I'm going on a work ski trip soon. The pounding waves of anxiety dreams are doing their best to wake me up to the fact that I can't ski at all (have literally never skiied) and that ski tripping is something that I'm doing 100% to hang out and get people to like me. I am not sure how good I will be even at learning to ski! There's only one sport I've ever done competitively and that's the one that is widely hailed as the best option for the malcoordinated. Anyway to jolly me along, and maybe you as well, here are some women who are great at skiing and/or who look stylish while doing so.
We start with something that – even if I turn out to be really great at this – I've probably left it too late for, and that's being the greatest skiier of all time. Happy for Mikaela Shiffrin though, who has achieved that:
Fighting off a lung infection, Shiffrin delivered her most resilient performance yet to capture the slalom title at the world championships on Saturday and become the first Alpine skier — male or female — to win the same event at four straight worlds. The drama added another layer of legend around Shiffrin, 23, who is on course to be the greatest skier ever.
Now here's Cassie Sharpe, who is a halfpipe skiier and seemingly also aceing hanging out and making people like her. Look at this jump first though:
Obviously, I love skiing with my Canadian crew and I’m really excited to be out there with everyone. Getting back on the circuit is like reuniting with all your best friends. If I had to choose I really love doing laps with my girls Meg Warrener, Allie Welsh and Janina Kuzma… they just know how to keep the stoke high and we always cheer each other on, it’s the best!
We start in the National Portrait Gallery. I took a turn around the NPG last Sunday, and found a painting that a suffragette slashed thrice for women's rights. They have fixed it extremely well by the way, and here is the story of the "hatchet fiend" Anne Hunt:
Hunt got in with a cleaver despite galleries being on heightened alert after a series of militant incidents in museums, including the slashing of the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery by Mary Richardson in March 1914. Women were, at one point, banned from major museums.
You might notice that the guard in the above story thought that Anne Hunt was American because she was standing very close to the art. WELL. Here's more on that topic; some classic Hairpin – a story about being in a gallery, wanting to touch the art, and actually touching the art. This is a terrific piece of writing about responding to art and also about being high:
Have you ever touched an outdoor plaster wall? You know, that smooth-pebbled texture? If you’re curious about what touching a Monet is like, it has that same pleasant roughness, a kind of glossy scrape on your thumb. But have you ever touched an outdoor plaster wall while gazing at a beautiful sunset that is somehow made of the plaster wall, and the guy who built the plaster wall has been dead for a hundred years but somehow he’s hanging out with you because you and he and God are all touching his wall?
Finally, if you are my age or maybe a bit younger, and your mum was/is like mine, it's likely that you had a copy of Great Housewives of Art lying around. Let's reminisce about our favourites, this was mine:
Happy weekend, Fem Fri does not endorse literal violence to "the text",
What a great animal seals are. They get their own Fem Fri today, you can scroll down for the links but first I want to tell you my favourite memory of this lovely critter. You might remember that I went to Lindisfarne last year, and I and my holiday friend were walking along the coast of the island, chatting and sometimes stopping to admire the things other people had build with the rocks. Then, there a seal was! Bobbing along next to us, as close as you can get when two of you are land based and the other sea based. And we said, "hullo seal!" and kept walking, and she kept bobbing along next to us. When we stopped to admire a particularly fine maze, she stopped and bobbed next to us on the spot. When we started walking again, she started bobbing along with us again. This kept going for about half an hour until we got to a corner and had to turn right (or be in the sea) and she kept going. It was magical to have a seal pal for so long. I love seals.
And so does Scottish island folklore! How about selkies, the charming half-seal-half humans with whom the fully human are constantly falling in love:
the selkie-folk have come to be regarded as gentle creatures, with the ability to transform from seals into beautiful, lithe humans […] If a girl went missing while out on the ebb, or at sea, it was inevitably said that her selkie lover had taken her to his watery domain.
Here's a selkie story, if you want to know more. It's not all in dialect, I just like this bit (also all the dialect is glossed if you are not Scottish):
"O bonnie man! If thur's inny mercy in thee human breest, gae me back me ain selkie skin! I cinno live in da sea withoot it. I cinno bide amung me ain folk waythoot me selkie-skin."
