Pretty Terrible

Pop Culture Criticism by Natalie Luhrs

Links: 01/29/16

a cat ponders the possibilities

  • I read this last week and it really shifted my perspective in a way it needed to be shifted:

    Sometimes I ask people, “How do you choose to suffer?” These people tilt their heads and look at me like I have twelve noses. But I ask because that tells me far more about you than your desires and fantasies. Because you have to choose something. You can’t have a pain-free life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns. And ultimately that’s the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have similar answers. The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain?

  • Why I Am Not a Maker. My reasons for not embracing the Maker movement are different but related: the Maker movement denigrates and devalues crafts and arts traditionally done by women unless there is a way they can be put to service of masculine interests.  Fuck. That. Noise.
  • This was also my reaction to much of this story: “You can’t tell from the recording, but I’m pretty sure I put my head in my hands.”
  • Fascinating article about Ursula the Sea Witch and Divine. Fascinating.
  • I wouldn’t call this a hoax–it seems to have been an art project from the beginning. Hoax implies nefarious intent and I don’t think there was any here–or if there were, it’s not clear in the article. At any rate, I find this sort of thing incredibly interesting and it says something about image curation, women, and Instagram.
  • I am so incredibly angry about the water situation in Flint, MI. If Flint were a wealthy white suburb, this would never have happened. Ain’t no racists like Michigan racists.
  • This poem by Monica Youn is astonishing.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. On the Asheville story: ‘“Nobody reached out to us to say, ‘What do you need to heal, to be better men?’ — except Trey.”’

    My mouth literally dropped open when I read that. These two guys will not ever, ever understand.

  2. Like you, I’ve walked away from the “Maker” culture thing, mostly because it devalues the craft work I do (I can knit, crochet, embroider, cook, bake, sew and write – not all at the same time, of course, but depending on where my head is at, I’ve done all of these as hobby activities) for not being “interesting” enough. I get the sense, from everything I’ve ever read about the whole “making” scene, that if I rocked up with my bag of yarn and crochet hook, and settled down to crochet in a corner while watching everyone else, I’d be laughed out of the room. If I brought a plate of biscuits (cookies), well, the baking would be welcome, but I probably wouldn’t be. I do my hobby stuff for fun – and for me, having to fight for a place and justify my existence and explain my presence over and over is positively the epitome of Not Fun.