Anyway, blades_of_grass kindly asked for permission to translate this gem on my behalf, because I feel everyone should see this. With many thanks to the talented authors, here’s my translation:

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FEMINISM ACCORDING TO HARRY POTTER.

The Practice of Female Separatism in Daily Life of Luna Lovegood

Hermione Granger on Liberal Feminism

Female Empowerment in Academia Through the Eyes of Minerva McGonagall

Women in Politics: The Dilemma of Dolores Umbridge

Women in the Military and Psychological Violence: The Case of Bellatrix Lestrange

Consequences of Limiting Abortion Rights: The Tragedy of Lily Potter

The Death Toll of Unpaid Labor: The Duel of Molly Weasley and Bellatrix Lestrange

Replication of Violent Family Practices: Family Strategies of Nymphadora Tonks

The Duality of Economic Strategies for Women: Narcissa Malfoy

The Internalized Misogyny Among Successful Women: Rita Skeeter

Woman as a Scapegoat in Political Processes: Marietta Edgecombe

Forced Marriage as a Conduit of Classism: Pansy Parkinson

Fatphobia: Millicent Bulstrode

Ridicule of Victims of Violence as a Form of Demonization: Moaning Myrtle

The Founders of Hogwarts, or Men are Always in Charge: False Equality

Hufflepuff and the “Virtue of the Working Class”: The Silent Majority

Cho Chang: The Relations with Racial and Ethnic Minorities as a Casual Entertainment

The Marriage of Ginny Weasley: “Woman Exchange”

Good Homosexual is a Well-Educated White Men with No Sexual Liaisons: Albus Dumbledore

Polyamory and Childfree Lifestyle — Self-Positioning of Bellatrix Lestrange

Ariana Dumbledore: Murder of a Disabled Person as a Social Necessity

Argus Filch: Even Harry and Ron Can Laugh at the Handicapped

Goblins: The Apotheosis of the British Antisemitic Tradition

Flitwick and Hagrid: Ethnic Minorities Will Always Clean Up After You, or Uncle Tom in Hogwarts

If the Protagonist is Fed, Slavery is Awesome: House Elves

Only Stupid Girls Fight Slavery

Hermione Granger: A Good Woman Defends Others’ Rights and Provides Others’ Lessons

Alcoholism and the Esoteric: Coping Mechanisms under Conditions of Discrimination

House Elves: Just Like Women, Only Ugly and Invisible

Pomona Sprout: Good Girls are Liked but not Noticed

Professor Vector, or Anonymity of Women in Mathematics

Poppy Pomfrey: a Subservient Suffragette, or the Outcome of Courses of Higher Women’s Studies in St Petersburg

Bellatrix Lestrange and Luna Lovegood: Psychiatric Disabilities and Ableism in Hogwarts

Luna Lovegood, Tom Riddle, Harry Potter: Good Children Don’t Get PTSD

Luna Lovegood: Forced Acceptance into the Family Strategies of Psychological Repression

Conventional Man is Allowed Anger but not Grief. Harry Potter: The Masculinity Trap

Remus Lupin and the “Good Cripple” Archetype

Rolanda Hooch: Professional Women’s Athletics as Deviation

Molly Weasley and Fleur Delacourt: Differentiation Between Women as a Tool of Oppression

I hope you all enjoy!

Con or Bust is an annual auction, which helps fans of color/non-white fans attend SF conventions. This year, I have three items for auction:

1) A signed copy of The House of Discarded Dreams;
2) A signed copy of Heart of Iron;
3) and a Wardrobe Refresher, where you have a chance to hire me as a virtual personal shopper.

Bid, and raise money for a great cause!

A tad Alexander Wang with a more avant-garde/military sensibility, well cut and clean-lined.

However, Kanevski is only the tip of the iceberg. In recent years, Ukrainian design really has been emerging as a great force, with many tending toward avant-garde but with frequent nods to classic cuts, with feminine estehtic that still managed to skew away from overtly sexualized. In other words, gorgeous stuff.

So I wanted to mention a few of my favorites. First, Fedor Vozianov. Talk about Scandinavian minimalism/clean-lined avant garde that still manages to stay wearable and dare I say pretty?

Yeah, I do. And of course I do especially dig the grey, white and black palette with occasional corals and yellows. And the shoes shaped like paws. Oh heck, just everything!

Then there are Natalia Kamenskaya and Olesya Kononova, the designers of Kamenskaya-Kononova. Their designs are more traditionally ladylike, with rich and sophisticated colors, refined midi silhouettes, and shredding.

Then there are vivid colors of Nadya Dzyak:

Small unexpected details and interesting colorblocking make this traditionally drapey silhoette not quite so.

And last but not least, Liliya Litkovskaya. I just am so enamored of her severe and beautiful esthetic.

I am so impressed with this group of designers. I hope that for some of you this is new info. There is really nothing more I like than introducing people to creative minds I admire. Now, if I could only get Tilda Swinton to wear Vozianov and Litkovskaya!

Introduction by Ekaterina Sedia

THE DANCING MASTER by Genevieve Valentine

THE UNLADYLIKE EDUCATION OF AGATHA TREMAIN by Stephanie Burgis

AT WILL by Leanna Renee Hieber

STEEPED IN DEBT TO THE CHIMNEY POTS by Steve Berman

OUTSIDE THE ABSOLUTE by Seth Cadin

RESURRECTION by Tiffany Trent

MRS BEETON’S BOOK OF MAGICKAL MANAGEMENT by Karen Healey

THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND by Sandra McDonald

FALSE COLOURS by Marie Brennan

NUSSBAUM’S GOLDEN FORTUNE by M. K. Hobson

THE COLONEL’S DAUGHTER by Barbara Roden

MERCURY RETROGRADE by Mary Robinette Kowal

THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS by Caroline Stevermer

I am really pleased about this one, even though YA is not something I do a lot of. But here’s an excerpt from my intro anyway!

“Recently we saw a great rise in both Victorian and Young
Adult categories of fiction, and to me these two go hand in
hand. If being a teenager is about disobedience, the notion of
Victoriana (at least the way it is perceived by a modern reader)
is often centered around propriety and convention, rigid social
structures, and impermeable class, race and gender barriers.
Yet, where there is convention, there is also defiance, and the
opposite side of this Victorian coin is the realization that as long
as there are barriers and conventions, there will be those who
will rise up against them.”

1) Ukrainian fashion design;
2) Obligation of beauty;
3) Some other random stuff that makes me angry.

So all of this will happen. For now, here’s an image from topic 1: a look by Fedor Vozianov, a fashion designer with a degree in linguistics.

I am a bit obsessed with his work at the moment. Go ahead, check out his website. Tons of interesting minimal, sculptural, and almost Scandinavian avant garde. More forthcoming.

I am currently reading submissions for Bloody Fabulous, and as happens with every new anthology, there is always a new set of issues. To be fair, I anticipated the majority of what is happening this time around: namely, people are trying to fake knowing about fashion. And it shows.

Firstly, fashion is not about labels. There is a reason a person dressed in a bunch of labels without rhyme or reason is called a fashion victim. Fashion is an industry that doesn’t sell you beauty or sexiness or any of those things; fashion industry sells you change and the promise of self-reinvention and your new, better self emerging from the ashes; it’s a promise of shapeshifting, of drag, of disguise and escape. And every successful fashion house knows it, and their label tells you what they are selling — which disguise. It’s a language, and you can fake it no more than you can fake speaking French. If you just throw a bunch of label names on the page, it looks off — as if you blurted random foreign words and expected people to understand you. So: what labels your character wears should tell us something about the character. The fewer labels the better, since it allows for a better definition without too much product placement. There is a reason it’s called The Devil Wears Prada, and not The Devil Wears Tom Ford’s Gucci.

Speaking of: yes, we all saw that movie. So the chances of me accepting a story about a fashion editor who is super mean to her assistant are close to zero. Chances of me accepting more than one of those stories are actually zero.

Secondly, fashion and style are not the same although they are related. Style is all about how a person puts together their guise. To paraphrase Ru Paul, we all wear drag: we put together our clothing in such a way as to tell other people what we envision ourselves to be, what image we want to present to the world. Style is being fluent in this language — that is, knowing how to put together a persona, as well as being sure of WHAT persona to present, whether to keep it fluid or to develop a uniform. People who do not care about fashion and style are not fluent (and that is fine, not every form of expression is mandatory); they dress for comfort and don’t give it a second thought. But when you’re writing about fashion, you are talking about people who are at the very least interested in style — that is, they know which persona they cultivate. And this part is not about labels as much as it is about the lines of clothing and the silhouettes.

