Arthur Hlavaty posted this link about the history of the castrati, and it got us to thinking about body modification for the purpose of enhancing skills. Here’s an excellent Wikipedia article on the castrati for background. “A castrato is a male soprano, mezzo-soprano, or alto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty [...]

Serene pointed us at this surprising article on why teaching English to native French speakers reminded the author of working with anorexia and other eating disorders. “Dealing with the oh-so-pragmatic French in this fashion was an uphill battle. ‘Yes,’ they admitted, ‘we are bloqué, we are perfectionistic, but if we relax like you say, we [...]

We didn’t intend to blog so repeatedly about male anatomy in the holiday season, but the hits just keep on coming–and now people are sending them to us. Here’s today’s unlikely story, courtesy of Alan Bostick at As I Please. Hey, he’s Superman! Why shouldn’t he show off a little? Penis Superman Brandon Routh Routh [...]

… and the cops will beat a path to your door. We don’t make these things up. We don’t have to. Link courtesy epi_lj. Penis Police Body Impolitic

Laurie says: I’ve been making final master prints from the negatives of my last trip to Japan. I was gone for two months travelling from Okinawa to Hokkaido. I wanted to do enough shooting to finish the project. It was a marvelous, exhausting trip and I did finish the shooting. I’ll be making these prints [...]

Lynn Bianchi, an internationally exhibited photographer who works with fat women, has a new series of seven photographs called The Spaghetti Eaters. Bianchi tones her prints with tea and gold to create a beautiful form of photography that is particularly difficult to reproduce well on the screen, so if you ever get a chance to [...]

Posted after the fact because of website troubles … Laurie says: I went to the Cabrillo College Winter Dance Concert because David King, the artistic director, is part of my family. I see a lot of dance, and body variety in dance is really rare. Choreographer and MacArthur Fellow Liz Lerman says “Dance is big.” [...]

Let’s start by apologizing for how long we were down; our webhost has been having multiple problems and kept us out of contact for most of the last week. We’ve missed the connectivity a lot, and hope you haven’t missed the blog too much! *** Lori Selke pointed out this article (which she found on [...]

Alan Bostick was late to Blog Against Racism day, thus pointing out to us that we are later still. But one day is hardly enough for that issue … Alan points to a superb post by Ampersand, who in turn links to Prometheus 6, a meaty blog we hadn’t come across before. Check out the [...]

Alison Lapper’s nude self-portraits, which we discovered last week, continue to amaze and delight us. We’re always looking for fine art that also carries a social change message, and Lapper’s work is a prime example. As Laurie did with the photographs of fat nudes, Lapper is asking her audience to look at something which is [...]