Vogue's Yin and Yang

Anna Wintour is the most powerful woman in fashion. PERIOD. There isn't any aspect in the fashion world where she is not involved in. From sales to design editing to celebrity styling to rubbing elbows with the mega-millionaires who own the conglomerates that turn our closets topsy turvy, she is immersed all the way to her neck in everything regarding the world of style. She advises and dictates what goes into a famous designer's show (advise and dictate become synonymous in her parlance), she launches young designers and catapults them into fame and megabucks by recommending them to all the right people and labels. (She told OPRAH WINFREY to lose weight to be on the cover of her magazine HUH!!!!!) She is the chief editor of and figuratively owns Vogue magazine, the US chapter and is responsible for 101% of what goes in and out the issues. Nothing escapes her scrutinizing eyes in terms of content or creativity when it comes to her magazine. She is not warm as her publisher says because she does not need to reach out to people who do not need her accessibility. Her private life is...private. She plays tennis almost everyday (she is already my idol) to keep fit and she is very fit, very skinny in fact. She can wear anything because she has the body and she has the power to acquire any designer's garb she wants. The infamous fringe and Chanel sunglasses are signature looks that she has never let go of for the past couple of years. She is Mount Vesuvius personified!!!.

Grace Coddington is the creative director of Vogue USA. She is responsible for the styling as well as the conceptualizing of the magazine's many fantastic editorial images which highlight the clothes and style of the season worn by the skinniest girls you can ever see in the planet. Coddington's creative eye and knack for ideas are both phenomenal. She takes out a story, a scenario, a seemingly boring and monotonous daily activity, a historical element from the past and turns it into the creative backdrop of a photoshoot but highlighting the relevance of today's current trends. She is responsible for so many of Vogue's uber original and iconic pixelated concepts e.g models wearing sheer dresses while washing their clothes in the laundromat, Kiera Knightley and designers all cast straight out of "The Wizard of Oz" fairytale book scenario, a shot of a photographer jumping while shooting a jumping model, heavily made-up girls donning John Galliano in a late night French restaurant straight out of a Brassai photograph, backpacking supermodels trying to mix and match with a crowd of Peruvian/ Andean revelers in a Teotihuacan scenario among so many others. If there is another power in Vogue office that does not necessarily complement Wintour's but is equally as forceful and influential creatively it is that of Coddington's. She believes that if you never close your eyes even if it's somewhere as mundane as being driven by a taxi to some place, you will see an outside world that will give you ideas. Any idea has value at some point in your life or career.

These are the two powerful characters that turn the wheels at the New York offices of Vogue at least if not the world of style. They are often in conflict with one another but have surprisingly worked together in the same offices for 20 years now. Surprising isn't it? Grace said it best when she was trying to describe their relationship, "I know when to stop pushing her, she doesn't know when to stop pushing me."

This is the backdrop for the documentary, "The September Issue." I highly recommend watching it. Even when you are just on the fringes of the fashion world or even out of it which I hardly doubt anybody ever really is. I mean if you're a businessman or a CEO, you always want to know which Hermes or Fendi ties look good on your suit, or which socks best complement your Bruno Magli shoes noh? Don't get me started on whether women are into fashion si? LOL

It's a fantastic film that documents the inner workings of the VOGUE team and Anna Wintour and Grace and the models and photographers and staff when they're trying to prep, create and build the magazine's September issue. It's suppose to be the biggest issue of the year because it's where all the new trends are discussed, featured and advertised. All the designers, stylists, cosmetic companies will kill to be featured in that issue. The movie showed the various chaotic elements all throughout the buildup towards the publication of the magazine. It also touches a little bit on the stories behind two of Vogue's most powerful people as well as the instances and relationships they needed to work on to achieve their Herculean status in the fashion world. It is beautiful and heartbreaking! In the end these elements coalesce to become the brightest issue of the year, Vogue magazine's September outing :)

To extract an idea...

There will be movies that make an impressive mark on people and their lives and then there will be movies that will shatter the whole world with the creativity, fantasy and sharpness with which the script was written and with the supple flow of the story. These are the movies that remind us that the film industry is in a progressive state rather than stuck in a state of regression.

