NYTimes: The Greatest Mystery: Making a Best Seller

The story mentions a book called ‘Skinny Bitch‘ by Kim Barnouin who was formerly a model and Rory Freedman, a former modeling agent.

“The voice is funny, tough love, no nonsense,” the authors’ agent, Talia Rosenblatt Cohen, said. But the authors were largely unknown and advocate a vegan lifestyle. “Everyone kept saying, ‘No platform!’ and ‘Vegan!’ ” Ms. Rosenblatt Cohen said.
-Shira Boss in the NYTimes

Amazon’s Online Reader feature for the book allows me to show this excerpt. I think the book is fabulous. It’s billed as “A no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous!” Now I’m not a girl and I don’t really feel I need to loose weight (not that that’s the main aim of the book anyway), but I think a book like this is great because it pokes through many of the food myths that people are expected to believe, demonstrates how many of the modern amenities that we live with may not be very good for us at all, and sets about giving examples of how to eat right to stay healthy:

“Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my morning coffee.” Uhm… pathetic! Coffee is for pussies. Think about how widely accepted it has become that people need coffee to wake up. You should not need anything to wake up. If you can’t wake up without it, it’s because you are either addicted to caffeine, sleep deprived, or a generally unhealthy slob. It may seem like the end of the world to give up your daily dose, especially if you rely on Starbucks as a good place to meet men. But it’s not heroin, girls, and you’ll learn to live without it. Caffeine can cause headaches, digestive problems, irritation of the stomach and bladder, peptic ulcers, diarrhea, constipation, fatigue, anxiety, and depression. It affects every organ system, from the nervous system to the skin.
But don’t go grabbing for the decaf. Coffee, whether regular or decaf is highly acidic. Acidic foods cause your body to produce fat cells, in order to keep the acid away from your organs. (Please, do not link this acid issue with citrus and other fruits. We discuss this in depth later.) So coffee equals fat cells. P.S. It also makes your breath smell like ass. …If you enjoy the occasinoal cup of coffee, fine. But if you need it, give it up.

NYTimes: The Greatest Mystery: Making a Best Seller

Skinny Bitch (Paperback) from Amazon.com

The t-shirts tastefully, in tiny writing, have slogans like ‘Are You 429′, ‘429 You Wish’, ‘429 Boy’, and ‘Absolutely 429′. If you’re unsure whether you’re 429 or not, you can buy the ‘premium soft cotton’ t-shirts without any label.

They don’t talk about the gay thing anymore. Now, under the ‘We Are 429′ section of their website they state, in ‘understated’ lowercase:

we like to challenge the idea of ‘labels’. so, when asked what 429 means, we can only give one answer: 429 is being confident in your own skin…
work in them, play in them, date in them … do whatever you want in them (we don’t judge).

I hate this lack of any attitude. It makes me want to despise their clothes, which isn’t as tough as it was before because they now look pretty ordinary. There’s nothing special about them. Of course they’re nice ‘premium’ shirts and such, but while last year their clothes were something remarkable, now they’re nothing more than what you could pick up at Zara with half of the price and none of the gay-shame. But they haven’t developed enough shame to stop putting homoerotic photos of muscly boys, as below, in their catalogue. Cute boys are apparently still allowed: it’s honesty and frankness that aren’t permitted. Theirs new style is like Abercrombie and Fitch but while A&F doesn’t really pretend to be anything but pretty and butch, 429 actively tries to deny its gay roots. Gross.

429 Life

via The Superficial

“I’m not going to give up school because Mike is two years older than me”

The pair talked to The Advocate magazine about their music and their style. With their raunchy and risque photos and ambigous lyrics to their most popular songs, the pair are an advert for new ‘modern’ sexual freedom. When the liberation movement of the 60s was all about empowering people to break free of society’s pre-determined roles for their lives, the current revolution appears to be pushing for the ability to attract, outrage and be whoever they want to be.

“There’s no such thing as ‘out’ anymore,” Mike interjects. “It’s like, everybody’s out. People are always trying to attribute behaviors to labels, and a lot of these behaviors are being stripped from genders. Even though you look like a man, you don’t have to act ‘like a man.’

Their music can be found at online distributors like iTunes, but can also be listened to via their MySpace profile.

Dangerous Muse: Official Website
MySpace: Dangerous Muse
The Advocate: Rhythm and muse sample
Looksmart: Rhythm and Muse full article

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