Old Babes

[purejuice]

Is that a leather top you’re wearing in this photograph?
Yes. I wore it when I went to speak at the first meeting of our University of Chicago lesbian and gay alumni association, and I thought it was so sweet for them to invite somebody who wasn’t gay to be their keynote speaker. But I wore this outfit, and they said, “We want to thank you for wearing leather.”

-- Martha Nussbaum, who goes on to scrupulize about marrying again or eating in restaurants when others cannot.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/magazine/13FOB-Q4-t.html

I know that people I worship around here worship Martha but I think the booties in this pic, or maybe its the ninja jacket, not to mention that it is leather, or maybe the sum of the parts, is too much.

I can't gank the pic as is the usual practice of the fashion police. I have accused Martha of dressing like a transsexual, not that there's anything wrong with that, but there is something both cluelessly butch and over-fastidious in the way the goddess dresses. Is she channeling Judith Butler or cruising her? One could begin with the too-tan decolletee and the ca. 1988 anchorbitch necklace, going for the Andree Putman PIB look. I think Putman pulls it off. I think. Jury still out on Putman, though Putman definitely has the Old Babe hair problem licked. I think there is a not so very fine line, of which Nussbaum and Putman may be beyond the pale, between Old Babe and what we call in Spanish, a vieja verde. Which is nasty, and the antidote for which is watching the shipboard scene -- the midget doppelganger with the makeup -- in Death in Venice annually. Compare and contrast with the Italian Old Babes of a previous post. Or the adorable Princess Lilian.


Andree Putman

What I'm saying is Martha is not following the Old Babe accessories rule. If you wear the red lipstick, you have to eliminate almost everything else you're wearing, the ca. 1995 Vamp nail polish at the top of the list. If you wear the ninja leather jacket, you do not wear the red lipstick, the Happy Rockefeller Hair Done, the low cut wifebeater, the necklace, the mini skirt, the opaque black stockings and the booties.


Happy Rockefeller

If you wear the jacket, you wear it, I think, with pants. Actually, the mini is good. If you wear the booties, you wear them with pants and not that jacket. Oh Jeez, the wifebeater again. She's got a thing about her bicepses. As I do not. Please. Martha. Dude. Put your shirt on.


Nussbaum in what I have called her Jan Morris outfit, with the wifebeater, anchorbitch necklace, Happy Rockefeller hair and biceps, but without the ninja leather jacket she sports in today's NYT.

And I have to say, viewing the most recent Tina Turner concert, while she certainly is old and certainly is a babe, Tina, grrrl, it's time to pack it up when you can hardly walk across the stage and the backup dancers (BUDs) have to do the heavy lifting. Yikes. Love the Lurex pedal pushers tho. And I'm, uh, relieved you didn't wear the booty short version your BUDs rock. Oh jeezus. I'm not sure that's enough of a credential to award you Old Babe status. Like Putman, however, you do have what is possibly the very best Old Babe hair.

Comments

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

I will simply note that Cherubino has two arias in Figaro. Depending on which one she's singing, either she doesn't know what she's doing due to extreme horniness, or she's suffering the slings and arrows of serious infatuation. Those are the options.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i think you are on the money. and i think her comment about not being gay, and how sweet they were to invite her anyway, is a big fat can of bullshit.

[atthesametime.livejournal.com]

Martha could wear a garbage and I would think she looked amazing. As everyone around here knows, I have a massive crush on her. I love the biceps, not only because I think women with strong arms are sexy, but also because of what they represent, that an intellectual can make time for both the library and the gym; that it isn't too much to ask of ones self to be both brilliant and fit.

I will concede that the hair in the photo with the book is a bit much.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

there's a way to dress which reveals your gorgeous biceps -- michelle obama is doing it -- and also your changing, fluid old babe sexual identity (susan sontag) without venturing into the realms of skank. is all i'm saying. that's the babe part of old babe.

[atthesametime.livejournal.com]

haha, maybe i am attracted to academic superstar skank? this is a possibility.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

there's nothing wrong with that. i just wish she knew she was skankin' -- most disturbing is the scrupulosity expressed in the interview about not marrying and not eating in restaurants while others cannot, while wearing leather? and other really crusted-out fashion tropes. i respect the ethicists of skank, but not so much the skanky ethicist.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

no, no, no. the real problem is it's fake skank, it's suburban housewife in leather pants skank. the manicure and the hair and the necklace belie it all. i have no doubt she puts a mink coat on over it all to go home when she finished the shoot.

[atthesametime.livejournal.com]

I think she is playing a part in the NYT picture, but I also think it is refreshing that she is willing to do so...

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i find it deeply disturbing that an ethicist -- and a professor of the young -- should Play a Part.

[atthesametime.livejournal.com]

I feel this conversation is getting more serious than I intended. I don't find it troubling for anyone to want to play a part. If Nussbaum wants to play a role for an evening, or for a photoshoot, why shouldn't she? Now, if she feels compelled or forced to play that part, that is a different story.

[oneroom.livejournal.com]

In most photos of her, my first impression is that MN could use to relax. But then I remember that in person, she is so alive that she appears to vibrate. Nothing about her says "relaxed."

So I like the photos. They're true. Plus she's just goddamn hot.

That doesn't mean I like the booties though. On anybody.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

ambiguous sexual msgs is really where it's at as far is dressing is concerned. but she has a real jewish princess thing happening with what she's chosing to wear which, as everyone knows, is a gender unto itself. and a rather antisexual one.

[oneroom.livejournal.com]

You made me look up to see if she changed class from her childhood to her adulthood. I don't know what it's called, but as someone who has jumped at least one class, I continually feel like I'm passing. Because nobody taught me How To Dress, sometimes I get it wrong. I wondered if MN was having that same sort of thing.