I will not care to tell the story about the film "Inception" because many of you have probably seen it (but will probably write about it in such a position in the future anyway LOL). I will discuss it from a perspective that's sort of external and not assume the storyteller/ fictional writer position. Another reason I will choose not to dissect the movie so much is I have not really totally gotten to the coherence of all the scenes which forms part and parcel of the overall plot but based on the things I have discerned from the movie while I was not using it as a sleeping tablet and was actually viewing it, it is one of the most wonderfully crafted ideas in the last 5 years. The actors are stellar but the film would probably have been equally as forceful even if it did not have an all-star cast.

They set up an arcane and intelligible series of situations that made viewers sit on the edge of their seats all the time and make sure not to miss a single scene because of how each scenario was stitched carefully to another in the effort to generate an interest within the viewer that wouldn't wane from the beginning to the end. The mysterious symbolic objects in the film too gave it immortal status in this viewer's perspective. The "top" like object referred to as a totem that spun round and round and round in your dream but would trickle and fall flat if you were awake was an important antidote to the film. The film had many spellbinding elements such as kicks and the music played in order to ward off the lethargy brought about by their dreams and bring them back the world of reality.

The presence of a villainess woman - sensual, mysterious and lethal is also a key ingredient in the film because her appearances all throughout the film coincided with significant moments which generated lots of intensity and confusion among the main characters. Women being the Achilles' heels of men has long been immortalized in many motion pictures and the venomously sly character of the woman weaved itself through many scenes in the film here. She posed a great danger to the central mission of the team but ironically she was also instrumental in keeping the sanity of the creator of the master plan.

When you watch the film trailer you will most likely conclude that it's another movie that tries to fill in the genre introduced by the Matrix, Transformers and many films that require animation that wants to stump and impress wide-eyed audience viewers like us with earth-shattering destruction and histrionic sounds. But the sheer intelligibility and brilliance of the plot totally differentiates it from the usual special effect-films we have seen in the past. Only a true cinephile as well as a moderately analytical mind can appreciate and embrace the beauty and effect of the film on the reality of our existence as well as that of an existence that escapes us - dreams.

L'Amoure...

This is my future husband!!! hahahahaha

Tres Cute

Tres rebellious ( refer to the fact he hates two hour movies but he is a filmstar!!!!)

Tres funnyish

Tres skinny-ish

Tres beautiful accent :)

He probably has a big ______ ! hahahahahahahahaha

Don't like the smoking though but pretty forgivable when he looks this nice :)

HE took movie clips of himself when he was a kid! How cute is thattt! Destined to be a movie star eh???

Love the taxi ride and the walk through urban Hong kong...And the meal at the Chinese kitchenette, PRICELESSSSSSSSS!!!! Hahaha

Of Seahorses and Flounders

What is attraction? The word draws a whole gamut of definitions, meanings that are significant to the beholder as well as the object of one's adoration. Oh I beg your pardon. The object does not have to necessarily be aware of the attention and hypnotism he or she incites in the beholder but wouldn't it be more just if he or she at least takes notice? But the world is not fair and justice is almost ephemeral etcetera etcetera and so we shall have to say attraction may just have to be one-fold :)

I was visiting a friend's gallery and I was fascinated by the underlying theme of his exhibit. It was not only mere artsy photographic images of extraordinary individuals but it was also the intellectual-dissectional comparisons he made of actual images of male to female and female to male transsexuals to objects, animals, mechanisms, vanities, religious and cultural icons and vanities. He cleverly juxtaposed, attached, superimposed, even realigned human parts with unconventional appendagesto convey his thoughts, philosophies, mythology and artistry. Sex-altering flounders, gender-role bending seahorses, the spokes and mechanical structure of a simple machine, pagan images, anatomical systems of insects and canines, phalluses and female canals were just among the many figures of symmetrical dissections and comparative representations he set up to compliment the images of his beautiful subjects

The above event would have sounded good enough for a blog entry but no I have to impose my authority here and write this crucible of a thought out haha... Although his artistry is superb undeniable and incomparable it is this one individual in one of his pictures that has haunted me. I have seen this person in his social network of friends for some time now and I have always considered him to be a very very attractive man. Until my friend shattered me yesterday by saying this person was once a woman!!!!!! He was Female-to-Male! I was like at a loss for words, not so much flabbergasted but maybe in some ways shocked at this revelation. How strange a stirring it caused inside me and how revealing at the same time of this side of my personality it has become!

