The Modern Venus Blog

Must-Read: "This Child Will Be Great" by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is Liberia's President - and the first woman to be President of an African country (amazing!).  President Sirleaf became president of Liberia, a war-torn country on the western side of Africa, in 2006.   As per Wikipedia:

The history of Liberia is unique among African nations, due to its roots as a colony founded by freed slaves from the United States. These freed slaves formed an elite group in Liberian society, and, in 1847, formed a government based on that of the United States, naming their capital city after James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States. This government was overthrown by a military-led coup in 1980, which marked the beginning of a period of instability and civil war that left hundreds of thousands of people dead and devastated the country's economy. Today, Liberia is recovering, and despite its lack of adequate infrastructure and poverty, it has experienced economic growth.

Liberia, unfortunately, according to the United Nations, the third most poor nation in the entire world.  In fact, close to 25 percent of all its children die before the age of 5, due to malaria, simple infections (there are not many antibiotics), and the like.   How do I know?  Because my husband and I are in the process of (hopefully) adopting children from this wonderful but challenged country. 

President Sirleaf is an amazing woman with an amazing story - married young, she lived in the United States, ultimately acquiring a Harvard education.   Pursuant to her involvement in Liberia's politics, her life was repeatedly threatened by politics coups, she was jailed twice (by incredibly violent young soldiers who also threatened to rape her), and went into exile as well.   President Sirleaf is publishing a an eagerly-anticipated memoir to be published in April 2009 which is currently exerpted in the new More Magazine, which I recommend you pick up.   It is absolutely fascinating and she is a woman of incredible bravery, commitment and perserverance - I was tremendously inspired just from the blurb I read. 

You can pre-order her book here.

Simone De Beauvoir

Today is the feminist philosopher Simone De Beauvoir's birthday!  I remember reading The Second Sex while I was a women's studies major in college and was profoundly impacted by it.  Her most famous quote that you all have surely read is:  "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."  Here is a blurb about her from my fabulous Bad Girl 2009 Daily Calendar:

 

"Born Simone Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bertrand de Beauvoir in Paris on this day in 1908, when women were passionately fighting equal rights, Simon grew up to study at the Sarbonne, becoming the youngest person to receive her agregation in philosophy - a highly competitive civil service position [don't you  just love the French? - MT].  At the Sorbonne, she met Jean-Paul Sartre; the two became pillar members of the Existential school of philosophy, sharing a relatinoship that spanned the better part of their lives, and shaped both of their work [Their lives were so intertwined that they were actually buried together in the same grave - MT].  Simone wrote many books over the course of her life, but is most well-known for Le Deuxieme Sexe (The Second Sex), which called for changes in the way society viewed women.  Not afraid to plumb the messy depths of human interrelations, she explored complicated issues such as Western society's treatment of the elderly and the trick matter of intimate relationships.  This bad girl boldly questioned the status quo, making major waves and paving a smoother way for generations of bad girls to come." 

Another birthday being celebrated today is that of Elvis - Happy Birthday to "The King!" 

Eartha Kitt, 1927-2008

Another great of entertainment passed away this month - Eartha Kitt.   Her voice and persona was always compelling to me - as well as her work ethic.  She was a performer up until the end.  She was always my favorite Catwoman!   I now will always regret not seeing her live - I thought about getting tickets to see her at The Carlyle Hotel when she performed last June - but didn't. 

An interesting tidbit - she credits using Vaseline on her face for her ever-youthful looks.  Here is her obit from the New York Times:

Eartha Kitt, who purred and pounced her way across Broadway stages, recording studios and movie and television screens in a show-business career that lasted more than six decades, died on Thursday. She was 81 and lived in Connecticut.

The cause was colon cancer, said her longtime publicist, Andrew E. Freedman.

Ms. Kitt, who began performing in the late ’40s as a dancer in New York, went on to achieve success and acclaim in a variety of mediums long before other entertainment multitaskers like Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler.

With her curvaceous frame and unabashed vocal come-ons, she was also, along with Lena Horne, among the first widely known African-American sex symbols. Orson Welles famously proclaimed her “the most exciting woman alive” in the early ’50s, apparently just after that excitement prompted him to bite her onstage during a performance of “Time Runs,” an adaptation of “Faust” in which Ms. Kitt played Helen of Troy.

Ms. Kitt’s career-long persona, that of the seen-it-all sybarite, was set when she performed in Paris cabarets in her early 20s, singing songs that became her signatures, like “C’est Si Bon” and “Love for Sale.”

Returning to New York, she was cast on Broadway in “New Faces of 1952” and added another jewel to her vocal crown, “Monotonous” (“Traffic has been known to stop for me/Prices even rise and drop for me/Harry S. Truman plays bop for me/Monotonous, monotone-ous”). Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times in May 1952, “Eartha Kitt not only looks incendiary, but she can make a song burst into flame.”  Read on . . .

Bettie Page, 1923-2008

One of the biggest - if not THE biggest -icon of 50s burlesque and bondage erotica, Bettie Page, died yesterday at the age of 85.     She was saucy, voluptuous and had a trademark thick black fringe of bangs that balanced her sexiness with a little girl quality.  She remains an iconic inspiration to new generations of past and present burlesque performers, including Dita Von Teese, Ducky Doolittle, and others.  

Time magazine  compared her with Greta Garbo as follows:  

But what Garbo and Bettie Page both had was It — a radiance, a mystery of personality, that transcends technique and passeth understanding. Bettie had a message that defined her medium, and a magic that defied it. The dance films she did may have been cheesy documents of bump-and-grind; the bondage films, creepy if dainty invocations of sadomasochism. But what everyone remembers about Bettie, aside from her trademark bangs, is her smile. Guileless and guiltless, it conveyed an Edenic sensuality. To her fans and her official detractors, who might have agreed that sex was dirty, Bettie's giddy energy said, "Heck, no, it's fun!"

Rest in peace.

Yves St. Laurent, 1936-2008

Yves St. Laurent, truly one of the most exquisite and talented designers in history, passed away on June 1, 2008 in Paris.  Here is his obituary from The New York Times - click on the link to read the entire article.  A pioneer in fashion, he revolutionized fashion for women by putting them, for example, in tuxedos.   He was also the first major designer to use African American women in his runway shows.   Here are a couple of my favorite photos of his fashions - his famous Mondrian-inspired shift and his women's smoking jacket pantsuit.   The world is just a bit less beautiful today without him.   

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Yves Saint Laurent, who exploded on the fashion scene in 1958 as the boy-wonder successor to Christian Dior and endured as one of the best-known and most influential couturiers of the second half of the 20th century, died on Sunday at his apartment in Paris. He was 71.

His death was confirmed by Dominique Deroche, a spokeswoman for the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation.

During a career that ran from 1957 to 2002 he was largely responsible for changing the way modern women dress, putting them into pants both day and night, into peacoats and safari jackets, into “le smoking” (as the French call a man’s tuxedo jacket), and into leopard prints, trench coats and, for a time in the 1970s, peasant-inspired clothing in rich fabrics.

Mr. Saint Laurent often sought inspiration on the streets, bringing the Parisian beatnik style to couture runways and adapting the sailors’ peacoats he found in Army-Navy stores in New York into jackets that found their way into fashionable women’s wardrobes around the world. His glamorous evening clothes were often adorned with appliqués and beadwork inspired by artists like Picasso, Miró and Matisse. Above all, he was a master colorist, able to mix green, blue, rose and yellow in one outfit to achieve an effect that was artistic and never garish.

Among the women of style who wore his clothes were Catherine Deneuve, Paloma Picasso, Nan Kempner, Lauren Bacall, Marella Agnelli and Marie-Hélène de Rothschild.

Mr. Saint Laurent achieved instant fame in 1958 at the age of 21 when he showed his Trapeze collection, his first for Christian Dior following the master’s death. But unlike many overnight sensations, Mr. Saint Laurent managed to remain at the top of his profession as fashion changed from an emphasis on formal, custom-made haute couture to casual sportswear.

For many years after he opened his own couture house, in 1962, his collections were eagerly anticipated by fashion enthusiasts, who considered his the final word on that season’s style. His influence was at its height during the 1960s and ’70s, when it was still normal for couturiers to change silhouettes and hemlines drastically every six months.

Among his greatest successes were his Mondrian collection in 1965, based on the Dutch artist’s gridlike paintings, and the “rich peasant” collection of 1976, which stirred so much interest that the Paris show was restaged in New York for his American admirers. “The clothes incorporated all my dreams,” he said after the show, “all my heroines in the novels, the operas, the paintings. It was my heart — everything I love that I gave to this collection.”

Originally a maverick and a generator of controversy — in 1968, his suggestion that women wear pants as an everyday uniform was considered revolutionary — Mr. Saint Laurent developed into a more conservative designer, a believer in evolution rather than revolution. He often said that all a woman needed to be fashionable was a pair of pants, a sweater and a raincoat.

“My small job as a couturier,” he once said, “is to make clothes that reflect our times. I’m convinced women want to wear pants.”  Read on . . .

