Saw the Korean film Like a Virgin this weekend. The film is about a working-class transgender teen who takes up traditional Korean wrestling (ssireum) in an attempt to raise money for SRS.
I had to do the “rapidly blink eyelids and look sternly at the ground to the right of my feet” move quite a few times during the movie.
I use Google Reader for craft and design feeds more than anything else. Recently I excised the Sartorialist from my list- every now and then there would be a particularly lovely photograph, but the weird class and race dynamics got to be too much.
I love this photo shoot. I love seeing people of color featured in fashion spreads, instead of being used as an exotic accessory for white people. I do understand that there are valid class and culture critiques inherent in people of color wearing preppy and vintage fashions, but to some extent I see it as a way of rewriting the narrative of people of color as inhabiting rigid sartorial roles.
(Also, having gone to an East Coast liberal arts college, at least some of that aesthetic has rubbed off on me.)
