lip magazine: for girls who think feel create speak out live

Hello,

It smells like spring!

I’ve been feeling overwhelmed and confused and thought-heavy the past week or so, but how can one not feel gloriously happy on a day like today, with the beautiful smell of flowers in the air and the sun shining. It’s magnificent. Surely I need to move someplace without winter. The world looks so much nicer when the sun’s beating down on your skin and gardens are dotted with colour.

Rachel

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Following the interesting lip radio poll on women’s magazines, I picked up HB to read in the doctor’s office this morning because I like looking at high-fashion clothes. But it turned out the magazine just really depressed me. Seeing Kate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman endorsing beauty products shits me. These women surely have enough money from making movies that they don’t need to sell themselves for advertising. But worse is the fashion photos - the ones from runway shoots especially. Near-dead looking, pale, stick women with almosts non-existent breasts baring nipples for no reason. Yes, I’m PMSing and ready to cry at the drop of a pin, but still, nothing about those photos are celebratory or even positive to females or their bodies. I don’t know what it is…. I don’t understand what it is about. It’s not sexy or alluring - it’s not about the male gaze - it’s like about exposing female flesh and wasting away bodies just because, well, they can… It’s vile.

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With lip radio just around the corner, I’d like to share this manifesto I found while surfing instead of working.

It’s interesting to note that audiences are turning away from commerical stations because of the shouting, the hype and the repetition - instead turning to community radio for intelligent discussion, diverse music, and interaction with their presenters. They are also embracing new technology - tuning into streamed broadcasts over the ‘Net - giving them more choice than ever.

So, when you get tired of the poorly-scripted radio ads, hearing the location of your nearest Black Thunder, and sick to death of that song you’ve heard for the sixth time today, you can always log on to your fave Internet-streamed station for some quality radio programming. On Sundays (from 21 August) from 4-6, I hope you choose lip radio on 90.7 SYN FM.

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Congrats Sarah on your very excellent art exhibition this week. I want to buy all your stuff, especially the sculptures. They remind me of Mambo t-shirts and Primus album covers, but are way cooler. Well done!

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I’ve never liked manga – not because I don’t like the style or technique – because of my first exposure to it. The group house I frequented in my early 20’s always had playing in the background violent cartoons featuring monsters raping women and then lopping their heads off with a swift slice of their samurai sword. Screams resounded from the crappy tv speakers, followed by maniacal laughter and cheers from the viewers. If this was what manga was all about, I didn’t want a part of it. The eerie resemblance to characters in one of my favourite childhood cartoons, Astroboy, did nothing to lessen my disgust of the craze.

I have recently learned of a new manga craze – directed at teen girls. Shojo Beat is a comic book for young women, launched recently in bookstores across the US. The comic books are available in hundreds of genres, but there are essentially two types: shonen for boys and shojo for girls.

With themes encompassing young women trying to “make it” in the world, falling in love and managing careers, shojo comics are the extreme opposite of the manga I was introduced to. As teenage girls are “driving the manga market these days” (Evelyn Dubocq, head of public relations at Viz), this may mean good things for the manga industry… and I might even learn to like it after all.

Check out http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=2334 for the full story…

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