Reading List: Holy Skirts by Rene Steinke

Holy Skirts: A Novel of a Flamboyant Woman Who Risked it All for Art

If the title doesn't already convince you to pick up the book...

Holy Skirts is a fictionalized life story about a very real and very awesome woman, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. She is a woman who is determined to live her life according to her own rules despite growing up with the pressures of being a young woman at the turn of the 20th century. She hung out with the likes of Man Ray and Djuna Barnes. She created clothing from various items she found dumpster diving, and she protested the war by reciting a poem and holding a giant phallus.

Holy Skirts explores the beginning of Elsa's life in Germany where she is a sexually liberated young women to her rise as an influential avante-garde and dadaist figure in Greenwich, New York.

This novel was quite the page-turner-- so much so, I often got caught reading it when I should have been working

Modern-day Fairy Tales

Check out the work by Vancouver photographer, Dina Goldstein.



From Goldstein:

The project was inspired by my observation of three-year-old girls, who were developing an interest in Disney's Fairy tales. As a new mother I have been able to get a close up look at the phenomenon of young girls fascinated with Princesses and their desire to dress up like them. The Disney versions almost always have a sad beginning, with an overbearing female villain, and the end is predictably a happy one. The Prince usually saves the day and makes the victimized young beauty into a Princess.

I have never been a fan of Disney. I've certainly never understood the fascination with passive women always needing to be saved. Disney constantly promotes ageism, racism and sexism (Don't believe me? Check out Mickey Mouse Monopoly) and I appreciate the fact that Goldstein has found a smart, creative way to combat useless stereotypes.


See the rest of the series and more on her website.