GISHWHES 2014

This year I participated in the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen. ~200 items worth ~10k points were released on Saturday August 2 and we were given exactly 7 days to complete them all with our team of 15 total people. All of the submissions where in the form of video or picture. I’ve been trying to find the best medium to share our completed challenges, and I landed on wordpress.

Challenges Team Athens (myself and Victoria) Completed

Note: We enlisted some friends to help. Thanks Sarah, George, Kyle, Sondra, Benjamin, Tim, and random people we met along the way.

Item 176: Try to make yourself look exactly like an iconic local statue (in every detail) and stand next to it.

Item 106:  Let’s see a fully dressed, face-painted geisha mowing the lawn

Item #29. If you’re like me, you’re sick of the go-to barista foam-art. If I have to sip at another latte adorned with a fern or clover shape, I’m going to cry. Let’s see the Elopus professionally recreated in the foam of a café’s hot drink. (This one was all Victoria.)

121: Challenge a movie theater employee: If you beat them in an arm-wrestling competition, they have to give you a free ticket. If they beat you, you’ll buy one. (This one was also all Victoria)

#147 It’s summertime and everyone loves a lemonade stand. But then again, every Tom, Dick and Harry is setting up a lemonade stand in the summertime and the market is flooded. Respond to consumer demand and carve out your own niche. Let’s see two children manning a “Hot Pasta With Jam Sauce” stand.

#35 Suck the blood from a doughnut.

37. [IMAGE] “When I grow up, I want to be…” Have a child dress up as what they want to be when they grow up (lawyer, doctor, ballerina, dragon-slayer, etc.).

Item #154: IMAGE. Sculpt John Barrowman’s head from duct tape.

Item #49: IMAGE. Make a 5-foot in diameter bird’s nest on a sidewalk in an upscale neighborhood. Nest in it.

Item 148: GISHWHES rock band album cover including one, some or all of your teammates.

Item #28. Stage a mini-newspaper boat regatta in a public fountain with at least four competing vessels. We must see intense competitiveness and gambling.

 

#36: You at the beach, pool or on a boat, wearing a homemade, 99% edible, candy bathing suit. (The remaining 1% can be inedible thread or wire, but we don’t want to see it.)

Item #12: GISHWHES has taken its toll this year. You deserve a break. Hit the hot tub with a couple of friends… wearing hats made of ice cream.

Item #134-You or your pet, in period costume, seated on a Game of Thrones-style kale throne.Make it so good that GOT producers would want it as a marketing poster

Item 130: An angel made from feminine hygiene products.

#178 Birds have style too. Create an architecturally-significant GISHWHESESQUE birdhouse. Hang it on a tree in a public park. On the photo, write the name of the park and the city and country in which it is installed.

 

#173 You see people holding up signs from time to time that say “free hugs.” I have always been wary of those people. I don’t know what it is they’re after. Are they trying to cop a feel? Get me to buy a timeshare? I avoid them. But your “free hugs” sign won’t leave any doubt in the readers’ minds… Wearing a bathing suit, cover every inch of your exposed skin with honey, peanut butter, syrup or jam. Hold a sign on a busy public sidewalk that reads, “Free Hugs.” Enthusiastically attempt to recruit hug-victims.

#8 A lot of politicians oppose minimum wage laws. Let’s expand their horizons: pay an elected official less than minimum wage to do at least 1 hour of yard work for you.

 

 

 

 

Sexualization in Girl With The Dragon Tattoo poster

obiwannabe:

thescreendoorslams:

Okay, since I’m STILL hearing people on the internet griping about the first Girl With The Dragon Tattoo poster, I felt the need to go on a little rant here. Bear with me.

Look at the image on the left. Now look at the image on the right. One of these images is of a “sexualized woman,” and the other is not. If you cannot tell the difference between a nude woman, and a sexualized woman, you are an idiot.

The fact that Rooney Mara is naked in the TGWTDT poster does not make her sexualized or objectified. David Fincher has not “missed the point,” he’s actually making a very insightful observation into the way nude women are portrayed in advertising and in films. Lisbeth Salander may be nude in this poster, but she’s miles away from the expected depiction of a naked woman. Rooney Mara said it perfectly herself:

There’s a certain way people are used to seeing nude women, and that’s in a submissive, coy pose, not looking at the camera. And in this poster, I’m looking dead into the camera with no expression on my face. I think it freaks a lot of people out.