Mildred Loving

I had the great honor of working with Philip J. Hirschkop, noted in this obituary of Mildred Loving, for the majority of my legal career.  Philip Hirschkop handled the landmark and legendary constitutional argument before the US Supreme Court that permitted Mildred Loving to marry her sweetheart.  The obituary below comes from the The New York Times.

* * * *

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose anger over being banished from Virginia for marrying a white man led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning state miscegenation laws, died on May 2 at her home in Central Point, Va. She was 68.

Mildred and Richard Loving, in 1967, were arrested in Virginia.

Peggy Fortune, her daughter, said the cause was pneumonia.

The Supreme Court ruling, in 1967, struck down the last group of segregation laws to remain on the books — those requiring separation of the races in marriage. The ruling was unanimous, its opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, who in 1954 wrote the court’s opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional.

In Loving v. Virginia, Warren wrote that miscegenation laws violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause. “We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race,” he said.

By their own widely reported accounts, Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed in their modest house in Central Point in the early morning of July 11, 1958, five weeks after their wedding, when the county sheriff and two deputies, acting on an anonymous tip, burst into their bedroom and shined flashlights in their eyes. A threatening voice demanded, “Who is this woman you’re sleeping with?”

Mrs. Loving answered, “I’m his wife.”

Mr. Loving pointed to the couple’s marriage certificate hung on the bedroom wall. The sheriff responded, “That’s no good here.”

The certificate was from Washington, D.C., and under Virginia law, a marriage between people of different races performed outside Virginia was as invalid as one done in Virginia. At the time, it was one of 16 states that barred marriages between races.

After Mr. Loving spent a night in jail and his wife several more, the couple pleaded guilty to violating the Virginia law, the Racial Integrity Act. Under a plea bargain, their one-year prison sentences were suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together or at the same time for 25 years.

Judge Leon M. Bazile, in language Chief Justice Warren would recall, said that if God had meant for whites and blacks to mix, he would have not placed them on different continents. Judge Bazile reminded the defendants that “as long as you live you will be known as a felon.”

They paid court fees of $36.29 each, moved to Washington and had three children. They returned home occasionally, never together. But times were tough financially, and the Lovings missed family, friends and their easy country lifestyle in the rolling Virginia hills.

By 1963, Mrs. Loving could stand the ostracism no longer. Inspired by the civil rights movement and its march on Washington, she wrote Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and asked for help. He wrote her back, and referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The A.C.L.U. took the case. Its lawyers, Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop, faced an immediate problem: the Lovings had pleaded guilty and had no right to appeal. So they asked Judge Bazile to set aside his original verdict. When he refused, they appealed. The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the lower court, and the case went to the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Cohen recounted telling Mr. Loving about various legal theories applying to the case. Mr. Loving replied, “Mr. Cohen, tell the court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.”

Mildred Delores Jeter’s family had lived in Caroline County, Va., for generations, as had the family of Richard Perry Loving. The area was known for friendly relations between races, even though marriages were forbidden. Many people were visibly of mixed race, with Ebony magazine reporting in 1967 that black “youngsters easily passed for white in neighboring towns.”

Mildred’s mother was part Rappahannock Indian, and her father was part Cherokee. She preferred to think of herself as Indian rather than black.

Mildred and Richard began spending time together when he was a rugged-looking 17 and she was a skinny 11-year-old known as Bean. He attended an all-white high school for a year, and she reached 11th grade at an all-black school.

When Mildred became pregnant at 18, they decided to do what was elsewhere deemed the right thing and get married. They both said their initial motive was not to challenge Virginia law.

“We have thought about other people,” Mr. Loving said in an interview with Life magazine in 1966, “but we are not doing it just because somebody had to do it and we wanted to be the ones. We are doing it for us.”

In his classic study of segregation, “An American Dilemma,” Gunnar Myrdal wrote that “the whole system of segregation and discrimination is designed to prevent eventual inbreeding of the races.”

But miscegenation laws struck deeper than other segregation acts, and the theory behind them leads to chaos in other facets of law. This is because they make any affected marriage void from its inception. Thus, all children are illegitimate; spouses have no inheritance rights; and heirs cannot receive death benefits.

“When any society says that I cannot marry a certain person, that society has cut off a segment of my freedom,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1958.

Virginia’s law had been on the books since 1662, adopted a year after Maryland enacted the first such statute. At one time or another, 38 states had miscegenation laws. State and federal courts consistently upheld the prohibitions, until 1948, when the California Supreme Court overturned California’s law.

Though the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in the Loving case struck down miscegenation laws, Southern states were sometimes slow to change their constitutions; Alabama became the last state to do so, in 2000.