So when writing about people who are (or try to be) stylish as well as fashionable, it makes sense to give some thought about how image is put together. Not the labels, but the lines — is it nipped in, girly, foofy, masculine, androgynous, eclectic, avant guard, approachable, forbidding, tailored, flowy? Knowing what selves your characters present to the world is knowing their aspirational self, or their armor. And if you set up a contrast between the true self and the projected self — well, that’s conflict right there.

And finally, it helps to know how fashion industry works if you choose it as your topic. As in, where do the models come from? Who makes runway samples? What are tailoring vs store samples? Where fabrics are sourced? Who are buyers? etc etc. Of course, not every story is about fashion industry — there are many about people of personal style, of significant clothing, of disguises. But for all that is sacred, if you write about the fashion industry, do your research in the same way you would research history or science or any other industry — thoroughly. If you think it’s too trivial to research, or that no one will notice, you do your story no favors.

(Image: Tilda Swinton wearing Haider Ackerman, in Toronto 2011)

My grandmother had a number of weird and funny sayings, as grandmothers do. This is the one I’ve been remembering lately: “If a woman doesn’t look good in her twenties, it is her misfortune. If she doesn’t look good in her forties, it is her fault.”

I know, I know. Quite a few assumptions here, but what I would like to focus on is the positives: the idea that as we age we not only acquire control over how we present ourselves to the world, but we also get to redefine what “looking good” is. Most of all, with all the built in assumptions, this saying resonates with me because I like getting older.

There was that thing about being young: I was unsure. I was easy to sway, I looked for male approval before female one, I fluctuated in my presentation to the world, I didn’t know what I was. It is not uncommon for young people to waver as they try to discover themselves. And the issue of approval is I think germane to how we express ourselves via dressing.

Dressing for men is something women are encouraged to do: we constantly hear women’s clothes being criticized as unflattering or unsexy, or what was she thinking, and she should show more skin, show off her waist etc etc. Anything to project an image desirable to a man. This is why I rarely have interest in clothes designed by straight male designers: they too often design for the male gaze, and I’m just not impressed. This is why I crack up at design competitors who break out “I bring a straight male perspective to clothing!” argument. This rare, precious commodity — the straight male view!

There is another saying about women who dress primarily for other women. This is at least what I hear mentioned by the way of explanation of the harem pant-wearing, waist-concealing, sack-dressing fashion forward individuals. While (some) other women surely can appreciate such styling better than (most) straight men, this isn’t all of the story either. Dressing in a way that is pleasing to oneself is important, sure; but so is sending a signal of “I do not dress for men”. So that this dressing for other women thing? I think it often gets misconstrued as competitive, trying to impress each other. For me, I take it as a signal of “I do not value male attraction above all else.” And as I get older, I see these women, and I want to be friends with them. Dressing for oneself OR for other women is a rebellion, since male gaze is such a default.

Now yes, there are plenty of young women who dress in interesting ways. But age does give one a few advantages in this area: first, there’s knowing what you like after four decades of trial and error. Personal style evolves, at least for those of us who are interested in that sort of thing, and any evolution takes time. I know what I like now, and unlike when I was in my twenties, it is hard to persuade me to like things because everyone else does (not that I never change my mind, but.) Then there is an issue of income or at least patience: it is easier for me to save for high quality pieces I want rather than spend it all on shiny disposable trends. I do want to dress as a grown up, which for me translates into tailored, high quality garments. (If I ever have enough of vintage silk blouses and woolen blazers, I’ll let you know.)

And finally, there is an issue of visibility. It’s an old chestnut that women after forty become invisible in our culture. But invisibility also comes with lessening of the scrutiny female bodies are subjected to. Women over forty are often freer to experiment with personal style — and many of the most amazing fashion icons, from Irene Apfel to Tilda Swinton to Helen Bonham Carter to Helen Mirren fall into this group. The social penalty for failing to cater to male gaze is lessened, since male gaze glosses right over women of a certain age, and… it’s okay. After all, most of us spent most of our lives railing against the patriarchy. Now we get to do it from a different place — from the place of strength and assurance, where our confidence is supported by a lifetime of achievement unrelated to our physical appearance, where our self-worth is unquestionable.

And I like it here, with the fabulously dressed women and timeless clothing. There is such a joy and freedom in finally knowing who you are, what you want, and what to tell those who don’t like it. No longer at the whim of outside influence, we can find peace with ourselves — and it is our doing.

