Abramovic

In a movie lit square stage a woman sits in a bright red dress that falls around her feet and in a cushion way at her bottom. The dress reveals the artist's hands and a slight raindrop shape on the artists back where the long dress is fastened at the neck. The artist sits alone in the space with one other person, across a light brown wooden table. Marina Abromavic is at MoMA until May 31st in a exhibit called "The Artist is Present."

My first reaction of the title was that it evoked a kind of comfort- the artist is here- just here. And when I walked into MoMA's large exhibit space there she was- just there. Video cameras were the first things I saw at the ceiling, and tons of people taking pictures. People take turns reenacting a similar performance that Abromavic and her former lover Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen) did called Night Sea Crossing. But instead of Ulay across from her, it is a random group of whoever is willing to wait in line for pretty much the entire day.

The space has a comfortable feeling regardless of the fact that Abromavic is probably aching in more places than one and the tally of days like markings on a prison wall. People sit and wait to look at her for hours and it isn't hard to stay there. To be free to watch her.

The first time I was exposed to Marina Abramavic (though completely subconcsioucly) was with my aunt Pat who lives in Minnesota. When I was 13, she thought it a very important time in my life to watch seasons 4 and 5 of Sex and the City. It was episode 86, in which Carrie goes to a gallery in Chelsea and meets a very attractive Russian man who turns out to be kind of sketchy in the end. In the gallery was a reenactment of Abramavic's The House with an Ocean View in which Abramavic did not eat for 12 days and lived in front of people in an elevated and open 3 rooms. There is a kind of martyrdom in her shows, Abramavic sits in front of countless New Yorkers and tourists, invisibly immersed in pain. In a sick kind of spectacle that comforts the viewer Abramavic seems to say- "its ok, thing hurt but we get through them, because we- as people- are strong." Abramaciv has used her body as her art using it to question physical and mental limitations.

6 Reasons to Love Glee- but not too much

Glee. What are we so happy about? And this is not the kind of peaceful blissful happiness. On the Princeton wordnetweb.edu site the definition of "glee" is "malicious happiness." The television show itself is so good, so utterly, for lack of a better a term, happy, that there must be something wrong.

6 Reasons to Love Glee in a Really Screwed Up Way:

1) Political correctness- You have an asian girl dating a white boy in a wheelchair and a black girl and a gay boy dressing up the sadistic and compulsive coach of the "cheerio" cheerleading squad. These "minorities" in question (the black girl and the gay boy) are being ignored in the glee club and decide to makeover the coach for her favor. They want their peers to really see them.

2) You wish everyone in your high school was that hot- First Lea Michele was in the Broadway show Spring Awakening and now she is in Glee as the leading hotty as well(intimately involved, I might add, with Jonathan Groff). In both a troubled adolescent who deals with sex and song at the same time. Would if high school was filled with such physically developed girls and boys? Wow.

3) Its just a bunch of music videos- Where the hell did music videos go anyway (MTV)?? We need to fill our need of sing along songs and sequenced dance numbers.

4) You wish your high school was that friggin' awesome- No class and when there is class its singing class= awesome

5) You wish you could think of those catch phrases- among many, we have the "Hey William, though I smelled cookies wafting from the ovens of the little elves who live in your hair."

A scripted life would suck but not if you could have phrases like this whenever you wanted them.

6) Why can't we just sing about EVERYTHING?- When everything we think is just as dramatic as a broadway musical, why do we have to hide it? Why can't we just let it out in impeceble harmony?

In short. Glee is good, but too much and you will come away with your world a little grayer in comparison and slight nausea.

Spas: The Harem of the Aughts

A spa carries a certain exotic charm. Spas pride themselves on their strangest looking flowers, the amount of little waterfalls in their lobbies and the array of foreign teas in their selection. The feeling of a spa must have an exclusive eroticism while being inclusive to anyone willing or worthy of a treatment that will better them mentally and physically. Spas were originally the baths of the Romans or the saunas of the Finnish, among other cultures that sought spas as a medical treatment, there is an interesting juxtaposition where spas are not only places to become physically well, but becoming instantly more beautiful. In a time when people only acknowledge instant results, spas seem to have become more repair places than places of healing.