Mr. Loving died in a car accident in 1975, and the Lovings’ son Donald died in 2000. In addition to her daughter, Peggy Fortune, who lives in Milford, Va., Mrs. Loving is survived by her son, Sidney, of Tappahannock, Va.; eight grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.

Mrs. Loving stopped giving interviews, but last year issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of the announcement of the Supreme Court ruling, urging that gay men and lesbians be allowed to marry.

Mental Health, Friends and Magic

From CNN -- more details about the life of the amazing author J.K. Rowling, who, through her "Harry Potter" books, has brought so much joy and creativity to the lives of people around the world -- and has re-invigorated the joy of reading!  What I take from this story is that perseverance, receiving support and love from friends, and being creative can shift the emotional states of people and can create magic.  I have experienced serious depression during times in my life and so I understand how sometimes people can feel helpless and hopeless. If any of you are feeling depressed, hopeless or even worse -- reach out to friends and faimly, get help from qualified medical professionals (including alternative health and holistic counselors, don't necessarily default to taking medication when natural treatments are available!), and I also recommend volunteering to help others, as sometimes helping people who are suffering more than you can shift energy into more positive places and even create magic (look what happened to Ms. Rowling!) . . . just definitely take action and know that change is right around the corner. 

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LONDON, England (CNN)  -- Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling has revealed she thought of killing herself while penniless and suffering from depression as a single mother, according to a report in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper.

J.K. Rowling is now one of the world's richest women due to the success of her Harry Potter books.

At the time, Rowling had separated from her first husband and was living in a cramped apartment with her baby daughter.

She was able to afford the rent only after a friend paid the £600 ($1,189) that she needed, the newspaper quoted her as telling a student reporter at Edinburgh University.

"We're talking suicidal thoughts here, we're not talking 'I'm a little bit miserable,'" Rowling said.

"Mid-twenties life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted. The thing that made me go for help . . . was probably my daughter.

"She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, this isn't right, this can't be right, she cannot grow up with me in this state."

Rowling said she then sought professional help.

While the 42-year-old has spoken before of her battle with depression, it was the first time she had admitted that she contemplated suicide, the newspaper said.

It was then that Rowling began writing the first Harry Potter book, which was eventually published in 1996.

Since then, more than 325 million books -- translated into 64 languages -- have been sold around the world and Rowling is now one of the world's richest women.

The Brilliance of Philippe Starck

Anyone who knows me knows I LOVE the design sensibilities of Philippe Starck.  He has designed some of the most iconic and sophisticated furniture (my favorite: the Louis Ghost Chair, pictured below -- I have 2 in my Modern Venus Ltd. office) and interiors (think: the original Royalton Hotel, Miami's Delano Hotel, the new condo at 30 Broad Street across from the New York Stock Exchange, a picture of the gilded lobby is below).   The 58-year-old designer also has an amazing outlook on life.  Below are a few excerpts from a recent interview he gave to Fast Company magazine which I found extremely inspiring -- talk about living outside the box! 

Q:  You design so well for a sophisticated, urban audience.  Do you like cities?
A:  I'm not a city guy.  I am not a fashion victim.  I live mainly on my oyster farm in the southwest of France, on a small island with 12 houses and without cars, electricity, or water.  It's a very rough life, a very basic life.  The island is full of mud.  I also  have a house on a small island in Venice.  If you are with the person you love, a good book, good music, and in front of you is the sea, the forest, the Venice bay,or 200 million oysters, that's enough.

Q:  So what, to you, constitutes "good" [design]?
A:  The most beautiful building is any room where you are with the person you love.  That's all.  After that, if you can have a good pillow, good for you.  If you can have a good mattress, better for you.  If you can have a good sunbeam on your bed on a Sunday morning when you make love, fantastic!  You have everything. 

Q:  Do you have a formula for creativity?
A:  Every morning, take royal jelly and omega-3 oil, eat oysters, and have a good sexual life.  Don't care about anything, and never listen to anybody.  Be free.

Living Outside the Box

I love women who live outside the box . . .  those who will not confine themselves to what is considered traditionally acceptable, but who follow their hearts and who live lives of extraordinary achievement in traditional -- and untraditional ways!    I have created a new blog category about "LIving Outside the Box" and here is our first entry!

Wrestling Legend Fabulous Moolah Dies

The most famous and recognized women's wrestler, Fabulous Moolah, passed away in South Carolina on November 2, the WWE announced today. She was 84.

Born Lillian Ellison, the WWE says that she "was the longest reigning champion in the history of her chosen sport, or any sport for that matter." She even held the title as recently as 1999, becoming the oldest champion in the history of wrestling.

She was inducted into the WWF Hall of Fame back in 1995, the first female wrestler to receive the honor.