Condoms are The New Black

No joke, Chanel Condoms, $279 for 12

"The tension between sexual danger and sexual pleasure is a powerful one in women's lives. Sexuality is simultaneously a domain of restriction, repression and danger as a well as a domain of exploration, pleasure and agency. To focus on pleasure and gratification alone ignores the patriarchal structure in which women act, yet to speak of...sexual oppression ignores women's experiences with sexual agency and choice and...increases...the sexual despair in which women live."  Carole S. Vance; Pleasure and Danger: Towards a Politics of Sexuality from Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, P.1. Routledge Press, 1993.

Martin Luther King Jr. and  Coretta Scott King, 1953.

This week, the United States marked the twenty-fourth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Dr. King was an eloquent "Baptist minister and leader of the civil-rights movement in America from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968." He was a voice of hope, courage and reason and lead a firmly non-violent campaign to end segregation, racial inequality and racism in an America. While African American males were being treated "as less than men," he acted as a fierce opponent against the oppression of the American Negro at the hands of their Government, the law, the FBI, the CIA, the Police and even the American Military.  (1) In his most famous speech on the steps in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C in 1963 "We hold these truths to be self evident. That all men are created equal. I have a dream."

"I Have a Dream" Speech, 1963

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a brilliant leader and spoke loudly and reasonably against racial hatred and bigotry. He was not silenced in the face of violence directed towards him and his family or the Black Community that he represented. He was known, however, to have what people would call "a weakness for women" was rumored to have several marital infidelities.

Now I say this not to discount the work of  Dr. King  or even to speak to the validity of the rumors. I mean simply to examine the concept that "we find it hard to imagine that ordinary human beings with ordinary flaws might make a critical difference in work of social cause."(2) Despite being a great leader and strong voice for the disenfranchised, Dr. King was human and vulnerable to the same temptation as you and I. He is symbolic not only of human frailty and human greatness but of a general human quality that causes us to view people as black or white, good or bad, and forget that while people may be essentially good, they are capable of doing bad things, even to the people they love.The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote of this duality:

"Man is a rope, tied between beast and [superman]--a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under. I love those who do not know how to live, for they are those who cross over."

Figure A

Figure B

Why am i writing about this in blog that's supposed to be about sex and fashion? Because at the end of the day, i feel that the way we conceptualize icons Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., follows us into our daily lives, into what we choose to wear and into our sexual relationships. Whether we idolize our partners sexually, romantically or both, we have a tendency to paint them as we wish to see them, as an impression. We abstract the fact that although we may love and/or desire them, they are still capable of doing us great harm, not only emotionally but physically. More specifically, men that we trust are capable of being unfaithful, and/or of exposing  us wittingly or unwittingly to STI's. (Sexually Transmitted Infections)

All them men I have been with have been with have somewhere gray,  between dogs and saints. I have had several STIs scares and i question I always ask my self after is why does it take a look back for me to see the mongrel in the angel?

I Cut my Hair to Reveal Myself

The Canadian Blog Contributor, Before.

I hadn't had my hair cut or coloured in awhile.

So I finally went to see John at Axis Salon in Sinclair Center because i heard he did a wicked blond and sat in the chair and declaring exuberantly "make me platinum!''To which he promptly replied in not quite so many words 'Hell no girl! Your hair will fall out, this fucking red will never ever lift. I can make the roots blond but unless you wanna cut it all off..."

He proceeded to shear the red hair down to my nipples into a pixie cut,  revealing my virgin and fledgling, dirty blond locks.

I'm not really sure what made me do it. Maybe it was because my hair dresser was sexy and if he said it was gonna look good, who was i to question it? Maybe i wanted to get rid of my colour damaged hair that was begging to make me look more like Raggedy Andy then a sexy Andrea. Maybe I did because I think Eddie Sedgwick and Jean Seberg are cool ass chicks. I dunno, I went in wanting a change begging the question "when did the break up happen.?"

The Canadian Blog Contributor, After.

Yes. I'm single. For the first time in four year, i have don't have a boyfriend and it's been difficult, I'm not gonna lie. I realized that I've always been the type of girl that needs the reassurance of having a doting man in my life. And in his absence i have had to let myself out of the mind set that even if nobody loves me, i still have worth and i still count. I've done it all, revisited past relationships, made out drunkenly with strangers in dark clubs and even tried to make male friends into lovers. Just as I have hidden coyly behind my come-hither hair, i have hidden in the company of men, denying myself the catharsis of knowing myself.

