The Object of Desire



Recently I have become obsessed with baking. My weekends have become filled with visions of finding the perfectly inspired recipe to bake. For some reason, it’s not bread or pies or loaves that are the objects of my desire – its cupcakes. Whether it is lemon cupcakes with lavender-infused vanilla icing, dark chocolate cupcakes with a thick ganache icing or pumpkin cinnamon spice cupcakes – I have discovered there is a sweet pleasure of making and sharing these tiny creations with family and friends.

When I tell people about my new obsession – they inevitably come to the same conclusion: that I’m “nesting” or becoming “domestic”. While there may be an element of truth in there – I think the real reason why I am deriving such joy from this activity is more related to my work life than my home.

We here at Sextv have been slowly but surely working on a slightly new format for the series for the fall. This process of creating something new for our show, has also become my obsession. This morning I realized that these seemingly unrelated fixations are, in fact, intimately intertwined.

Like storytelling, the act of baking requires patience and focus. Being that I am not at all a patient person and also that I am someone my partner often refers to as an “anarchist” (in & out of the kitchen) - this process has proved to be quite challenging.

This type of creation requires a steady hand and – at the beginning - does not condone random acts of creativity. However, once the elements are carefully measured, delicately mixed and sifted, then the details can be flourished as wildly as you can imagine.

And then, of course, you must wait.
And wait.
And eventually – it is ready.

There is nothing quite like watching something you are creating go from being a shapeless mass to a perfectly formed entity that you and those you share it with will be delighted by.

Stay tuned for our lovely new creations this fall!


Posted by Berrygrl
Wednesday, August 22, 2007 3:58pm

"I'm not a feminist, but..."



So I just had to post this excerpt from a very good friend of mine. She writes:

"Yesterday I was flipping through the channels and happened to land on Drew Carey's new game show, "The Power of Ten." The premise is that people have to guess what percentage of Americans answered a question a particular way. The guest was an absolutely adorable 19-year-old guy, the kind that you can't help but root for. The question they were on, for $1 million, was: "What percentage of American women consider themselves to be feminists?" … Initially I thought it would be pretty high--maybe 60%. Then I started thinking about all the women I know who say things like, "I'm not a feminist, but--" And then all the people in the audience kept shouting: "Lower! Lower!" at whatever number he picked. He ended up picking between 25 and 35%. And he kept saying that he thought it might be too high. But it wasn't; he won."

While I suppose I shouldn't be surprised - I kind of was a little, though. You could publish reams of papers debating the meaning of the term "feminist" (and I'm sure people have) but I find it disappointing that many people still negatively associate the word with (dare I say it?) bra-burning, Birkenstock-clad, Berkeley lesbians - as if that's so abhorrent. I've met so many women who won't call themselves feminists because of the way people react to that term - if you say, "I'm a feminist", you know someone is going to get all defensive and think you're a man-hater.

But this also reminded me of many conversations we've had in the office where we wondered if girls growing up in Western, industrialized countries today even "need" feminism. Or is it called something else now? All of us at Sextv grew up being taught about the feminist movement and why it was important, but I wonder what it would be like to be born today.


Posted by Emily
Wednesday, August 22, 2007 2:47pm

Watch More TV!



When my mother watches television, she learns from it. Though (thankfully) most of my important life lessons were not taught as a result of scenes taken from television, I still get an odd phone call now and then: "I saw this young man put drugs in a girl's drink on TV - make sure you never take your eyes off your glass!"

We all know that there is no escaping the effects of television (this would be an obvious spot to plug the benefits of watching Sextv, but I digress). Even if what you glean from it is that our depraved society is near its demise, it never fails to make you think - or zone out, if that's what you wanted. Slate published an interesting article today on how the presence of television in rural India has increased female empowerment in the areas where the box was introduced.

It's hard to imagine what it would be like if TV didn't exist, but after cable was introduced to these villages, the stats measuring women's autonomy, beliefs about beatings, and preferences for male children became more positive - well, positive from a Western standpoint:

[W]omen's preference for male children fell by 12 percentage points. The average number of situations in which women said that wife beating is acceptable fell by about 10 percent.

All this from watching Indian soap operas featuring "emancipated female characters" who are "well-educated, work outside the home, control their own money, and have fewer children"! Now I'm wondering if I should maybe stop watching so many episodes of The Bachelor...


Posted by Emily
Tuesday, August 21, 2007 1:58pm

Want some pepperoni with your pepperoni?



A little over a month ago, an entrepreneurial 30-something in Winnipeg had the idea to marry two of popular and beloved consumables: pizza and porn. Corey Wilderman’s aptly named Porno Pizza joint serves up “traditional pizza with a pornographic twist”.

The bottom of each Porno Pizza box is lined with a pornographic image that is revealed as the pizza gets eaten. In a recent interview for Macleans, Wilderman says that Canada’s liberal laws afford him the freedom to choose a “wide breadth” of different images for the boxes – ranging from soft to hardcore.

Whether your taste buds are in the mood for THE BEAVER, a twin order of HAWAII 5 “HO” or a slice of plain ol’ classic MISSIONARY POSITION, be sure to have your I.D. handy at the door. Wilderman stresses, “If, for example, we see that there are children in the room when we’re making a delivery, we take special care to warn the customer: ‘There’s pornographic images under your pizza.’ So don’t just hand this over to your kids and tell them to have fun.”

