just ignore the horrible music by a horrible italian singer – who unfortunately is still a L-icon (in the closet) for many italian lesbians -, breath… and enjoy it! you can read the plot here.

hello! i am still alive, i have just have been very busy in the latest couple of weeks and also a bit sick.
nothing better for being back than posting one of my fave pics ever of my old love amanda moore. that shot must be taken from a 2001-2002 editorial for italian mag ‘la repubblia delle donne’ and shows amanda at her best, a tender fierce tomboy. too bad that later she cut her hair and ended up in a too masculine side for my tastes. no need to spend too many words on the fact that she was the first proper gay model i heard about, one of the few outed.

kate moss meets édouard manet

here i am! long weekend is over and i am back to routine… even if i am not yet at home, so i can’t update sections. meanwhile, as a sign of life, get this intriguing version of édouard manet’s painting revisited by mario sorrenti for a 1998 campaign. that is when i like advertising, unfortunately that happens rather rarely. i like it when advertising plays with genders rules, but recently it has become more and more boring and embarassing, like a poor use of nudity and (hetero)sexual(ist) references has taken the place of creativity. so why do i like this pic? i like the artistic reference of course, but most of all i like the subvertising of roles, plus the choice of colours and the elegance of the composition. add kate moss at her best. i love kate moss, that’s the truth, i love her as a model. she reminds me of jeanne moreau, another icon of mine, and i prefer her chamaleontic enigmatic face to the superbeauties of the previous supermodels. i know i am in the minority, but in the art of modeling i never ask for flawless beauty. more on kate moss in the future.
and if you want to have fun going through revisitations and quotations of manet’s masterpieces, have a look here.

i think today i have lost oine of the few left reason to watch nowadays women’s tennis: amélie mauresmo (born 1979), the last romantic, announced her retirement from tennis circuit. her career had slowly fallen down in the latest years, due to various injuries, and she hasn’t won as much as she could do, also due to her long-lasting fragility, but her tennis style has always been magnificent, a triumph of classic elegance in this era of unstylish monotonous ball-beaters (<– does it sound as double meaning?!). moreover, she has always been a proudly outed lesbian, an example for everybody. vive la mauresmo!!

let me just post this beautiful picture of italian model chiara baschetti, that i have followed for a few years and i am always pleased to celebrate in her most gender daring images. usually they use her in more traditional ways, especially for catalogues and classic brands, since she looks rather classic compared to aliens and post-cold war colleagues, but there are a few shots where she looks like a refined version of amanda moore (about which expect a huge gallery in the sapphic section).

my negative opinion is first of all because of a sense of disappointment towards photographer terry richardson, the author of the calendar. he is a very trendy photographer, one of the most sought of at the moment. yet, while i have loved his ironic provocative raw xxx-shots and his fashion editorials done in collaboration with vogue paris stylists, i definitely think he gets lost when he should stay at a less strong level than pure representation of sex. let’s say he can’t shoot erotism, he can only shoot sex. his imagery is pornographic.

at this point we should have a definition for what erotism is and for what porn is. i don’t think i am so good with those definitions yet, but for sure it seems that while erotism is more like a promise of sex, a hint at something-to-come, a game between veiled and unveiled, shadow and light, reality and mystery, porn is a matter of sexual evidence. from the highest degree of genital close-ups to the softer degree of imitations of sexual acts (for instance with particular positions or phallic objects), porn seems to deal with explicit contents. again, i am not saying eros is good, porn is bad. and those look like the extreme concepts, then you may get a mixture of eros and porn.

going through the many editions of pirelli at their site – as i have done with pleasure a few times – you get it that pirelli has steadily done with erotism more than with porn. even in those early years when it was aimed to tuckers and mechanics, there was more a promise of sex than a representation of it. that doesn’t mean it was always classy, cos i see ppl tend to confuse erotism with class and elegance, which isn’ true. erotism may be trashy too and partially early pirelli was.  so, if 2010 calendar was aimed to recover the spirit of early pirelli, it’s a failure. cos this year we have porn, not eros. this year we have richardson.

failure comes from another point too though: not only this calendar is soft-porn with its use of phallic objects and poses of butts and bodies ready to be penetrated, instead of being erotic as in the pirelli tradition, but it’s also a poor pornographic thing. lack of ideas is evident: there is a sense of repetition, of random, of boredom. there is no sexual joy in those pics, but like it is like a gallery of naked young women pretending to be joyful and ironic. that leads to a further point, concerned with the young age of the girls, but i will talk about it in the next post. for the moment let me say that one of the best things in terry’s porn shots is their life, like sex is exploding in the pics, be it joyful or just miserable. that’s the realistic porn i love in terry. here it’s not fish neither flesh. it’s just a full lack of ideas and pics don’t create any representative system. i remember last year i was rather negative at 2009 calendar too (apart from daria’s sub-calendar that was great), but at least there was an idea behind, pictures were linked in an authorial project. here there is nothing of it.

so result is a poor clumsy porn with an additional disturbing lolitic effect i will deal upon next time!

