A Prom Beauty and the Beast Style

A Colorado boy goes to Las Vegas and shoots a movie of himself dancing for Maxim model and one of two "Octagon Girls," Arianny Celeste. In front of the Paris Hotel's Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe the 18-year-old boy asks Ms. Celeste to the prom with him. To the probably floored classmates of his, Conner Cordova arrived to his senior prom in a stretch green SUV with Ms. Celeste at his arm.

I am reminded of a film that I have seen when I was younger, or maybe a mix of films. One about a guy who gets an uber hottie to date him, "She's Out of My League." Or the song Ballad of Chasey Lain by The Bloodhound Gang. This Beauty and the Beast thing is all over the media. And I begin to wonder if it's all true. Do men not try as hard to look nice because women are less shallow? And are women attracted to less attractive men because they are "nice" or "funny?" However, what happened on prom night for Conner Corodova is much different than a Beauty and the Beast fad. There is something beautiful about how Arianny Celeste agreed to go to prom with Conner Corodova. Their meeting on Lopez Tonight is an anxious exchange of phrases that is touching in a completely honest way. Both the model and the boy laugh as if they are 14. "I'm an Internet geek too" she says. Sure. But, regardless, Conner's honest naivete is nothing less than cute.

There is nothing more lame than a senior prom unless you make it what it actually should be, a fabulous night in the clouds with a beautiful person who came to you from the ether of the Internet. Apparently, this is what would happen for Conner Corodova. For Arianny Celeste, as well. While going to prom they were raising money for Haiti and Arianny Celeste was able to spread her fan base.

With this fascination with unattainable beauty ideal, I've got the feeling that when things like this happen for real there is a much greater surprise. The video of the prom on the MMA Religion website is a kind of insane video with a lot of posing for paparazzi. Arianny represents this kind of story that we always here about the ugly guys and beautiful girls, and Conner just looks bewildered with everything. Maybe this whole thing is not as good as it looks, maybe going to the prom with a couple of friends, or, worse, someone who didn't have a date can be enough. But I doubt we'll ever see this kind of beauty in our own beastly lives without seeing the awkwardness of having chaperones for the prom- no alcohol, no crazy grinding. And isn't that what prom is all about?

In the end I begin to worry about Conner, what is he expecting in the end? What girls will he date? And how will ever get over the fact that, after those 15 minute (as they say) it may never happen again?

A Sad Beauty Queen: Is it her Parent's Fault?

Recently television has been crazy for pretty wealthy girls who seem to have nothing more to do but party and date. One particularly blonde, tiara toting beauty queen, Alicia Guastoferro, has decided to sue ABC and Disney for villinizing her on the show "Wife Swap." Alicia was 15 when the show came out, and now, as an 18 year old she has considered herself victimized by the companies and suing them for 100 million dollars. A video of her on youtube is called: the "most spoiled brat in the world" as she gets a new car and has Christmas everyday.

I tend to think that this idea of bratty children has nothing to do with their nature, but the way their parents coddle them. Reality TV shows like Laguna Beach, Bravo's NYC Prep or My Super Sweet 16 have created examples of teens as bratty, irresponsible, utterly gorgeous young people who have never had less than everything they want. The teens are placed in a world without parents, without school and without responsibility.
The danger of these reality shows is not the people who they portray, or even the fact that these are "fictitious circumstances," (obviously) but the implication that it is normal to be like this. People watch these shows to laugh at teens making complete idiots out of themselves. However, there is something much more sentimental to experience the vulnerability of these kids and that is our romanticizing of youth. Unlike the Real Housewives shows, where the women are older, these kids are everything anyone could ever want to be: beautiful, rich and careless. I think this is something that our beautiful Alicia may not understand. Underneath the ridiculous videos is a fascination, like watching a giraffe eating in Africa, it is an othering that makes her so fragile. What would one try to achieve after they have signed their life away already to a television network? But who asked this girl to be like this? Television creates the people that we want to see, at the expense of those people, taking away all kinds of dimensions that life involves. It is simply easier to exploit teens than the wealthy men whose companies have created these shows.

"It's because they love me." Alicia, with her flattened blonde hair and her dimpled cheeks says, to her swapped mother. The issue does not seem to be with the children but with their parents, the parents choose what the child does. Alicia is suing because of the amount of harassment she has received after the show. There is an interesting link on the wgrz site that has a copy of the lawsuit. True, she may be completely out of touch and feel bad for ugly people and all of us hate her for it, but, honestly, give her parents a talking to as well!