Back to actual seals, and weirdly topically the news this week, how about the working USB drive some volunteers found in leopard seal poo. Obviously I'm covering this because the seal researcher who runs the institute that found it is a woman. You can read an interview with her here, and if you have lost a USB drive in the last couple of years maybe get in touch. Krista Hupman, people:
Even if you aren’t doing the most glamorous volunteer work [for example, defrosting poo], remember that the reference you get from your time is what will count towards your next opportunity, which could be something amazing.
And finally, some music to see you into the weekend: it's Nina Simone's Sea Lion Woman! It might be not actually about sea lions/seals but there is much to enjoy here:
Imagine my delight when I found out that there is an Egyptian goddess of spreadsheets. Enjoy a Fem Fri devoted to what I am going to call female number mystics.
I know about Seshat, Egyptian goddess of spreadsheets, via Fahmi Quadir, who named her hedge fund for her:
Raised in New York by parents who emigrated from Bangladesh, Quadir is a rarity for more than just her strategy in an industry dominated by middle-aged white men. She named her fund for the ancient Egyptian goddess of accounting, math and knowledge.
She was depicted as a woman wearing a panther-skin dress (the garb of the funerary stm priests) and a headdress that was also her hieroglyph which may represent either a stylized flower or seven pointed star on a standard that is beneath a set of down-turned horns. (The horns may have originally been a crescent, linking Seshat to the moon and hence to her spouse, the moon god of writing and knowledge, Thoth.)
This is a number mystic you might want to know about – St Zita. She's the patron saint of losing your keys, and so – and this is not the official Catholic Church position, but it checks out to me – very likely also the patron saint of forgotten passwords. She used to have a chapel devoted to her in London, which was destroyed in the Blitz and replaced with my least favourite building of all time. Anyway – the incorruptible St Zita!
After many years of working as a domestic, she was promoted to head housekeeper, and a series of miracles began to reward her hard work and piety. The story most often related concerns her distribution of bread to the poor. One day, as she was smuggling bread from the home of the family she worked for, a fellow servant ratted her out. When the head of the family pulled open her apron, instead of bread, only flowers fell to the ground. According to legend, when she died at age 60, the church bells spontaneously began to toll.
Finally, this is more of a conceptual number mystic, but it's also a reason to read about and enjoy the Icelandic language:
When the University of Iceland got its first computer in 1964, Icelandic did not have a word for “computer.” So the guardians of the language invented one: tölva—a fusion of tala (number) and völva (prophetess) that adds up to the wonderfully poetic “prophetess of numbers.”
The usual Fem Fri "beat" is very much women who are doing good things for the world, basically because good things for the world is what I like. Every now and then, though, it's worth remembering that women can also do… crimes! I'd like to thank the colleague who inspired this newsletter by opening a conversation with "have you heard about the Chinese pirate princess".
AND HERE SHE IS. Ching Shih, who commanded a fleet four times the size of Blackbeard's, She was not really a princess – this is more of a rags to riches story than a palace to pirate story – but she seized opportunities where they were presented and literally ran a tight ship:
With Zhèng Yi and Ching Shih side-by-side, the Red Flag Fleet quickly grew from 200 ships to more than 600 ships, and eventually to 1700-1800 ships. Their fleet was “color-coded,” with the lead fleet being Red, and the remaining fleets Black, White, Blue, Yellow, and Green. […] Zhèng Yi died in 1807, only 6 years after marrying Ching Shih. At the time of his death, the Red Flag Fleet included approximately 50,000 – 70,000 pirates. Ching Shih, not wishing to go back to a life of prostitution, knew that this was her opportunity to rise to become a powerful pirate lord.
From the high seas to grim old London*, here's Moll Cutpurse! The pullquote is from The Newgate Calendar, which seems to have been basically a scurrilous gossip rag masquerading as improving literature, and there's lots more about her antics at the link:
She was above all breeding and instruction. She was a very tomrig or hoyden, and delighted only in boys' play and pastime, not minding or companying with the girls. Many a bang and blow this hoyting procured her, but she was not so to be tamed, or taken off from her rude inclinations. She could not endure that sedentary life of sewing or stitching; a sampler was as grievous to her as a winding sheet; and on her needle, bodkin and thimble she could not think quietly, wishing them changed into sword and dagger for a bout at cudgels.
