“I THOUGHT IT WAS ARMAGEDDON”:
Mega top-level tragedy is happening right now. This morning Chilè had an earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale, killing at least 80 people.
Now a tsunami is heading towards Hawaii. You can get breaking coverage from Hawaii News Now.
If you are looking for a person in Chile, you can use the Google People Finder. Here’s how you can help earthquake relief:
Donate to the Children’s Emergency Fund: Save the Children is readying to send its emergency assessment team to Chile.
Donate to AmeriCares Response to the Chilean Earthquake and its Aftermath, American Red Cross’s International Response Fund, International Medicorp’s emergency response fund or Habitat For Humanity.
TOMBOY:In considerably less important news, apparently our overall disinterest in the lives of the children of famous people has prevented our awareness, until today when it was featured on Jezebel, of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt’s f*ckin’ kickass tomboy style. In Why The Gossips Find Shiloh’s “Tomboy” Attire So Odious:
Shiloh and her sister Zahara rock Halloween
Doesn’t she realize she’s the crown princess in the fairy tale? She’s ruining it with that “wanting to be a boy” thing!… it’s so amusing to watch the gossip ecosystem’s earnest concern over the fact that Shiloh wears her hair short and prefers traditionally “masculine” attire. Sure, it gives them something to tsk-tsk Angelina over, a favorite pastime. But there’s also an undertone of frustration, as if Shiloh doesn’t realize the role she’s supposed to play as the “most beautiful baby in the world.”
If you were a little tomboy kid, this anxiety is, perhaps, familiar, as your gender-neutral fashion choices may have once upon a time troubled your relatives & friends. Apparently pants looked even worse than your tear-stained face, exhausted after your physical struggle against The Dress? But how is anyone supposed to climb trees in a f*cking dress, you know? WTF? Parents just don’t understand.
However, the reaction to Shiloh’s look has been mostly positive, if still kinda weird:
Gather: “Shiloh, 3, with her newly-cropped hair and neat outfit, resembled nothing less than an adorable little French boy wandering about a posh store.”
from US Weekly’s article actually entitled “Stylist’s Rate Shiloh’s Princess Charming Haircut”: Cozy Friedman “absolutely” predicts new client requests for the “Shiloh cut.” She should know: “we get a lot of requests for the Maddox cut. We’re doing tons of faux baby faux-hawks all the time.”
But some people have been freaking out and saying weird things:
Brangelina – What Are You Doing to Poor Shiloh Jolie Pitt? “She is being guided into a bisexual role. Her mother is projecting this onto this particular child—she has chosen her as her favorite. I think this is an issue.”
Angelina Should Also Go Back to Her Peter Pan Haircut IMHO
from The Irish Daily Mail: “The little girl is young to be losing her milk teeth already, but as she seems to be turning into a tomboy, perhaps it’s not surprising.”
Betty Confidential: “She’s got a new Peter Pan ‘do and doesn’t like to dress up like a girly-girl. Does Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s daughter secretly want to be a boy?”
Stuff: Shiloh is known for her tomboy ways, and is said to look up to her older brother Maddox, eight. She recently had her flowing blonde locks cropped into a short, boyish style, and is never seen wearing skirts. It has previously been reported the toddler refuses to wear girls’ clothes… she is so enamoured with her brother she will only wear his old soccer boots on her feet, apparently refusing to take them off even when she is at ballet and tap dancing lessons.
But what’s wrong with these people? From the glbtq encyclopedia on tomboys:
Burn, O’Neil, and Nederend argue that tomboy behaviors help girls acquire traits such as assertiveness and self-reliance that become useful in adulthood. Higenkamp and Livingston link self-perception of being a tomboy with “masculine” traits such as competitiveness and leadership ability, and postulate a correlation with expectations of career success.
The lesson to learn from all this is that if only your parents had embraced your forward-thinking fashion sense AND had a few million to spare on your wardrobe, you could’ve looked way cooler! Check out this kid’s kicks!
