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Hello.

I have been busy lately. It stems from doing next to nothing for school for let's say the first month and a half...then going away to New York for 4 days...then coming back realizing I left without even starting to pull up my socks...then feverishly pulling up my socks and sacrificing some important things to get other important things done, and still not being on top of it all. I've never failed a class, and sometimes I even do well but I wish that I could learn to not procrastinate. Not going to my short fiction class last week worked out in my favour, as when I went this week with my essay complete and (I think) well-done, it turns out she changed the date and it's actually not due until November 14th. So I looked like the biggest over-achiever of life, which is so far from the truth that I should write a song called Ironic, and do it right this time. No offense Alanis; GO OTTAWA!

Next Friday, November 9th, is the 5th Annual Women in the Arts luncheon at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Needless to say, I'll be out of town for that as I they caught wind of the vagina art that overpowers my apartment.

As aforementioned, I chew a lot of gum and about a month and a half ago, before I had people over for dinner I decided to pick up all my pieces of gum because people might find them offputting. Basically, wherever I am when my gum loses flavour, I'll take it out and stick it within half a metre of me. Not in public, I mean I don't put gum under tables and chairs but I do leave it on my friends' refrigerators on occasion, just to liven things up.

Anyway, that day I decided that I should make some vaginas out of my gum, inspired by artist Hannah Wilke who did some innovative body art in the 1970s and a lot of cool shit afterwards also. This is from S.O.S. (Starification Object Series), that Wilke did in 1974.

She died in the early 90s but she lives on in places like Gender Issues in Art and Art History, a course I took this summer at Concordia. In August, I wrote an essay about Hannah Wilke's Intravenus Series in conjunction with Frida Kahlo's The Broken Column and maybe you're bored and I should make another blog for serious and meaningful shit.

Intravenus Series was a collection of photographs that Wilke had done to document her battle with cancer. Wilke got a lot of flack in the 70s for her blatant exposure of her seemingly flawless body; some feminists found her work to be completely irrelevant and entirely insenstive...it wasn't really aBOUT her body being the commercial ideal, even back then, but a big check THIS went out to the naysayers when she showed herself falling apart years later. This is the piece I wrote about, which shows Wilke in June of 1992 and January 1993, followed by Kahlo's The Broken Column.

Body issues. I joke about how women view their bodies often enough...some things worth laughing about are worth seriously talking about also. I can laugh because I don't take myself as seriously as I once did, and even when I do, I have much better perspective than I did even two years ago.

I'm reading a book right now called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body by Courtney E. Martin. My dad bought it to try and understand what it's like to be a young woman in this day and age, and then lent it to me in August. I started it then, but tired of it quickly. I picked it up again this week and I've been pummelling throught it, ironically enough, while doing cardio at the gym. At first I found that Martin makes some broad and irksome generalizations, but if you can get through the first few chapters, it becomes easier to stomach. It's not particularly well-written and Martin uses the phrase "hip to the fact that" altogether far too often.

I guess I'll have more to say when I've completed it, but it's worth reading and my wheels are certainly turning. I feel as though I'm about to get caught up in a cocoon of relevant shit...so I might not have as much time to wax poetic on pop culture and critique nightlife/fashion. Except that pop culture has a whole lot to do with it, so who knows...

Anyway, my parents liked my gum vulvas because it means that what I'm doing in school matters to me and that hasn't always been the case. They are all different, like real ones...some are more pink (Trident Watermelon Twist) and others are more purple (Trident Blueberry Pomegranite).

The Guerilla Girls have been around since 1985, just like me! The Brooklyn Museum is honouring them at the Women in the Arts luncheon and this is something important.

If you don't know who they are, get with it: http://www.guerrillagirls.com/

In irrelevant non-relation...Ashley Olsen was seen carrying a Balenciaga motorcycle bag the night she supposedly made out with Lance Armstrong.

And Christina Aguilera was seen carrying a Balenciaga motorcycle bag while shopping for cribs for the baby she has not yet admitted is inside her.

Nicole Richie used to rock Balenciaga motorcyle bags all the time, but lately she's been smoking cigarettes instead because that's a good thing to do in your third trimester if you want to one-up Britney Spears.

And really, who doesn't want to one-up Britney Spears...NOT THIS GUY!

Finally, I would like to wish my brother, Alexander Lachlan Young, a very happy birthday. He is not a feminist artist but he's still cool and I wish that he would paint more instead of just carving really great pumpkins.