Samson and Delilah, ca. 1610
Peter Paul Rubens

As my hair fell around me I began to panic. He was cutting away my femininity, my beauty, my identity. I went in with a gorgeous main that flew attractively around a dance floor and fell softly on the pillows of lovers, and left with a short hair seen on mode girls, butch lesbians and business women. I had violent flashbacks to the last time i had my hair cut short, when i was a  ,

me, age two, 1989

geeky three year old kid with coke-bottle glasses, a time when i was often mistaken for a little boy. And I though "Damn, I'll never have another boyfriend." I sat slumped and  defeated like Samson, my great tool of adornment and of the power of attraction, gone to me for now.

But as i left the salon, back to my natural colour that had been hidden for as long as i could remember, my ears and the nape of my neck turning red from the bite of the winter air, I had the most incredible sense of freedom. For the first time in years i was alone, no man and little hair. Free from hair ties and the blow dryer. No one to hold, but also no one to hold me back.

Not so pretty in black.

 "What's the point of wearing lipstick if you are not going share it with some other lips?"

Scarlett Johansson Sporting Black lips for the 2010 Cosmetic Campaign for Dolce and Gabbana

That's what I said to my friend while I was applying my new black lipstick from Make up forever.

The Buchanan's whisky bottle was in the middle of the table, we were getting ready to go out. She wore her new black chamois, which were giving her the usual bad time that a new pair of shoes give the first day you wear them. We were determinated to get drunk that night. We had two different reasons for that, but both had a common denominator: Man.  That was also the reason why we needed to find someone to dance with, and why not? to kiss too. A casual kissing session which gives us the topic to talk about the morning after, while we are wearing pyjamas and making coffee.

I wore an oversized black tshirt as a dress, with black mate tights and my black doc martens boots. I straightened my two-colored hair and wore my vintage black hat. The kind of hat that ladies used to wear in my country during the fifties, whenever they went to the bullfights.
I love wearing hats in this bored city, it's easy to find me, nobody is wearing a hat, but the mariachi musicians.

Erin Wasson sporting Docs

And it's even weirder to find a girl in a club wearing her docs.
After three glasses of whisky, we left home and took a cab down to the club.

As soon as I got in I saw my victim. Young cute guy with the best hair in town I've seen since I got back.
I stoped, and stared at him from far. He took me back in time, when I first met my old young love. He had his hair like that. So, for a moment I thought that he was him, a stupid and romantic thought from a desperate person who wears a mourning black, even on her lips.
My girlfriends and I went directly to the dance floor and ordered some drinks to our favorite waiter.

Two beers after, the cute hair walked infront of me... I grabbed his arm and said: "I like you, I saw you when I came in, and I like you". He said: "I like you too, I guess it was pretty evident that we stared at each other when you crossed the door". Yes, indeed, it was evident, and also awkward.

He asked me what do I do for living, and of course I didn't want to say "mmmmh I write". First of all because I don't think he would understand the implications of being a writer and what was a writer doing in that club, which is everything but a writers place; and also because I don't make my living writing, I'm alive because I write. Anyways, I said "what's the point of knowing what we do? We're only going to be together for a night".
He had a weird look when I said that. So, to break the unconmfortable moment I asked him where was he going before I stopped him. "To the washroom, but suddenly I don't feel like going". We laugh.
Those were our last words, he got closer to me, like trying to kiss me. I moved my face to one side, preventing a black mess. He didn't care, grabbed my face from my chin, and gave me a good reason to smile.
I opened my eyes, and all my black lipstick was on his lips, none in mine. "Perhaps you wanna go to the washroom now, and see your reflection on the mirror", "Perhaps not" he said and kissed me again.
We kissed, and kissed, and kissed again. We kissed until he said "I need to go, my friends are waiting for me". Who leaves the club at 1:30 in the morning when he finally found a cute girl to kiss? That's when I knew that I had became a cougar without knowing it: He was 20 years old! That explained why after kissing me he hugged me, guys who are my age don't do that.
I let him go, we literally kissed each other goodbye.

And there I was, in the middle of the dance floor, drunk and lonely again. All dressed in black, but with nude lips.

I stared at my boots and thought: "What's the point of wearing black lipstick again?"
My old young love is not here, and he won't be in the foreseeable future. And his are the only lips I wanna mark.

