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Category / Conversation Starters

Hollywood’s Doom Book and other Tales of Blacklisting in American Cinema

Before we even knew it as “Hollywood”, the American film industry was a very different place, producing a surreal amount of extraordinarily liberal and raw movies that would give today’s rated-R movies a run for their money; featuring nudity, strong female characters, sex, drugs, violence, abortion and even homosexuality. But everything changed in the year…

The Secret Lives of Fashion Mannequins

For a brief moment in the 1930s, one of the most famous celebrities of the day was a 100-pound mannequin named Cynthia. She had box seats at the Metropolitan Opera, received freebies from Tiffany and Cartier, graced the cover of Life magazine and was even invited to the wedding of Edward V111 and Wallis Simpson.…

Japanese Mermaids: Ancient Pearl Hunters of the Sea

These women are the last of their kind. In their floral wetsuits, they fill their lungs with air and dive for long periods of time deep into the Pacific ocean, with nothing more than a mask and flippers. They are known as Ama and make a living hunting for abalone, a sea snail that produces pearls.…

A Pilgrimage to the Ancient Penis Monastery

Deep in the Himalayas you’ll find Bhutan, an ancient kingdom with an equally ancient Buddhist monastery that is bound to make you blush. It’s called Chimi Lhakhang, and it’s a temple dedicated to fertility and the “sacred phallus.” Emphasis on the phallus. A carved “welcome” sign invites Western visitors to explore the monastery and its surrounding village,…

The Girl behind the Wallpaper

You definitely know her face, but do you know her story, her name, or that she even did actually exist? Her repeated face is the muse behind one of the most recognisable prints in interior design; Piero Fornasetti’s eccentric plate series ‘Tema e Variazioni’, which over the years became a decorator’s go-to wallpaper or accessory for achieving a quirky and…

How Sex Scenes in Film/ TV really Work

Ah, sex scenes. Those precious few minutes of a film (or HBO series) when parents decide to walk into the room. 9½ Weeks (1986), Shame (2012) and let’s not leave out Game of Thrones– some pretty racy and realistic sex scenes have made their way onto our screens over the years and have often prompted the question– are…

How One Frenchman Became the World’s Most Beloved Lesbian Poet

We thought we’d heard it all when it came to imposters. Clearly, we hadn’t met Pierre Louÿs. The French writer had Europe’s literary scene eating out of the palm of his hand, and was decorated as a Chevalier and Officier de la Légion d’honneur in his lifetime, two of his country’s highest honours, that would never have been awarded…

The Groundbreaking Kitsch Cowboy Art of George Quaintance

You just can’t outshine George Quaintance. Literally. Take one look at the glistening bodybuilders from his kitsch, homoerotic oeuvre, and you’d think you were looking some 1986 romance novels, but nope. These babies date back to the 1940s-50s, to an era before the queer advocacy following the AIDS crisis, and before the sexual revolution. And…

Lost Fetish Files of Mid-Century S&M

Note: this article includes some sexually explicit and graphic content. There’s something especially spicy about mid-century, femme-dominant S&M — and that’s saying something, considering Sadomasochism has been shaking things up in the bedroom since (roughly) 1785, when the French philosopher Le Marquis de Sade first published his erotic fantasy novel, Les 120 Journées de Sodome (The…

The First Monokini: Trying to make the Topless Swimsuit happen in 1964

When we think of the monokini today, we picture those fiddly one-piece swimsuits that give you awkward tan lines, popularised by the Kardashian and Hilton sisters. But the first monokini was in fact originally a topless swimsuit that exposed the female breasts, conceived in 1964 by avant-garde designer Rudi Gernreich, who predicted (rather accurately) that…

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