If you read one thing this weekend, make it Why Emma Watson Really Left Brown:
“Someone just said you were the chick in the Harry Potter movies,” the guy said. “Anyway, my mom is the Exchequer of Mauritania, but that’s not something that defines me. Have you ever read anything by the French social theorist and philosopher de Certeau?”
“No, I haven’t,” she said. “What does he write about?”
“Well,” the guy said. “It’s kind of hard to describe. But you know how everyday life works by a process of poaching on the territory of others, using the rules and products that already exist in culture in a way that is influenced, but never wholly determined, by those rules and products?”
“Not really,” she said.
“Alright,” he said. He looked at his cell phone. “Shit. I gotta go to band practice.” (The Hairpin)
“What if the cast of Friends were all cats? It would be called Cat Friends.” (Sam Downing)
Does SlutWalk slut shame men? (Rabbit Write)
Rabbit White again, with Why is the BFF relationship so romantic? (Rabbit Write)
X-Men: First Class is “a period piece for our post-racial times”, says Ta-Nehisi Coates. (New York Times)
Stephen Wright on being Kylie Minogue:
I also wonder if to be famous at the stratospheric level of Kylie-fame is to feel as though you are inhabiting a ghost of yourself, and you only begin to feel solid when being visibly adored by thousands. That would explain a statement that Cate Blanchett once made abut how she only really feels alive in the dressing room just before she goes on-set or on stage. In the Kylie interview, it was obvious that the moment Kylie lives for is what she calls ‘The Walk’, the walk to the stage toward the deafening noise of the crowd, dressed in her finery, with escorts, minders, courtiers, photographers, twitterers and so on in tow. It might also explain why actors like Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Heath Ledger and Blanchett all seem to have the scary capacity to utterly disappear into their roles, as if they’ve finally found a way of being real. (Overland)
Erica Bartle on Carbon Cate and the Prius effect. (Girl With A Satchel)
“You all know at least one. Who knows, maybe you are one. A girl who hates other girls.” (Persephone Magazine)
Further to all my mentoring posts this week… Business networking, career women and the unintegrated immigrant. (Tiger Beatdown)
And related: It’s who you know: on the power of networks. (Horse Pig Cow)
If I looked like her, I’d spend my days naked and accepting marriage proposals. How could she ever doubt herself? Everywhere she goes, people praise her. Everywhere she looks, the media tells her that she looks the ‘right way.’ I wanted to know, so I asked.
Her response? “How would you feel if the only thing people ever praised you for was something you had no control over? And how would you feel if every day, you were slowly losing the one thing people complimented you on?” (Yes and Yes)
Are you jealous of people in your industry? Watch this now. (Marie Forleo)
“If you don’t know by now, THE THING is an object-based quarterly, created by artists Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan, where different artists create an object that incorporates text.” The artists in question being the likes of James Franco, Miranda July and David Eggers. (The Rumpus)
What I learned while fact checking at Cosmopolitan:
Every word in Cosmo, surprisingly, is verified with a professional rigor that far exceeds virtually all Internet publications and daily newspapers. (Slate)
Do movie characters exist in the a world without movie stars? (Sam Downing)
I want! Recipe Friday: almond cake with blueberries and strawberry sauce. (Liberty London Girl)
Plugging myself because I’m in one of those days when I DO WHAT I WANT! (sort of, partially, maybe)…
And because my ego requires the kind of stroking only procured through shameless self promotion!
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