Public Service Frivolity

It's time for a Frivolity Break.

Trump just pulled aid to Ukraine?
Oooh, quick now, before the end of the world, let's...
look at OSCARS OUTFITS.
npr.org/sections/the-picture-show/2025/03/02/nx-s1-5307225/oscars-2025-red-carpet-outfits

The men's outfits were, as usual, mostly disappointing.
It's weird to me how men's clothing is absolutely stuck in a STUBBORN standard:
"Men wear trousers and a jacket."
Allowed variation: the lapels are a different color. Oh, boy!

No matter how much you shake that dog, it won't drop the bone.
And when a man does loosen it up, usually he's gay, or they're a nonbinary person.

Hooray for Billy Porter wearing a fabulous tuxedo-styled ball gown at the 2019 Oscars!
Could some other male-stylin' human represent too?

Here we go: hooray for Jeff Goldblum (below, left) for wriggling loose the straight jacket.
(If terms like "straight" even apply in his case? Seems irrelevant for a guy who's a fly.)
His corsage... Would it BITE you? I love it.

Like oregano, you only need a little Goldblum, and there was just the right amount of him as the Wizard of Oz in Wicked. He's one of the reasons I'll bother to see Part 2.

And Michelle Yeoh (above), also in Wicked, stepping out in 100 pounds of fabric like it's nothing... (I made that number up, but really! It looks like it weighs as much as she does.)

Also a WRIST WATCH.

Swoon.
You can't have too much of her elegant strength, like wire work--loved her ever since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), then Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).... Even a stint on Star Trek, etc.

Cynthia Erivo is the main draw of Wicked. Her character is green.
Was her green dress a reference to  the iconic gown Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) made of velvet curtains in Gone with the Wind? *
(GWTW came out in 1939--the same year as The Wizard of Oz. Also the year WWII broke out.)

Surely that is not the desired association?
Or, hm. It could be. Hollywood of the present talking to Hollywood passed––
"Look who's wearing it now, it isn't the white lady".

Fine, if so, but the dress made Erivo look like a sofa.

Erivo is so lithe, a green sheath would have looked much better.
(Like the to-die-for burgundy gown Rhett makes Scarlett wear to the birthday party Melanie throws Ashley Wilkes. There's a power dress! [article on the restoration of these dresses])

Or at least leave that stupid bow off.
Can you tell I hate that outfit?
_______________

I'd vote for more frivolity in men's clothes and more powerful elegance in women's.

And there it is:
Not only did Selena Gomez (below, left) look like a star, but she has grown up into her own woman. (Well, what do I know, but she carries the look well, anyway.) I was proud of her for it: I remember her primarily from the teenage drama of her relationship with Justin Beiber.

Above right is what I'm talking about:
Omar Apollo (a musician--I had no idea) wearing a fascinator.
For another Bieber connection--it is rumored that Apollo dated hip hop artist Frank Ocean--at any rate, they are musically entwined--and Ocean wrote for Bieber.

This is model Anok Yai, below. (Also, no idea.)
Look at that--her hair looks like her feather boa, her pale nails look like her satin dress... And that lip color...
Oh, my.
I usually do not care about this sort of thing, but this is Visual Artistry at work, and she knows how to carry it.

Slay.

Also, it looks like her team got the memo about the Oscars' Hotel-Lobby Color Palette and turned it to her advantage.

This all moved me to look up Justin Bieber.
I'd heard he and his wife Hailey had a baby boy, Jack Blue Bieber, in August, but I hadn't checked in.
And... Baby, baby, baby, oh!
What a chubby dumpling cutie!

That thing babies do with their toes makes me want to nibble their tiny digits!

I have a small fondness for Justin Bieber.
Marz was into him when I first met her (she was a teenager), or I would barely know who he is. I don't care much about his music--I don't care much about anyone's music--I just kinda relate to the soft lost bewilderment of him...
Marz says it's because we have similar astrological charts!
What a hoot.
I can't remember the details--some Pisces placements.
(I could ask Marz again.)

Boy's a freak, and his style is his own.
Social media comments on  Bieber's hat-over-hoodie ranged from “[I love] the way he’s so comfortable to wear what he wants like random clothes in public”
— to “The bar has never been lower.”

I feel like he could hang with Divine & John Waters.

Sometimes I wish I had more fun with clothes.
Mostly I've never much cared.
Lazy? Yeah, kinda. It's a lot of work.
Body shame? Some of that, when I was younger--and I definitely wanted to avoid being hit on! I never liked that attention.

But my father was the same about clothes--he wore them to rags, so I don't think it's primarily a sign of social-emotional dysfunction (like it's in vogue to assume everything is (but it isn't), it's more of a personality thing.
They have identified the chromosome that creates a preference for wearing sweaters with holes!

I do have some other preferences too.
Like Justin Bieber, I like pink.

I wish I had a photo of a pink-striped dress I loved when I was in first grade. Here's proof of preference, 24 years apart:
eating carrots with RMcG, below left, at the art college library in 2000, and, right, bowling with Sp'ed last spring--I guess I like the orange accents too, since I chose that bowling ball:

All for now. I am printing 100 prints today, to hang on the fence with Emster tomorrow, my birthday. (JB's was four days ago, March 1. He's thirty-one.)
I'll be that good age from the Beatles song: Sixty-Four!

You all take good care out there. It's slippery!

* Note on Scarlett's green velvet dress in GWTW:

"For the curtain dress, costume designer Walter Plunkett acquired moss-green and chartreuse velvet that he exposed to the sunlight to achieve a faded appearance that would be appropriate for the much-used drapes. 

He then created an ingenious design with the curtain tiebacks made into a belt and a matching velvet cap adorned with chicken feathers. Plunkett also toned down his excellent sewing skills for a dress that looks like it could have been thrown together in one evening."
––via

The enslaved woman known only as Mammy helps Scarlett sew the dress--and the actor who played Mammy, Hattie McDaniel, won best supporting actress but was segregated at the 1940 Oscars: there is interesting social history there, which Erivo's dress evokes, whether consciously or not.