Garbage Girls
Asia, 25, Toronto - Marc Jacobs sweater, vintage shirt.
What do you do for a living?
I’m an artist.How long has your bedroom been this messy?
The mess has a tendency to ebb and flow, depending on my mood. This is actually pretty tidy. I’m having a good week so far.How far in advance do you plan to clean?
Sometimes when I come home drunk I clean, but by the time I wake up, it’s a mess again. I’m not sure how it happens. I don’t plan to live in a clean place until I can afford a French maid, so no, I don’t procrastinate.Do you bring lovers into your place, and what do they think of the mess?
I bring boys home sometimes. If they complain I punish them.
Do you collect anything?
Yes. Rare and precious jewels. I accept donations.Were you messy as a kid?
I’ve always been messy. My mom never cared, but it grossed my brother out because he’s a Virgo. My mom still doesn’t care that I live this way. My brother never comes over. I don’t mind though because he’s got cable at his place and pretty much always has food.What would your parents say about your apartment now?
I make sure to look clean and pretty when I leave the house and I’m usually tidy when I make art.What is your favorite item that you own, and are you worried about losing it in the mess?
My favorite item is a secret. I don’t want to say whether it’s hidden or not because I don’t want people snooping around when they come over.
I Spent The Weekend Watching Topless Feminists Piss Off Neo-Nazis
Last Friday, I took the Eurostar from London to Paris to meet the topless feminist protest group Femen. Originally based in the Ukraine, the organization has since spread across the world. The idea was to film the buildup to Femen’s next protest, but I didn’t find out quite what I was getting myself into until I arrived at their headquarters—a lofty space above a theater in Goutte D’or—that afternoon.
The area has a large Muslim population and is dotted with Islamic cultural centrers, so it seems quite a ballsy (or boobsy? Is that a thing?) move to base themselves there considering a large part of their shtick is protesting against conservative Islam. Their last protest action, for example, was Topless Jihad Day—a day where Femen members got their boobs out in various European cities to show solidarity with Amina Tyler. Amina, is a 19-year-old Femen member from Tunisia who was drugged and given a “virginity test” after posting topless protest pictures of herself on Facebook.
When I arrived, the Paris HQ was plastered with banners from previous demos—one that read “Sextremism” in bright red paint covered an entire wall. A few members were trying to decide on the best slogan for the massive new banner, which a girl called Oksana was already decorating with paintings of topless Femen activists. The reason for the extended deliberation was because of a heated discussion over whether “Nazi factions” should be spelled with or without an s at the end. No one’s going to pay you much attention in the protest world if you mess up your spelling.
“So my amazing daughter, Emma, turned 5 last month, and I had been searching everywhere for new-creative inspiration for her 5yr pictures. I noticed quite a pattern of so many young girls dressing up as beautiful Disney Princesses, no matter where I looked 95% of the “ideas” were the “How to’s” of how to dress your little girl like a Disney Princess…We chose 5 women (five amazing and strong women), as it was her 5th birthday but there are thousands of unbelievable women (and girls) who have beat the odds and fought (and still fight) for their equal rights all over the world”
- Jaime Moore, Not Just a Girl
Daft Punk’s new album is finally available!
In the wake of the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh that has killed more than 1,100 workers, some major retailers — including H&M and Zara’s parent company, Inditex — have signed an agreement mandating better working conditions and safety standards for buildings. A couple weeks ago, author Elizabeth Cline told Terry that this tragedy might be the final straw, that it might actually force companies to sign such an agreement for garment workers. It looks like she was right.
The factory safety agreement calls for independent, rigorous factory safety inspections with public reports and mandatory repairs and renovations underwritten by Western retailers. A legally enforceable contract, it also calls for retailers to stop doing business with any factory that refuses to make necessary safety improvements, and for workers and their unions to have a substantial voice in factory safety.
Cline is the author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Price of Cheap Fashion. She visited clothing manufacturing plants in Bangladesh as part of her research for the book.
Image via InkKC
This afternoon, a stranger set an aerial drone into flight over my yard and beside my house near Miller Playfield. I initially mistook its noisy buzzing for a weed-whacker on this warm spring day. After several minutes, I looked out my third-story window to see a drone hovering a few feet away. My husband went to talk to the man on the sidewalk outside our home who was operating the drone with a remote control, to ask him to not fly his drone near our home. The man insisted that it is legal for him to fly an aerial drone over our yard and adjacent to our windows. He noted that the drone has a camera, which transmits images he viewed through a set of glasses. He purported to be doing “research”. We are extremely concerned, as he could very easily be a criminal who plans to break into our house or a peeping-tom.
This footage is dizzying. Not for those prone to vertigo.
On Friday the final piece of One World Trade Center was installed making it the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere at 1,776 feet and the third tallest building in the world.
İstanbul is under police siege today, Public transport banned, roads blocked, pepper spray used extensively, police attacks demonstrators.
Teargas enveloped Istanbul as demonstrators defiantly merged onto the city’s symbolic Taksim Square, where they hold May Day protests every year. The government banned all events there this year, because the square is under construction. As protesters and police clashed they turned the 15 million strong metropolis into a war zone, leaving behind destroyed property and reportedly dozens of injured people. To get a grip on the increasing number of protesters, Turkey’s police fortified their ranks with four planes full of officers transfered from other cities. Among the injured were four journalists and a teenage high school student who suffered head injuries. and is in critical condition at the hospital. Opposition politicians affected from gas and police brutality were also hospitalized.
Teargas and Water Cannons for Istanbul’s Labor Day Protesters
