re/action magazine: last week’s belated dispatches from Ladyfest Ten saw us rabbiting on about mags, zines and feminist-friendly readables. Here’s another – re/action magazine, which launched at roughly the same time this fair blog did. Our copy arrived this week, and the bumper debut issue’s definitely worth the fiver, clocking in at double the pagecount of yer average homegrown, with lots of longform articles. So far we’re impressed; proper review to follow!
Draw This Dress: now, this is gorgeous – vintage fashion lovers take note. Illustrators Em Carroll and Vera Brosgol have joined forces on this charming artblog. The concept? Reversing the usual trajectory of design-drawing-to-fashion-photo, they find photos of outfits from bygone eras – usually on dressmaker dummies – and turn them back into vibrant drawings filled with character of the clothes being worn. What’s striking is how they reimagine the clothes on bodies of different sizes – clicking through to see the photographs that inspired the art, one sees the same base mannequin shape, but the artwork showcases women (well, so far it’s all women) across a nice range of body shapes. We particularly dig this sultry lady in 80s stripes, this curvaceous Twenties flapper girl, the late 18th century lady having a good brow-furrowing scheme, and the “come on then, impress me!” Forties work-chic bombshell.
But Then Feminism Happened: it’s actually about loos, but stay with me here; it’s a photo-blog documenting the under-represented art of toilet graffiti. Confessional, inspirational, humorous, slanderous and anonymous. Locked away in the privacy of a stall, what would you write? Read the wise and witty words scrawled on toilet walls around the world, written by women, for women. And if you’ve spotted any good examples on your travels yourself, you’re encouraged to submit your own pics to the grand collage of privy-wall scrawls (we sent one in the other week). This is my favourite. I also like the one in the first post. Birrrrds.
Behold the Lost Women of the Royal Society. Says Richard Holmes: “… my re-examination of the Royal Society archives during this 350th birthday year has thrown new and unexpected light on the lost women of science. I have tracked down a series of letters, documents and rare publications that begin to fit together to suggest a very different network of support and understanding between the sexes. It emerges that women had a far more fruitful, if sometimes conflicted, relationship with the Royal Society than has previously been supposed.”
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