The Awl http://www.theawl.com/ Be Less Stupid Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:00:04 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.2 40.727093-73.978644 A Portrait Of Boxing's First World Championship http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAwl/~3/1ObUqYVtKdM/auto-draft-15 http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/auto-draft-15#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:00:04 +0000 Alexis Coe http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/auto-draft-15 Hello, would you like to buy something weird? Hammer Time is our guide to things that are for sale at auction: fantastic, consequential and freakishly grotesque archival treasures that appear in public for just a brief moment, most likely never to be seen again.

"Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking against his shoulderblade. In Clohissey’s window a faded 1860 print of Heenan boxing Sayers held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood round the roped prizering. The heavyweights in tight loincloths proprosed gently each other his bulbous fists. And they are throbbing: heroes’ hearts." —James Joyce, Ulysses, Episode 10, The Wandering Rocks

Tom Sayers’ right arm had been broken since the sixth round, but his bare-knuckled left fist still rendered John Camel Heenan’s face unrecognizable. During Round 29, Sayers’ only working fist finally managed to make contact with Heenan’s only working eye. But even with both eyes swollen shut, Heenan managed to end Round 37 with Sayers’ neck firmly placed between his hands and the rope. Exhausted, he leaned his 195-pound frame into his opponent, whose face turned purple under the pressure.

And that was before the rope was cut and the crowd rushed the ring. They still had five more rounds to go.

It had all begun months earlier. Bare-knuckle prize-fighting was illegal, but nearly every newspaper in the world had breathlessly speculated about the world’s first Heavyweight Championship. On April 17, 1860, thousands of men knew to show up at the London Bridge Station by 4 a.m. and purchase three-guinea tickets. The destination was marked "To Nowhere," and the trains were simply called "Southbound Specials."

Today in London, Bonhams auctioned off a color lithograph showing around 3,000 men— rumored to include Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and the Prince of Wales—crowded behind the Ship Inn in Farnborough.

Organizers had strategically picked a spot along the Surrey-Hampshire border. If the police came, even the dukes, lords, earls, ministers, journalists, merchants and lawyers knew to run out of their jurisdiction. The butchers, barkeepers, fishmongers and day laborers knew, too, but hoped it wouldn’t come to that, and if it did, many intended to employ the weighted sticks and knives they had brought along.

At half past seven, Sayers stripped down to his breeches. At just 5 feet 8 inches, the 33-year-old illiterate bricklayer known as "Brighton Titch" had won a series of titles, but his twenty-five-year-old American opponent had a good four inches and forty pounds on him. The English reporter Henry Mills observed the size difference, but concluded Sayers’ legs "were cast in a decidedly stronger mold than that of his opponent."

Heenan had two nicknames back in San Francisco, where he often wielded a 32-pound sledge in foundries and fought for cash on the weekends. He maintained order in the dockyards sweatshops, where he was known as "Benecia Boy," but around election time, local politicians simply called him "enforcer."

"Time!" yelled the referee, and the boisterous crowd hushed, watching Heenan and Sayers bob and weave, holding and punching, aiming at first for the kidneys and other soft targets.

No regulation meant no rules. Rounds weren’t scored or demarcated by intervals; they ended when a man hit the floor.

Sayers drew blood first, but Heenan countered in the second round and by the fifth, odds were five-to-one on the American. During the twenty-minute long eighth round, men were climbing on each other’s shoulders and frantically placing bets, the heavy stakes quickly rising. Journalists’ accounts were somewhat influenced by national ties, but at this point, they all began to recoil at the "hideous and loathsome" injuries incurred by both boxers. At one point, Sayers’ knuckles caused such a great gash in Heenan’s right cheek that pink flesh hung limply off his face. When they retreated to their corners, their wounds were inadequately treated with a blood-soaked sponge.

"It’s an eye for an arm now," Sayers reportedly said, but both boxers continued to spill copious amounts of blood on the grass for hours to come.

According to the London Times, a few policemen attempted to force their way into the ring, but the crowd "kept them back by rushing on the ropes, shouting and cheering the combatants to the utmost."

By 9:30, the exhausted pugilists were flailing about, wildly throwing punches. More police arrived, batons in hand, and the focus shifted to the melee outside the ring.