BUT the more ARCANE reality is that this divine divulgence my friend made about his friend has only served to coat this individual in ENIGMA. I looked once again and concentrated looking at him and it was unmistakeable. Not an ounce of femininity could be found in him! He looked just like any other bloke on the street who I would give more than a second glance because of how handsome he was! The facial hair as well as the structure all pointed to masculinity! Please do not mistake me. I perfectly respect him as an individual and think in more than a hundred ways that he is MAN. But i am just fascinated that transformation with the right hormones and chemical reactions can occur both ways too! Are we capable of manipulating attractiveness by controlling our hormonal makeup? OF COURSE! Look who's asking! Hehehehehe

I am attracted to this person. But yes going back to the lack of justice in our world, he doesn't know it. And I think I may choose to keep it that way. He probably wants his privacy because there may be a lot of bigotry or discrimination where he lives AND the bigger impediment is he may have a partner so I think it would be a tad too invasive if I meddle with affairs that are beyond me. I have to marvel from afar. But what is more disturbing I think is WHAT does THIS ATTRACTION to him MAKE ME? What label is to be attached to someone like me who is attracted to someone like him who is an F-T-M transformista? Does the "if it moves, looks and feels like a man, it probably is" principle DEFINE me as a STRAIGHT woman too, naturally attracted to a STRAIGHT man?

How unusual for me to admit that I am in a state of ambiguity at this moment too! I love the gay men and now I may indulge in something unknown to me because it is pleasing to the eye. What's next? Oh no not zoophilia please! That would be too extreme for me and for you presumably, you who adore me for me! hahahaha

(PS thank you to http://citizenchris.typepad.com/citizenchris/dc/ for the second picture which is that of transgendered FTM Adam Dahl. I am grateful!)

Merci mille fois!!!!!

Thanks a million to the new members of my VIP group!!!!

I Love the Austrians!!!

I Love the French in South Africa!!! (presumably)

I Love the Englishmen!!!!

I Love the Americans in UAE!!! (presumably)

And I love my VIP GROUP!!!

Email me: blogwinklergirl@hotmail.com for more information on how to join....

BISOU!!!!

A thought for my Birthday

You know the older we get the deeper we become when it comes to thinking about many mundane realities in life and suddenly these events suddenly do not seem so average anymore after taking on a different hue because of how we analyze and rethink about them in so many ways. Perspective is key word when we analyze happenings. We have to assume a third person persona to be able to be objective in examining, cross-examining and making our conclusions about everyday realities.

For example just after a certain provocative event earlier during the month I have come to realize that when a man gives me head it is absolutely one of the greatest gift he can give me!

Why do I say this?

For a man to lay down his ego, and men HAVE EGOS, by going down on a woman or another man if we have to widen the scope, this act of submission becomes a thing of beauty - worth dying for, poetic, artistic and oh so beautiful! I do want to define the boundaries of submission though, and I respect the people who adhere to this, by reclassifying people who enjoy being submissive as an art form and people who chose to be submissive at just that rare moment in time for their partner. It is so gratifying to see a man go down on me because their willingness to lay down their egos and go beyond the box which they have cloistered themselves around during their periods of normalcy is so valuable and highly appreciable and I consider it such an honor to be the recipient of a very submissive act.

Sigmund Freud always thought that adult men at some point in their lives always chose to return to their comfort zones whenever they are taken out of it by pleasing their oral faculties first. He explains that this started eons ago in a man's life that during infancy when he would feel uncomfortable and he screamed and cried and had no power over appeasing himself except through the sensitivity and the actions of a Higher One- his parent, His mum would stick his mouth with a milk bottle or had him suckle her nipples to appease him quickly. This was one of the very first acts of being pacified, being given comfort. And later on in infantile life with the power of movement, he would appease himself by sticking a toy, a stick - almost anything in his mouth to feel happy or comforted!

When men become adults and powerful individuals in comparison to the helplessness of infancy, they have the power to remove themselves out of an uncomfortable situation. They are more in control now. This power THOUGH still demonstrates regressing back to a similar-ish stage in their infancy - pleasing the mouth. Do you remember sticking a cigarette, candy, or a smallish food item instinctively into your mouth to ward off an uncomfortable feeling, stress or pressure?