Nope. However perhaps there's a similar experience when one jumps from WASP to Jew?

Also: 60-something women academics Aren't Allowed to be sexual. MN is blazing a new trail. She's bound to fuck it up here and there. I say more power to her, as I aspire to the same sort of thing - confident sexuality + academic brilliance, regardless of age. If she can figure it out before I get there, I'll owe her.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i'm with you on the sexuality thing, but camille paglia and judith butler and susan sontag each have sartorially crossed this semi demi hot homo line more hiply.

i am so interested to think about your sensitivity to the vibe she's giving off of not quite having the cattle to go with the big ole hat. or perhaps it is the hat to go with the cattle.

panjianlien picked up on it, in comments above, through the insanely hot but dimly perceived horniness/infatuation of the cherubino arias that MN is singing -- MN refers to singing these arias as "acting like a teenager" in the text of the interview. she was bat mitzvah last year and goes shopping with her girlfriends for fun.

i don't need to know what her newly fluid old babe sexuality is, and i'm not against expressing it. three inches on the necklines of the wifebeaters, a serious hair color and cut rethink, and losing the bat mitzvah jewelry (wearing suburban housewife rings on your middle finger, arrrghhhh)....

i'm still not getting to the heart of it. she's not even getting the PIB thing right, it's the jewelry and that old kountry klub broad in leather pants vibe that's killing me. i think it's a version of the lime green golf skirt episcopalian thing coming out.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

here's a vision of martha for you: i think she should dress like giorgio armani. in sleeved muscle t shirts and gorgeous trousers, with silver hair, no belts, no makeup, NO jewelry, except like a toe ring. and serious bondage shoes with six inch heels. and greyish pale toenail polish. for winter, a gorgeous jacket or immense cashmere stole or classic black trench. long sleeved muscle tees for winter.

[oneroom.livejournal.com]

Camille Paglia's so disgusting intellectually I think one would find it difficult to use her as fashion inspiration. (I personally also have trouble because she more than casually resembles my mother. Which is not, for me, a good thing.) Judith Butler is way more butch than MN - she is genius inspiration for butches, but less so for the rest of us. Susan Sontag could work for MN, but I still think MN rocks a more femme vibe than any of them. It may be related to the teen tendencies she cops to. Who are some of the hot old intellectual femmes? I'd say Isabel Allende, but she has old lady hair.

I was looking at that NYT picture and thinking if MN wore over the thigh boots, I'd buy it. Those booties just show she can't wear stockings like I can, or like the kids do. Stockings with those booties look old on her. Over the knee boots would've looked, perhaps, kickass.

What's a PIB?

Also, I'd say it's a situation of having the hat to go with the cattle in MN's case.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i'm totally with you on the over the knee boots.
Person in Black.

i'm not suggesting any of these ladies as role models for MN. i'm just saying that sexy but sexually fluid dress codes exist in academia.

femme is the key. how bout some of those frenchies? your grrl irigaray?

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

aha! we all need to get this tranny's guide to dressing like a real lady (http://enfemmefashionguide.com/) for only $77.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

or, as the fashion genius filmstills below suggests, carine roitfeld.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

I don't like the boots. I am so behind the bare arms, and the assertion of her sexual presence. Plus, I kind of love the pictures just because it's her. There she sure enough is.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

i'm not against bare arms. i'm against the wife beater.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

with the red lipstick and the happy rockefeller hair and that hideous passe bourgeois necklace of which she had about a hundred, and which is, apparently, a female distinguished academic trope. after the anchorbitches were over it, the female uni presidents took it up.

[villagecharm.livejournal.com]

LOVE the Saturday Evening Post cover with Happy Rockefeller (and, I presume, Nelson). Real-deal WASPs are endlessly fascinating.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

if one's sexuality were burgeoning in one's 60s, as it seems miss martha's is, there is another hairdo, or two, that one could rock. unless one were trying to communicate certain taboos, one would not be wearing haute WASP ca. 1962 hair.

[filmstills.livejournal.com]

i usually avoid nit-picky fashion commentary, but i'll roll with ya here because i think this topic is fascinating...even if the outfit were on a Young Babe, it's un peu too much. to my eye (which is a very fashion-inundated eye, i grant you) she's working that Paris Vogue thing that's fashionable right now -- whether that's her intention or not, that's what it's invoking right now. the hosiery and the bootie are not working together with everything else. i think you're right, the jacket is distinctive enough without everything else distracting from it. the boots are just wrong, wrong, wrong.

it's an outfit that is similar to something Carine Roitfeld might do, but Carine would never do the necklace, hosiery and shoe. it's worth looking at the fact that Carine Roitfeld and Martha Nussbaum are not that far apart in age (they're certainly within a generation of one another) and both are hot stuff in their own particular way. but this type of outfit (i.e., slightly dom-y) would feel at home on Carine but just a tiny bit uneasy on Martha, and it's fascinating to surmise upon the discrepancy.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

one thing carine doesn't do -- and she is a good role model for the femmey-transgressive vibe MN seems to be emitting -- is foufy hair. i won't say she does't get it done -- you can't get that haute stringy look without a lot of Product -- but her hair is very negligee. and nor does carine do lipstick. the only over the top thing she does is the bondage shoes, which are strangely age appropriate, sort of dommey femme, and which i recommended, above, for MN with her armani muscle shirts. i think MN should look carefully at roitfeld, who always looks ready for work and play, a mastery vibe which old babes must work or else people will be treating them like idiots, firing them, ignoring them when they speak, and helping them across the street.

yeah, old babes is a really interesting topic.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

http://media.photobucket.com/image/carine%20roitfeld/chicwit/CarineRoitfeld.jpg

this is hott. i'm not sure MN has the length of leg required but it is the perfect vibe for her. you're so right.