Yes, I wrote a story for this, with the ambition to be most quietly contemplative Zombies vs Robots story ever. Have I succeeded? You’ll be the judge!

HIT GRAPHIC NOVELS GET LITERARY TREATMENT

IDW Unleashes Prose Program for Breakout Comic Series:
ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS

35 Writers Explore, Expand and Remix ZvR World

San Diego, CA (September 6, 2011)—IDW’s gleefully subversive ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS comic book series from creators Chris Ryall and Ashley Wood will soon be eating readers’ brains from the inside via a series of short stories, novellas and more. As announced at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con in July, the company plans for an ambitious slate of original prose stories set at different points in this epic adventure of a zombie apocalypse. In ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS, the clanking robots are built to fight the shambling braineaters, in a desperate attempt to save Earth’s dwindling population.

“It’s gratifying to see that ZvR has taken on an unlife of its own,” asserts Ryall, series co-creator and Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief for IDW. “Expanding from comics into prose is a logical progression, though as the heretofore sole writer of the series I must admit that letting other writers into our subversive little world was at first troubling. But now I’m fine with it. Really. Mostly. Especially since editor Jeff Conner has corralled such a talented array of writers to tackle some really bizarre and creative prose stories. As long as no one expects me to let them write ZvR comics, too…”

A lurching cohort of writers—including such notable talents as John Shirley, Nancy A. Collins, Rio Youers, Brea Grant, Steve Rasnic Tem, Amber Benson, James A. Moore, Rachel Swirsky, Norman Prentiss, and John Skipp & Cody Goodfellow, led by Ryall himself—has been assembled to pen original stories of life during wartime in the ZVR world. “It’s our biggest project so far,” states Conner, the IDW contributing editor helming the ZVR prose program. “In a way it’s a follow-up to our Classics Mutilated release, at least in terms of its anything goes spirit. The results so far have been—um, riveting.”

The rest of the ZVR writer roster includes: Dale Bailey, Amelia Beamer, Jesse Bullington, Simon Clark, Lincoln Crisler, Stephen Dedman, Rain Graves, Rhodi Hawk, Robert Hood, Stephen Graham Jones, Nicholas Kaufmann, Steven Lockley, Nick Mamatas, Jonathan McGoran, Joe McKinney, Gary McMahon, Mark Morris, Bobby Nash, Yvonne Navarro, Hank Schwaeble, Ekaterina Sedia, Sean Taylor, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Kaaron Warren, and Don Webb.

A film version of ZVR is currently in development through Sony Pictures, with Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes as producer.

Visit IDWPublishing.com to learn more about the company and its top-selling books.

1) Oh Project Runway. I liked you so much better when you at least pretended to be fair, and to be about fashion design rather than just drama. So far, we have: team leaders picked by running a race (assuring that only young men get to lead), a designer who quits being replaced by someone who was kicked off three episodes ago instead of the most recent one, and just ugh. Seriously. Also, Tim Gunn isn’t even trying anymore. He has more presence in that Expedia commercial.

2) Big Sexy is a new TLC show, about plus-sized women who are trying to make it in the fashion industry (as stylists, designers, models). I would’ve liked this show a lot better if 5 minutes into the first episode they didn’t start bodysnarking on thin models, at some point calling one very thin young woman “that thing”. I wish they realized that body policing is not OK, no matter who gets to do the policing (and that’s the whole other issue about who gets to be a real woman etc). Also, this show is problematic on other levels, but I’m yet to digest it enough to verbalize it. My unease is mostly about their search for romantic relationships and the whole “we want men who like big girls but no chubby chasers” angle.

3) Work of Art is coming back in October. Yay!

4) I was offline because Irene killed my computer, and I had to get a new one. The new one is a laptop, and I find it easier to write/do editing stuff if I disconnect from the internet and go downstairs. So expect reduced online presence.

5) Some other things I’ve been mulling over, about the whole female/foreign/childless outward presentation. I was planning a post on some of those things for feminist fashion bloggers, but lately I feel like everything I have to say doesn’t make any difference, and futility overwhelms. And there is a lot of good blogging going on about the obstacles facing various kinds of people (especially writers), but what none mention is that at some point jumping over the hurdles becomes simply not worth it. Giving up under such circumstances is a valid response, not weakness or a failure. No one owes it to the world to keep banging their head against the wall, you know?