Lawrence Boothby doesn’t think much of sculptor Jamie McCartney’s plaster vulvas: Pale, monochrome, rigid, dry, repeated - it was interesting to me how the medium of plaster, the context of the exhibit, the isolation of one part of a woman's body from the rest of her body (and emotions), and repetition, alters a viewers' perception. For artistic purposes, the 400 tiles could have been of almost any set of objects that were similar yet unique. Four hundred color photographs of the same size would have better captured the beauty of vulva including their hair, but he wouldn't have been able to...

26 March, 2011

An anonymous reader writes: Marriage is the cruelest form of celibacy, so I thank you for the reminder of what women look like....

20 March, 2011

English sculptor and prop maker Jamie McCartney arranged 400 plaster casts of vulvas into a nine-meter polyptych, to be displayed at the Brighton Festival Fringe in May. The project took five years and a quarter ton of plaster. Subjects ranged in age from 18 to 76, and included mothers, daughters, identical twins, transgendered men and women, one woman before and after giving birth, and another before and after labiaplasty (a practice McCartney hopes his exhibition will discourage). For many women their genital appearance is a source of anxiety and I was in a unique position to do something about that. Vulvas...

19 March, 2011

My netizen pal Angela Mombourquette makes a good case for the proposed seven story housing project that has stirred opposition in the otherwise low-rise, middle-income neighborhood where church elders want to build it. Venerable St. John's United Church, which currently occupies the lot at Windsor and North in a residential neighborhood of Halifax's West End, has reached its best-before date. The congregation proposes to replace it with a building, called "Spirit Place," that will house both a place of worship and an independent living facility for old people — all wrapped into a seven-storey structure. Furthermore, St. John's specifically promotes Spirit Place...

13 February, 2011

If someone asks you that on a first date, they could be asking a proxy question. OK Cupid, the dating site that uses its database to research the sociology of romance, has been considering the best questions to ask on a first date if your real goal is to find out something altogether different: Among all our casual topics, whether someone likes the taste of beer is the single best predictor of if he or she has sex on the first date. H/T: Nathan Yau...

10 February, 2011

The Fratelli Pelligrini (that's Pilgrim Brothers in Italian) perform at the Holy See. It's hard to pick out the weirdest element: the boys themselves, their bare chests denuded of hair; the Pope's rapt expression; the nuns' ecstatic approval; or the cheesy martial music: ...

15 December, 2010
Reader Ritchie Simpson challenges me to consult a mathematician on my assertion that "one should always be sceptical of surveys that show heterosexual men had more partners, on average, than women, since this is a mathematical impossibility."
While I do not fundamentally disagree with your observation about "heterosexual men," I am dubious about your math.
My go-to guy on matters arithmetic is retired Cape Breton University professor Doug Grant, now living in exile in Kitchener. His response after the jump.
30 October, 2010

The dating site OK Cupid dips into its database of 3.2 million users to compare gays and straights, debunking a few myths along the way. A few highlights: Gays and straights have the same number of sex partners: six, on average; the same for men, women, gays, and straights.* Gays do not pursue sex with straights. (Only 0.6% of OKC's gay male users have ever searched for straight matches; only 0.1% of its lesbians users have ever done so; only 0.13% of straight users's profile visitors are gay.) Straight people sometimes have gay sex, straight women for more so than straight men. (One in four...

28 October, 2010

The setting for this cleavage shot by New York artist Bethany Jean Fancher is a tad unusual, but something else about the photo, from a newly published book of similar images, seems slightly off. To find out why, follow this link, but be prepared to confront and perhaps reconsider your own notions of sexuality and female objectification. Hat tip: Daily Dish....

02 June, 2010

No sensible person would go see Sex in the City -2 after reading (or even hearing about) the appalling reviews. But one good thing has come out of it: this delicious review, by Lindy West in Seattle alternative paper, The Stranger. The lead: We've been thinking it for two long years. All of us. Gnawing our cheeks at night, clutching at sweaty sheets, our faces hollow and gray, our once-bright eyes dimmed by the pain of too many questions. Sometimes we cry out, en masse, to a faceless god and a cold, indifferent universe that holds its secrets close. What...

01 June, 2010
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