Finally, in the interests of balance, the view from Reductress; Sorry Feminists, Men Are Better At Murder:
If there happened to be a preponderance of male murderers in a sample group, a typical whiny feminist would say that it’s due to a legacy of sexism and a culture that discourages girls from committing murder. Yet there is nothing keeping women from murder – men and women have equal and abundant access to guns, which have made murder more accessible to everyone.
Are you aware of the musical Hadestown! I went to see it last week and it's so good. The first five minutes I spent squirming with worry that it was going to be really cutesy and awful, and then it just… carried me right along with it. So here is a Fem Fri about the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus.
You might know that I always like to see other Mitchells doing well, and here's Anaïs Mitchell, who wrote the album Hadestown and collaborated on the musical, talking about her work and storytelling:
Why do we tell this tale again and again? I don’t quite know, but I know that the act of telling is worthwhile. We still have got to live, to make art, to love each other, whether or not the end is going to be sad.
Here's my favourite song from the musical. The London run had an entire extra verse, sung by Orpheus, that increased the soppiness of this song by at least 100% and that I therefore like 100% more. However, that version is not available online and this is, after all, #feministfriday and not #sentimentalmansaturday. Enjoy the Broadway cast recording instead:
Finally, here's another telling of the myth, and you'll be delighted to know it's from the toast dot net. Orpheus rescuing Eurydice from the underworld, in order of rescuing:
“I’ll be back in five minutes, honestly I never even loved him, babe, I will be right back. He’s an idiot.”
In common with many other people, I have recently watched and enjoyed The Favourite, and take this as my jumping off point this morning.
Let's start with the historical low-down. It seems like things went down more or less as depicted in the film, which is gratifying:
Sarah used to dominate Anne ruthlessly, and often spoke over her, made fun of her appearance, and once famously told her to ‘shut up’. Tensions came to a head when Sarah demanded her son-in-law, Charles Spencer, the husband of her daughter Anne, be made a Privy Councillor. Spencer was a famous Whig, a cause which Sarah supported, but Anne suspected the Whigs of attempting to usurp royal authority. When Anne refused, Sarah used her connections to force Anne to appoint Spencer, while continuing to lobby her and forcing her to read Whig literature.
(Do not force your friends to read Whig literature!)
One of the best things about the film is how visually stunning it is. Every single outfit that Rachel Weisz as Lady Marlborough wears, I would also wear given half a chance. I mean look:
Here, Sandy Powell, the costume designer, talks about her work. Specifically talking about dressing Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne in the pullquote, and if you click through there's great stuff about the colour palette as well:
“She’s ill, she depressed, she can’t be bothered to get dressed,” Powell explains. “It’s like pulling on your most comfortable, cozy safety blanket.” And how did Powell achieve that? She bought two bedspreads on eBay and sewed them together: “It’s exactly what my grandmother had on her bed.” She lined the result in black velvet.
It's not just the costumes that make it look incredible, of course – the production design is also incredible:
Here's the production designer, Fiona Crombie, on her influences and the difficulties of candle-wrangling:
Candida Höfer, I remember looking at some of her photography […] I was very interested in the play of scale. So, you’d have vast spaces, sometimes with enormous elements, like a huge bed, and then you’d have a tiny person or a tiny chair.
This, of course, made me look up Candida Höfer and her beautiful, luminous photographs. Here's one of a library:
And Candida herself writing about her photography:
I wanted to capture how people behave in public buildings, so I started taking photographs of theatres, palaces, opera houses, libraries and the like. After some time, it became apparent to me that what people do in these spaces – and what these spaces do to them – is clearer when no one is present, just as an absent guest is often the subject of a conversation. So I decided to photograph each space without people.
After some #content intensive Fem Fridays, normal linky service is restored today. I hope you enjoy it. Also, happy new year!
Our first link comes from Elizabeth Stokoe, conversation analyst, who has featured here before. These are tips for how to convey a delight you don't feel on receiving a disappointing Christmas present. Obviously if you've already got and reacted to a disappointing gift, that particular chicken has flown the coop, but this is a good one to keep on file for the future and birthdays:
let’s assume that people select gifts that they think you will like. There may still be reasons for you not to like it. If you once collected “cat things”, or enjoyed the music of Bruce Springsteen, it’s quite possible you later stopped liking cat things or listening to Bruce Springsteen.