A Tampon Is So Much More Than A Tampon-.2

I usually ignore the Business section of the New York Times.  After the sections on New York City, The Arts and Health, I see no interest in reading about how Google is buying the world.  However, recently, the business section has been calling to me in a way that it never had before.  Because everything seems to funnel back into business including news, health and art all have to do with it in some way.  Business that concerns women has always been a touchy and somewhat forbidden subject, after the women's feminist movement, it seems that businesses stay away from any kind of "feminist" subjects so as to not enrage any radical activist.  In Tuesday's New York Times I read the business section, along with every other section on a two and a half hour trip from West Palm Beach back to New York City's LaGuardia Airport. 

         What caught my eye was an article in the business section discussing the new Kotex label: U by Kotex.  The executives at Tampax are rethinking ways to market to women by using a more upfront tone in their advertising as opposed to the euphemisms of the past tampon and pad advertisements.  The box is black with an assortment of many pastel colored tampon wrappers inside. In a grocery store, aisles are filled with little messages and pictures that whine longingly for groups, genders, religions, ages, endlessly.  However, these messages are constantly changing.

        Of all the women's products on the market feminine hygiene products have been a constant aspect for society to deal with.  Tampons and pads are an interesting group of products nestled between the shaving cream and tooth brushes.  In the 1930’s women were embarrassed to buy tampons and there was a little box that allowed them to buy them discreetly.  Though that is not the case anymore, there are always ways to hide the reality of periods, whether it be with scented tampons or symbolic ads that use symbols.  At 12 I bought what I thought were pads, they were in a pink package next to the o.b. tampons and had a little flower growing at the side.  To my shock and horror, when I got home I realized by the blue scented areas and the vast and thickness of them that they were not pads at all.  In fact these monstrous things were for older women who could not hold their bladder through the night.  It is true that this tidbit of misinformation was partially on my account because I did not yet know the right period lingo, I did not yet know the brand names.  But why was there so much confusion, why did a product that was meant for a woman in menopause bought by a girl who had just gotten her period?  This seems to be the history of tampons and pads, a constant flow of mis or vague information.

        I was then lead through an interesting journey through the internet with ridiculous tampon commercials and the history of periods.  Menstruation has always been really awkwardly handled.  After the Industrial Revolution, when everyday objects would be discarded of easily.  Feminine menstruation products were officially put on the market.  A 1966 Glamour magazine had a tampon ad with a suspiciously beautiful nurse saying that “it's recommended by doctors!” as if it was a medication for an illness.  More recently, in 1979 an ad came out for o.b. tampons, the only tampon that is not inserted with an applicator.  Some women are uncomfortable with this because it requires a more intensive relationship with ones nether region, it is the most discreet and boasted being recommended by a woman gynecologist.  Into the 1990's many of the tampon and pad ads have become vague euphemisms of a period, whether it be Tampax's red present given by an older woman to a young beautiful woman, or a young girl out in the rain with an umbrella.  What are we?  Five?  All of these seem to add up to the fact that menstruating women need to be taken care of.

         This Kotex by U is an interesting new look at how women a viewed.  My friend said it looked like a cigarette box, and, indeed, compared to the way tampons were marketed before, these have a much harder look to them.  I got to the website and it began to describe in (relatively) shocking detail, the importance of our "vaginas."  A word that has long been avoided by companies that make products for women.  If companies feel safe getting that experimental with the discussion- and by discussion I mean the simple word of female genitalia it is apparent that young girls are being exposed to a female body in a much more open-or perhaps, explicit- way than they had before.

         But other tampon companies are right about one thing when they wrap themselves in all these euphemisms like rain and greenery and red boxes.  Tampons are so much more than tampons.  Women's need for tampons represents the difference between men and women.  In a time when differences are to be stifled there is no way to avoid a woman's menstruation.  With the amount of significance on one small and funny looking product euphemisms seem inevitable.  But U by Kotex is a new kind of advertising that completely avoids the rain showers and red boxes of the past.  This bluntness appears to be addressing the amount of exposure a young girl is getting about women’s bodies and the language used to describe them.  It’s a wonderful thing when a girl can buy a box of pads and know it’s a box of pads because the people around her give her enough information to know the difference between two flowered boxes.

