Dear Lad Mags: Sex Sells, But At What Cost?

As a woman who has appeared on the cover of Maxim, been in FHM, Loaded, Stuff, and Gear, I am not ashamed of my body. But British “lad mags” have made me think twice about the consequences of gracing their pages with my image.

Last week, Jezebel reported on a study that asked a group of men and women to compare quotes from the UK lad mags FHM, Loaded, Nuts and Zoo with excerpts from interviews with actual convicted rapists originally published in the book The Rapist Files. The results show that it was often impossible to tell the difference between plucky journalism and the words of sociopathic deviants. Yes, this is disheartening. Teeth grinding. Gag-reflex inducing.

In the comments section of the Jezebel piece, there was a particularly insightful reflection: “’Women’ do things, ‘girls’ have things done to them.” The writers of lad mags look at women in a certain way. They are part of an idiomatic genre that denigrates women, reducing women to mere objects with male sexual gratification as their primary focus. Are they in turn conditioning their readers? Is one naturally predisposed to this or does one come to it via social and visual cues? (The same argument has been made for violent video games; does fantasy violence beget actual violence?)

Reading this study I can’t help but think of Nabokov writing Lolita in the same time frame as The Kinsey Reports were revealed. Was Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert born the way he was, or were his sexual proclivities a result of his environment? To me Kinsey seems to be hunting for this same information. Chicken or the egg? Perhaps the answer is both.

HOLIDAY CONTEST: rules, fine print, and the nitty-gritty

When in the course of Holiday Restraint, an intelligent contestant brought forth this question: shall its and it count as a repetition? His question spawned the following rules:

On the subject of possessive pronouns: If words have separate entries in the dictionary, they are not considered repetitions. Example: you, your, yours, and yourself are considered different words. So are it and its; she, her, and hers; just like he, him, and his.

Possessives of previously used proper nouns are considered a repetition. Example: Tom prevents the later use of Tom’s.

Contractions shall be counted as two different words. Example: you’re, prevents the later use of you and and are; it’s prevents the later use of it and is. And vise versa, is prevents using it’s later.

Conjugations of previously used verbs are not allowed. Example: give prevents the later use of giving. Exception: is, was, are, am.

The Most Beautiful Books of the Year: a Holiday Gift Guide

It’s the holidays, time to unleash the year-end lists and let loose the hyperboles…

The greatest book of all time is now one of the most beautiful books of the year. The first part of that statement comes from me (and many others), the latter half comes from the NY Daily News (and many others, including me).

Artist, librarian, and mensch, Matt Kish reinterpreted every glorious page of Moby-Dick, generating well over 500 leviathan-inspired illustrations. The artwork was bound into a handsome and surprisingly affordable volume by Tin House. Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page is available for under $30 from Powell’s and other independent bookstores.

Amid the eBook boom, publishers are investing more into book design to turn physical books into collector’s items (insert comparison to the reprise of vinyl records here). If you’re in the business of judging books by their covers, here are some options for stocking your bookshelves or stuffing stockings this holiday season.

HOLIDAY CONTEST: Show a Little Restraint!

SHOW SOME RESTRAINT AND WIN FABULOUS PRIZES

 

Before you drink all the eggnog, eat all the pie, and come-on to your co-workers at the office holiday party, show a little restraint.

Write a short short that uses each word only once, and email it to halimah@electricliterature.com by December 31 at midnight for your chance to win Electric Literature vol. 1 and be published on The Outlet. Only one entry per writer. Please include your entry into the body of your email.

Authors on Amazon’s “Bare-Knuckle Approach” to Christmas Sales

In case you haven’t overheard the outrage, Amazon is endorsing the nefarious practice of “showrooming” by offering discounts to holiday shoppers who essentially undermine brick-and-mortar stores (you can read our post about the controversy here).

Yesterday at the NY Times, Richard Russo asked some of his writer friends (including Stephen King, Andre Dubus III, and Ann Patchett) to respond to the news.

