True Blood Has True Style

2009-03-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

I can't draw my eyes away from True Blood; not simply because it bleeds vampirish sexiness and oozes midnight sophistication, but because the fashion is to-die-for (please forgive the succession of puns).

Sookie Stackhouse, or whatever her suspicious name is, has a shameless attachment to fifties frocks. They're simply charming and unlike their sisters: tube top and skinny jeans, completely figure-flattering. Of course, Anna Paquin doesn't need a grandma cover-up to look good, but the rest of us could take a few lessons from Miss Stackhouse.

I wonder why the costume designers have chosen sexy over androgynous. Is it some kind of sick juxtaposition: the dichotomy between the harsh, Gothic world of vampirism and the saccharine (pre-civil rights) world of homemaker America? Are her clothes designed to speak testament to her innocence? Or is it simply a left-over adapted from the book series, upon which the TV show is based (I haven't read the books)?

Regardless, I hope designers (as they did in fall 03/spring 04) will once again embrace the fifties fashionista. Marc Jacobs, when pushed, makes delightful cupcake concoctions. Equally beautiful are the frothy, lady-like designs on show at Lorick.

I wonder who dresses Sookie Stackhouse? Perhaps Dior's not dead, merely undead.

I think my generation is rather blasé about morality

2009-03-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

Not because we're trying to be rebellious or iconoclastic or anything particularly avant garde (like our baby-boomer parents); but simply because we don't know any better.

Take my new best friend for example. She's sleeping with a boy she's known for forever; forever being a total of three weeks. Ironically, she and her lover met on Catholic Camp: five days of Bible reading and God-loving did nothing to suppress her (or his) human instincts.

Of course, being completely oblivious to the tumultuous developments in her flip-flopping love life, I made the mistake of asking her if she was currently "seeing anyone."

This phrase, ubiquitous as it is, doesn't really mean anything. It's not descriptive. It doesn't generate any images of attachment (God forbid) or of long lasting commitment.

In fact, I think I would be berated for being positively archaic if I asked if she were, "dating anyone." No one dates anymore. We just hook-up, sex-up, fuck-up and make-up. Any connection between two people must be expressed with a noun, followed by an -up suffix.

So anyway, Amelia, my new best friend, proceeds to tell me that she's not "seeing anyone". But that she is involved in a casual relationship with let's call him John. Of course, being the fool that I am, I ask her what she means by a causal relationship. "Oh, we just screw occasionally." Is her blunt-as-a-razor answer.

"Is he any good?" Is my immediate response. I don't bat an eyelid. It's interesting, if not somewhat irrelevant, that less than one hundred (heck forty) years ago, I'd be cringing at my friend's sluttiness. Today, I smile, toss my hair and wonder whether let's call him John's equipment is bigger than my boyfriend's.

"Oh, not really," she replies, flicking her gold-polished fingernails against the table. So, I'm left wondering (1) why let's call him John the Catholic is screwing my friend and (2) why I won't screw for less than two orgasms Amelia is screwing him.

So I ask her: "Amelia, hun, why, if he isn't any good ... are you having sex with him?"
"Oh darling, how else am I supposed to get close to him?"

Which makes me wonder: are we living in some upside down world? Aren't we supposed to get close before we copulate? I think my generation is like Alice, we've fallen down the rabbit-hole and now we're lost at the Mad-Hatter's tea party. No one has any morals anymore.

Explorations In The Mundane

True Blood Has True Style

I think my generation is rather blasé about morality