Shiloh Jolie-Pitt has become better dressed than all of us. Other young tomboys may recall youths of hand-me-downs and soccer-jerseys-as-formalwear, but now Shiloh is debuting Young Tomboy Chic. Lucky kid. SERIOUSLY LOOK AT HER SNEAKERS JEALOUS.
THE LEZZIES:
Have you voted for us yet? ‘Cause you should! 
. Grace wrote a funny post about it.
NAACP IMAGE AWARDS:
The 41st Annual NAACP Image Awards were hot and lots of famous people were there! Precious based on the novel Push by Sapphire snagged outstanding film and outstanding independent motion picture, lead actress for newcomer Gabourey Sidibe, supporting actress for Mo’Nique, motion picture writing for Geoffrey Fletcher and directing for Lee Daniels.
Chris Rock, my favorite comedian besides Julie Goldman, won best documentary for Good Hair (the reaction to the film was a bit more divisive but the discourse around it was fascinating– check out Racialicous’s Dispatches from Nappyville: What is Good Hair, Anyway? and Jezebel’s What Did You Think of Good Hair? and Good Hair Doesn’t Get to the Root of the Issue and PopWatch’s Good Hair? Hardly. How Chris Rock Gets it Wrong) and in his speech said:
“Most people make movies to make money, and then make more movies to make more money. I made this movie for black people!”
Also in attendance: the GLEE kids because no awards show is complete without them.
SCHOOLED:
South Africa school dormitory closes after lesbian kiss: Two girls got caught kissing at boarding school, and then 27 pupils got expelled for also having same-sex relationships and the entire school was shut down. (@bcc)
LAW AND ORDER: SVU:
“While I have yet to see the entire episode, I have a good idea what I’m going to get: Lesbian man-hating, anti-feminist clichés and the perpetuation of both as mainstream ideals of gay women.” (@bitch)
UNIVERISTY GAYS:
U-Penn wants gays: “Penn is identifying gay admits through information they provide on their applications — groups that they are members of, or statements they make about themselves in their essays,” relays Inside Higher Ed. “One question on the Penn application asks applicants about the communities they would like to be active in at the university, and the answers include academic interests, social and cultural organizations, and — for some students — gay life at the university.”
TOE TO TOE:
Emily Abt’s film Toe to Toe is the story of Tosha, a poor African-American girl in a private prep school aiming to get into Princeton who meets Jesse on the lacrosse team, which Tosha’s grandmother has encouraged her to participate in. Jesse is white, rich, troubled, and “sexually provocative.” After a strong reception at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, the film opens this week in NYC and next week in LA. Abt got her idea for the movie because she’s “intensely interested in race relations… and the surprising fact that interracial friendships end at age 14 for 87% of Americans — that really goes against how we like to think of social dynamics in our country.” That statistic blows my mind.
GUILLERMO DIAZ
Guillermo Díaz speaks to OUT Magazine:“My managers wanted to put a halt on me being out,” he says. “I just don’t have the patience for that shit. It seems like so much fuckin’ work to keep lying. I remember them saying, ‘We need to build up your body count.’ They wanted me to kill more people on film. I was like, ‘You guys would rather I kill more people on film than tell people I’m gay?’ Needless to say, I’m not with them anymore.”
LADY GAGA:
Producer Rob Fusari Dishes on Lady Gaga, Beyoncé:“When a friend phoned him from a New York club late one evening in January 2006 with a tip on an undiscovered, then-raven-haired rock singer/songwriter, Fusari was dubious, but his career had stalled and he was in no position for snobbery. A few days later, the two met, and Germanotta performed a couple of her songs for him on piano. “In 20 seconds,” Fusari says, “I knew this girl would change my life.”
THE NET:
Back in 1995, Newsweek was very wrong about the future of the internet: Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.