The image of Katy Perry is clearly what Rooney is talking about here (I don’t have anything visceral against Katy Perry, I’m just using a picture of her to make a point). She looks sweet, coyly hiding herself from the camera, but still looking inviting and sexually available. Rooney Mara is the exact opposite. She is bold and uninhibited in her nudity, and she looks right at the viewer with a piercing glare that conveys an unmistakable message: come near me, and you’re dead. This is hardly in keeping with the conventional images of naked women that we are used to seeing.

Nudity and sexualization are not the same thing. Try to actually understand an image and look closely at it in relation to societal conventions and expectations before you make a judgement.

Reblogging, because I want to discuss this with Vicious.

There are a number of issues in this argument all being snowballed into sexualization: objectification, female nudity, society’s perception of female nudity, female nudity in pop culture, and David Fincher’s intentions behind the GWTDT poster.

There is a difference between female nudity and female sexualization and certainly a difference between female nudity and objectification, but when seen through the lens of pop culture and American society, those lines begin to blur.

(Note: I realize that because I can see Mara’s nipples that this is the European version of the poster, not the American. However as both myself and the author of the rant are living in America, I think we can safely take an American point of view on these posts.)

In the initial rant, Mara is not sexualized because she is not looking submissive, coy, sweet, or sexually available. Moreover, she is looking straight at the camera with an expressionless face.

The fact that in the image Mara is being held from behind by a clothed man in the darkness (as the heavy shadows show) with nipple piercings does not play a roll in the argument.

(Note: It is a topic of debate online whether or not novel Lisbeth has her nipples pierced. If anyone finds me a passage stating that she does, please let me know.)

Of the following images of blank faced nude models looking directly at the camera, please tell me which are sexualized and which are not.

All images via Ms Pussy Le Queer

Victoria’s Secret is huge into non-coy looking models. To argue that they are not sexualized is defeating a major point of the product they’re selling.

One can attempt to make that argument that Fincher is attempting to critique the way society views women and the way women have been portrayed over the past 120 years in the media, (with a focus on coy sexualization) but why would he choose to make this grand statement using the medium that he’s apparently contradicting?

More than likely, the graphic design team chose the photo and made the design of the poster. Yes, Fincher approved the design, but his producer or production team was there to remind him about the bottom line and MGM’s expectations. Mara’s role in this movie poster probably became about what most female sexualization in movies comes down to–selling tickets.

Pho†ographer Unknown

Via All Things Amazing

Not to self: Dance underwater more often.

Druid Power!

Goldfish on the Brain

I came dangerously close to buying a goldfish, yesterday.

I don’t know why, I guess I’ve just had

Goldfish

on
the

Brain

Thank God it’s Here

http://ilovedoodle.com/wp/

Fishy in the Sea!

Ponyo, ponyo, ponyo, fishy in the sea
tiny little fishy, who could you really be?
Ponyo, ponyo, ponyo, magic set’s you free!

Rania Matar

Photographer Rania Matar began A Girl and her Room in 2009. She has since traveled the world over to photograph teenagers and young women (12-23) in the unique worlds of their bedrooms. Matar’s thoughts on the project:

I originally let the girls choose the place of their choice and was slowly welcomed into their bedrooms, an area that is theirs, that they can fully control, decorate, trash and be themselves in – within an outside world that is often intimidating...I was fascinated to discover a person on the cusp on becoming an adult, but desperately holding on to the child she just barely left behind. A person on the edge between two worlds, trying to come to terms with this transitional time in her life and adjust to the person she is becoming. Posters of rock stars, political leaders or top models were often displayed above a bed still covered with stuffed animals; mirrors were always an important part of the room, a reflection of the girls' image to the outside world.
Being with those young women in the privacy of their world gave me a unique peek into their private lives and their real selves.

See the entire project here: http://www.raniamatar.com/portfolio/recent/girl-room.php#girl-room/1-01.jpg

An Animal and his Prints

I should have known this was The Blonde Salad

Tim Gunn