Her name is Stormy Leather and she is not a pole dancer, prostitute or porn star. However, she does often go by The Naked Girl of Burlesque, and above she is pictured getting off to a 4-minute reading of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, for film project Hysterical Literature.

Of course, there’s more to it than that. Thanks to Photographer Clayton Cubitt, readers world ’round may realise their bibliophilic wet dreams in this marrying of literary sophistication with licentious abandon. The premise is simple: offer a woman a Hitachi vibrator, a table, and a book. In return, ask her to “dress as you would for a date with a man, not a boy,” and try to hold out for as long as you can.

For Stoya who admittedly is, but so much more than, a porn star, that meant a Vivian Westwood dress, minimal makeup and expensive panties, slightly wet in the gusset. To read, she brought along Necrophilia Variations by Supervert. The rest? Recorded history.

Now, you may very well find it hysterical, but mostly I find it delectably crude & stimulatingly genius; high art meeting and melding with the low-brow, or in other words, decidedly my sort of thing. Cubitt’s no-fuss set, shot in black and white, showing each subject with a book in hand, while eluding at a mystery beneath, achieves something wildly unheard of in popular pornography: it elicits eroticism through covert means, instead of garishly shining lights and camera on an explicit sex scene.

Much like Andy Warhol did in the 1960s with his 35-minute silent film Blowjob, the film is set to capture the transient changes in the subjects physiognomy, while they’re being pleasured off camera. The genius behind it? It all goes beyond the sex. Without a white coat and a controlled lab, Cubitt managed to bring attention to the ongoing physical, psychological and arguably philosophical debate about Body vs. Mind, armed only with a book passage and a vibrator. At the beginning, we see each woman start her reading, completely focused on the words. Often, by the five or four minute mark, their bodies take over and their brains give way, going blank, and losing their place on the page. The words lose their meaning, momentarily becoming nothing more than a ticking time-bomb, the symbol of what their trying to outlast.

The sweetest thing is when they’ve come, it’s over, and they eloquently deliver the closing line, punctuated by a giggle, or a pant.

It might fascinate you, turn you on, or turn you into their personal cheerleaders. Regardless, I dare you to not scrub through the following videos like you’re alone and watching your favourite porno, or cuddled with your favourite book; safe for work with earphones:

Nothing sells like words, and few things are more appealing than gorgeous women. When New Yorker Elle Muliarchyk decided to put the two together in collaboration with online shopping community, Motilo, the cheekily creative Lips of Babel emerged. Elle who was born to both a diplomat and journalist, respectively, has roots in high fashion modeling and a linguistic passion that runs 5 languages deep. For this simple but engaging project, the ex-model/artist cum linguist gathered 50 of the world’s finest models earlier this year, and had them each recite their country’s local tongue twisters for Motilo.

The videos are simple, the lips are beautiful, and the words sound like nothing but gibberish–so unless beautiful women in brightly coloured lipstick talking nonsense is not your thing, I’m sure you’ll be entertained by all the patter.

Bonus Points: Jamaica’s very own Gaye McDonald is part of the linguistic fanfare–guess which tongue twister? Besides Pop’Africana’s Oroma Elewa’s video, hers is my favourite. Watch a few of my favourites below or follow this link to Motilo to learn more about the project and the collaborators.

2011; what can we say about 2011? It was a decent year. Good, maybe. On the good hand, it was a huge lens magnifying acts like Lana Del Rey, Panda Bear and Azealia Banks. It gave us the opportunity to finally finish the Harry Potter movie franchise, and brought us close to the end of the world for the second time since the year 2000 . However, 2011, remains a mixed bag–one that, unfortunately, includes planking and Justin Beiber’s paternity drama–and so you may be able to understand why I’d be sitting patiently, waiting for a sign to signal that 2012 will be an improvement on what was not altogether a bad year, just one with too much Kardashian and too little Fun.

Share/Bookmark

Do you ever think that what you have to say won’t feed a starving man? That your blog posts won’t amount to any relevant contribution to the improvement of failed economies?

Do you ever consider that whatever you’ve been aching to talk about, that thing that’s running through your mind like the victim of a bad pick-up line, won’t improve your country’s standard of living, build a home or provide a job?

It won’t save a young man from wielding a pistol, a police from being shot at, a riot or a house burning down.

To think that what you have to say won’t change anything but your Facebook status, is heavy thinking; But I thought about it, then wrote this anyway.

Share/Bookmark