On reading this, I took the obvious next step of searching for "BIGGEST COLLECTION OF CAT THINGS". This particular honour is held by Carmen de Aldana of Guatemala, who has twenty one thousand distinct cat things. She started collecting at 13 and is now 76. I wonder if she is easy or hard to buy presents for. I would hate to buy her a cat thing that would occupy the bottom quartile of her 21K other cat things.
“Empecé con tres gatitos. Eran unos angelitos que tocaban música, pero solo sobrevive uno y fue con el que comencé a coleccionar más gatitos”, comentó doña Carmencita […] Fue así como su casa se empezó a poblar de gatos. Tazas, decoraciones, tablas, prensapapeles y hasta cuadros. Las barandas de las ventanas de su casa tienen un toque felino que hace que las personas vuelvan a ver hacia esta curiosa vivienda.
Here's another cat thing (apparently) – it's acting. Animals are getting better at acting and this article explains why and how it manifests itself. The example used is a film with a woman director and lead actor, so obvious relevance to the Fem Fri brief here:
There is a moment in the film where he [Towne, a cat] gazes toward McCarthy “sort of sympathetically, and also judgmentally, and you feel all of that,” she added. [Marielle] Heller ended up commissioning a prop modeled after Towne that cost thousands of dollars — the most expensive one for the production. Towne’s efforts did not go unnoticed. “This cat is out-acting me,” [Melissa] McCarthy thought as they worked.
This is usually the time of year when I totally phone in the newsletter, but today I thought it would be good to share some of the intensive research I've been engaged in lately and give you a definitive rating of all the female characters in Mario Kart 8. Rankings run from worst to first, please enjoy.
13. Pink Gold Peach
Also known as Millennial Peach. The aesthetics are all here with this one! Pink Gold Peach looks great, but unfortunately playing as this incredibly heavy character captures all the thrills and spills of dragging an iron girder up a hill. You might think that this has its compensations such as improved grip and/or handling. NOPE.
12. Villager
I had a pretty good race as Villager, but can't get over the fact that she is called "Villager". Lady, have some self esteem! There's more to you than being a villager, you exude flowers when you come first in a race! You could be Happy Flower Villager, and even this is setting the bar very low.
11. Baby Peach
The Mario Kart racetrack is no place for a baby. You are up against baddies like Bowser who show no mercy.
10. Baby Daisy
Really very similar to Baby Peach but at least looks aware that she's out of her depth in this photo that I took.
9. Isabelle
What's charming about Isabelle, the little dog from Animal Crossing, is how much she chats to herself as she drives, sometimes singing a little song and sometimes showing you a heart when you do a particularly nice jump. I like her personally but I did not do very well at driving as her.
8. Inkling Girl
After I took this photo I found out that you can change not only the hair but also the skin colour of Inkling Girl, and that when she jumps she sometimes turns into a cool squid. Both of these things are good. The massive headphones make her very much the hipster choice.
7. Wendy
You thought your phone was on silent, but your phone was not on silent, and Wendy gave you a look of such withering pity and disdain that you can never go back to the library again. Wendy takes no guff and looks great on a wee bike.
6. Baby Rosalina
My opinions on babies on the Mario Kart racetrack are noted above, but because Rosalina is a star goddess (and presumably was as a baby as well) she is better able to handle the pressure. I've had some amazing races as Baby Rosalina and like her little fringe.
5. Daisy
I know what Peach's deal is – she gets kidnapped by baddie Bowser and Mario takes it upon himself to rescue her – but Daisy's role has always been less clear. She's Luigi's girlfriend, but what is she doing while Luigi is helping Mario to rescue Peach – just sitting in a café reading the London Review of Books while she waits for the rest of them? Highly relatable, and a good character to play.
4. Peach
I have a friend who once insisted that Peach was the best character in Mario Kart, and, impervious to the stats and data in front of her indicating this was not the case said only, "in which case I definitely play as her because she is the most annoying". A great troll from start to finish and an ironclad argument for playing as Princess Peach.
3. Toadette
I love this entire line of mid-weight characters and the happy-to-be-here vibes of Toadette make her very charming. Just look at that wee smile! You can't really see it in this photo but she also has toadstool bunches. Utterly delightful.