As a friend pointed out, how could pizza and porn not be a winning combination – it’s every teenage boy’s fantasy come true. And if the porno prize just doesn’t do it for you, maybe you can be swayed with a guaranteed complimentary order of “hot, throbbing breadsticks.” Apparently they leave you begging for more.

Posted by Lady Elaine Fairchild
Tuesday, August 07, 2007 11:43am

Al Green isn’t for the birds



It’s been a long time since I’ve slow danced with somebody. The last time must have been high school grad – and it was a semi-awkward two-step to Stairway to Heaven.

A friend of mine who DJs at high school dances says that - believe it or not - Led Zeppelin’s classic is still one of the most-requested slow dance songs in schools across the Unites States. Add to that list: Unchained Melody, I Only Have Eyes For You, What A Wonderful World, and Let’s Stay Together.

Who knew young people still dig oldies? Turns out, an evening of classic jams wouldn't go down nearly as well amongst our feathered friends.

Elizabeth Derryberry, a biologist at Duke University in North Carolina, compared recordings of popular sparrow songs from 1979 to those of 2003 and found that the newer songs have a much slower rhythm and dip further down into the lower registers. And upon playing older and newer songs to sparrows in a variety of areas, she found that today's birds are much more into current hits than those of 30 years ago.

The male birds responded much more aggressively to the newer songs, defending their territory against the perceived threat of a crooning interloper. And the female birds responded more favorably to sexual advances when the new songs were played. The old classics didn’t do it for them at all.

Derryberry, who carried out her experiment near Yosemite National Park in California, has been studying bird song recordings made over the last three decades to determine how they evolve and whether the changes have to do with mate selection or habitat.

An audio file of a 1979 song followed by a 2003 song is available here:
http://news.duke.edu/mmedia/audio/birdsong_mixdown.mp3

Posted by Lady Elaine Fairchild
Friday, August 03, 2007 2:42am

Out of all the "J" names, they pick "Jennifer"???



I am absolutely fascinated by the Duggar family. I became acquainted with them via a show on TLC called 16 Children and Moving In, which featured their enormous family and chronicled their trials of moving into a new home. Okay, so the thing that completely boggles my mind is the fact that Jim Bob and Michelle just had their seventeenth baby yesterday. Seventeen! All the kids are home-schooled and their names all start with J - like, as in Joy-Anna, Justin, Jinger, Jedidiah, you get the picture. As the Associated Press reports, Michelle Duggar is only 40 years old, and has been pregnant for 126 months, or 10.5 years of her life! I'm wincing just thinking of all the havoc wreaked on her body.

According to their Wikipedia listing, the Duggars, who are from Arkansas (big surprise there) are fervent followers of Quiverfull, a fundamentalist Christian movement that encourages families to uh... "be fruitful and multiply." So basically no contraception (including natural family planning), and you have to eagerly accept children as blessings from God. Superficially speaking, I don't have a huge problem with this, because at the moment no one says I have to expel seventeen babies from my womb (though there are some serious political implications that are really frightening). But that aside, mostly I can't tear myself away from pondering the sheer logistics of raising such a large family. Like, how many rolls of toilet paper would you have to buy at Costco? What's the morning line-up to the bathroom like? Do you line up all the kids alphabetically to take their turn? (Wait, their names all start with the same letter - okay, maybe by height? Age?).

Posted by Emily
Friday, August 03, 2007 2:18am

Here’s (not) looking at you, kid.



Lately we’ve been particularly fascinated by the way in which media industries manipulate and digitally-alter the images they serve us. Certainly this isn’t news to anyone - advertising is dependant upon the idealization of youth and engaging people in the quest for the unattainable, for physical perfection.. blah blah blah.. yeah, we get it.

And yet I still find myself somewhat shocked – baffled, even - by the frequency and degree to which this takes place. Then a friend sent me a link to THIS doozy of an enterprise.

Apparently retouching is not just for post-adolescent cover girls anymore. Now, thanks to Pageant Photo Retouching the ambitious pageant parent can touch up baby, too. Are your baby girl’s eyebrows unruly? Does she wake up some morning with those pesky under-eye circles? Are her eyes not bright enough, not blue enough, not “camera-friendly”?

With a skilled eye and heavy hand, this entrepreneurial pageant photographer can enhance your baby’s natural beauty by replacing her hair, removing her tears, adding and lengthening her lashes, plucking and reshaping her brows, adding makeup, blending her skin, removing drool, and replacing her eyes with those of a doll. Or you may be unhappy with the expression on your child’s face at the time the photo was taken... No problem.

And for those members of the under-three set that have “outgrown their baby pictures”, there is the Age Progression Total Makeover – where dark under-eye circles can be removed, skin can be tanned, and arms can be reshaped.

Highly contentious interpretations of this phenomenon aside, from a purely aesthetic point of view I just don’t get the appeal of the embalmed, plastic, zombie-child look. And while I wouldn’t want to suggest that there is anything inherently sinister about it, it does seem to be indicative of a larger cultural push toward striving to be better marketers – even if that means stripping babes of all the intrinsic goofy goodness that makes them so darn cute to begin with.

Posted by Lady Elaine Fairchild
Friday, August 03, 2007 11:09am