I think this is also similar to what happens during oral sex! Making love or copulating with someone is a stressful situation albeit stress of another nature. But still the event is volcanic in nature, volatile and susceptible to uncontrollable urges, it might be beautiful or it might be destructive. Men lose control over themselves while in it and I think one of the best ways they pacify and relax is by giving head. It is also a stress-reliever for them - something akin to smoking a cigarette in a testosterone-filled, pressure chamber of a roomful of men in an executive meeting- can you imagine the sizes of the egos inside such a sanctum? This would be enough to make men -well, pick up a cigarette and puff furiously!!! hahahaha! This is also similar to the sexual act! Men adhering to the code of fellatio is almost Freudian! They are appeasing, pacifying themselves as adults now and more in control by giving head!!! And for me to be at the receiving end - ahhhhh pleasure!!! I tell you this is TRUE-ish...

I am not undermining though the possibility that a guy might actually also be enjoying the fact that he is giving me pleasure but nevertheless no matter which perspective I take on, if the very end to all these means is still the pleasure of both partners then I am for it! But the mere fact that he chose to celebrate, treat, partake, indulge, honor or mark as special this rare event of submitting himself to the act of fellatio is truly an art form that can only be replaced by few realities in our lifetimes! So enjoy yourself and make your man feel blessed too by letting him know it's so beautiful to watch him give head!

Be an Angel...

....and buy me these books for my birthday???? :-)

Mwahhhhhhh

Sibling site

If you're feeling nostalgic and sort of want to go through my old blog posts without having to sort out this website with lots of content and pore over it like a scientist studying hieroglyphics, I have come up with a perfect solution for you!

This has become partially essential to me too because my fans in China cannot access anything with a BLOG named in a URL so I decided to launch a second website where entries from THIS website are exported over to that second website. (which makes my China viewers access my writings)

SO if you want to avoid the hassle of looking for old articles from over more than 300 here on www.winklergirl.com then here is the solution! And if you're in China and want to enjoy reading me....

just CLICK

http://winklergirlinchina.wordpress.com/

and VOILA!!! it is my blog all over again but with articles that I have sifted through and have picked out the chaff from the grain from..:)

It is still in its infancy so don't expect a lot yet but I am progressing real well and it is sort of a webpage with all the highly read-able entries only and none of the craziness I had in the original site. I've made sure to even include the dates of each entry so people will be able to understand what MAY have been my mode of thought was at that moment and not be confused about it being a current article.

It is the younger and more sensible sister of this original site if I might say! hahahah

Big kiss and enjoy reading ME

Salma

VIP MEMBERS beware!!!!!!!!

Loads of new photos to come on my yahoo group!!!!

My new look and body as well as the new mantra I've recently adopted to achieve a more balanced me...are all evident in these rockin' new images...

I love you all!!!!!!!

Email me: blogwinklergirl@hotmail.com for more details!!!!

PS: thanks to my patient and beloved Beijing photographer...you're numero uno my amigo!!!!

emblazoned track prints

I just really needed to copy paste this..Thank you CNN and Sports Illustrated! (and to all the websites who supplied photos...)

These moments make the Olympics irreplaceable, timeless and oh so worth-watching. Even with commercialism and the growing concerns of manipulating the drug test system, if we look back at these pieces of history, it is really inspiring and the romantic in us still aspire to follow the Olympics despite the loss of tradition and athletic integrity from the many modern factors which have tarnished it it.

I was still very young when I came across a controversial article about this event. This was way way way back before when I would commute from high school and pass by a magazine stand that sold old NEWSWEEK, TIME Magazine copies. I would spend hours poring through them for free and sometimes when I saved enough I would buy one or two which was pertinent to the Olympics, the Russian sports machine, gymnastic and badminton. The magazine stand is not there anymore. I miss it! I could stand for hours reading and reading and reading. This young little person, try

ing to digest everything so fast because the caretaker could kick him out anytime enforcing the disallowance of free reading! hahahaha...Now with the resources on the internet I was able to see it all again, and nostalgia came flooding back again.

Assembling this blog entry came from that spur-of-the-moment where something just popped up from the back of my brain and made me remember to

note everything that my small mind has ever recorded, encountere

d and found significant before oblivion and the substances that erode our age take over...