TEGAN AND SARA:
Also, Tegan & Sara performed in Austin and statistically chances are that you missed it:
I may have missed Austin, but I won’t miss Chicago! YAY! It’ll be a sea of fashion mullets & skinny jeans & i’ll be the older (yet sexier?) misfit in my bootcuts & non-tiny boobs. YAY!
I’ll be the ever older misfit with non-tiny boobs. And low tops.
you are going?!? yay!
low top shoes or low tops w/r/t your shirt?
i’m pretty sure i am older than you!
Low top shoes! (I do own ‘low top’ shirts but… no). And of course I’m going! It’s Tegan & Sara IN MY ‘HOOD.
I’m 28 and usually one of the older/oldest ones around here (at least that’s what it feels like with all the 18-22 year olds running around.)
Oh, I definately thought “non-tiny boobs. And low tops.” was your non-discreet way of anouncing just how much cleavage you were going to be showing.
I AM THE OLDEST, BISH
I said *one of the oldest* ;P
I AM ALSO OLD
I am everyone’s grandma (34)
I’m going to see Tegan and Sara in Chicago too! How fabulous!
Yay! It’s going to be an Autostraddle party at the Aragon!
omg we need autostraddle signs. i am going to represent autostraddle, so if you see me SAY HI.
the only thing i have autostraddle-y is a sticker. i forsee a tshirt making project in my future.
(and i would so rather wear an autostraddle shirt than try to find a “cool kid” outfit to feel “cool” enough.)
YAY!
I’ll be there too! In … plaid shoes?? Just look for a girl with curly hair….
I love Shiloh’s style. She is so cute. Zahara also dresses really cute. All the kids do really. You can tell that Brange let them choose their own clothes which is great and allows them to express themselves. I just wish people wouldn;t talk about it in such a negative way and saying it will turn her gay. You don;t ‘turn’ gay esp from clothes. People sound like such idiots. And if she is gay SO!
if she is gay, i call dibs in 18 years.
Really you can holla at her in 16 years..
Yeah I love how everyone is freaking out about Shiloh when clearly look at zahara, there is no “girls should dress like boys” policy happening there. Anyhow I think all their kids are redic adorable and stylish, one day they will be old enough to be in I’ll Have What She’s Wearing.
I totally agree! I loved this article. I don’t understand the hype about Shiloh’s style. I went through a tom-boy stage myself and if I must say, I have become quite the successful woman, and I still love men!
maybe i just don’t “get” the celebrity children thing, but don’t kids just kind of do what they want? like, isn’t that what being a toddler is? when i was a toddler, i needed to sleep with my stuffed baby lamb doll every night. i did not grow up to be lambsexual. i get that this is important b/c it is about the way our culture views gender presentation and pressures little girls to be feminine etc, but also, like, she is three or whatever, calm the f*ck down.
Well if she is like any of the 3 yr olds I’ve ever taught..they are def vocal enough to say what they want.. we had a girl in the class just like that and it was mainly because she wanted everything that her big brother had. The parents didn’t fight it…it wasn’t hurting anyone if she wore spiderman shirts and shoes.. most parents I know these days don’t fight with what the kids want in that sense as long as it doesn’t like harm them… if that makes sense, I am not a parent obviously
I dressed like a boy with a peter pan haircut and had a close relationship to a very serious land of legos and several hand-illustrated series of books about people called Simpletons who looked like Fiestaware and I still grew up to be lambsexual.
i clicked on that link, and i love the peter pan haircut. anyone would go lambsexual for that kid
I always wore pink and dressed up as a fairy and fantasized about being a princess and carried around dolls. Very girly.
And I’m gay. Go figure.
me too… either way, i was gonna be a lesbian or a flaming queen. so, yeah.
i feel the need to out-misfit everyone. but i’m too lazy. i do love the child tie thing. this is greatness.
My mom let me wear whatever I wanted and you know what that was most of the time? Poofy layered dresses. Like, I wore my yellow Easter dress for the rest of that year (I was 7), even when I was on the floor building legos and such. And look at me now. Now I have a similar style to Shiloh.
