First, from Kristen Painter, My New Pink Button, a dye to down your nether lips (or neither lips, whichever you currently possess) back to a lovely pink, should the normal process of aging and hormonal changes mean that your downthere is a bit more brown or red in color.
A: OMG, this MATTERS?! I’m filing this under ‘Really? You bleach your anus? Why?’
B: I better see some seriously florid and elegant descriptions of nether lips that reference the color. I barely pay attention to what my own hard-to-see parts look like, but I darn well want to know what a romance heroine’s hey-nanner-nanner looks like beneath the hood, k? Synonyms for pink: get on it!
Second, from JKR, I bet this guy cares a LOT about the color of your meat curtains.
Third, from anonymous, who says she is cringing over and over, comes this announcement: the admins of an online fanfic community devoted to Twilight have announced a new publishing company. Of course, yes, they are specializing in romance. After all, how hard can it be?
The twist on this one? Omnific is “a publishing company specializing in the publication of authors with a proven track record of online success in transformative works.”
How does one measure “online success” as a writer of transformative works? Hits? Number of people telling you you’re awesome? The owners of the press really, really liking your stuff?
But the real amazing part for me:
Omnific Publishing is a publishing house with a myriad of resources for author development and promotion, including post submission editing with Certified Editors, associated art development, publication in various media, national marketing, and profitability.
“Post submission editing?” Isn’t that kind of the point? And what exactly is a Certified Editor? Many, I’m told on twitter, are “certifiable” but Certified?
I found one such certification through a site called Grammatika but I’ve never seen that seal of wtf on anyone’s site before, either. Certified by WHOM? Half of their staff is listed as being among the “certified” but no reference of the certification source. Are there certifications for editors I’m not aware of?
Can I declare myself Certified Awesome? Certified Carnival Ride?
If it weren’t so irritating, it would be hilarious.
the lips thing is interesting to me. scary but interesting.
i think grey hair is beautiful. go with it girl.
as far as omnific goes i must say a few things.
1) there are, up on their site RIGHT NOW, stories that are pieces of finished twilight fanfic where the authors have simply changes the names in order to post them with Omnific. recently a number of authors pulled their stories from ff.net and twilighted for the sole purpose of posting them with Omnific.
2) the main people running this site and “editing” these stories are TERRIBLE writers. I have read fic from each other of them and in every case was either bored, horrified by the lack of ANY likable characters or just shaking my head at how bad the over all story was.
3) they are taking submissions from a small group of fic writers who became popular through shady means and high school popularity games. none of it was ever based on quality.
HOWEVER I am all for this site if it keeps these ass writers from submitting to legit agencies and publishing houses 🙂
I love how vag dye evolves to a discussion of plastic surgery. LOVE.
Body image is such an almighty fucked up thing that no matter how much you’re told that you are ok the way you are, the standard of beauty is something else entirely. Whatever you are, the standard of beauty is not you. From clothing sizes for women that aren’t consistent to the horrors surrounding body hair, living in a female body is a hot mess of confusing, conflicting messages.
Now, I’ve had plastic surgery several times, from a breast reduction (OH THANK YOU LORDY YES YES YES) when I was 19 to comprehensive reconstruction on my face following a car accident (OH THANK YOU LORDY YES YES YES). The breast reduction was probably one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done for myself, and I have never regretted it. I was so shy and angsty and I had these GIANT ENORMOUS BOOBS when I was in 6th grade – oh, the angst multiplied. Talk about confusing, conflicting messages about sexuality. I don’t think that adhering to an external standard apart from what my body looked like on its own has done me any damage. Totally worked for me.
Of course, in the US, we can’t figure out a viable plan for national health coverage for the country, so forget discussing what cosmetic surgery options should or should not be covered. That said, I find it absolutely jaw dropping awful that only recently was it mandated by federal law that health insurance companies must cover breast reconstruction following mastectomy. There again, external standards of appearance are important to well being.
I am all about boobs tonight, apparently.
Joss Whedon is convinced that there is a deep-seated, pathological loathing of women, and I agree. What kind of insanity is it to tell have the population that they’re not good enough and to act like the worst thing they can do is age past a certain point that we’ll call 35? Damned if you look you age, damned if you get work done, damned if you have cellulite, damned if your nose has a bump. Damned if your vagina isn’t a perfect pink and able to crush walnuts, and your tummy isn’t free of stretch marks. In, fact, damned if your body reflects you’ve had kids, but damned if you don’t have kids.
Doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for thinking, does it? Gee, why do girls have poor math and science scores?
anthrograd, not to let this devolve into a discussion of Cassandra Cla(i)re’s actions, but she lifted a heck of a lot more than just a few Buffy quotes now and then, and nowhere near all of what she lifted was cited. You can read a long and sordid history of it here.
Henceforth, I am calling my vagina The Nutcracker.
JamiSings, I’m hearing you. While there are some bizarre-looking victims of vanity surgery out there in the world, I really don’t understand the hatin’ that gets directed toward people who are interested in cosmetic surgery. Feeling hideous can be debilitating. And having enormous, saggy boobs is NOT fun.
@ MichelleR – He saw Dollhouse? (Sorry, I had to. I am ready to break up with Joss over Season One)
@ JamiSings & Suze – It’s not plastic surgery per se, it’s the never ending procession of things that are wrong with women and require correction. You want to cut the boobs down, push them out, whatever? Your body, your choice. However, my feelings about the societal constructs that drive that train and then push women to consider if their labia is attractive enough without surgical intervention falls under my mind, my thoughts. And I think it’s vile. Our bodies, ourselves. Our bodies under constant attack, our selves under constant attack.
Miracle Laurie—Joss Whedon had the courage to make Miracle Laurie a doll, even though she’s plus-sized by the crazy standards of Hollywood.
Yes, but this was always true. Women have done countless odd and damaging things to be “attractive”. (Corsets, foot binding anyone?)
And to a certain extent men feel this too. (Wigs, long hair, short hair, high heels, stockings.)
There’s unfortunately only one solution: stop worrying about what other people think and live your life.
I’m not against plastic surgery but the idea that it must happen before women can feel good about themselves again makes me skiddish.
Suze is not the only person who felt the pain of other’s opinions in middle school. I had like 2 friends in middle school because I overweight, awkward, plain, and got A’s in a small rural town. I distinctly remember still sitting down in the 8th grade and having people move away like I was a leper.
There’s no plastic surgery for overweight and awkward. The greatest truth is that the beauty and happiness are inside jobs. Outside work can sometimes make the inside work easier, but there’s no skipping over it entirely.
There are people who use plastic surgery to avoid the inside work. As in, “I’ll feel good about myself once xx happens.” Then once xx happens they notice some other unsatisfactory area and self acceptance must wait until some indefinite moment in time…
As a practical matter, I would prefer not to help pay for that type of surgery. I have no problems with helping to pay for birth defect and accident reconstruction. This might make me leper here -*grin*, but I do see how reconstruction after mastecomy lives in the grey area between the miracle (face reconstruction) and the frivolous (botox).
Maybe I will feel differently after, but I know I will have to have a mastectomy and I consider the reconstruction frivolous.
There are a lot of women that are completely flat as a board. If we are to buy into the ‘women come in all shapes and sizes’ credo we’re going to have to face that.
Giving me a reconstruction after I lose my boobage while overlooking a woman that’s been flat-chested her whole life, saying my life will be negatively effected by my boob size and hers won’t, has always struck me as bewildering.
For the record, they’re huge.
“of years ago someone posted a link to an article about a college student who was auctioning off her virginity to the highest bidder to pay her college tution. Her sister was paying for her college by stripping. In both cases women of the board said “It’s their bodies, they cal sell them if they want to.””
My response would have been that it’s too bad that there aren’t other options for covering tuition or more financial aid as opposed to acts with high potential for danger, particularly auctioning off the virginity. Perhaps an extra paragraph or two regarding virginity fetishes, and the mysticifcation of sex where losing virginity is SOME BIG DEAL as opposed to biology.
I have no idea why they said what they did. You’d have to ask them. However, expressing their opinions doesn’t take away yor or anyone’s choice. They aren’t passing laws, they’re typing on a message board.
I feel that absolutely we should discuss why people do things like mutilate themselves (ala Joscelyn Wildenstein) with repeated cosmetic surgeries. And see no reason why people shouldn’t have and express opinions on it, both pro and anti.
Disapproval does not equal prevention. Prevention I would frown on.
As an aside, I come down as pro-availability, but distressed at how many women have surgery because they feel that they ‘aren’t good enough’ in their natural state. And icked out by the fact that instead of being reduced, the creeping low-self-esteem-crud seems to be spreading to include men, where historically it has been a primarily female problem. Anorexia is on the rise in boys. Western society has a serious problem, imo.
The first thing that hit me between the eyes (since I don’t know anything about CC or fanfix) was “a myriad of resources” to make sure your work cleaned up good. Really. Aren’t “a” and “of” redundant and wouldn’t a really good editor resource excise the unnecessary?
