The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was never quite my jam: it’s over my personal comfort threshhold for depictions of sexual assault, and the early financial stuff is some seriously heavy furniture, so I never read the subsequent books. That said, I’ve always been half-amused, half-depressed by the idea that this novel, originally titled Men Who Hate Women, and directly connecting capitalism and the abuse of women, is a huge American hit. Who knows what it is about this particular package that got these ideas, which would be radioactive in another context or presentation, into circulation?

All of which is a long way of saying that, no matter what you think about the novels and how they depict violence against women and the way those women recover, I don’t think creating a clothing line inspired by Lisbeth Salander glamorizes either the terrible things that are done to her or the things she does in response to them. That’s what Natalie Karneef is arguing in a post that’s produced a moderate buzz, rising up to ABC News. She writes:

And now, H&M, you have created a line of clothing based on her character: a woman who has suffered a lifetime of abuse, who is violently raped, and who is hunting down a man who violently rapes and kills other women. Lisbeth has been through hell, and her clothing is her armor. That’s her choice, and it’s an understandable choice. But you glamorize it, putting a glossy, trendy finish on the face of sexual violence and the rage and fear it leaves behind.

I wonder if you’ve considered how a survivor of sexual violence chooses her or his fashion choices…When I dress in the spirit Lisbeth Salander, it’s because I want to send a message to men: to stay the fuck away.

Anna Norling, the Division Designer at H&M, says that she is “so proud” of this collection, because Lisbeth is the “very essence of an independent woman.” Lisbeth Salander is independent woman whose mother was abused by her father, who was violently raped by a man in charge of her well being, who is harassed and bullied by men in public, and who is severely emotionally scarred.

Stieg Larsson was inspired to write The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because he witnessed a girl getting gang raped when he was 15 years old. I’ve heard it said that being raped is like getting a tattoo – it never goes away. I hope your shoppers bear this in mind before they emulate Lisbeth Salander.

There’s a lot going on here, so I’m going to unpack it step by step. It’s pretty hard to tell from either Karneef’s post or her statements to ABC, in which she says she objects to the collection because it “glamorizing surviving rape” whether she thinks Lisbeth Salander is a role model or not. Again, having read only the first book, it’s not particularly clear to me that Lisbeth is an aspirational figure. She’s painfully thin, has difficulty emotionally connecting to people, works in a field that allows her to isolate herself from human contact, and the violence she herself commits is both offputting and logistically out of reach for most women. Neither her experience nor means by and extent to which she’s recovered seem particularly glamorous.

And are we really supposed to find “glamorizing surviving rape” so offensive? Sure, a narrative where someone is brutally attacked and rises from their hospital bed dewy and saintly would be offensive, but it also would be so emotionally implausible that it wouldn’t resonate with people. Stories on the other hand that emphasize that rape and sexual abuse are horrific and difficult to recover from but that still celebrate the strength of survivors seem appropriate. But whom am I or anyone else to tell survivors where to find their role models or how to interpret the stories they find meaningful?
Read more

Wesley Morris’s piece on the rise of nerd fashion in the NBA is fascinating, but I’m kind of surprised he doesn’t mention David Stern’s dress code until the third-to-last paragraph of the piece:

When David Stern imposed the league’s reductive dress code six years ago, all this role-playing, reinvention, and experimentation didn’t seem a likely outcome. We all feared Today’s Man. But the players — and the stylists — were being challenged to think creatively about dismantling Stern’s black-male stereotyping. The upside of all this intentionality is that these guys are trying stuff out to see what works. Which can be exciting. No sport has undergone such a radical shift of self-expression and self-understanding, wearing the clothes of both the boys it once mocked and the men it desires to be.

I’d actually be really curious to hear more about the stylists in these equations, the people who mediate between the league’s expectations of the men who are the key to their profits, and those men’s expectations of themselves. If the rise of Kanye West and nerd hip-hop hadn’t coincided with the ban, what might the prevailing riff on the code have looked like? What inspirations would they have turned to—and because fashion evolves, where might they turn next? Malcolm X wore himself some crisply-cut but patterned suits back in the day is all I’m saying.

The bridge is yours.

-Omelas State University.

-Another movie about journalists in war zones.

-Fashion as art.

-Woo Miles Davis biopic.

-Increasingly excited for Red Tails:

The public policy conversation about headscarf bans is so loud that it obscures the fact that Muslim women who want to be stylish and religiously observant face a lot of other challenges, ranging from the predominance of sleeveless tops and dresses to a tendency by designers to make compliant garments in drab colors. So it was cool to read this NPR profile of designer Nailah Lymus:

They are full of color: blues, purples, prints and tapestry woven pieces. Lymus is determined to break down many of the stereotypes about Muslim women — like the assumption that all Muslim women are docile and wear black.

“I like colors and I like flowers, and I like head pieces with feathers coming off of them, and all I do is just put it on top of my hijab instead of putting it on my hair,” Lymus says. “I am a woman — I am attracted to those things, so I really want to break down that stereotype.”

Amirah Creations takes its inspiration from the 1920s-1950s. The dresses have a lot of flow, “a lot of pouf,” and there are “a lot of very playful kind of pieces.”

“I’m inspired by that era,” she says, “but also, Islamically, it is pretty modest.”

The 1950s, Lymus says, was a period where you could be feminine, but you also could be covered. As an African-American designer who lives in Brooklyn and grew up Muslim, Lymus herself wears bright prints and colors, but her head and arms are always covered.

I really love her metallic color palate in her most recent show, and the ’50s silhouettes on her day dresses, the space age Betty Draper-ness of it all. The clothes are a reminder that, just like in movie or television storytelling, constraint can be a useful spur to creativity in fashion. Goodness knows that having absolutely no limitations whatsoever on what you can afford to do or on your sense of what’s too sexy doesn’t mean you’ll produce a collection with interesting ideas or that actual women could, or would, wear.

-Adam Serwer on Battlestar Galactica and suicide bombings.

-Neville Longbottom is the true hero of the Harry Potter series.

-The man who bought MySpace explains why.

-Nikki Finke: “If you accept the premise that the film business is the folly of the filthy rich, and the indie film business the folly of the stupidly rich, then the fashion business must be the folly of the insane rich.”

-A good analysis of how shifting the lead in a TV show changes its ratings.

I’ve got mixed feelings about the fact that TOMS, the seller of fashionista-approved canvas shoes that distributes a pair to a needy child every time someone ponies up for a pair for themselves, is partnering up with uber-conservative social issues group Focus on the Family to get their shoes to folks who need them in Africa. As Irin Carmon notes, ” Focus On The Family isn’t the only group TOMS could have turned to for collaboration, nor is it the only Christian group involved in charitable missions. It carries significant cultural and political baggage, for good reason.” And I would like to know how TOMS made the decision to partner with Focus on the Family, as opposed to other aid groups working in Africa that might have more effective distribution networks, and whether either partner in the deal’s imposed preconditions on the other.

But as long as Focus on the Family hasn’t made it part and parcel of the deal that they get to slip abstinence or anti-gay pamphlets in the shoes, or required TOMS to donate to abstinence-only education, or to do anything that has a negative effect on people’s health and safety and as long as the shoes get to people who need them rather than being diverted, I have a hard time getting incredibly upset about this. You don’t need to pass an ideological test to want to make life more livable for the world’s poorest people. If TOMS shoes make it easier for more African kids to walk to school, or for folks to get to health clinics, or make it easier for them to carry clean drinking water, that’s a good thing. This collaboration may not be good for TOMS brand in the long run, and I think it’s worth watching closely, but if it works out, it could help a lot of people.