And that’s when Heenan began to crush his opponent’s neck against the rope. The Times reported Sayers "would have been strangled on the spot had both umpires not called simultaneously to cut the ropes." Still, the mob wanted the fight to continue, so they formed a protective circle around the fighters, leaving them just six feet on which to fight five more rounds.

The police finally gained entry two hours and twenty-seven minutes after the fight started, and the fighters fled. After 42 rounds, "Heenan was unrecognizable as a human being" and ran blindly into the field, while Sayers was seen "walking firmly and coolly away, with both his eyes open and clear." Locals argued that Sayers had won, but in the end, both men were awarded silver championship belts and 400 British Pounds Sterling. They spent the next few months performing theatrical reenactments of their epic fight around England.

The backlash against the gruesome fight was substantial. The Saturday Evening Post wrote: "Compared with the bull-fighting of Spain and the cock fighting in Cuba, it is not only more barbarous, but dashed with a peculiarly Roglish trait of vulgarity." By 1865, Parliament accepted the "Dozen Rules," which included three-minute rounds and "no cross-buttock throwing whatever."

Sayers never fought again. His supporters, including members of the House of Commons, raised £3,000 for his retirement, which he mostly spent on the drink. When he died at just 39, 30,000 people attended his Highgate funeral.

As for Heenan, he fought another world championship against Tom King, in 1863, but he lost in 24 rounds. By the time he died of a lung hemorrhage in Wyoming at the age of 38, he was destitute.

At Bonhams today, the lithograph of the first Heavyweight Championship, by W.L. Walton, went for £687, as part of the Sports Memorabilia and Golfing Heritage Auction. Who was the lucky buyer, we wanted to know. "No we do not release buyers confidential details by law," was the full verbatim response from a Bonhams representative.





Alexis Coe is now a writer living in San Francisco, but not long ago, she was a research curator at the New York Public Library. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Slate, The Millions, The Hairpin, and other publications. Alexis holds an MA in history. Follow her. Image: detail from W.L. Walton's lithograph.

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]]> Hello, would you like to buy something weird? Hammer Time is our guide to things that are for sale at auction: fantastic, consequential and freakishly grotesque archival treasures that appear in public for just a brief moment, most likely never to be seen again.

"Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking against his shoulderblade. In Clohissey’s window a faded 1860 print of Heenan boxing Sayers held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood round the roped prizering. The heavyweights in tight loincloths proprosed gently each other his bulbous fists. And they are throbbing: heroes’ hearts." —James Joyce, Ulysses, Episode 10, The Wandering Rocks

Tom Sayers’ right arm had been broken since the sixth round, but his bare-knuckled left fist still rendered John Camel Heenan’s face unrecognizable. During Round 29, Sayers’ only working fist finally managed to make contact with Heenan’s only working eye. But even with both eyes swollen shut, Heenan managed to end Round 37 with Sayers’ neck firmly placed between his hands and the rope. Exhausted, he leaned his 195-pound frame into his opponent, whose face turned purple under the pressure.

And that was before the rope was cut and the crowd rushed the ring. They still had five more rounds to go.

It had all begun months earlier. Bare-knuckle prize-fighting was illegal, but nearly every newspaper in the world had breathlessly speculated about the world’s first Heavyweight Championship. On April 17, 1860, thousands of men knew to show up at the London Bridge Station by 4 a.m. and purchase three-guinea tickets. The destination was marked "To Nowhere," and the trains were simply called "Southbound Specials."

Today in London, Bonhams auctioned off a color lithograph showing around 3,000 men— rumored to include Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and the Prince of Wales—crowded behind the Ship Inn in Farnborough.

Organizers had strategically picked a spot along the Surrey-Hampshire border. If the police came, even the dukes, lords, earls, ministers, journalists, merchants and lawyers knew to run out of their jurisdiction. The butchers, barkeepers, fishmongers and day laborers knew, too, but hoped it wouldn’t come to that, and if it did, many intended to employ the weighted sticks and knives they had brought along.

At half past seven, Sayers stripped down to his breeches. At just 5 feet 8 inches, the 33-year-old illiterate bricklayer known as "Brighton Titch" had won a series of titles, but his twenty-five-year-old American opponent had a good four inches and forty pounds on him. The English reporter Henry Mills observed the size difference, but concluded Sayers’ legs "were cast in a decidedly stronger mold than that of his opponent."

Heenan had two nicknames back in San Francisco, where he often wielded a 32-pound sledge in foundries and fought for cash on the weekends. He maintained order in the dockyards sweatshops, where he was known as "Benecia Boy," but around election time, local politicians simply called him "enforcer."

"Time!" yelled the referee, and the boisterous crowd hushed, watching Heenan and Sayers bob and weave, holding and punching, aiming at first for the kidneys and other soft targets.

No regulation meant no rules. Rounds weren’t scored or demarcated by intervals; they ended when a man hit the floor.

Sayers drew blood first, but Heenan countered in the second round and by the fifth, odds were five-to-one on the American. During the twenty-minute long eighth round, men were climbing on each other’s shoulders and frantically placing bets, the heavy stakes quickly rising. Journalists’ accounts were somewhat influenced by national ties, but at this point, they all began to recoil at the "hideous and loathsome" injuries incurred by both boxers. At one point, Sayers’ knuckles caused such a great gash in Heenan’s right cheek that pink flesh hung limply off his face. When they retreated to their corners, their wounds were inadequately treated with a blood-soaked sponge.

"It’s an eye for an arm now," Sayers reportedly said, but both boxers continued to spill copious amounts of blood on the grass for hours to come.

According to the London Times, a few policemen attempted to force their way into the ring, but the crowd "kept them back by rushing on the ropes, shouting and cheering the combatants to the utmost."

By 9:30, the exhausted pugilists were flailing about, wildly throwing punches. More police arrived, batons in hand, and the focus shifted to the melee outside the ring.

And that’s when Heenan began to crush his opponent’s neck against the rope. The Times reported Sayers "would have been strangled on the spot had both umpires not called simultaneously to cut the ropes." Still, the mob wanted the fight to continue, so they formed a protective circle around the fighters, leaving them just six feet on which to fight five more rounds.

The police finally gained entry two hours and twenty-seven minutes after the fight started, and the fighters fled. After 42 rounds, "Heenan was unrecognizable as a human being" and ran blindly into the field, while Sayers was seen "walking firmly and coolly away, with both his eyes open and clear." Locals argued that Sayers had won, but in the end, both men were awarded silver championship belts and 400 British Pounds Sterling. They spent the next few months performing theatrical reenactments of their epic fight around England.

The backlash against the gruesome fight was substantial. The Saturday Evening Post wrote: "Compared with the bull-fighting of Spain and the cock fighting in Cuba, it is not only more barbarous, but dashed with a peculiarly Roglish trait of vulgarity." By 1865, Parliament accepted the "Dozen Rules," which included three-minute rounds and "no cross-buttock throwing whatever."

Sayers never fought again. His supporters, including members of the House of Commons, raised £3,000 for his retirement, which he mostly spent on the drink. When he died at just 39, 30,000 people attended his Highgate funeral.

As for Heenan, he fought another world championship against Tom King, in 1863, but he lost in 24 rounds. By the time he died of a lung hemorrhage in Wyoming at the age of 38, he was destitute.

At Bonhams today, the lithograph of the first Heavyweight Championship, by W.L. Walton, went for £687, as part of the Sports Memorabilia and Golfing Heritage Auction. Who was the lucky buyer, we wanted to know. "No we do not release buyers confidential details by law," was the full verbatim response from a Bonhams representative.





Alexis Coe is now a writer living in San Francisco, but not long ago, she was a research curator at the New York Public Library. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Slate, The Millions, The Hairpin, and other publications. Alexis holds an MA in history. Follow her. Image: detail from W.L. Walton's lithograph.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/auto-draft-15/feed 1 http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/auto-draft-15 New York City, June 18, 2013 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAwl/~3/3ZbmSs4tsF8/new-york-city-june-18-2013 http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/new-york-city-june-18-2013#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:30:42 +0000 Tom Scocca http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/new-york-city-june-18-2013 ★★★ The shorts the kindergartener wanted were in the laundry, as were several other acceptable fallback shorts options. Lots of pairs of shorts were in the laundry. The morning warmth was nothing much till you stood still at a crosswalk and let the sun catch up with you. A woman was using a cheap black umbrella as a parasol. By late midday, it seemed as if umbrellas would need to be umbrellas. A stroll out for a sandwich, in the oncoming dimness and dampness, seemed doomed. But the rain held off, even as the sky's burden grew heavier and darker. Every trip outside felt like a narrow escape, a bit of unearned luck. The radar showed angry colored strokes all up the mid-Atlantic, with an arbitrary gap over New York, where the brush had lifted on a whim. The gap finally closed around leaving time, and the clouds yielded a gentle but unignorable rain. Or almost unignorable—the guy ahead in line at the bodega wanted to talk about umbrella price and quality, but in the end he bought only some tallboys ringed together, some snack chips, and a pack of cigarettes. Wet clothes steamed on the subway platform, and hair made ringlets. The clouds gave way to the sunset—first luminous rents in the western sky, then the full disc asserting itself, and finally an eerie upward wash of pink (orange, the kindergartner argued, watching it) while the river went orange and blue. Orange, blue, and pink, the kindergartener said.

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]]> ★★★ The shorts the kindergartener wanted were in the laundry, as were several other acceptable fallback shorts options. Lots of pairs of shorts were in the laundry. The morning warmth was nothing much till you stood still at a crosswalk and let the sun catch up with you. A woman was using a cheap black umbrella as a parasol. By late midday, it seemed as if umbrellas would need to be umbrellas. A stroll out for a sandwich, in the oncoming dimness and dampness, seemed doomed. But the rain held off, even as the sky's burden grew heavier and darker. Every trip outside felt like a narrow escape, a bit of unearned luck. The radar showed angry colored strokes all up the mid-Atlantic, with an arbitrary gap over New York, where the brush had lifted on a whim. The gap finally closed around leaving time, and the clouds yielded a gentle but unignorable rain. Or almost unignorable—the guy ahead in line at the bodega wanted to talk about umbrella price and quality, but in the end he bought only some tallboys ringed together, some snack chips, and a pack of cigarettes. Wet clothes steamed on the subway platform, and hair made ringlets. The clouds gave way to the sunset—first luminous rents in the western sky, then the full disc asserting itself, and finally an eerie upward wash of pink (orange, the kindergartner argued, watching it) while the river went orange and blue. Orange, blue, and pink, the kindergartener said.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/new-york-city-june-18-2013/feed 0 http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/new-york-city-june-18-2013 Find Old School Video Games for Cheap Online http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAwl/~3/eb1nLNbWisI/find-old-school-video-games-for-cheap-online http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/find-old-school-video-games-for-cheap-online#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:20:11 +0000 Awl Sponsors http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/find-old-school-video-games-for-cheap-online "If you grew up in the late 80s and early 90s you probably spent a fair amount of time (if your parents or your friend’s parents were cool) playing video games on Nintendo entertainment systems, at video arcades, and on your school’s primitive computers. Current game systems are super elaborate and way expensive, and sometimes you just want to see your old pal Mario. If you feel like playing some old school video games, all you need is your HP Envy Touchscreen Ultrabook™ and the following…"

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]]> "If you grew up in the late 80s and early 90s you probably spent a fair amount of time (if your parents or your friend’s parents were cool) playing video games on Nintendo entertainment systems, at video arcades, and on your school’s primitive computers. Current game systems are super elaborate and way expensive, and sometimes you just want to see your old pal Mario. If you feel like playing some old school video games, all you need is your HP Envy Touchscreen Ultrabook™ and the following…"

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/find-old-school-video-games-for-cheap-online/feed 0 http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/find-old-school-video-games-for-cheap-online Talking to Jenny Slate http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAwl/~3/0BtRl7g5XN4/talking-to-jenny-slate http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/talking-to-jenny-slate#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:00:00 +0000 The Awl http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/talking-to-jenny-slate While most professional comedians keep busy by involving themselves in many different projects, it seems like Jenny Slate has a lot going on even compared to her most diligent peers. In addition to recurring roles on Parks and Recreation, House of Lies, and Kroll Show, Slate is writing the new Looney Tunes movie for Warner Brothers and, as she reveals in the following interview, co-writing an independent movie based on her hit viral video, "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On." On top of all of that, she has a new web series, Catherine, which debuted on the YouTube comedy channel JASH last month. Slate stars in Catherine as the title character and also co-writes the series with her husband, Dean Fleischer-Camp, who directs. Three new episodes of Catherine are set to debut today, and I had the chance to talk to Slate about the series, why she's turning Marcel the Shell into a movie, and the sitcom pilot she starred in with Kristen Schaal and June Diane Raphael that ABC bafflingly didn't pick up.

Read the rest at Splitsider.

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]]> While most professional comedians keep busy by involving themselves in many different projects, it seems like Jenny Slate has a lot going on even compared to her most diligent peers. In addition to recurring roles on Parks and Recreation, House of Lies, and Kroll Show, Slate is writing the new Looney Tunes movie for Warner Brothers and, as she reveals in the following interview, co-writing an independent movie based on her hit viral video, "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On." On top of all of that, she has a new web series, Catherine, which debuted on the YouTube comedy channel JASH last month. Slate stars in Catherine as the title character and also co-writes the series with her husband, Dean Fleischer-Camp, who directs. Three new episodes of Catherine are set to debut today, and I had the chance to talk to Slate about the series, why she's turning Marcel the Shell into a movie, and the sitcom pilot she starred in with Kristen Schaal and June Diane Raphael that ABC bafflingly didn't pick up.

Read the rest at Splitsider.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/talking-to-jenny-slate/feed 0 http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/talking-to-jenny-slate Marriage Troubled http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAwl/~3/IGza6UhZ2dc/marriage-troubled http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/marriage-troubled#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:50:15 +0000 Alex Balk http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/marriage-troubled "Simon Parkes, a Labour politician for Whitby, has claimed to have fathered a child with an alien female he calls the Cat Queen and that his extraterrestrial affair is ruining his marriage."

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]]> "Simon Parkes, a Labour politician for Whitby, has claimed to have fathered a child with an alien female he calls the Cat Queen and that his extraterrestrial affair is ruining his marriage."

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/marriage-troubled/feed 2 http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/marriage-troubled Arctic Monkeys, "Do I Wanna Know?" http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAwl/~3/bo765nXUD9c/arctic-monkeys-do-i-wanna-know http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/arctic-monkeys-do-i-wanna-know#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:20:27 +0000 Alex Balk http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/arctic-monkeys-do-i-wanna-know
You wait around a while for a new Arctic Monkeys song and then two of them come along. It's a funny old world. [Via]

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You wait around a while for a new Arctic Monkeys song and then two of them come along. It's a funny old world. [Via]

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/arctic-monkeys-do-i-wanna-know/feed 0 http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/arctic-monkeys-do-i-wanna-know Coffee Articulate http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAwl/~3/7zVxHtnsNWg/coffee-articulate http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/coffee-articulate#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:10:17 +0000 Alex Balk http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/coffee-articulate "Hi-Collar is currently serving coffee roasted by Porto Rico Importing Co., one of the oldest of old-guard New York coffee companies. I would consider this to be archetypically dark-roasted 2nd wave coffee, which is to say, it’s something of an outlier for the kinds of cafes we typically write about on Sprudge, and certainly not what I usually choose to drink. But the siphon I ordered at Hi-Collar was excellently prepared; called the Tokyo Blend (Porto Rico is somewhat blend-mad), my coffee was initially dominated by carbolic roast flavors, before opening up into a pronounced hard caramel and nutty sweetness, which mellowed into a nice toffee with the gentle addition of milk. This was one of the most articulate, well-balanced darkly roasted cups of coffee I’ve ever had, the kind that would make your favorite old-school coffee drinker immoderately happy." [Via]

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]]> "Hi-Collar is currently serving coffee roasted by Porto Rico Importing Co., one of the oldest of old-guard New York coffee companies. I would consider this to be archetypically dark-roasted 2nd wave coffee, which is to say, it’s something of an outlier for the kinds of cafes we typically write about on Sprudge, and certainly not what I usually choose to drink. But the siphon I ordered at Hi-Collar was excellently prepared; called the Tokyo Blend (Porto Rico is somewhat blend-mad), my coffee was initially dominated by carbolic roast flavors, before opening up into a pronounced hard caramel and nutty sweetness, which mellowed into a nice toffee with the gentle addition of milk. This was one of the most articulate, well-balanced darkly roasted cups of coffee I’ve ever had, the kind that would make your favorite old-school coffee drinker immoderately happy." [Via]

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/coffee-articulate/feed 4 http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/coffee-articulate No One Cares About Bloomberg Redux Lady's Memoir http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAwl/~3/z45We5aB2Jc/no-one-cares-about-bloomberg-redux-ladys-memoir http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/no-one-cares-about-bloomberg-redux-ladys-memoir#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:00:09 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/no-one-cares-about-bloomberg-redux-ladys-memoir "At McNally Jackson, a bookstore in SoHo, three copies were in the store, but none had been sold as of Tuesday, said a bookseller, Matthew Wagstaffe."
—Bloombergian Mini-Me Christine Quinn's memoir has had a rough first week, selling 100 copies. Kinda hoping that's how many people vote for her.

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]]> "At McNally Jackson, a bookstore in SoHo, three copies were in the store, but none had been sold as of Tuesday, said a bookseller, Matthew Wagstaffe."
—Bloombergian Mini-Me Christine Quinn's memoir has had a rough first week, selling 100 copies. Kinda hoping that's how many people vote for her.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/no-one-cares-about-bloomberg-redux-ladys-memoir/feed 1 http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/no-one-cares-about-bloomberg-redux-ladys-memoir My Favorite Catfight http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAwl/~3/YwcnZF1GnB0/my-favorite-catfight http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/my-favorite-catfight#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:40:32 +0000 The Awl http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/my-favorite-catfight One of my fondest memories of my best friend is a fight that escalated with me hurling a bottle of Advil at her head, and her firing back by lobbing the TV remote at my torso. We loved each other, but living with your closest friend isn’t easy. As with siblings, you know each other too well to be on your best behavior; you know nothing permanent will be lost if you toss a salt shaker at her because she forgot to wash her dishes for the tenth day in a row. That’s the beauty of true friendship–you can express yourself, and chances are, you’ll apologize and head to happy hour once the dishes are washed and the saltshaker retrieved.

In film, fights between women are usually sexualized (bikini-clad girls mud wrestling and pretending to be mad at each other; boobalicious 1960s Russ Meyer babes pulling hair and rolling around in the desert), or viewed as negative expressions of female envy and pettiness. In her 2003 book Catfight, Leora Tanenbaum writes, “Competitiveness between women is a fact. It has a history and function in American society that does not benefit women.”

She’s right that sabotage benefits no one, but two women fighting with each other doesn’t have to be embarrassing or even negative. Sometimes catfights are cathartic and funny, and I’m not just talking about Kill Bill-style beat-downs. As fun as it is to watch women expertly kicking ass—each others’ asses, too—on screen, what I’m talking about are fights between women who aren’t wielding Hattori Hanzo swords, the ones that feel pleasurably, uncomfortably real.

Read the rest at The Hairpin.

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]]> One of my fondest memories of my best friend is a fight that escalated with me hurling a bottle of Advil at her head, and her firing back by lobbing the TV remote at my torso. We loved each other, but living with your closest friend isn’t easy. As with siblings, you know each other too well to be on your best behavior; you know nothing permanent will be lost if you toss a salt shaker at her because she forgot to wash her dishes for the tenth day in a row. That’s the beauty of true friendship–you can express yourself, and chances are, you’ll apologize and head to happy hour once the dishes are washed and the saltshaker retrieved.

In film, fights between women are usually sexualized (bikini-clad girls mud wrestling and pretending to be mad at each other; boobalicious 1960s Russ Meyer babes pulling hair and rolling around in the desert), or viewed as negative expressions of female envy and pettiness. In her 2003 book Catfight, Leora Tanenbaum writes, “Competitiveness between women is a fact. It has a history and function in American society that does not benefit women.”

She’s right that sabotage benefits no one, but two women fighting with each other doesn’t have to be embarrassing or even negative. Sometimes catfights are cathartic and funny, and I’m not just talking about Kill Bill-style beat-downs. As fun as it is to watch women expertly kicking ass—each others’ asses, too—on screen, what I’m talking about are fights between women who aren’t wielding Hattori Hanzo swords, the ones that feel pleasurably, uncomfortably real.

Read the rest at The Hairpin.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/my-favorite-catfight/feed 0 http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/my-favorite-catfight What Thin People Think About The Causes Of Obesity http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAwl/~3/T-0wuX7higE/what-thin-people-think-about-the-causes-of-obesity http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/what-thin-people-think-about-the-causes-of-obesity#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:30:06 +0000 Alex Balk http://www.theawl.com/2013/06/what-thin-people-think-about-the-causes-of-obesity "Thin People Believe Obesity is Caused by Diet, Lack of Exercise"

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]]> "Thin People Believe Obesity is Caused by Diet, Lack of Exercise"

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