Thanks to my beautiful memory and to my wonderful love for almost everything interesting and fascinating.

--------

After another half lap, Mary Decker would begin a long, ever quickening drive to the finish. She had led the women's Olympic 3,000-meter final from the gun, first at world-record pace, then slowing a seccond or so every lap. The last had taken her 71 seconds, bringing the field past 1,600 meters in 4:36.

She had shaken no one. Zola Budd of Great Britain and Maricica Puica of Romania, her most heralded opponent and her most dangerous one, respectively, ran second and third.

Decker felt fine. Her sore right Achilles tendon which had required a cortisone injection in July, was operating smoothly. Her semifinal win in 8:44.38 had been, as she put it, "Effortless. Except for Lynn Williams [of Canada] stepping on my heel four times." "She was looking for about an 8:29 pace in the final," said her coach, Dick Brown. (The world record is 8:26.78, by Syvetlana Ulmasova of the U.S.S.R., who, of course, wasn't in L.A.) "With a kilometer to go, she would begin picking it up." This was similar to the tactic Decker had used to win the world championship 3,000 last year in Helsinski, but there she had started her drive 600 meters out. In Los Angeles she planned to go the last 1,000 because she was stronger now, because Puica, the current world cross-country champion and mile-record holder (4:17.44), would produce a respectable kick if it weren't run out of her, and because these were the Olympics.

Decker had never run in an Olympic race. In 1972 she was too young, only 14. In 1976 she was injured. In 1980 the Carter boycott stymied her. But these Games were her own, in the city where she'd grown up. "Finally it all seems so perfect," she'd said.

That last brutal kilometer would begin in about 300 meters, on the backstretch. Now, as Decker relaxed, gathering herself, the slight, pale, barefoot, 92-pound form of Budd again came even with her. Budd had been outside Decker's right shoulder almost from the start, and Decker knew it. They had bumped elbows at 500 meters, a result of Budd's wide-swinging arm action, and Decker had shot her a sharp look.

Budd had sensed the slowing pace and didn't like it. Her training and temperament combine to make her natural race one of constantly increasing pressure. She and her coach, Pieter Labuschagne, knew that she couldn't kick with a fresh Decker or Puica. If she was to run her best in this Olympic final, the pace would have to go faster. So she passed Decker on the turn, just after, 1,600 meters. Decker felt her uncomfortably close. "She was cutting in on the turn, without being near passing," Decker would say.

By the end of the turn, Budd appeared to have enough margin to cut in without interfering with Decker's stride, but instead she hung wide, on the outside of Lane 1, as they came into the stretch.

Decker was near the rail, a yard behind Budd. Budd's teammate, Wendy Sly, had come up to third, off Budd's shoulder, and Puica was fourth, tucked in tight behind Decker, waiting.

Decker sensed Budd drifting to the inside. "She tried to cut in without being, basically, ahead," Decker would say. But Decker didn't do what a seasoned middle-distance runner would have done. She didn't reach out to Budd's shoulder to let her know she was there, too close behind for Budd to move to the pole.

Instead, Decker shortened her stride for a couple of steps. There was contact. Decker's right thigh grazed Budd's left foot. Budd took five more strides, slightly off balance. Trying to regain control, she swayed in slightly to the left. Decker's right foot struck Budd's left calf, low, just above the Achilles tendon. Budd's left leg shot out, and she was near falling.

But Decker was falling, tripped by that leg all askew. "To keep from pushing her, I fell," she would say. She reached out after Budd, inadvertently tearing the number from her back and went headlong across the rail onto the infield.

Decker's competitiveness is without limit. "My first thought was, 'I have to get up,'" she said. But when she tried, "It felt like I was tied to the ground." She had a pulled gluteus, the hip stabilizer muscle. Only then, understanding that she couldn't go on, with the field past and the medical attendants and her fiance, Richard Slaney, running across the track to her, did the anguish come. Hers was the horrible realization that once again, in the race she'd been denied by injury and boycott for eight years, she was being denied any chance of a conclusion of her own making.

She who had been hurt so often, for whom the sensation of raw exhaustion is a joy compared with the misery of not being able to run, was hurt again, three laps from the end of overcoming all of that hurt. And as that crashed in on her, she lay writhing and screaming on the infield, her face hideously expressive of the wild rage of her reaction.