Bugs me when people say/write that. I’ve seen/heard it myriad times, really, almost as much as confusion over sink/sank/sunk—as in “she sunk to the sofa”—like, how’d she DO that?
I think/thank/thunk I have to lay/lie down now that I’ve read the part about nether/pinker/fatter ladybits.
can someone please tell me wtf a “transformative work” is?
Maggie P – Short version: fanfiction and its professional counterparts (e.g., Scarlett or Lo’s Diary). Transform a work by taking a piece of it and view it in a different way. (The mashup of Dangerous Minds and HP where Hermione ends up teaching in an underresourced, underprivileged wizarding school would be a video example.)
Playing the Bio Inflation at Omnific Game: can someone tell me what “holds a doctorate level degree” (CJ Creel, Developmental Editor) means? Either you have a Doctorate (Ph.D., LLD., Ed.D., etc.) or you don’t (exception noted for JD, which is really Master’s level). That she puts the Thomas Covenant rape fantasies series in the list of her influences would be worrisome, if I were going to take “Developmental” as a serious position.
A publishing company that can’t write its way out of a paper bag and is based in TX is at best not long for this world and more likely intended to separate fools from their money.
@ JamiSings:
TOTALLY agree with you. I don’t see plastic surgery as “empowering” necessarily, but neither do I see it as being a slave to The Man or to public opinion or societal pressure or anything else. If it makes someone happy to get something done, what’s wrong with that? How is it any different from dyeing my hair bright red for fun and to give myself a little lift? Or buying new shoes, or losing a few pounds? Why is it okay for me to wax my ladyparts if I choose, but not to dye them? Or it’s okay to wear a waterbra but not to get implants, or to wear false eyelashes but not to get my eyelids lifted?
Why not do it, if you think it would be fun?
Oh, and also. People who would never dream of making rude comments about someone’s weight, or thin hair, or man-hands, or whatever, will happily pick apart a woman who’s had any kind of cosmetic surgery, even though that’s no more anyone else’s business than her weight or menstrual cycle. I think that’s sad.
@anthrograd
As someone who was around at the very start of the CC plagiarism debacle, she never gave credit to the original source until after she was called out about it.
I don’t believe she ever took money for fanfic directly but she did at one point ask her ‘fans’ to buy her a laptop/iPod etc after a ‘break in’ so that she could continue to write. And IIRC, they did.
@Anna,
Ah, ok. I must have come in a little late then. That seems like a silly trick to pull off when you are writing fanfiction of all things. In the first place you are already using other people’s characters, so you should know about attributing sources. People who read the books and probably read/watch similar things (e.g. Buffy) are reading your work. Why in the world would you think it’s ok to just gank whole lines of dialogue from your favorite show and why would you think you wouldn’t get caught?
To me the money thing could be more of a gray area because people aren’t paying for access. But I could see the argument of why this is a pretty bad error for her.
Thanks for shedding more light on things. It would be interesting to know if she learned from her mistake or has had any other issues with her original novels. From the posts, some of the commentors seem pretty wary of things with Clare’s involvment. If she learned from her mistakes and has been keeping her nose clean and producing truly original material, is she allowed a do-over? Or if someone has shown that they’ve plagirized, does that mean they are person non-grata for some people? I wonder what other people think especially considering the emphasis and research that Smart Bitches did with the romance writer (can’t remember her name off the top of my head) who stole lines from all over the place to fill her books.Though of course, that example is extreme and she was making a living off her plagiarism.
My first reaction is to give a second chance. But on the other hand, in my field credibility is mandatory and any shadow of impropriety can keep your research from being taken seriously.
BTW, the article that the Times (or some other news org) did on her stealing from an article on ferrets (or maybe some other small-ish ferret like animal) and this website’s research into what else she plagiarized is actually what led me here the first time, so I’m really glad the Smart Bitches were being so diligent : )
I’m all for plastic surgery. If you need it. If and that’s a big if, you think its the only thing that will help you. I myself am a big woman, and come from a family of big women who all have big tattas, I unfortunately do not. There are 2 and only 2 women in my family who don’t have them. Myself and my mother’s sister who was also lucky enough to be born with a great metabolism, so for her having a smaller breast size was good, for me not so much. She’s like a size 2.
I went through high school being teased cause of my size.
My mother keeps telling me she wished I was small through her whole pregnancy, my response to her was always when you got half your wish, my upper half sure as shit is small but you gave a big ass, so how’s that working out for you.