2. Rosalina
One thing that I found out in the course of these investigations is that whilst the mid-weight characters might be my favourites they are not necessarily the fastest. If it's speed and handling you are looking for, you might be after the stylish star goddess Rosalina. Cool earrings, great posture, she is the complete package. If you want to win a game, choose Rosalina.
1. Cat Peach
There is only one thing more joyful/annoying than a princess who dresses entirely in pink, and that's a princess who dresses entirely in pink and who is also dressed up as a cat. Cat Peach is a brilliant character. She is fast, she handles well, and she wiggles her bum at opponents as a taunt. She feels like the ultimate expression of the cheerful "do your own thing" Peach that the creators of the Mario universe intended, and she doesn't even care about their approval. She's Cat Peach! If you want to annoy your opponents, choose Cat Peach.
It's the last Friday before Christmas! And on Fem Fri, that means one thing, which is, it's time for my books of the year. I hope you enjoy reading both my round up and the books I am recommending. It's sort of the time of the year when people come to you ridden with angst and say "I just don't know what to get you this year, what are you into right now"; you can choose any one of the books from this list to tell them, and be sure of a great read.
There's something particularly delightful about reading a book that feels like the author is talking to you directly, and I like it even more when that author is… just… consistently… a bit demented. You are very pleased to be reading her rather than, for example, cornered by her at a party and steering her along the fine line between harangue and gentle ribbing.
Here's an example of Claire-Louise Bennett's writing in Pond, this is the page that I send to people to convince them that they should read it as well:
It's all like that! And sometimes better! This is my book of the year, no question. I knew it was my book of the year when I read it in July, which as a friend and subscriber noted at the time is a pretty bold claim to make with the year only really halfway through. Definitely buy or ask for this book. You will love it.
It's worth noting that I read this during the intersection of Pride month and the World Cup, so at a time in my life when I was extremely susceptible to the themes of this book. And you might be reading this and thinking, I couldn't get into a book about football. But I really think you can! Ross Raisin's A Natural is not just about sport, it is also about being good at things, and wanting things, and desire, and it's wonderful to read from start to finish. While I was reading this book, I was cross whenever I had to stop reading it – for example, because I had arrived at work, or because we have to eat and sometimes I am responsible for cooking.
Speaking of demented narrators. If that is your sort of thing I strongly recommend Paulina Chiziane's The First Wife. There are lots of books out there about African polygamy but no others, that I have read, really get torn in with the bonkers passive-aggressive glee of Chiziane's narrator. I don't want to spoil a second of the plot, just let this one suck you into its mad little world.
This is a heck of a book and I don't recommend you undertake it if you are feeling a bit delicate. It's about – and it sounds too simple when I put it this way – it's about the transplant of a single heart. But it's also a pan through the lives that revolve around this heart, and even as I write this I can feel the tears gathering behind my eyes because it really is quite something. It's a beautiful book, wears its research lightly and has some very thoughtful translators notes. So, so good.
Here is my favourite ur-genre of book; it's rich people behaving terribly towards one another. And it spans so many other genres – it fits just as well in the lit fic section as in the thriller/murder section. Point being, if you are writing a novel right now, or have an idea ready to go in 2019, here are some settings that will guarantee my rapt interest:
Large country house (Warwickshire/elsewhere)
Flat in Mayfair
Flat in Marylebone (boho/slumming it)
The French Riviera
Oxford
Anyway, Elizabeth Day for sure got this memo. I saw the cover of The Party in WH Smith Victoria Station, bought it with no further thought, and loved it exactly as much as I knew I would. If you have a stressful time coming up – or if now is a stressful time! buy this book and enjoy the several blissful hours of rich people being dreadful that it will afford you.
I notice there is no non-fiction on this list, that's because I didn't read a lot of non-fiction this year. If that's the only sort of book you like, though, how about Jennifer Ackerman's The Genius of Birds, which I have been recommending very freely. If you want to read amazing anecdotes about the cleverness of crows and sparrows, this is the book for you. It's also interesting on models of intelligence in general – what qualities there are that we don't read as "clever" but which are useful for specific circumstances. Lots to think about!
Have a great Christmas, everyone. 🎄🎄🎄 If you don't celebrate Christmas I hope you enjoy having a public holiday or two (and lots of time, dare I say, to read Claire-Louise Bennett's Pond) 🌝🌝🌝