Budd, who had kept her feet, maintained the lead and increased the pace. Boos rained on her. She had tears coursing down her face, this woman-child perfectionist who already had gone through so much trauma simply to be here. She had left friends and farm and studies in South Africa to claim the citizenship that was hers because her father is of British descent. And in so doing, she had become the center of a storm of debate over whether these two things could be reconciled: prohibiting South Africa any place in international sport until apartheid is no more, and letting a slender, shy girl test the extent of her talent.

Decker and Budd were seared into Olympic history in the minutes that followed, the woman in agony on the ground and the frightened little deer running on, desperately trying to squeeze away the thought that it was all ruined, this race that she had overturned her pleasantly sheltered life for, trying just to run, to go her hardest, because that was what always worked, that was what she knew, that was what she was made to do.

But she had so little left. With a lap to go, Sly and Puica were running away from her. Puica then bolted out alone over the last 250 meters, winning in 8:35.96. Sly was second in 8:39.47, and Williams third in 8:42.14. Budd faded badly, crossing the line seventh in 8:48.80.

Slaney walked the limping, sobbing Decker across the track and then lifted her into his arms as they entered the tunnel. Budd found her way there a few moments later, desperately wanting to somehow make clear that she had intended none of this horror. She admired Decker enormously. Above her bed, back in the Afrikaans town of Bloemfontein, she had kept a picture of her. In San Diego, before the Olympics, she had spoken of Decker, saying, "It would be wonderful to be so pretty."

Decker saw Budd coming. "Don't bother," she snarled, waving her off. Budd, mortified, was assisted by Britain's Mary Peters, the 1972 Olympic pentathlon champion, to the medical area, to have her bleeding ankle bandaged. On the way back to the UCLA Olympic Village, British team manager Nick Whitehead sought to cheer her. "I just said that it was her first Olympics and she ought to be proud," he said. "All she said was, 'How's Mary?'"

By then, of course, a great cacophony had arisen over whose fault this wreck of a race was. An umpire seated along the track had signaled a foul, and referee Andy Bakjian disqualified Budd for obstructing Decker. The British team manager protested the disqualification, so the matter went to the jury of appeals.

Fifth-placer Cornelia Burki of Switzerland, who was also born in South Africa, said, "When you're behind, you're the one to have to watch out. It was Mary's fault."

This doesn't mean that a leader can swerve in with impunity. but that in the give and take of pack running, athletes learn to make allowances. "You're supposed to be one stride ahead before you can cut in," said Eamonn Coghlan of Ireland, the world indoor mile-record holder. "But this happens all the time. You have to protect yourself out there."

Neither Decker nor Budd has ever had much experience racing in the pack. Decker, though 26, can count on one hand the number of races in which she has had to maneuver in tight quarters. Her main concern with other runners on the track has been in lapping them. So she has never needed finely honed protective reflexes.

Perhaps it was inexperience on Zola's part," said Coghlan. "Perhaps it was being too ladylike on Mary's part. You can't blame either one." The jury of appeals, after watching videotape from six angles, saw it that way, too. Budd was reinstated.

The last person Budd would ever want to hurt is Decker. The reverse may not be quite true, but the essential thing seemed not motive -- "Mary doesn't feel that Zola did it intentionally," said Brown a day later -- but the waste of all the preparation both had invested in this race.

At another level, both seemed to be getting punished for elements deep in their characters. Six years ago Decker said, "If it comes down to a choice between causing pain or taking it, I'll take it." That certainly seemed to be operating in the split second when she had to decide whether to push or fall.

And Budd, so shy, so much a symbol of the runner as one trying to flee, is now the one caught in yet another maelstrom.

But both picked themselves up. Rather than being dejected, Budd was said to be a little testy the next day. "She's not too happy with Mary's reaction," said British coach Frank Dick. "It wasn't her fault. She knows that."

Decker went back to her hotel after a tearful press conference and lifted a glass with some friends. "Here's to Zurich," she said, naming the locale where she plans to race next, on Aug. 22. "And here's to Cologne and Paris [Aug. 26 and Sept. 4] . . . and here's to Seoul in '88."