign

Transsexual model, Lea T. is featured here posing on a beach in Rio, Brazil. She is one of very few transsexual models that have become very successful in the industry. Even fewer pose for swimsuit campaigns, which is why I thought this was such a brave and really liberating thing for her to do. She is so beautiful and deserves to participate in all forms of modeling, just like other 'real' women...

The faces of Mugabe's victims

Photographer Brent Stirton is an amazing visual activism, specialising specifically on African political hardships. In this reportage, called: Mugabe's Victims, he captures the horror and turmoil many suffered at the hands of their ruling party, Zanu PF and its lawless and feared dictator, Robert Mugabe. Below, the photographer speaks about his work in Zimbabwe: 

 

July 2009: Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe and leader of the ruling Zanu PF party, has been waging a war of the armed against the unarmed for the last 26 years. It’s a war his party wages against any Zimbabwean who does not go along with their brutally oppressive regime. Since 1983, when 30 000 Ndbele people were massacred by Zanu in Matabeleland to the present day, Mugabe’s rule is one of ruthless impunity and oppression. Today Zimbabwe is a failed state, 3 to 5 million Zimbabweans have fled to South Africa and a further million have sought a better life abroad. 

 

There is 90% unemployment in Zimbabwe; HIV rates stand at a conservative 25% with zero state health system for all but the wealthy. Many thousands of innocent people find themselves victims of rape, torture, destruction and mayhem at the hands of Zanu PF thugs. All large scale commercial production farms, most white owned and employing over 1.8 million Zimbabweans, have been taken over and occupied and through ineptitude brought to a production standstill. Once the breadbasket of the region, Zimbabwe now finds itself in dire need of emergency food aid, which Zanu PF uses to further control a devastated population.I met blind and physically disabled people who made epic journeys crossing illegally into South Africa because it is no longer possible to beg sufficient funds or food for their own survival in Zimbabwe’s failed economy. I met traumatized senior leadership of the MDC who had to flee Zimbabwe for fear of their lives. I met Xenophobia victims who lost everything in Zimbabwe then lost it again in South Africa.

 

I encountered hundreds of people in Zimbabwe living with full blown Aids who can never afford the $20 it requires for testing to get into the one ARV program that exists in Zimbabwe. I met a man who spoke of torture as bad as anything I have heard in ten years of reporting on African conflict. He held his gang-raped wife and daughter in his arms as horror stories spilled out of him in the small one roomed shack in which he was hiding. He tells me he knows of many others with similar stories. I met a man who showed me where his leg used to be and told how a Zanu PF gang hacked it off with an axe and left him to die in the bush behind their camp. Everywhere I went I met frightened, traumatized people, victims of Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs. 

Zimbabweans are literally dieing for change. The regional destabilization Mugabe has brought about is likely to get worse. Xenophobia is a bitter reality in South Africa with its own unemployment rate estimated at 35%. Civil strife is a genuine continuous possibility, with impoverished, disappointed South Africans taking out their frustrations on a refugee Zimbabwean population with nowhere else to go. The 2010 Soccer World Cup is supposed to be a shining beacon of African success embodied in the shining new stadiums of South Africa. They barely mask the tensions right under the surface, tensions which must boil to the surface sooner rather than later. Until Mugabe and his henchmen are removed from power this will continue to be the situation. Mugabe has exhausted the wellspring of goodwill which flowed from being one of Africa’s longest ruling post-colonial rulers. In the words of the common Zimbabwean, “It is time for the Old Man to go.” 

Published by UK Sunday Times Magazine and Newsweek International. More @ Brent Stirton

Mormons for Prop 8

Watched this yesterday, The Mormon Proposition. I cannot believe how hateful and disturbingly hypocritical some people can be! This is so disgusting, especially for those who say they are Christians but leave their children to live on the street when they tell their parents they are gay...This is just the trailer, but try to watch it, really opens your eyes!

Iranian fashion police

The ultimate regulation of women?