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FATHERS DON’T GET TOO much play here on The Sister Project. But I figured if there ever was a way to celebrate great dads, it should be with the lovely Loretta Lynn, who — let’s face it — is a bastion of womanly wisdom (and a famous daughter to boot). So happy father’s day to all the daughter-raising daddies out there, especially mine.

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Thanks to the wonders of the blogosphere, you don’t even have to purchase a five dollar, three pound glossy mag to get such a beauty industry fix anymore. Here, I’m chronicling three of my favorite online beauty inspirations. Starting with the awe-inspiring Jane Feltes (featured in the video above).

1. Jane is a regular contributor to The Hairpin, where she gives makeup tutorials, answers readers’ beauty questions and occasionally gets personal. She’s a producer for This American Life, her hair, face and nails are flaw-less, and her beauty advice is a satisfying mix of sage meets sass. And that’s not all folks: amazingly, her total lack of pretension makes it rather impossible to hate her for any of the aforementioned things!

2. Now let’s move on to total pretension, which is (let’s be real here) one of the sparkling pillars of effective beauty writing. And for this, I always to turn the often-lauded makeup blog Into the Gloss. The clutter-free, editorial layout of this blog is just is as beautiful as the stoic models and “beauty insiders” featured within. Take, for example, this post about the lovely Lauren Santo Domingo (pictured above) and her beauty routine, in which she admits that she can’t even remember the last time she washed her own hair! Le sigh.

3. Lastly, I love to hit up the beauty section of Refinery 29, which is a treasure trove of all things beauty related, to the point where, at times, it can get a bit overwhelming. It is all here. Everything you wanted to know about nails, makeup and hair trends. (Apparently those long pointy nails are just so very right now!) Understandably, this blog can be a danger zone for your wallet. But tread lightly, and you’ll be fine.

Happy grooming, ladies. I’ll be back to my more cynical, bra-burning-self soon. I promise.

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OKAY, SO I’VE BEEN meaning to do this post for a while. A very long while. You may remember (back in the infant days of The Sister Project) a little series called Sister Jams (Not Jellies), in which I highlighted all kinds of sibling bands and otherwise sisterly songs. (It was a broad sort of umbrella, really). In any case, that recent post I did about Kathleen Hanna reminded me of how Le Tigre’s “Hot Topic” is a much-needed third wave feminist-y addition to the list. And for nostalgia’s sake, how about we visit some of the old Sister Jams standards?

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Care to add on?

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IT’S BEEN FAR TOO LONG since I dug up any vintage advertisement gems here on the blog. So on the heels of the big wedding (you know, the one where we all allowed ourselves to become nostalgic saps about  fairy tale endings for a day), I thought this Ivory commercial would do just fine. Of note: is the princess receiving a large taxidermed giraffe along with her silks and diamonds? Also, I love her hairdo at 0:35.

[via]

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I‘M SMITTEN WITH THIS video of lil’ brothers lip syncing to Jerry Seinfeld’s “Halloween” stand-up. That little dude in the Hawaii shirt is so fidgety and hilarious! (I love when he “says” that his mother made him wear a winter coat over his cool costume…mine too!)

(via jezebel)

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THIS WEEKEND, MY FRIEND Erin’s parents are driving up from New Orleans with 70 pounds of crawfish. We’re all going to contribute our favorite summer side-dishes (I’m bringing the potato salad), get a keg, and have a ruckus outdoor crawfish boil! I’ve never eaten crawdads (have you?), but apparently this kind of neighborhood crustacean boil is a bayou tradition. I think it’s a perfect way to wrap up the semester. And until then, I’ll be practicing my Louisiana Waddle, a la the lovely NOLA native Boswell Sisters.

(I’ll post pictures of the big boil next week…stay tuned!)

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EW, WHY DOES Sex and the City keep betraying their awesome roots by making horrible movies that involve living happily ever after whilst traveling to foreign lands? (Did you see the first movie? Will you see this one?)

Despite its annoyingly shameless focus on consumerism, I used to love watching the show. In the early seasons especially, the writing was fresh and funny–the female friendships, complex and compelling. But with this new movie coming out, I’ve been inspired to do some critical thinking (and reading) on the show’s ever-controversial relationship to feminism. Here goes–and I’d love if you’d weigh in with your own thoughts below:

Better days: a still from the first episode of season 2.

With the impending release of the first Sex and the City movie in 2008, Alice Wignall, a writer for The Guardian, embarked on her own exploration of this vexing topic. In her article “Can a Feminist Really Love Sex and the City,” she weighs both sides of the issue. Yes, the television show exposed taboos about women’s sexuality and offered something different to mainstream TV. And while the show was about women and was written for women (something rather novel in the late 90s), it wasn’t actually made by women. So by the very nature of the show’s male production, Sex and the City holds and holds up the problematic male gaze inherent to mainstream television and cinema.

And then Wignall raises the question of how a show meant to wrestle with the challenges that heterosexual women face while navigating love, sex and careers in an urban setting so often just devolves into obsessing about men. Even SATC‘s own Miranda laments in an early episode, “How does it happen that four such smart women have nothing to talk about but boyfriends?” But even though Miranda acknowledges what many feminist viewers might have feared, SATC was never able to keep its tongue firmly in cheek.

But whether you accept the concept of contemporary “post-feminism” or not, it’s hard to believe that the Sex and the City franchise is evolving with the times when neither the show nor the movie has ever offered any thoughtful analyzation of class or race.

Men only become more and more of the show’s obsession as the seasons roll on, and SATC begins to resemble, nay embody, the classic rom com. (A genre that was once reviled by the very characters of the show.) And with all four women eventually ending coupled-up in the show’s finale (and now beyond to movie-dom), SATC ultimately does little, if nothing, to challenge the standards of this largely female-debasing genre.

Sex and the City’s own Kim Cattrall (who plays Samantha Jones on screen), rebukes Wignall’s argument altogether. She claims that the SATC franchise is an answer to the muddled “post-feminism” society in which we currently live. In a conversation with The Wall Street Journal Cattrall says “Post-feminism has been really confusing…It influenced so many women to leave a lot of their feminine qualities behind and assume the business suit.” She attributes the franchise’s success to its ability to re-embrace a femininity that was once lost. “That’s why it’s captured so many women’s imaginations. It’s truthful and it’s real and it’s now; it’s not dated, and it keeps evolving,” Catrall explains.

But whether you accept the concept of contemporary “post-feminism” or not, it’s hard to believe that the Sex and the City franchise is evolving with the times when neither the show nor the movie has ever offered any thoughtful analysis of class or race. Not to mention that the show’s intermittent foray into queerness over the last 10 years has been portrayed through a completely hetero-normative lens.

Story-book ending 101: Carrie and bad boy Mr. Big wed in the first SATC movie.

Courtney over at feministing.com has even named Sex and the City #2 on her list of the “Top Five Feminist Posers.” Perhaps her attitude is most like mine: “I have to ask how we can consider something truly feminist that has NO CLASS or RACE ANALYSIS. I enjoy it. I’m down to watch it. But do we have to call it feminist?”

Blogs and critical texts alike are awash with feminist criticism of the SATC franchise. But one surprising thread that these many writers have in common is that they like (or liked at one time) watching the show. Even the radical of us feminist (myself included) acknowledge that the ladies of SATC hold/held allure. But I think Feministing‘s Courtney is right, let’s call it like it is: there will be nothing remotely akin to feminism in the movie Sex and The City 2.

But I’ll probably be forced into watching it at some point.

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WE’RE BIG FANS of Christmas carols in my family. “Oh Holy Night,” “Little Drummer Boy,” “The 12 Days of Christmas,” you name it, we’ve been singing it this week. And so last night between verses of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” my mom asked me if I remembered my very first favorite Christmas song. I was stumped at first. And then I remembered “Children Go Where I Send Thee,” and all the many Christmases T and I spent clapping and dancing along (with arguably as much spirit as that little tyke on the right) to the rhythm of that song came back to me. What about you? What was your childhood favorite carol? Current favorite?

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