The Illusionists: Help fund it on Kickstarter

A few weeks ago, I had drinks with a young filmmaker I had started following on Twitter months ago. Her name is Elena Rossini and she lives in Paris. We talked extensively about her feature-length documentary project, The Illusionists. I’ll let her explain it in her own words:

As you may know, in late June I’ve launched an ambitious fundraising campaign for my feature-length documentary The Illusionists, which I wrote and I am co-producing and directing.

Here is the synopsis of the film:

THE ILLUSIONISTS is a feature-length documentary about the commodification of the body and the marketing of unattainable beauty around the world. The film will explore the influence that corporations have on our perceptions of ourselves, showing how mass media, advertising, and several industries manipulate people’s insecurities about their bodies for profit.

The Illusionists’ Kickstarter page has a video teaser and a longer explanation of the project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1085595579/the-illusionists-documentary-insecurity-sells (its themes, style, and my motivations for making the film).

There are amazing experts already lined up for the interviews, including author & filmmaker Jean Kilbourne (best known for her iconic film series “Killing Us Softly”), psychotherapist Susie Orbach (best known for her books “Fat is a Feminist Issue” and “Bodies”) and Jenn Pozner (author of “Reality Bites Back”; she was recently featured in the New Yorker and on NPR). I’m also hoping to interview Umberto Eco, Gloria Steinem, Oliviero Toscani and Maurice Levy of Publicis, amongst others. 

Thanks to the incredible generosity of friends, friends-of-friends, Twitter and Facebook followers, the fundraising campaign has already achieved some amazing milestones. 12 days in, I’ve reached 43% of the total funding goal, with over 110 backers and more than 1,100 Facebook “likes” of my Kickstarter page. In short, I’m on cloud nine. But the road ahead is still long… if I don’t reach 100% of the funding goal by August 5th, I will lose all the pledges made so far.

On Kickstarter, I am offering “regular people” pre-sales of the film and various other gifts as rewards for donations:http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1085595579/the-illusionists-documentary-insecurity-sells (the column on the right). I’m also developing a special package for sponsors whose mission is aligned with the message of the film that would offer exposure on the site, in all press material, and in the end credits of the film.

If this is something that resonates with you, go to Kickstarter.com and fund it. I just did.

My new favorite fashion designer

Last weekend, an advertising image (among dozens and dozens of full-page ads in a magazine) caught my eye.

Yes, she is advertising a fashion brand. Yet, look at her.

She is not squeezed into a corset or stuck onto stiletto heels. There are no animal prints, no lace, no fur, no patent leather. No chains: she is not wearing any jewelry. No sunglasses. No handbags. Normal, healthy hair.

The clothes play with her body – concealing some features, showing others. She’s comfortable. She’s not constrained.

She may be dancing. But she’s dancing for herself – not for a male gaze.

The designer’s name is Martino Midali. I haven’t had a chance to wear his clothes yet, but based on this image alone, I think we need more designers like him.

In favor of wearing whatever the hell you want, part 2

Here is Carme Chacón, Spanish defense minister, in a supremely elegant suit by Spanish designer Purificación García, presiding over the troops’ Pascua Militar parade on January 6th (photo: EFE). The suit had been previously vetted by officials in charge of royal protocol, yet Chacón was criticized (mostly by men, obviously) for not wearing a dress.

Women across the political spectrum defended Chacón’s untraditional choice. Esperanza Aguirre, a leading member of the opposition, said: “Como mujer que se dedica a la política, me indigna que sea motivo de discusión lo que nos ponemos, cómo nos peinamos y cómo nos cortamos el pelo, eso no pasa con los hombres.” Minister of Equality Bibiana Aído said: “No se nos ocurriría comentar la indumentaria de un hombre.”

Human capital

I am back from two days in London and still thinking about the experience. This was a different trip for me – no museums, no galleries – just long walks, some shopping, some dining, some warming up at the fireplace in the lounge at the hotel. I must not have noticed before, but this is what hit me this time: everybody we dealt with was on top of their game. I think this means if you’re very good at something, you go do it in London. Some outstanding people were:

• The Albanian head sommelier at Gordon Ramsay’s at Claridge’s. We had very good conversations, both about wines and about Albania.
• The South Asian saleswoman who sold me two pairs of jeans (Hudson and 7 For All Mankind) after having me try on about a dozen to find, in her opinion, the perfect fit.
• The young pale blonde English woman who took us through the entire range of Jo Malone fragrances until we found the two that were just right.
• The Italian maitre and staff at Pont de la Tour, where we had a festive lunch and felt at home despite eating turkey and looking out at Tower Bridge.
• Everybody at 41 Hotel, including a concierge with the fantastically literary name of Adele Coetzee.
• The hostess at the lounge we used at Gatwick airport, who gave us a most enthusiastic overview of her facilities and truly looked sorry we couldn’t stay longer when it was time for us to board.