I know that if I had the money, I would definitely get my breast done. I have to much trouble and not to mention frustration getting bras that fit half way decent. But to put a somewhat toxic chemical near my cat just so it will look pretty? Don’t think so. But if that’s what you want to do, who the heck am I to say your wrong?
spam word: well 47. well here’s the 47th reason I want bigger boobs, cause my winter sweaters would look better.
Cosmetic surgery is in a different league to lipstick and hair dye, since surgery is a non-trivial matter.
Breast reconstruction after a masectomy is in a different league again, since there are many flat chested women, but few one-boobed women. I believe that reconstruction can be carried out straight after the masectomy, while you’re still knocked out, which cuts down on the risks.
@anthrograd
Cassie Edwards != CC / Judith Rumelt / Cassandra Clare
Cassie Edwards (real name unknown) committed both commercial copyright infringement and plagiarism and is/was a popular romance writer who appropriated Native American cultures to exoticize/fetishize people of color with really bad writing. SBTB exposed her.
Cassie Cla(i)re (Judith Rumelt) committed plagiarism while writing fan fiction, a derivative form of fiction that falls into a legally gray area (fans can sue original authors for using their plot executions—this happened to Marion Zimmer Bradley—and their works may not be reproduced in toto w/out permission, like original fiction authors, but they cannot make a profit from their work and technically can be sued for making fanfic public). Within fanfiction circles, there is a HUGE ethical difference between doing the background research like you would for an original story and using the characters or setting from another person’s work in homage to the original work and *copying someone’s words, line by line, without attribution.* The latter is what CC did, several times, without apology or retraction.
@ teshara – I had a partial on one side and rejected reconstruction – I have met a number of women who had the reconstructions done but none (yet) that didn’t. There was a lot of pressure that our ‘self image’ would be too badly harmed after cancer treatment unless we rebuilt ourselves as closely as possible to our originals. I like my scars, they show I Went Through Some Serious Shit. I don’t want to deny that. Whatever you decide, I hope it goes well for you – there’s an ‘after’ to this but it takes forever to get here.
@Dionne,
Cassie Edwards! That’s the name, the first time I heard of her issues and of this site was on a Times article where the author discussed how his biology article on the black footed ferret (or something) was written into one of her Native Exploitation books.
@ Jami and Stacia K
I totally agree with you. I think the main distinction however is that while I totally agree that there is nothing wrong with you for getting plastic surgery, it is not the choice for me.
I was recently in a heated debate with a girlfriend of mine regarding stripping as a profession, she said “I dont agree with women becoming strippers because I am a feminist.” I said, “WTF!?! I have no problem with women being strippers because I am a feminist. Women should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies. Would I want my daughter to beocome a stripper? No. Do I think it a poor life choice? Yes.” When we tell people what they can do with their bodies is the moment their bodies no longer belong to themselves. Like, I almost had to withdraw my friend card because of that discussion!
I dont have a problem with women having plastic surgery. If a boob job will make you feel better about yourself, more power to you. I think its sad that some people think fixing their outside is the only way to make themselves feel better, but if it works for them more power to them!
My grandmother had a full mastectomy on her left breast about 25 years ago. I was 6, so no one thought to talk to me about the repercussions about the scars or not having both breasts – it doesnt seem to have bothered her much though. I think scars are cool, this coming from a girl that has no major disfiguring scars, but I think this issue is a very personal one and I do think women should have the option to have reconstructive surgery. Another girlfriend of mine chose to have a double mastectomy in her mid 30’s, because she had a pre-cancerous growth in her breast and her genetics predisposed her to having breast cancer – she decided to get breast implants WAY bigger than the ones she originally had. Kind of figured that she might as well! Of course every time i look at her I think her rack is way too bigh for her frame, but she feels good about herself.
I think my main problem with the plastic surgery issue is the way women deny having any done. Sharon Osbourne had ridiculous amounts of plastic surgery done and looks amazing and admits it! I think thats great! I get annoyed when these women get work done and then pretend that its just good living that keeps those lines off their face. Of course a family member works for Dr. 90210 as a surgical nurse, and boy howdy has she seen a lot!
Obviously, this conversation enabled Jennifer Love Hewitt to share. How, exactly, does one get the crystals to stay on? And wouldn’t a glue that strength be, um, painful during – well – use?
But wait! Did anyone go to the Pink button site and check out the marketing? I quote:
And for “shy beginners”:
I am in the land of plastic surgery, so I have to laugh. I think plastic surgery should be used for reconstruction from an accident/disease, not to make your rack larger (who wants the sagging and back pain that goes with THAT?).