On my way to The Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salon on 5th Ave in midtown Manhattan an orchid petal lay on the crosshatching of the subway stairs. The Red Door Spa has recently celebrated its 100th anniversary. I was beginning to wonder if the flower would be a symbol of the skewed sense of beauty I was about to see. The secretary, with a beautiful maquillaged face was animate about the amount of celebrities whom they service. The place had a pristine red and white color scheme. The colors emulated a kind of feminine eroticism and purity all at once. Ironically, the only women there were over 60 and botoxed. "We do a lot of sessions outside of our spa." The Secretary added, "for- privacy reasons." She emphasized the word privacy and smiled. The place was pretentiously both welcoming to me- a young lady who obviously did not have the money to spend there and utterly secretive. Most of the doors were closed. Though they were happy to welcome me around their four floor establishment there was little room for exploration. I left with the place still a mystery to me, the hallways of rooms, caverns of mysterious goings on. The way to beauty, it seemed to say, is a magically exotic secret.

Why do women feel as though they need to spa? Spas are different from salons in that they offer a wider selection of services. People are expected to stay longer in spa, which offer entire days their clients to whom they may offer champagne or food. It is important to regard the different between a day spa and a salon because they have different intentions, while a day spa offers an apparently more “medical” day, the salon just offers beauty treatments. A spa day is a "me" day, it is a day to nurture the self, to come in a mess and leave cleansed. With the naked women lounging in the California spa that my mother took me to when I was 13, I could not help but remember the paintings of the harem women of Delacroix and Ingres. The spa was a place to me that was exclusive to women, and women who wanted to become beautiful. The services within spas have changed over centuries, where the first spas were mineral baths, they have expanded to doing services like botox and anal bleaching. Returning to my memory of the spa in California, I cannot help but think that spas have developed from the Orientalist art of the 17th century. Within the spa, like within the harem, things go on that are forbidden, private and mysterious. A woman can come into a spa one person and, rather than leaving in a cleansed spiritual state, they are leaving in a physically altered state, a physically "perfected" state. In the same way the women of the harem were owned by the men, these women coming to spas, to "treat themselves" are coming to change their bodies to become more aesthetically pleasing to men. The treatments that spas offer now cater to our need for instantaneous gratification. The treatment within the spas have the same mystique, the same decor, even: erotic and secretive. And though women are "doing it for themselves" they come out more reformed to a male gaze Spas will never leave existence, and, what spas where and what they offer is for the most part healthy and important to society. People must be healed through massage and baths. A spa is not something that should offer the instant gratification of transforming oneself physically. If there is confusion between turning a person physically into something that they are not and making them feel as though they are being healed through that process, then we have a problem. Beauty is health, beauty is not the beauty of what the male eye sees peaking through the keyhole of the harem. And spas are right in the sense that beauty must be found within, and the insides of people are very magical and cavernous places.

The Heat Wave from 1929

New Yorkers swarm the streets in large happy groups. Legs are borne once more and little dresses are being worn with no jackets, and even a little sheen of sweat that has risen from the sun's ridiculously pounding heat. No, this is not August, not even close, it's hardly spring. April 7th and it is 90 degrees with a touch of breeze. But barely. What is one to do if the entire spring season is skipped and they have to get out all their summer clothes? It did not seem difficult to let go of tights until the fall, but as fate and weatherchannel.com would have it, the rain will return with a chill 50 something degrees. Sandals can't be worn because manis and pedis haven't been done yet, it's a time of confusion.

So instead people will do well to suck it up and pretend that it is the summer time, with iced coffees and shirts that are so thin that they don't really exist. The last time it was this hot was in 1929. Coincidence? Perhaps. It's either the wretched economy or the loose fitting fashion and stick thin models. It could also be prohibition, similar to the way so many are fighting to legalize weed (and, at least in cali, it looks like their winning.) If the weather is a good indicator of history, this is the beginning of a very complicated time.

This disgusting weather will pass, and in its wake we wait for the real spring to pop its head up, so that we will be able to wear the little sweaters and jackets that we have been waiting to wear again. Everyone will have time to get the manis and pedis they need and ease into summer the way the year should be. But this was an important and rather prophetic time, if you will, and, if you want, take this unusual time as a little echo from the past.