This sample is, I admit, biased towards the retail and hospitality sectors, places with brutal competition where staff can’t help but being eager to please in the current downturn. But if this small sample says something about the quality of human capital in London that holds true across the board, then it must be one of the reasons why London is such a great city.

Monetizing LinkedIn: this is where it gets creative (Banana Republic promotion)

LinkedIn has long been admired for its thoughtful and apparently highly effective approach to monetization. Yet, today I was a little surprised to be offered a pop-up promotional box (pop-up! yes, a pop-up!) after a minor update to my profile:

I like 25% off coupons as much as the next person, I guess, and may well use this one on my next trip to the mall. But the thing is: I go to Banana Republic exactly once a year, and I always buy the same stuff (say: three pairs of pants, a dress, a sweater or two). So, for them, it’s money that they basically leave on the table.

For LinkedIn, it’s another way to essentially sell their audience to an advertiser. Is there an opt-out? Of course each promo has its own opt-in mechanism, and you can just close it if you don’t care for it, but is there an overall button to opt out that says “I only want to use LinkedIn as a professional tool and online Rolodex, so please do not show me any pop-up sweepstakes or promotions“?

In favor of wearing whatever the hell you want

We spend our lives, sadly, trying to conform to others’ expectations. It is good to confound expectations once in a while – all the more so if, like Angela Merkel, you’re over fifty.

Shanghai cool

I have slept in hotel rooms decorated with Venetian views, English landscapes, Roman ruins, Balinese rice paddies and Arizona skies. I had never slept, until last week, in a hotel room where the decorators had chosen to take their (loosely Warholian) inspiration from tin cans. Here are a blown-up syruped fruit label in the living room of our suite, and a pattern with fried fish and beans above the bed.

When we returned to our room in the afternoon of Dec. 31st, we found a tongue-in-cheek surprise from the management: on the immaculately made-up bed were two aspirins and two pairs of cheap sunglasses, a men’s RayBan Aviator-type and a huge women’s white-framed 1970′s-looking model. We had no choice but to wear them when we went downstairs for breakfast on Jan. 1st. Overall, we loved the hotel (although I am sure this was in part because we chose a spacious corner suite) and felt quite at home there – the intended effect, as Jia, we are told, is a Mandarin word meaning “home”. Here is their site.

Shanghai was a discovery. As Norman Foster reportedly said, the process of urbanization that took 200 years in Western Europe is taking about 20 years in China. Futurologists have argued for some years that contemporary Chinese development is one of the most impactful trends in our lifetimes (see, for example, Peter Schwartz’s Inevitable Surprises). There is a palpable sense of things happening.

Notwithstanding the Chinese middle class fascination for Western brands, I tried to shop for cool local stuff and was able to take home some Shanghai finds. It’s way too cold now, but this summer I will be wearing a few nifty designs by SQY-T:

Finally, there’s stuff that’s not cool about China. You do hear about censorship, but you do not realize its full extent until it hits you in the face, to the extent that you wonder whether your browser is truly having a technical problem. From the hotel’s WiFi connection I could check the weather, set up an order of groceries for my return home, catch up on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and so on; but I got a server timeout if I wanted to access either of my blogs – I have to think, because both have posts tagged with alarming labels such as “politics” and “politica” respectively. Readers, if you are better versed than I am in Chinese Internet policy, please enlighten me. Subjectively, it was a fairly spooky experience. And, as much as I loved Shanghai, I was reminded of a few freedoms we have over here, and we should never give up.

Shopping, product review sites, and policies for treating unladylike words

There seems to be a new crop of “Web 2.0 product review” sites, whatever that means, and it’s hard to tell which ones can stick around for the long haul. Some of these seem to gain momentum, then flounder in the space of a few weeks; they may be designed by people with nice ideas, but no clue about a traffic-building strategy.

As a side note, they have different policies for treating unladylike words.

Here’s a product: a pretty embroidered blouse by Swiss-Parisian designer Nicole Locher, whose motto is “Perversion with a touch of class”.

On the designer’s own site, lochers.com, the name of this style is “Cute Little Fuckers”.

On iliketotallyloveit.com, it shows up as “Cute Little F*ckers”.

On thisnext.com, it is garbled into “Cute Little &%&#@”.

I love most of Locher’s models, especially “I don’t play nice”, “I like it rough”, “No time to fuck”, “Insatiable little thing” (hey, you’ve got to have different shirts for different moods), and “I can only please one man a day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow does not look good either…”.

Still, it doesn’t look like the policies at those review sites actually help you find cool stuff like this. If I read “Cute Little &%&#@”, my eyes just sort of glaze over it.

And the pretty blouse is never found.

Ah, the eternal dilemmas of good manners and censorship.

