Ich Liebe Dick - limited edition print

Christmas Greetings!

Just a quickie to say that you can now get a limited edition of my 'Ich Liebe Dick' series via my website, just click here.

They are hand signed and edition of 250.

Merry Christmas one and all and I wish you a very happy new year!

The objectification of Take That.

I was minding my own business the other day when I thought 'you know what, I'm gonna watch a Take That' youtube. I typed them in, clicked on 'Relight my Fire' and away I was.



I am currently experiencing my 'third wave Take Thatism.' I loved them the first time round when I was about eight or nine (I even wrote a letter to Fast Forward about them and it got printed!!) then I loved them a second time a few years later. I was about 14 and there was a Take That weekend on VH1 which I happened to catch and I got hooked again.

Now I am experiencing a third wave. And I have to say, it's not just about the music. It's about the 'Relight my Fire' video. I hadn't seen it for sometime but when I saw it again, I was just transfixed. I had this sudden rush in my stomach which I hadn't felt since I was a teenager. It's amazing really. Something about them has just not been replicated by any other boy band since. I tried to put my finger on it. After watching several more times and going 'phwoarrrrr' in my head like a twat looking at page three, I realised what it was.

Meat.

In that video and in pretty much all the videos they are meat. And I find this totally fascinating. You just don't get this now. I don't even know if it really happened much in the nineties either. But it's usually women that dance about sexually for us in music videos and passively drape their half naked bodies over things. If men do get their body out it's usually a rippling six pack and it's done in a very macho way - you just don't get men objectified in this way. And they really, really were objectified.



Check out the Pray video. They are all meat for us to consume. Robbie is giving us the innocent doe-eye (oh please fuck me sir) look, Gary is touching up his open shirted bod, Howard is draped over a fountain and Jason and Mark passively lie in the sand, arching their backs with their bods out. Men are never, everrrr portrayed in this way. I don't just mean them being half naked - it's HOW they are half naked. The eroticism, passivity, the sexuality.

Now I know they had a huge gay following which they were probably appealing to in these videos also. But I wonder if this says anything about men and women today. Have we slipped even further into 'men must act this way and women must act this way' territory? Because I can't imagine any boy band or male artist making a video like this today.

My Clash moments

People may listen to whale music or Fleet Foxes to relax them at night. Not me. I like to have my Clash moments. Just taking a moment at the end of the day to sit in bed with the door closed and have a jolly good listen to the Clash. I get lots of ideas for work too when I listen to the Clash. I think it's because it seems like art at its rawest, doing what it should do, saying something without the supporting essay and sticking a good ol' two fingers up at everything.

Is it just me but does having the door closed in your room really make a difference? I feel totally different with the door open than when it's closed. Maybe that also goes for being alone in the house too.

Anyway, here's an example of that excellence. Puggy stopped what she was doing to stare at the screen when I was watching this earlier. The best cat ever.