What would Abigail Solomon-Godeau make of “Dieux du Stade,” the new book by photographer Fred Goudon, inspired by the “Dieux du Stade” calendars featuring members of the Stade Français Paris rugby club and athletes from other disciplines?
In her 1997 book “Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation” (Thames and Hudson), the feminist art historian suggests that the nude male has been the primary sex symbol throughout art history, reaching an apotheosis in Neoclassical (turn-of-the-19th-century) Paris in the work of such artists as David, Ingres and especially Girodet, who often portrayed their subjects in the languid pose of women offered up for the male gaze. ...
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Read MoreAt first glance, Carrie Fisher, a contemporary actress and author, and St. Teresa of Ávila, a 17th century philosopher, abbess and mystic, wouldn’t appear to have much in common (even though Fisher was reportedly a script doctor on “Sister Act”).
But the two both wound up in the particularly meaty Jan. 10 edition of The New York Times’ Week in Review as unwitting examples of how far women still have to go when it comes to being defined by men, particularly where their looks are concerned.
Fisher, who reprises her role as Princess Leia in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” found herself embroiled in an Internet brouhaha in which posters were unable to forgive the princess for aging – as if the Web were a particularly petulant Peter Pan. This prompted novelist Jennifer Weiner to write a piece in which she opined that we all need to let it go, including that endlessly self-improving Weight Watchers’ investor, Oprah. ...
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Read MoreFirst it was Playboy doing away with nude pinups. Now the 2016 Pirelli calendar has eschewed the naked ladies – well, mostly – for something different, courtesy of photographer Annie Leibovitz.
Think Patti Smith as imagined by John Singer Sargent, Fran Lebowitz as a latter-day Georges Sand and model Natalia Vodianova with her youngest in a pose that despite her bare leggy-ness echoes a Raphael Madonna and Child.
Besides Vodianova, other examples of fleshiness are a topless Serena Williams, back to the camera in a heroic lunge; and Amy Schumer in panties and heels, comfortable with her stomach rolls as she holds a paper cup. ...
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Read MoreThere is a moment in “Casablanca” in which Resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) – having escaped from a Nazi concentration camp – confronts a group of German officers in Rick’s Café Américain through music. The Germans are loudly, arrogantly singing “Die Wacht am Rhein,” an anthem that has its roots in French-German antagonism, when Victor orders the house band to strike up “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, to which club owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) acquiesces. One by one the club patrons rise and join in, all but Victor’s wife – and Rick’s former lover – Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). As the others sing lustily, she sits thinking and marveling at all that has been lost and yet still remains.
It is one of the most moving moments in the history of cinema, one I couldn’t help but flashing on as the City of Light was plunged into the heart of darkness. The fans leaving the Stade de France – where one in a series of coordinated ISIS attacks took place on Friday the 13th – burst into “La Marseillaise.” The exchange students in Manhattan’s Union Square held hands as they sang it that night. And Placido Domingo led The Metropolitan Opera Chorus in it at Lincoln Center Saturday afternoon. It, too, is a symbol of all that has been lost and yet still remains. ...
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Read MoreWell, I guess everything really is up-to-date in Kansas City.
The Kansas City Royals thrashed the New York Mets four games to one in the World Series. Really, the games were never as close as they sometimes seemed. The Royals, who were on a quest for Series glory ever since losing to the San Francisco Giants in a heartbreaker last year, reminded me a lot of the late-1990s New York Yankees – down by five runs in the seventh, up by six in the eighth. Not to mix sports metaphors here, but it’s like playing Novak Djokovic: When your opponent does everything solidly, you have no margin for error. And the Mets made plenty of errors, mentally and physically. The Royals had their oopses, but they were able to transcend in a way the Mets couldn’t. ...
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Read MoreWhenever I was asked about my “walls of inspiration” – which have followed me to each new job, albeit with a changing cast of characters – I always responded that they were a feminist gesture, that I would remove them the day Playboy magazine folded.
Well, Hell has frozen over and I’ll have to remove my men. (Yeah, right. More on that in a bit.) ...
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Read MoreRafael Nadal is a fever in a woman’s blood.
The sensual gaze. The tawny, molded muscles. The playful sexiness that makes a little skin oh so in.
He’s displayed all that and more in the Armani jeans and underwear campaign and now he takes it off again as the spokesmodel for a new line of Tommy Hilfiger underwear and clothes as well as the new Hilfiger fragrance TH Bold. ...
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