lethargy pt 2: inversion of albertine/small medium large

There are probably a billion Flickr groups called something like "Girls In Beds" (or more appropriately, "~~GIRLS~~IN~~BED~~" blah blah) littered with bent arms and a tension between skin and fabric.  There are things that I might talk about as a problem of style or rather, uh, "problematized" by my relationship to fashion that someone without the obnoxious tendency to overthink and schematize wouldn't see as such.  And yet the existence of these types of Flickr groups completely confirms my outlook.  There are groups called "Take Off Your Sweater" of just people in the process of taking off their sweaters (I almost included in the above images a picture I stole from this group).  Flickr, as the Wikipedia of both semi-professional and snapshot photography--and thus of a certain kind of gaze--is the perfect space for me to openly fetishize gesture.  Not that I'm not doing enough of that in the real world, where it is quieter and creates more complications.  It may be comforting to play with  my hair, run my split ends along my nose, and pinch my lower lip while I'm writing close-reading responses on the third floor of the library, but my ability to do it without thinking about who can see me do it and how adorable it might look to them never lasts more than two seconds.  

I am a pen chewer.  I chew compulsively on pens because I fucking love the way it feels.  When strangers loan me pens in class I frequently slip them in my bag at the end of class and rush out in an effort to pretend like I forgot where I got it from so I don't have to return and explain a mangled cap.  It's a disgusting habit.  While I am partially proud of all my disgusting habits (except of course internet addiction) I would much prefer a boy to catch me doing this softer variation of my tendency to make a meal out of a bic:

And in fact I have done that in class, imagining I've got as big an upper lip as Anne Wiazemsky and pretending like I think no one is watching me, that it's not a performance for the boy sitting diagonally across from me, that it's just a mindless gesture.  These are all the same sentiments I put into getting dressed: the delusion that I will look as good as whoever coined the particular look I am going for (or is it rather that I hope I will partially become that person? which is another topic for another entry), the hope that no one will notice that I'm trying to look like I didn't try and that any remnants of trying that slip in will just come off as further reasoning for my allure, that I can transform what is genuine awkwardness into an awkward feminine charm.

The original intention of this post was to talk about how I comport and--let's face it--pose myself in situations where I am in bed with someone or where someone can see me in bed or otherwise lounging (see the top three photos).  It seems inherently backwards that there would be a mental index of poses in these situations or that one would dare be self-reflexive during moments of intimacy or lethargy or both.  And yet at the same time it makes sense; being in bed with someone or letting them see you in a state of repose is rarely a sign of total comfort with them.  The flirtation continues long after the clothes come off, states of undress are as carefully accounted for as first date outfits (what the hell am I talking about? I've been on two dates in my entire life).  And so I find myself frequently checking my positioning when I'm curled up next to someone or stretched out on a couch in front of someone: which arm is flopping down, which is bent across my chest, how curled is my stomach, where is my hair falling.  The ultimate goal of course not necessarily appearing "sexy" (the word that induces the most vomit noises in me), but rather being something that I can only describe as the perfect object of affection, relaxed and soft, yet bent and contorted, something that invites the freedom to cuddle while keeping itself distanced enough the be idealized (an image obviously derived from the movies I liked in middle school and a certain kind of fashion photography, yet again, a topic for another time).  But, as with all my calculations of appearances, the result is always worse than if I hadn't tried at all, doubly so here because of how ridiculous it is to construct your relaxation mode.  I lie there shoeless or half-naked, sure that what is really being watched is my twitching right hand, attempting to curl just so around my left temple.

k.e.

p.s. to the fist picture: I totally have the pillowcase for the that style of linen set! I don't think that helps at all.

sheep in wolf's clothing/if you wanted it back you'd have to see me again

k.e. & ts.

letter #1

an innate sense of my junk

I think 75 percent of the posts I've made here lately have been tagged "penis envy," a concept I don't totally believe in but which is an easy way to express an idea I've been toying with for a while.  Diane Fuss writes of a kind of lesbian vampirism that fashion photography inspires in heterosexual women: a desire to both posses and be, to become as you possess.  Would I then be able to say that my own straightness is based on a variant of this idea?  There's a certain kind of affectation of masculinity that you only see in straight girls; it's so specific that when I see it in gay girls I do a double take.  It's an affectation that is derived of a similar kind of vampirism, such an intense desire to posses that it merges with a desire to be.  And I in fact can never tell which sentiment came first, did I desire so much to be like a boy that it became a desire to posses them? Or did I desire to posses them so much that I tried to become like them?  I started to write that this desire was genuine because I was sure that I would much rather be a boy than be a girl who attempts to dress, walk, slouch and talk in a masculine manner.  But the moment I typed that in I realized that it wasn't so clear cut.  What is cooler: a boy simply because he is a boy or a girl successfully affecting boyish behavior because she overcomes her femininity and yet projects the idea of a boy that only the self viewing the desired other can have?

k.e.

Between The Preface and The Meat

I've been asked several times to explain what Tom Peepington is really about, and for lack of no sure, pithy response, I end up saying that it's a "style blog." Hence, the sidebar subtitle which is meant to be more tongue-in-cheek, than it is literal. Tom Peepington is a "style blog" insofar as it is certainly about and around the issue of style, but we are not style informants. This blog does not care to report that Prada is coming out with a line of skirts for men for Fall/Winter 2010. Instead, we are more concerned about the social ritual of dress: how we approach the problem of dress and what affects personal decisions of dress; how clothes make us feel; how we feel our feelings in our clothes; and how we understand our bodies in clothes. So hypothetically, the men's Prada skirts are interesting to us, and how the skirts might change the way they move in them, or how might it change or altogether eliminate the masculine bravura -- hypothetically. Because even still, we are not reporters of trend du jour, the fleeting ideas for this or that season, or even the issue of name brands and brand egos and empires (...yet). Tom Peepington is about looking at the on-going undercurrents of the dress ritual.

Consider all these posts thus far a preface. And even this post as a preface. Or a footnote, even. You can skip it --but it is the bed of material we are departing from. These images we've posted thus far, and will continue to post, are those we've grown up with and are growing up with. They affect the way which we dress and judge others, but are also visual representations of social patterns that we see emerging - which we have not articulated or perhaps even fully comprehended yet. We are delivering to you a slow build up to a greater project with text. And so a preface, albeit just visual, is crucial nonetheless. Perhaps it is in the way that these images are so suggestive and thus limitless and cryptic in meaning that they are the only things that have gone up so far. They seem completely full of possibility for excavation, and I think this is the reason why we -and perhaps by "we," I am neither speaking for Mae nor Kate, but myself -- I have stuck so earnestly to them, faithfully clinging to these vessels of overflowing potential. I've had writer's block. I'm paralyzed by this fear of doing these loaded ideas injustice, of putting them away in the box they don't belong in, or one that's too small. So without further or due, here begins the second phase of Tom Peepington - existentialism and clothes. No, wait, just kidding. Sentiments behind Clothes, and Clothes as Sentiments.

ts.

men's swatches plus illustration.

(mc)

a collar cape.

(mc)

a sheep in wolf's clothing. a wolf in sheep's clothing.

(mc)

look beyond the mustard yellow, the ketchup red, and the bouffant 'do.

(mc)

playing it cool

ts.

little children come unto me

k.e.

glitch, pt. 2: "come for me, cover me"

ts.

kate or buzzy?

ts.

archive fever when you hold me tight

k.e.