On Muslim headscarves and peep-toe shoes

Some personal disclosure, first: I never understood those people who feel most at ease when naked. If you sleep naked, you’re probably one of them. I’m not. I’m most comfortable when fully clothed. I like my arms to be covered by long sleeves, and my legs to be clothed in full-length trousers. I’ve been known to wear gloves about six months a year, especially when riding public transportation. For years, I could not imagine wearing sandals in public, and stuck to sneakers and shoes all summer. The fact that I now own not one but two pairs of peep-toe shoes, even if I rarely wear them, feels to me like an extraordinarily daring act.

The bare shoulder and arm you see in my sidebar picture are a reminder: writing ought to be like getting naked. If I don’t feel some of the same discomfort, I’m not writing candidly enough.

So, here’s a candid reflection on headscarves. I don’t mind the idea of headscarves at all. As long as your face is shown – your expression, your personality, the sparkle in your eye – who cares about whether the rest of you is in plain view or hidden by a scarf?

Yet, our culture – ever since we threw the Victorian whalebone armor into the bonfire – associates freedom with the less restrictive dress codes. More skin, more freedom. It’s hard for us to understand how some women, in cultures that are not so far from ours, may choose to wear a headscarf as liberating. Yet, I have a lot of personal sympathy for this claim. I think I can instinctively understand how a woman, modestly dressed and with her hair covered, might find it somewhat easier to go about her business.

Yet this is not a commonly held view in the West. Ataturk, in the 1920s, decided that banning the Muslim headscarf was a necessary milestone in the secularization of Turkey. (Incidentally, the country just went through a psychodrama over the headscarf-wearing wife of presidential candidate Abdullah Gul, but let’s put this aside for a minute.) So, if – like Turkey, Tunisia, and some Western democracies – you decide to ban the Muslim headscarf from schools and public offices, where should you draw the line? Surely, then, the Polish legislator who is introducing a bill to ban miniskirts and see-through or low-cut blouses is justified too? In the end, that’s probably a more demeaning dress code than the headscarf, and perhaps a ban is healthy, one could argue. Our culture has plenty of instances of demeaning dress codes enforced by tacit agreement – and I don’t mean in Hollywood or Las Vegas. In my country, a member country of G7 and a founding member of the European Union, I have seen corporate cultures where the dress code for women – usually confined to administrative or other low-ranking jobs – involved plunging necklines, miniskirts and high heels. I will repeat it for the sake of my American readers, who may not remember life before Politically Correct: I have seen corporate cultures where, to this day, women are expected to come to the office in plunging necklines, miniskirts and high heels. In the summer, those places look like meat markets. I’d choose full Muslim garb any time.

Of course, at least from a libertarian point of view, banning any sort of harmless personal or religious expression doesn’t make sense. Such a point of view would also argue that, in personal appearance, rules of any kind invite defiance, and therefore defeat themselves. (The Economist reports that in both Turkey and Tunisia “veiling, which a decade ago was confined largely to the tradition-bound poor, has made a middle-class comeback”; at the same time, some of the countries with some of the strictest rules mandating headscarves – Iran, Saudi Arabia – are witnessing “an undercurrent of rebellion against sartorial rules of any kind.”) So, let people wear what they want, perhaps with minimal exceptions for identification documents and the like. Don’t ban anything, or it will come back to haunt you.

Are bans ever justified? Perhaps under revolutionary conditions, when a strong break with tradition is needed (as in 1920s Turkey, and probably even more so in today’s Taliban strongholds?) Or when whoever gets to decide feels that there’s not enough separation between church and state? If I were a ruler in charge of deciding on this criterion, I probably wouldn’t ban anything in Turkey and in France, who are established separationists; yet, I’d be tempted to ban religious displays from schools and public offices in the United States, where those boundaries are a lot more porous.

It is plain to see that the world doesn’t work according to logic. We have a lot of bans that ought to go, and we may engage in intellectual play over some that are never going to happen. Yet, I think if I were to meet Mrs. Gul, we’d probably have more in common than one would first guess. For a start, she probably doesn’t have too many pairs of peep-toe shoes either.

Unexpected echoes of Rebecca Horn

Last month I bought one of those lounging-around-the-house comfortably soft outfits from Banana Republic. The top, in this outfit, has long sleeves and neither buttons nor zips up the front: rather, each side continues in a long flap of fabric that can be either wrapped around the body and tied in the back, or loosely tied in front and left to hang down almost to one’s knees. One night, I walked in the warm wind of the holiday resort where I spent Christmas. I didn’t tie it up at all: I just let the flaps hang loose and be carried by the wind. It felt like another pair of arms. And I was reminded – I think this would go back to the early ’70s: anyone got one of those Guggenheim catalogs handy? – of Rebecca Horn’s body extensions, in which she (or her models) used to walk around displaying ungainly long fake body parts. Now, I am pretty sure the designer who designed these clothes has probably not seen those works. I am also pretty sure that I may be the only person on earth to have thought of Rebecca Horn while wearing this outfit. I must think, however, that if she knew she’d probably be pleased. Nothing an artist sows fails to bear fruit.