Ellen Willis

"Music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated — as good rock ’n’..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:00:00 -0400

““Music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated — as good rock ’n’ roll did — challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was antiwoman, antisexual, in a sense antihuman, the form encouraged my struggle for liberation.””

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Feels like fate that I read this part of Out of the Vinyl Deeps the morning before listening to Yeezus for the first time.

Recommended Kanye prerequisite.

"It was only when I was working on a book investigating what it means to have, and to be, an only..."

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:27:25 -0400

“It was only when I was working on a book investigating what it means to have, and to be, an only child that I realized how many of the writers I revere had only children themselves. Alongside Sontag: Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Hardwick, Margaret Atwood, Ellen Willis, and more. Someone once asked Alice Walker if women (well, female artists) should have children. She replied, “They should have children—assuming this is of interest to them—but only one.” Why? “Because with one you can move,” she said. “With more than one you’re a sitting duck.””

- #singletonpride. (via theothernwa)

"One, rad feminists of the 1960s and 1970s did not all look alike. That cliched Norman Mailer-esque..."

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:56:08 -0400

“

One, rad feminists of the 1960s and 1970s did not all look alike. That cliched Norman Mailer-esque view overlooks the fact that it’s war-paint makeup and girdles that cause women to look like clones, not going au naturel. I get so sick of people saying rad fems were not beautiful — have they ever seen pictures of the young Ellen Willis, Shulamith Firestone, or Jill Johnston? How about Michele Wallace when she wrote “Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman?” Hot!! I’d burn my bra for any of them.

Two, if Dowd thinks that only non-feminists like “Desperate Housewives” clothing — i.e. sexy retro duds — then she’s never met Carol Queen. Or Nellie McKay. Or these ladies.

”

- Ann Powers, 2005, on this Maureen Dowd tome.

Former Facebook staffer Kate Losse’s piece on “Lean In”: For someone with fewer family...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:38:00 -0400

Former Facebook staffer Kate Losse’s piece on “Lean In”:

For someone with fewer family demands than Sandberg, freedom is depicted not as a pleasure but a problem to be resolved by getting a family. The single woman goes out to a bar goes not to have fun or be with friends (the main reason most women I know attend a bar), but to find a husband with whom to procreate. “My coworkers should understand that I need to go to a party tonight…because going to a party is the only way I might meet someone and start a family!” Astonishingly for a book published in 2013, there are no self-identified lesbians, gay men, or even intentionally unmarried or child-free people in Lean In’s vision of the workplace. It’s not clear why Sandberg thinks that everyone should be in the business of getting a family, since the book argues that family gets in the way of work. But it seems that Sandberg can only imagine the dreaded “leaning back” as a product of family demands. Who would take a vacation voluntarily?

Has definite Ellen Willis-like pleasure politics vibes.

"Besides, most people made endless assumptions about married couples and treated them accordingly; it..."

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:27:00 -0400

“Besides, most people made endless assumptions about married couples and treated them accordingly; it wasn’t so easy to get married and pretend you weren’t.”

- My mother, summing up my feelings about matrimony 5 years before I was born. (From “The Family: Love It Or Leave It,” included in the forthcoming collection!)

Cute bangs, Mama! (18-year-old Ellen Willis on the College Quiz...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 17:21:00 -0400

Cute bangs, Mama! (18-year-old Ellen Willis on the College Quiz Bowl show, 1959)

slaughterhouse90210: “The emphasis on sex that currently...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 18:43:20 -0400

slaughterhouse90210:

“The emphasis on sex that currently permeates our public life attest not to our sexual freedom but to our continuing sexual frustration. People who are not hungry are not obsessed with food.”

—Ellen Willis, No More Nice Girls

*Quote recommended by Emily of Emily Books, a fantastic new indi(e) bookstore.

"It’s less a matter of “the right to control our bodies” than the freedom to accept and relish our..."

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:42:09 -0500

“It’s less a matter of “the right to control our bodies” than the freedom to accept and relish our bodies, to explore our capacity for pleasure.”

- Ellen Willis on women’s sexual freedom

"Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are..."

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:39:54 -0500

“Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by our rulers.”

- Ellen Willis

lolajambon: Ellen Willis is such a badass. I am so excited that...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:39:12 -0500

lolajambon:

Ellen Willis is such a badass. I am so excited that I get to write about her.

Though everyone knows I’m a sucker for Paul Simon myself, she’s so good here I almost want to nod and agree.

“His alienation, like the word itself, is an old-fashioned, sentimental, West-Side-liberal bore.”