“These writers all derive considerable income from Amazon’s book sales,” writes Russo. “But when the responses to my query started coming in it was clear Amazon’s program would find no defenders in our ranks.” Basically, it’s all shock and awe at Amazon’s “scorched-earth capitalism.”

Hipster Hero: Who Was Really Behind Buddy Holly’s Glasses?

buddy holly in glassesJ. Davis Armistead changed the face of cool by hiding it behind a thick pair of glasses. Armistead, now retired, was Buddy Holly’s optometrist back when the musician was struggling to establish his identity (and struggling to see).

Holly’s vision was apparently so poor that he couldn’t read the ‘E’ at the top of the vision charts, but the nondescript glasses he wore weren’t helping his image. While watching an episode of “The Phil Silvers Show” (AKA Sergeant Bilko), Armistead discovered the iconic frames that would distinguish Holly and make it hip to be square.

At the Wall Street Journal, Charles Passy says the frames paved the way for other legendary celebrity accessories (Elton John’s goggles and — somehow — Lady Gaga’s meat dress). But Passy overlooked a few other notable credits to the spectacles: Weezer; bizarre literary crime; and, most importantly, a way for un-bearded hipsters to hide their faces.

Symbols in Literature

In high school and a few undergraduate literature classes, I remember my professors would instruct the class to identify and analyze the symbols in the texts we read. Poems, especially, were apparently so packed with symbols that I’d stumble through looking for meaning: was that parrot really a parrot, or was it actually the squawking spirit of America? Now, in graduate school, however, professor after professor has proclaimed that there are no symbols—or that if there are symbols, they are more the work of the reader than the writer.

At the Paris Review, literary archivist Sarah Funke Butler looks at a young writer who’d hoped to resolve the question of whether symbolism actually exists in literature and whether it was indeed the intention of the writer. “In 1963, a sixteen-year-old San Diego high school student named Bruce McAllister sent a four-question mimeographed survey to 150 well-known authors of literary, commercial, and science fiction. … Each responder offers a unique take on the issue itself—symbolism in literature—as well as on handling a sixteen-year-old aspirant approaching writers as masters of their craft.”

New Directions’ Secret to Success

New literary magazine The Coffin Factory printed an inspiring interview with Barbara Epler and Tom Roberge of New Directions. In case you haven’t heard of them, for the last 75 years, New Directions has been publishing some of the most influential voices in fiction, and their back list reads like a roll call of literary legends: Bolaño, Borges, Céline, Nabokov, Neruda, Pound, Sebald…

Although these names are all recognizable now, New Directions took a risk when they first published them. “Really new kinds of writing can take twenty years to catch on, and the people [founder James Laughlin] published were considered very far out. Then, not too long afterwards, they became the canon,” says Epler, President and Publisher. New Directions’ strong back list has sustained the publishing house for years, allowing them to continue to introduce readers to exciting and diverse literature.

Your 10 Favorite Words

The editors at Merriam-Webster have compiled a top ten list of your favorite words:

“Over the years, our editors have learned which words stand out as people’s all-time favorites – generally because of what those words mean and how they sound.”

The list cites examples from popular articles and features some interesting etymologies. Take a look here and you might even pick up a few words to impress the next callipygian flibbertigibbet you meet.

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– Benjamin Samuel is the Online Editor of Electric Literature. His favorite word is secret.

What Writers Read This Year

The Millions is running their fantastic annual feature called “The Year in Reading,” where authors recommend books they’ve read in 2011. So far the list of writers includes Jennifer Egan, Colum McCann, Benjamin Hale, Chad Harbach, and, most recently, Nathan Englander.

Englander, whose story “The Reader” is available in Electric Literature no. 6, chose a classic from Orwell that, sadly, still rings true nearly 80 years later. According to Englander, “everything Orwell says reads as deeply current and bitingly accurate — that is, ‘everything’ if you leave out all the parts about the Jews, the Arabs, the Irish, the Italians, the Russians, or, well, anyone who doesn’t look like what Orwell sees in the mirror every morning.”

Click here for more from The Millions.

 

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– Benjamin Samuel is the Online Editor of Electric Literature.  The best book he read this year was Breaking Bad.