At least wearing my docs made my walk home so much easier.

Wore that out of spite.

I have been trying to erase a person from my mind and heart. It´s been pretty much impossible to achieve my goal. No matter how many new pairs of shoes I buy (or actually my dad buys for me), his image appears everywhere: from the mirrors at the fitting room to the cash register. Even the security guard looks like him. So, three days ago, I went out shopping taking advantage of ZARA sales. I went directly to the shoe area, and decided to get a pair of shoes, or maybe two. But this time I wasn't going to buy the kind of shoes that I always buy: confortable and fashionable ones. No, I went out that day with the idea of getting a new me, a new pair of shoes, a new wardrobe, because I wanted to be new. And I wanted that 'cause maybe, if I became a different person, I wouldn't have that horrible image of my old young love. I was going to be a different woman, with a clean heart, with a blank after the phrase: "I Love _____".
Fuck love, and fuck confortable shoes.
And there I was, getting the highest heels in the store. I couldn't even walk to see them infront of a mirror, so I got pretty much an idea of how painful this new life was going to be, but still, I was positive that the pain that those shoes will cause me was nothing compare with the constant nightmares that my old young love brings me every fucking night.
I got those unwalkable shoes, a really short short brown leather skirt and three silk blouses: one see through with flowers, one black one with cute withe buttons and one leopard print (by now, you should now that my favorite color is leopard print). So I was determinated to look like a whore, but a fashionable one. I wasn't going to be the cute fashionable girl who loves a mother fuck*r who lives far far away from me. No more love, just hate speaking from my clothes. It was going to be a bitter version of myself, but with more legs and letting my bras do the talking.
At the end of my shopping journey, carrying two bags in each of my hands, I walked outside of the store confident about my choices.
It's been three days since that and I haven't wore my new me, which was on sale, how sad could it be. But I think that today is the day. The beautiful weather in this city allows me to wear a tiny skirt in full winter season, without wearing any tights on my recently tan legs.
Au revoir old me, sayonara old young love, hasta la vista memories, I hope tonight my new clothes write a new story, a one without your name on it, a one that erases you forever.

High heels, high expectations.

A week ago I tried to catch this guy attention by wearing high heels.
My best friend and I went to this bar close our home. I was supossed to meet "the magician" that night. So there I was, wearing a new pair of heels, my feet; killing me after 2 hours of waiting while I was dancing, pretending I didn't care his absence.

After three songs and many beers, two guys approached me. I wasn't interested, they weren't my magician. But still I did talk to them, while they were showing me how cute they thought I am by buying me shots of the most expensive whiskey.
Soon the huge amount of alcohol went from my veins directly to my heart, and the show began. I couldn't hold my tears anymore, they were somewhere behind my eyes hiding from the public at the bar. but somehow the whiskey gave them the power to go out. They danced on the lousy stage, and the audience started to clap.
Perhaps was my new leopard print shirt, or my tiny black leather skirt, or maybe my fake height, which caught people's attention.
My friend thinks it was my mascara running down my cheeks... Who cares, I was crying for a guy who's not even in the same city that I am, and that night I was expecting to get my magician home, so he could do some magic trick and for a night or maybe just for a moment, make disappear all the memories I keep from my young old lover.

Suddenly, when I had no more make up on my eyes, the magician made his triumphal entrance.
He poked my shoulder and I didn't want to turn around, not in that condition. I ran into the ladies washroom, and stood in front of the mirror... everything was ok, my shoes were great, but I was sure that we wasnt going to look at them, especially not with the face i was wearing.
I had no time to put some make up on again, so I just took my red chanel lipstick out of my harajuku lovers make up pocket and put on my lips.  I love making a mess on a guy's lips whenever I kiss them while I'm wearing chanel red lover.

So I went to the dance floor again, and there he was, wearing a white shirt with the wrong jeans, they seemed to came all the way down from the 90s. He looked like Brandon Walsh from Beverlyhills 90210.
He wasn't a magician anymore, he was a bad joke, a failed trick.

We didn't kiss, I managed to kept my chanel on my lips. He left and I started crying again. It wasn't for him, it was for my young old lover. He couldn't make my memories dissapear, on the contrary, they were more alive than ever.

While my tears were falling to the floor, i saw my heels again, they comforted me. I went home alone, but with a great pair of shoes, they were killing me, but they weren't as lethal as my memories.