Nailed it. (Just wait for Graceland, Ellen; you’ll like that better.)

lolajambon: Ellen Willis, 1964

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:38:48 -0500

lolajambon:

Ellen Willis, 1964

"For a year I cut myself off from men altogether. Perhaps I had to plunge so deeply into the negative..."

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:11:06 -0500

“For a year I cut myself off from men altogether. Perhaps I had to plunge so deeply into the negative side of my ambivalence in order to say good-bye to it, or try to. When I began to be with someone again it was a bit like moving to a strange country. In the intervening years aloneness had become my norm, my taken-for-granted context. And yet those same years had changed my sense of myself, of men, of the ground rules for relationships, making it impossible to simply pick up where I left off.”

- Ellen Willis, “Escape from New York” (via rightnow-forever)
#singleladies

irinc: Excerpt from the Talk of the Town by Ellen Willis...

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 11:26:00 -0500

irinc:

Excerpt from the Talk of the Town by Ellen Willis about the feminist disruption of the all-male (save one nun) New York abortion law hearings. Published in the New Yorker, February 22, 1969 and, Nona tells me, about to be republished in the forthcoming anthology!

OMG Sandra Fluke flashbacks.

—notes from Ellen Willis’ Bob Dylan piece, which took her...

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:31:00 -0500

—notes from Ellen Willis’ Bob Dylan piece, which took her seven months to write

Mom would have been an ultranervous blogger.

Birthday cake.

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:12:00 -0500

It’s my mom Ellen Willis’ birthday today. She would have been 71. Every year, I figure the best way of honoring her is to read my favorite pieces she’s written—things that push me to consider every moment of my life, and to fit together cultural forces like puzzle pieces. Here’s what I’m reading this year:

Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life, which Susie Bright once read on her podcast

Women and the Myth of Consumerism, just in time for the holidays

Our Mobsters, Ourselves, a perfect companion to my current “Sopranos” marathon.

Escape from New York, in No More Nice Girls (which, along with Beginning to See the Light, is now back in print. Emily Books also made it an ebook if you’re into that instead.)

Coming Down Again, in No More Nice Girls

Intellectual Work in the Culture of Austerity, in Don’t Think, Smile!—an essay that has never been more relevant to my life

musichistorian: Because Ellen Willis is one of my primary...

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:20:04 -0500

musichistorian:

Because Ellen Willis is one of my primary subjects, I was at Harvard the week I got the call from the librarians saying that her archives had finally opened. Spending time immersed in her life is a strange and powerful experience. I got to know her in a really sincere but completely imaginary way, making an intellectual and emotional connection to her as I read each document in her boxes and boxes of personal writings. It’s a feeling that’s hard to capture, the intense and immersive relationships that historians have with our subjects. It’s really like you’re conversing with them sometimes as you read and respond to their ideas and recreate their lives using their own memories.

Here are some clips of Ellen’s notes for her “Dylan” article. Notice that she had to get the lyrics for herself by listening over and over to the songs (which she preferred to do while lying on the floor with a speaker on either side of her head). Sometimes, she gets them wrong; usually not. Some of her ideas and scribbles are here, too. They’re the best part.

Amazing.

"Dylan is now free to work on his own terms. It would be foolish to predict what he will do next. But..."

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:17:31 -0500

“Dylan is now free to work on his own terms. It would be foolish to predict what he will do next. But I hope he will remain a mediator, using the language of pop to transcend it. If the gap between past and present continues to widen, such mediation may be crucial. In a communication crisis, the true prophets are the translators.”

- Ellen Willis, “Before the Flood” (from Cheetah, 1967)

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, the in-process...

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 11:40:14 -0500

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, the in-process documentary about the birth of the women’s movement that features Ellen Willis (and me!), has just launched a Kickstarter. Give them $$$$ or a tweet or a reblog!

"A fair and generous woman is (at best) respected, but seldom loved."

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 10:31:49 -0400

“A fair and generous woman is (at best) respected, but seldom loved.”

- the realest of talk from Redstockings co-conspirator Shulamith Firestone. (via theothernwa)

“When feminism first erupted, it was for me an extremely...

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 09:53:00 -0400

“When feminism first erupted, it was for me an extremely erotic moment, ‘cause I think, for the first time, I saw the possibility of what I was really being beautiful.”

—Ellen Willis

Filmmakers Mary Dore and Nancy Kennedy are making a documentary about early radical feminists, called She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry—and both my mom and I are in it.