Since When Were Housewives Ever "Real?"

I believe in marriage like Cheney believes in world peace.  Married couples smell from a mile away, and not only a mile, but streaming into your living space while your watching T.V.  No, I don't have a T.V, but if I did, Lord help me, but I would end up watching Real Housewives of New York City, the third episode in the series, religiously.  

Love is a beautiful thing.  Love and commitment is something that we need so much more of. But marriage, or all the marriages that I have experienced, all of the marriages that I've seen have not been examples of love and commitment.

The role of the housewife does not exist anymore.  Nor am I certain that it ever existed.  In any case, why do so many women fantasize about it when it is so artificial and so demeaning?  The Real Housewives of New York are a bunch of crazy middle aged women who have enough money to completely exclude themselves from the real world.  It has become an ironic display of a woman's sexuality, women who are married: Have their "man" can turn against each other.  

I agree with Jean Paul Gautier in terms of marriage.  It has become an ironic display of a woman's sexuality.  

why would we want to get married anyway?  For people to be annoyed by us, or, even worse, be entertained by us?  Here are a couple of people trying to keep this state of union together when anyone can see that this lifestyle does not apply anymore.  I will gladly watch people who have given up all else after they walked down that shimmering isle to give their soul away for money, but I will never understand it.

Going to the Movies, May It Always Be the Same

One of my favorite things to do- like-ever- is go to the movies.  This must involve raisinettes, dressing up and a good seat, not so close to the screen as to be nausouse, but a good three rows in, where the movie can take up my entire vision.  Movie theaters now have screens as big as mountains like the IMAX screens.  I didn’t grow up with movies on huge screens like my hometown’s Crandell, but I have come accustomed to it, and it feels unnatural  for me to go to a movie that does not have a huge screen and those seats that look like they should be on a spaceship. 

There was a time when people said that movies would not survive, they said this in response to the internet and in response to videos.  And, though videos may have lost their popularity, movies have not.  Movies now continue to be a luxury.  Movies are more than just watching a screen, movies are the entire experience, including the people, including the raisinettes.  Movies are a public space in which people can enjoy each other and the movie.  People like to experience real things, and looking at a screen at home isn't going to cut it. There is love without love, there is hate without consequence.  A movie is a game, and, like a ride, we can let us swoop us up without worrying about our outside world.  This is why we need movies right now. The economy is a wasteland but, despite everything, there are still movies. Not only do we love going to the movies but movies love us.  Filmmakers have the technology now to send the viewer into an entirely different world.  Like Avatar, like The Dark Night, two of the highest ranking movies in the past two years. 

With the Oscars coming up my mind is going back to movies.  The simplicity of watching them, the intense relationship with movies, I have a tender place in my heart for film.  When I look back on Oscars passed I remember being with my father and curling up, first to watch the fabulous dresses of the red carpet, and then to watch the Oscars themselves.  I had seen almost every single movie (except for the shorts because they never came to my local theaters).  And I was determined to stay up until all hours of the night to watch it even though it was a school night.  Though I hardly did, or, I took a nap in between.

What comes to mind is when Titanic won, I was in love with Leo, when Lord of the Rings won EVERYTHING.  And, of course, the most recent, Slumdog Millionaire, now, everyone thought, we all love indie movies!  This years Oscars are proving to be different from past years.  The film industry is not selling enough overall tickets.  Actors are being paid a fraction of what they had been making in recent years.  It's so important to remember the movies.  The movies have such a beautiful way of tying together so many pieces of popular culture, from music to fashion to books, and our stars that we love so much.  It's important to remember the films that we love.  It's important to remember how sacred movie going can be.

So before we see the Oscars, I think about what movies I have seen that have made a serious impact in my life, and, for the most part, these are movies that I have seen in theaters, these are movies that I have experienced with other people in packed theaters.  The internet can give to our impatient sides, but a movie in a theater can give to our communal side.  

When I saw Transformers I went to a theater in Albany New York.  The theater had a relatively small screen and those old uncomfortable seats with the worn down cushions that itch and are too low on the back and make for a sleeping bum by halfway through the film.  I remember a baby a few rows back- just screaming.  The theater was packed.  And there on the screen was a shot that scaled the massive Transformer, all frozen in ice and evil to the metal-car core.  From behind a young man's voice spoke the words that we were all thinking, in awe, even the baby, quiet and in agreement, of one mind.  "That's Megatron."