Two recent comments from the manosphere women’s auxiliary

Seductive lingerie or naked honesty?

A comment at the site: “I agree with you on the lingerie issue. I admit I like pretty underwear (and have admittedly spent money on that needlessly in the past) but night gowns and teddies are not worth spending money on. Nothing says “I’m available and eager” as plainly as simply going to bed naked.”

Rather a female point of view. It is instructive to check the pornography, even the softer stuff, aimed at men. It is relatively unusual to see a woman portrayed strictly nude. She is almost always shown naked, in the sense of mostly but not completely undressed. She will usually retain her shoes or some trifle of clothing.

Items like teddies are cute on wives because they are clothing that is designed purely to titillate.

And secondly, Who cut the cheese?:

“Without the help of WKs [“white knights” who defend all women], women might have the opportunity to realise that they are not equivalent to men, that they are in fact more often than not, inferior with poor reasoning skills.”

A statement which reminds me of this guest post on my blog.

I have noticed that when women are criticised, including women in general, men are very often those who leap to their defence.

A “Metropolitan” curse?

Whit Stillman, the director of “Metropolitan” (1990) and most recently “Damsels in Distress” and “The Cosmopolitans”, recently tweeted this:

People on Metropolitan's Audrey, Carolyn Farina: http://t.co/HwA905YjNg Mystery that she, Dylan Hundley & Brian Leder got no break: all gr8.

— Whit Stillman (@WhitStillman) April 6, 2015

It would be silly to speak of a “Metropolitan” curse. Isabel Gillies went on to a long-running role as Kathy Stabler on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. And Chris Eigeman is still appearing in movies. Allison Parisi moved on to success in law. But, as Whit Stillman suggests, there were a number of young actors in “Metropolitan” who only had indifferent success afterwards. Will Kempe seems to have mostly done sporadic work in TV. Ed Clements left acting and became a pastor. Carolyn Farina had a couple of minor roles afterwards in good movies, but, as I commented at my previous blog post, she is now working in childhood education in New York. Taylor Nichols gets steady work but nothing outstanding.

Of the cast of “Metropolitan”, only Isabel Gillies and Chris Eigeman went on to have screen success.

Carolyn Farina’s short career seems to puzzle a lot of people, and I have analysed it here.

More women as geometry

Woman as sine wave function. Source. (Later: the tweet appears to have been removed.)

This is the original image, available at this site:

More digital and geometric women.

“carolyn farina sex scene”

I just had someone arrive here by searching on “carolyn farina sex scene”.

I have written extensively on this actress. And one thing I have remarked on is that she never did a sex scene. She appeared twice in her slip in her most noteworthy film Metropolitan. But not nude. I suspect neither she nor her director was interested in that kind of scene.

I suppose one could argue that the scene – in another character’s imagination – in which she is in the arms of “Rick” is kind of a “sex scene”. But as I said, she still has her slip on and very little happens. (The scene is a little silly really. Perhaps Stillman was worried about the rating for his film. The cover art on some videos apparently showed a game of strip poker in progress, but there is no nudity in the film. The most risque moment would be a girl at “Rick”‘s house shown holding her undone bikini top up to cover her breasts. In the “daydream” scene involving “Rick” and “Audrey”, Audrey is shown, rather absurdly, as I mentioned, still in her slip. It is unlikely that the ladykiller Rick would let a girl keep any of her clothes on for long.)

Here is a detailed discussion of her strangely truncated acting career. The latest on her is that she is working as a child psychologist in the New York school system.

Carolyn Farina as “Audrey Rouget” in “Metropolitan” (1990):

This photo is described here as “Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan is also a Christmas movie (Carolyn Farina as Aubrey-Fanny Rouget with her mother)”. In fact, her character’s name is “Audrey Rouget” not “Aubrey”. The reference to “Fanny” is a nod to the film’s relationship with Jane Austen’s novel “Mansfield Park” and its virtuous heroine, Fanny Price. Audrey is, to some extent, a modern version of Fanny.

Leafbirds are also “rainbow” birds

[The blue-winged leafbird (Chloropsis cochinchinensis)]

The leafbirds (Chloropseidae) are a family of small passerine bird species found in India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. There are 11 species all in the genus Chloropsis.

Like many parrots, as I discussed here, they have “rainbow plumage” which shows adjacent colours which are also adjacent on the visual spectrum (of which the order is: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). Notice in the pictures below how yellow and green areas of plumage, and green and blue, for example are often found right next to each other. Also orange and yellow are found together, and maybe blue and violet.

Many, but not all, parrots have plumage in which adjacent colours are also adjacent in the visual spectrum. However, it appears that all leafbirds show the effect. I have discussed possible adaptive reasons for this in the case of parrots here.

Illustrations of the eleven species of leafbird are below.

Orange-bellied leafbird (Chloropsis hardwickii):

Blue-winged leafbird (Chloropsis cochinchinensis):

Golden-fronted leafbird (Chloropsis aurifrons):

Jerdon’s leafbird (Chloropsis jerdoni):

Blue-masked leafbird (Chloropsis venusta):

Yellow-throated leafbird (Chloropsis palawanensis)

Lesser Green Leafbird (Chloropsis cyanopogon):

Philippine leafbird (Chloropsis flavipennis):

Greater green leafbird (Chloropsis sonnerati):

(female)

Sumatran leafbird (Chloropsis media):

Bornean leafbird (Chloropsis kinabaluensis):

Mermaids have one obvious design flaw

From this page on “cyberpunk” “full body conversions”:

There is one obvious design flaw in the mermaid body from a masculine perspective. This is a better futuristic design:

More Digital Women

This has long been one of my favourite dance tunes. I always used to imagine it being danced to by African-Americans in Detroit, putting their hands up “for Detroit”, and chanting “our lovely city”. I had no idea that this was the official video:

It is a lovely example of the digital women theme of my recent post.

I think that the above is at least ONE of the official videos. Some of the lyrics were apparently “sampled”, as described here. There has been some confusion as to whether the words at one point are “I love this city” or “Our lovely city”. I prefer the latter, and the Wikipedia article says this is what is being sung.

Four girls participated in the making of the video, presumably made up to look like “clones”. The male “clone” was a dance student. The man whose face he touches homoerotically is the writer and producer of the music video himself appearing in a cameo.

The girls are very good at being “robotic”. Shirley Manson, playing a robot “terminator” in The Sarah Connor Chronicles did a good job in a different context; shown here at her creepiest: