BID
Bi-Monthly Magazine For Lesbian And Bisexual Women Issue 13 FREE
BEHAVIOUR . IDENTITY . DESIRE
Contributors Elly Badcock works in a call centre and pretends to be a writer, spending her spare time attempting to reverse this description. Her interests include class politics, Jarvis Cocker and science fiction. A socialist, feminist and long-time activist, Elly specialises in feature-lenth polemics and the overuse of adjectives.
Lynsey Calderwood is a Scottish fiction writer. She’s had several short stories published in literary magazines and anthologies including Nerve, Nomad, Mslexia, The Edinburgh Review and the Scotsman+Orange 2006. She is currently working on a novel.
Sophie Cohen is a19 year old English Language and Media Student at University of Brighton. She regularly contributes to B.I.D Zine writing about fashion. Likes: Rubiks Cube and Tartan Dislikes: Mushrooms and Arrogance
Lotte Murphy-Johnson is a 22 year old writer and TV researcher. She spends her week working for a TV production company and her weekend frantically putting together the B.I.D zine with her girlfriend Holly. Likes: chicken curry, baked alaska, Amanda Palmer Dislikes: Corriander, chewing gum, self-obsessed people
Lili Murphy-Johnson is an enthusiastic, friendly, full-figured young woman with catering experience and is looking for love and full time work. Available to start immediately.
Holly is a 23 year old trainee Montessori teacher who lives in London. Her passions in life are tattoos, women and computers. Shes loves music and in her dreams she’s a punk rock front-woman like Brody Dalle, in reality she is trying to learn the ukelele and can just about play Hot Cross Buns. Holly is an avid photographer and rarely ventures far without a camera. She launched B.I.D zine with her girlfriend Lotte and she enjoys being her own boss.
Contents Page
Lili Murphy-Johnson
AMERICAN APPAREL: SELLING CLOTHES OR WOMEN’S BODIES? Holly Richardson takes a look
FASHION Sophie Cohen takes a look at the Waterfall and Dip Hem skirts which are making an appearance in shops this April.
HOMELAND REVIEW Onomé Okwuosa and Lotte Murphy-Johnson look at the portrayal of Carrie Mathison in this new hit US drama.
NEWSFLASH A London Fringe Festival Special
at American Apparel’s recent advertising campaign.
GHOST A short story by Lynsey Calderwood
NEWSFLASH
London
FACING YOU, AN EXHIBITION OF PHOTOGRAPHS WHICH EXPLORE WHAT IT MEANS TO BE QUEER AND THAT EXPLORE GENDER, IDENTITY AND LIFESTYLE is on show at the Long White Cloud in Hackney. The work of five London-based photographers is being shown and all the works exhibited are for sale with the money going to Gendered Intelligence. The exhibition runs from the 13th to the 21st of April, 7am to 6pm daily. Long White Cloud, London E2 8JL.
IN BED WITH MADONNA, the 1990 documentery filmed while the Queen of Pop was in the middle of her huge Blonde Ambition Tour is being shown on Friday the 13th April at the Rio Cinema on Kingsland Road. Those that come to watch the movie dressed as Madonna get a pound knocked off their ticket price and expect lots of singing and dancing!
Fringe
Fest Sp
ecial!
FRINGE! THE ALTERNATIVE EAST LONDON FILM FESTIVAL HITS THE CAPITAL ONCE AGAIN FROM THE 12TH-15TH OF APRIL. COMBINING FILMS, ART, WORKSHOPS AND QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSIONS THE FESTIVAL IS RUN COMPLETELY BY VOLUNTEERS.SO IF YOU’RE IN LONDON NEXT WEEK THEN WHY NOT CHECK IT OUT, MANY EVENTS ARE FREE. HERE ARE THE EVENTS THAT WE AT BID THINK SOUND PARTICULARLY INTERESTING.
THE GANG GIRL”S TRILOGY: showing at the Hackney Picturehouse, 14th April at 10.45pm. http://fringefilmfest.com/ films2012/the-girl-gang-trilogy
A NUMBER OF DOCUMENTARIES ARE BEING SHOWN AS PART OF THE FRINGE FEST THIS YEAR. A(sexual) is directed by Angela Tucker and explores what it means to be asexual and realise that you have no sexual attraction to others. (http://fringefilmfest.com/films2012/asexual) Also being shown is Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years 1984-1992, a documentary about the Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist. For tickets and more information visit: http://fringefilmfest. com/films2012/audre-lorde-theberlin-years-1984-1992
THE BIG PICTURE
TWEET THE DAWN, Sunday 15th April, 4am-6am St Augustine’s Tower, The Narroway, Mare Street, London E8 4RP
AMERICAN APPAREL: Selling clothes or women’s bodies? HOLLY RICHARDSON INVESTIGATES
AS AN AVID MAGAZINE READER, a girl who loves shopping and now a Londoner I am constantly exposed to clothing store advertising campaigns. Advertising is everywhere, on tube trains, on stations, in shop windows, in the papers, even on Facebook. It’s hard not to notice adverts. A woman who worked at a marketing company once told me that on an average single journey in London you pass over 600 ads and that most people grossly underestimate how much advertising they think they are exposed to. I am a keen shopper but I also know very much what stores I like; H&M, Topshop and UNIQLO (the stores wear a supermarket sweep style challenge would be very much appreciated) and those that I don’t; French Connection, Jane Norman and Oasis to name just a few. American Apparel is a store that doesn’t really fit into my like/dislike categories, it has some clothes that I would wear but the fact that it is ridiculously overpriced for the basic, simple staples that it sells put me off shopping there on a regular basis. A blouse caught my eye in the Camden store the other day but its £56 price tag caused me to swiftly return it to the shelf. The American Apparel ads are also something I really noticed a couple of years back, I remember being in New York and passing a huge billboard showing a girl’s bum in a very tight pair of pants and nothing else. American Apparel has never been a stranger to racy ads but only recently have I realised quite how far the company repeatedly pushes the limits of what is acceptable and what is not. The All-American company was actually founded by a Canadian, Dov Charney, in 1989. It started life as a wholesale type business, selling blank t-shirts to other companies and to screenprinters. After a multimillion pound merger American Apparel Inc became a publicly traded company in 2007 with Charney as president. The company prides itself on not using sweatshop labour and it pays its US employees over 12 dollars an hour with every step of production carried out in the United States. American Apparel has a strong pro-immigration stance and provides English lessons for employees who are struggling. It also supported the fight for gay marriage with its Legalise Gay and Repeal Prop 8 t-shirts. The models featured in promotions are also not often professional models, many are girls off the street and others are employees. Emaciated women don’t feature in their ads and the much maligned airbrush is also conspicuous by its absence. However the company decides to sell its clothes like this:
Now I am definitely not a prude and I certainly don’t object to hot photos of women but their ads aren’t selling their clothes, they’re selling the girls themselves. In 2010 the company ran a competition on their website which encouraged girls to post pictures of their bums in a pair of pants so that they could be rated by the public and one girl’s butt crowned ‘best in the world’. Charney has been at the centre of at least five sexual harassment claims with women accusing him of exposing himself, asking them to masturbate with him and running business meetings from his home wearing little more than pants. The photos have an amateurish feel to them and Charney reportedly took a lot of the photos himself. E Cain points out on the Gender Focus blog “They epitomize the male gaze and are taken from the perspective of a heterosexual man looking at a woman who is (presumably) sexually available for him.” (http://www. gender-focus.com/tag/american-apparel/) He even features in some of his own ad campaigns.
Don’t get me wrong, some of the photos themselves are fine. The simple, plain backgrounds work well with the models only wearing one or two key items. The pictures are also refreshing because they feature girls who look like women, not children, and that’s something which makes a refreshing change. The industry’s over use of certain models and the generic size zero body is getting a bit boring in my opinion, I like variety in the models as well as the clothes. The women in the pictures also rarely wear jewellery and don’t have over-styled hair; in fact most pictures feature girls with messy, bed hair and no make-up. That’s also the problem though, most of the pictures show girls in bed or ready to go to bed and they don’t look as though they have getting a good eight hours on their mind. The company just seems to sometimes blur the lines of what is acceptable and what is not. Just this week the company has been warned about the use of ‘exploitative images of women’ by the Advertising Standards Agency after it published a series of photos of women with their buttocks and breast exposed on their website and in a free magazine last October. American Apparel hit back saying that they featured “real, non-airbrushed everyday people” and although that may be true the photos are not to be published again under the ruling.
The ASA said the photos were likely to cause ‘widespread offense’ which I don’t agree with; the photos aren’t offensive they just further aid in the objectification of women. In some shots Charney himself makes an appearance, as do male legs and feet which may or may not be him too. The association with Charney makes the photographs sleazy, there is less focus is on the women and more of the man behind the camera. The photographs would fit in well on Nerve.com or in magazines like LOVE or Garage; I’m just not convinced that they should be on billboards, shop windows or in free magazines. They should focus more on advertising their clothes as opposed to women’s bodies.
W E I V RE Onomé Okwuosa Takes a look at how Danes does damage Warning: SPOILERS I’m a huge fan of well written dramas, ones that keep me gripped by massaging my mental matter with exciting plot twists while compelling my heart to ache with compassion for its characters and their complex lives and back stories. I’ve been watching gritty thriller-drama Homeland for a few weeks now and in that time my stomach has lurched, my brows have furrowed and my head has been cocked to the side in a questioning manner more times than I’d care for. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was making me uncomfortable until I had a eureka moment during episode 6 which was swiftly followed by a huge dollop of guilt. I was being judgmental, I was looking at Claire Danes’s character Carrie Mathison with an incredibly critical eye. For some reason she was ‘repping’ the female race and in my opinion was doing an incredibly poor job of it. Gutsy CIA agent Carrie Mathison will stop at nothing to get her target and from the outset she’s had her eye trained on Nicholas Brody; a former prisoner of war who she believes has been turned into an Al Qaeda operative. Dashing any morals to the side she rubs herself up against Saul, her mentor and superior, with the hopes that it’ll get her the warrant she needs to bug Brody’s home. That was the first time my gut grumbled with disappointment, what kind of a woman would stoop so low as to offer up her body in exchange for a warrant, did she have no sense of self worth? Then I remembered James Bond, how many women did he bed, how many twisted tales did he tell? And all in the name of Queen and country? How is it that he earned a chuckle for his flirtatious ways, yet Carrie was earning my chastisement? Even with the knowledge of Bond and his bounty of bed-buddies I still shook my head and tutted when Carrie clambered into the back of the car with Brody and did the ‘grown up’; was spreading her legs really required for the sake of preserving national security? I began wondering, is this show describing how things are or prescribing how they should be? Grimacing every time she popped one of her little blue pills to keep the symptoms of her bipolar at bay once again I was divided; should she have to hide her mental illness for fear of losing her job or should she be embraced and any erratic behaviour forgiven, forgotten and not considered a failure? By episode 7 Carrie has cost the US government tens of thousands of dollars, proved that she is morally defunct, slaughtered the functionality of her liver by countless drinking sessions only to find out that Brody was not in fact the threat to national security she had been declaring and proving that she is well, a bit of a fruit loop! Perhaps I’m being too harsh and expecting too much but when a show is marketed as smart or intelligent I kind of expect it’s lead character to deliver. Instead I’m left tuning in to see just how much of a mess she’s going to make and who’s going to have to clean up after her.
Lotte Murphy-Johnson tells B.I.D why she disagrees Homeland is definitely one of the better things on television these days. Usually when I flick through iPlayer or 4OD I’m faced with a choice between Supersize vs. Superskinny and Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents, but for the last month I’ve been able to eagerly await the next episode of a US drama which has been scooping up critical acclaim wherever it goes. Homeland is made up of an impressive cast including Golden Globe winner Claire Danes. Despite this debate, Danes’ performance as Carrie Mathison has never triggered any annoyance for me and, before today, I’ve never really thought about how Danes’ character could represent women in a negative light. Despite this, I’ve got to admit that Carrie Mathison doesn’t go about her CIA business in the most orthodox of ways. She illegally bugs a suspect’s house and lies to her contacts. However, why should one characters behaviour impact the reputation of all women? Carrie Mathison may not be a shining example of a perfect woman, but when did we start expecting that of our favourite tv heros? There are many female leads who would fail to live up to the high standards many of us could impose. Det. Olivia Benson and Shane McCutcheon both fall short in many ways. Rather than viewing these personality quirks as failures, however, these characters are embraced and loved by thousands of people. In the same way, I find myself attrackted to Carrie Mathison. Flaws and all. It is complex, and often morally ambigious characters, that become the best loved. This is simply because an interesting character needs a deeper and more complex personality to sustain the viewers interest. Claire Danes’ character isn’t a good role model for anyone wanting a career in the CIA. But she’s a clever, tough and ruthless woman who provides a nice antidote to some of the women in today’s gossip magazines and reality shows.
Ghost A SHORT STORY BY LYNSEY CALDERWOOD
It took me a while to realise I was dead. Everything seemed normal except the absence of a hangover. The last thing I remembered was Leigh, and that horrible email. I went to make tea but the kettle was gone. Most of my things, I now realised, were gone. I picked up the phone but the line was dead so I went outside. No buses stopped; I walked to Leigh’s. No answer, but she was in; her bedroom light was on. I used the key under the flowerpot. There were voices upstairs, declaring their love. One of them was hers. I threw open the bedroom door and found them huddled under the duvet. The voice I didn’t know said: ‘It’s just the wind.’ ‘What if it’s...?’ Leigh whispered. ‘Babe...’ ‘You don’t know.’ Her face was pasty white. ‘I know that Kat had a lot of problems.’ Kat. Me? And that’s when I finally got it. ‘She... I...’ ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ My knees buckled and I sat on the bed. Leigh was crying now, the other girl holding her. I stroked her hair and the side of her cheek. ‘It’s O.k,’ I whispered, and she shivered.
Sophie COhen takes a look at April’s ‘Waterfall’ and ‘Dip Hem’ skirts. Flattering, cheap and on the high street, they’re defintaly one to look out for. This April it’s ‘Waterfall’ and ‘Dip Hem’ skirts which are really making a breakthrough. They’re making an appearance in most high street shops and are filling the void between mini and mazi. THese lengthy flowing skirts are flattering on most figures and, with high street prices, you really can’t go wrong. Now these skirts were also around last season but, with the materials being so thin, I don’t think any of us were brave enough to face the cold in these gorgeous numbers. But after an unusually warm March and an that April seems to be warming up I have decided to put my money where my mouth is and purchase my very own. I must say I am ridiculously excited about the arrival of my waterfall skirt. It’s coming all the way from the US and at $25.00 it was a real bargain. They also offer 20% off your first order until August 27th and have free worldwide delivery. With a deal like this there is really no option, so get spending! The thing I love most about it is the beautiful fuchsia/red colour that will work so many different looks. It can be worn with whites and paler shades as well as pumps and sandals for the spring and summer. Come autumn/ winter team it with denim, darker tones and boots for a grungy look. While I am making plans for my winter wardrobe already, why not grab a bargain and put one away for your summer holidays. Team with a crop top or bikini and skyscraper heels for the evening or strappy sandals for the beach. From left to right: Romwe - $25; New Look - £22.99; River Island - £22.00
B.I.D ZINE Issue 13
With Thanks To: Holly Richardson Lotte Murphy-Johnson SOPHIE Cohen lynsey calderwood Lili Murphy-Johnson OnomĂŠ Okwuosa