Jessica Simpson: Another Supermodel out to Change the World

Jessica Simpson gained weight in in 2009. On covers of People and US all over there were screams to high heaven about the blasphome, until she turned around and made a TV show based on the negative media attention she received. That made them shut up on a whole different level. "There's a lot of pressure to feel beautiful" she said in the video introducing her new show The Price of Beauty that began airing in March. In her new show she travels around the world "to see what makes a woman in different cultures feel beautiful," she added. For the May issue of Marie Claire magazine that was released Tuesday April 6th she is the cover shot and Marie Claire "au naturel" meaning no makeup or photoshop. Jessica Simpson has gone from being the ditsy blonde in the show Newlyweds, to the blonde bombshell who cared for the world. I am beginning to see a little of Brigitte Bardot's saving the seals deal. After the complete apocalyptic shots of Jessica Simpson as being fat and depressed and all the things the media loves, she decided to do the cover of Marie Claire. Though many of the comments on the pictures complain that it is a lie, that photoshop and mascara can be traced in the photographs.

Stars are in the unfortunate place for having their individuality manufactured for them. Jessica Simpson seemed to have woken up from this world that she had been in with a TV show and a husband and a long career (in pop singing years) in being a female vocalist sex symbol.

Being a celebrity can be used in so many different ways now. And it is this celebrity that has allowed her to accomplish her new goals. Jessica Simpson, without the celebrity she had before would not have been able to do the things she is doing now. Indeed, she may not have even been aware of them because it was the abuse of the media that caused her to look for that deeper, unmanufactured part of her. In a different way from Brigitte Bardot, Jessica Simpson is not leaving the world she had behind, but constantly comparing it to the world she is exploring now. In a video on ABC she describes the show and the transition.

And she will not save the world, the way Bardot will not save the seals. Possibly her fans will not take her seriously, no one is expected to believe a Marie Claire magazine cover. But this doesn't seem to matter when the journey is not really for the audience anymore.

A New Face For Men

In the mess of the 5th Avenue H&M the Thursday before Easter weekend there were countless languages flung around like the clothes hanging off the racks, or on the floor. I noticed a man speaking Spanish and whipping his shirt on and off to try different polos on in the men's section. Though I understand his refusal to wait on the mile long line to the dressing room, I noticed that his perfectly bare chest, all tan, did not in fact, match the color of his face, which was powdered beige. I have seen makeup on men many times before, but never a man who looked like this. He did not look gay, he did not have a punk rock look, he was utterly "normal" looking with khaki pants and a boring brown shirt. Beneath the powder I saw no blemishes or disfigurations, he was straight and wearing a thick layer of beige foundation. Why would he want to wear makeup and when would a boy think it appropriate to wear makeup?

Foundation is a funny thing that is more difficult to put on than it looks. Foundation must be as close to one's skin color as possible and it absolutely must not be binged on. A foundation binged face looks clownish and completely contradictory to its purpose.

The first men that come to mind when discussing men's makeup is the eyeliner of pop/punk rockers like Pete Wentz or the Marilyn Manson. News anchormen and stars wear makeup. It is important for when a person who is going to be on screen or having pictures taken of them, or, if they just want to be noticed. But foundation is a different phenomenon, and when worn with no plan to be on screen is another interesting situation.

Men wearing makeup is a similar type of pampering to the way a woman would wear

makeup, it is not for a show, rather than how one looks at themselves in the mirror, or admires

a short glance in the upcoming window. Men use makeup to feel good about how they look.

The way one would go to get a massage or their nails done, but makeup is an interesting form

of pampering that is solely visual and not necessarily "healthy" or reenergizing.

It has been a popular belief, however, that a man wearing makeup is either gay or ridiculously out

of touch to the way they are portraying themselves. However, we Americans seem to be the

ones out of the loop. It has been more acceptable in Europe for a man to wear makeup than in the United States. The trend for men wearing makeup is becoming more and more popular, and concealer, no less. Forbes Magazine wrote an article about men's wearing makeup and how the importance of grooming has become more and more important for men and women. Makeup is now taking a crucial role in this cleaning routine. Websites and companies have been created just for men's makeup such as kenmen.net and MYEGO Cosmetics among many others.

Makeup for men was once a form of standing out, a statement that was both radical and controversial. However, the scenes are shifting. In a society where there are screens everywhere, where one is judged so harshly, makeup has a different role. Everyone is looked at through the images in the media, there is a much higher standard of what is beautiful, it seems only natural that a man would be as concerned about his image as a woman. As long as society has become so nitpicky with looks, let the men's concealer sales rise.

It was a silly thought for me to judge this man who was wearing makeup and taking his shirt off. His pampering himself was much more appropriate than I had suspected, in my old American ways of gender definitions. The man looked just as normal as any other man, but with a little bit extra that, for him, was probably sharp and sexy, and that seems to be the new future.