the movie was presented at the rome film festival last october and it got a good promotion also because one of the producers is a very famous sex-symbol in italy, so her name is enough for catching the attention of media: maria grazia cucinotta, a nice gay-friendly person which i find a bit difficult to define as an actress though… :S)

here comes the plot taken from a intramovies pdf file where you can also read more on the movie crew:

viola di mare (sea purple [or sea violet? i would get the flower insetad of the bare colour?!] ) is a story about the love of two young women, Angela [Sovarino] and Sara [Ragonese],who have both grown up in the same historical microcosm surrounded by hauntingly beautiful scenery. the plot is based on real events that took place on one of the islands near sicily in the second half of the 19th century [...]. viola di mare is a story about a love that is as intense and compelling as only young love can be, but it also speaks about challenging the rules of society. the film shows up abuses, social injustices and the age-long oppression of women, everything the protagonist Angela staunchly fights against. yet just as staunchly she besieges Sara, sometimes frantically, sometimes with tenderness, and she will not cease until sara gives in to her passion. [...] the forces which she fights against will exact a high price but Angela is ready to pay it. she agrees to completely change her outward appearance, disguising herself as a man, but in her heart she never denies her identity as a woman. in the film, the various stages of their passion, the moments of awareness, of joy, happiness and sorrow, are interwoven with the seasons of nature and its patterns, sometimes radiant and peaceful, sometimes raging, and these give a rhythm to the unfolding of the story. the narrative structure finds unexpected closure which, though painful, serves to reaffirm the heroine’s identity and give meaning to the law of desire, the only law, Angela seems to say, for which it is worth paying the final price.

you see that the story is suggestive and charming. too bad that the realisation isn’t as good as the plot: script is even ridicolous in some points, especially when angela turns into angelo; direction and post-production are rather clumsy, with wanna-be-artistic insertions that are a pain; soundtrack is invadent in some points and less than refined, since it was made by that gianna nannini who is a butchie also musically… yet, this movie is going to be a cult, one of those movies that are beyond evil and good… because it has some good points too, like the wonderful chemistry between the 2 protagonists. you can’t help asking yourself if they experimented their harmony in some unsaid way… cos, really, the sex scenes are really really beautiul, sapphic and passionate, very realistic about how 2 women in love make love. and it’s beautiful how not only (tomboy) angela/o never forgets that she is a woman even when she is forced to act like a man, but also sara never forgets she loves a woman.

i will post more pics in the sapphic section, meanwhile enjoy the trailer… time to learn some italian!!

valeria solarino at the premiere of "sex and the city" in rome, 2008

i love this woman! unfortunately in pics she doesn’t take as good as in vids, so i will post a couple of videos too.

she was born in 1979 and she is a good italian actress. she is known for usually choosing courageous roles in minor movies, although she has also done a few commercial things. half-northen, half-sicilian, despite her mediterranean features, she embodies a rather refined mental kind of erotism that is very far from (hetero)stereotypes of italian beauty. she is also a self-proclaimed shy person, which you can fully realise when she does interviews, cos most of times she looks nervous and a bit blocked. and to give thousands of points to her appeal score she is also a rather evident tomboy. i particularly appreciate how she tends to hold her hands in pockets. viva la solarino!!!

so, first vid is a musical video of a mediocre song by an italian singer, gianna nannnini, who is a true L-icon here in italy, which i hate!! aagh, i can’t stand this pointless butchie anymore!! so, song is so so, but images are… miauuuuu!!!

solarino is a L-icon too in italy now, after she has done the L-movie viola di mare, which i will be talking about in my next post. second vid is a compilation of images made by a fan (with a terrible song as a soundtrack):

p.s.: i have started to build the tomboys page…

pp.s. in the late afternoon: i can’t believe i am having a so encouraging feedback! that has been totally unexpected! fingers crossed that it may last! i am about to start building the sapphic page…

italian actresses valeria solarino & isabella ragonese kissing on the red carpet of roma film festival, october 2009

wow,  i have got more than 100 hits in the first 12 hours of public life of this blog! i am amazed and very happy! and i see that my loyal bunch of e-groupies is back! so hopefully it’s the new beginning of new shared fun!

i thought you deserved a prize… so here comes this lovely pics of the protagonists of the italian movie viola di mare (sea violet) taken from the red carpet of the premiere in rome film festival last october. more on this L-movie and on the 2 beautiful protagonists soon, especially on solarino, a rare mix of beauty, intelligence and shyness. and she is a tomboy too!

flock of seagulls meeting sporty spice, that could a good definition of la roux’s singer, elly jackson (born 1988).

i can’t say i like her physically, but it’s a pleasure to see how successful such a gender bending woman has become in the uk. i don’t know if she is gay or not, but that doesn’t matter. the important thing is: difference. difference from the average heterosexist popstar, difference from the mainstream woman in the entertainment industry, difference from the brainwashed feminity.

so thanks elly. next step would do to drop your musically limited partner and make some good music. i like bulletproof though.

alessandra ambrosio getting her make-up done at victoria's secret, 19-11-9

usually i am not interested in commercial models. not that i am so into high fashion models either, especialy seeing how nymphic-like and young most of models are. but certainly commercial models and their heterosexistised behaviours don’t attract me at all. there is an exception though: alessandra ambrosio. i have the feeling that she belongs to the tomboys race, but unfortunately most of times she wears too much make-up for my tastes and just blows kisses around. yet, i like her piercing eyes, her sex-appeal, she evokes a lot of L-thoughts in me…

so this picture is simply a miracle! with little make-up, if not barefaced, ambrosio shines here. too bad she had to wear those wings soon later…

an archive-blog of images that should unfold my personal cult of women and interest for gender bending, namely my aesthetics.

you see that, despite the number of pages, this is a simple and not particularly demanding thing, basically in order to put pics that i find interesting on line instead of saving them in my pc. i know some would like to see me committed to more qualified subjects, but honestly i do that everyday in my work projects, so i prefer something lighter when i write on internet.
i am not expecting a huge traffic, but it would be nice if some want to drop a comment and share the voyeuristic pleasure of admiring bodies and souls. everything is going to be done with the purpose to have fun, but that won’t prevent me from sharply commenting when that is necessary.

p.s.: header is a pic of the mythical gia carangi (1960-1986).

everything is under construction and you know my geological rhythms, so be patient!