We continue looking back – and ahead – with the top stories covered by this blog in 2015. In the last post, I considered the top sports stories. Now I explore the top cultural events of a tumultuous year:
Pluto rising
It was the summer (OK, July) of the little planet that could as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft staged an expensive ($700 million) but profitable flyby. “Pluto, still smarting from its demotion to dwarf planet, nonetheless revealed itself to be a complex world, with a polar ice cap, rugged mountains, smooth plains, and reddish patches that recalled the surface of Mars,” Nicola Twilley writes. ...
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Read MoreWell, now we have the backlash to the fallout from Serena Williams being named Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsperson of the Year.”
How dare she be picked over fan fave American Pharoah, went the fallout.
How dare anyone compare her to a horse or pick an animal over an African-American female athlete, went the backlash.
Let me try to make a nuanced argument here, not the Internet’s forte. Williams was chosen as much for what she symbolizes – African-American female athleticism in a racially troubled country – as for what she has accomplished. ...
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Read MoreThe acclaimed new movie “The Danish Girl” – about the artist Einar Wegener, who became the first person to have male-to-female sex reassignment surgery – raises intriguing questions about the nature of art.
Specifically, should a transgender role be played by a transgender actor? (The film stars Eddie Redmayne, who won an Oscar for his performance as Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything” and has been nominated once again for a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for “Girl.”) More broadly, should creative and interpretive artists stick to their own experiences? The latter is a question that I have a vested interest in as the author of the debut novel “Water Music,” about four gay athletes and how their professional rivalries color their personal relationships with one another, and the forthcoming “The Penalty for Holding,” about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for identity, success, acceptance and love in the NFL. (They’re both part of my series “The Games Men Play.”)
What, I’m often asked, would a woman – and a straight one at that – know about gay sex? ...
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Read MoreSerena Williams has been named Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsperson of the Year,” and, predictably, all Hades has broken loose.
Let’s forget those who voted successfully for American Pharoah in the fans’ poll. I voted for AP, though I knew SI staffers would never give the award to a four-legged athlete. (No word from the Pharoah on any residual disappointment. Given his lovely demeanor, my guess is he’s already tweeted Serena his congrats on his big new iPhone. So much easier to type on with hooves.)
Would that his two-legged counterparts were as gracious. That SI picked a tennis player other than Novak Djokovic sent up red flags among those who saw reverse prejudice. ...
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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 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 MoreYou would think that for two people who had reached the pinnacle of their profession, the world would be their oyster.
But no, no, things didn’t work out that way for Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic though it’s certainly not for lack of effort on their part.
Holder of the Serena Slam (all four Slam titles at once), Serena will no doubt win the US Open that begins on Aug. 29 and succeed Steffi Graf by capturing the Grand Slam (the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open) in one calendar year. She will be remembered as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, to play the game. Simply put, there is Serena and there is everyone else ...
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