September 1, 2009

A Corset Manifesto

My essay A Corset Manifesto is now available in the recently-released and TOTALLY AMAZING Steampunk Magazine #6, which is available for free download on the publications' website. Also included are other fabulous authors too numerous to list, though I'll name Margaret Killjoy, John Reppion, and Dylan Fox as awesome people you will find included. After I get done internet-ing, I plan to curl up in my dorm and spend the night reading it cover to cover.

This is only partially to avoid the pro-life protestors currently praying outside my dorm, in protest of the Health Care Town Hall going on here on campus this evening. "Abortion is the worse poverty!" Urg. I'm not even going to go there.

An excerpt from my piece:


Were you to seek an international measure of a woman's value, you would need look no further than her appearance. Across history, women have been treated as china dolls in glass cases, judged only for their beauty, and no era is more guilty of this than the one we build upon: the smog-choked alleys of Victoria's Empire that are our inspirations hid women trapped in parlors and kitchens, bound in gilded cages of silk and steel.

The costumes we create from ruffles and tea-stained lace summon images of the garment-restraints worn by the women we claim as our inspiration. Their identities were bound in laces criss-crossing up their spines; their creativity and passions were labeled hysteria and locked away, leaving them with musty parlors and parasols to keep their delicate skin from the sun should they, God forbid, find the need to step outside. Their young daughters were dressed like dolls in heavy skirts, and quickly learned that the price of a stain or tear outweighed any wish to climb a tree.


But wait, I like pretty ruffled things AND climbing trees! Whatever shall I do? Go read the whole thing to find out!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Whoo! Spiffy! You go girl! Glad to see you are beginning to taste the success that comes by being published. I am still working on my sub for the next issue.
-Licorice Lain