I wanna see pictures
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=148815&l=5d6fad51ff&id=702027759
Oh curses, it won’t link the pic, just the album. It’s photo #12…
I would die happy if I had a kid like Shiloh. She is amazing. Good for Brangelina for letting her be adrogynous. She’s so cute!
Guillermo from Weeds is gay?? I love that
yeah, moms tried that “dress” shit with me but I’ll be damned. I lol-ed at that “climb a tree” comment.
Kids do get better clothing! I was in Dhaka recently, and for the adults it was either traditional wear (for the women) or shirts & pants (for the men). But the KIDS – OMG they got all sorts of cool stuff. Shirt-dresses, fancy leggings, interesting-cut tops – it’s like everyone’s creativity got channelled towards kids’ fashion because no adult will stray. (Hint: no matter how feminine you look, wearing a shirt & pants in Bangladesh automatically makes you a guy.)
I had that shiloh bowl cut when I was a kid.
me too.
OMG I want that shirt!
I refused to wear jeans, and rocked stirrups/leggings with oversize sweatshirts, until High School.
It was then I realized that if I ever wanted to not be a social outcast I would need to 1. wear jeans 2. put away my collection of magic nursery babies 3. get rid of my dinosaur village i had made from clay. (this kept my in my basement for hours every day.)
me too, i wore the same pants in a different colour every day. bad times.
That was me too! My mom bought all my clothes from catalogs because I refused to go shopping! Then my friends started making fun of me because I only wore leggings, so I got a pair of plaid pants and wore them to the school dance. I’m sure they would be considered very stylish for an aspiring clown. When a boy asked me to dance I picked up a chair and waved it at him. Yah, I was a superpopular middle schooler.
Me too! I HATED clothes shopping when I was little, so my mom would grab the catalog and make suggestions (hers turned out better) and then I would make my own picks. Which is how I ended up with a Batman T-shirt as well as a Pee-Wee Herman sweater. It was the weirdest thing! It looked like a giant Picasso-esque Pee-Wee face on a multi-colored sweater. I look back now and think, wow. What the hell was I thinking?
Parents embracing Tomboy style?
My parent’s made me stop going topless at 7. I think they would have been relieved if I’d had a fixation with ties and boy’s soccer shoes…
I was jealous of boys for having way cooler bathing suits and being able to go topless at the beach. This was YEARS before my boobs happened of course.
I actually convinced my parents to let me wear just my shorts to the beach when we were camping, that was a sweet afternoon of victory.
I was a huge tomboy when I was a kid. Mostly my parents were letting me wear what I wanted: they must have thought “she’s just a kid, it’s not worthwhile to apply our homophobic education methods at this very young age”. Because later, when I grew up to be a lesbian, they quickly made up for the time lost and unleashed all their homophobic wrath on my poor self.
When I told my mother I was gay she jokingly asked me if it’s because she made me wear “that pink dress you hated so much when you were four.”
No laughing matter though. That IS the reason why.
Children terrify me. I don’t know how to deal with them at all, so naturally the lil assholes flock to me. Something tells me that I’d totally get along with Shiloh, though. But I’d be really worried that her tie would get caught on something and she’d choke.
can there please be a retro post of all the auto-tomboys of the 70s 80s and 90s doing our kiddie queer thing?
i second that.
Is there someone out there who can come to the rescue of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt? This little girl is being taken to boys’ clothing stores, by her father, and her hair has been cut like a boys. This is major psychological abuse waged, innocently, by two very ignorant parents. I realize that Jolie “gave” Shiloh to her brother’s care, in a manner of speaking, BUT this does not mean that the Uncle and Parents can exploit this child to satisfy their own unresolved issues. They need to know that ALL children want their own place of distinction, and to avoid extreme statements to find that distinction, parents simply tell their kids, “All of you Jolie-Pitt girls love beautiful clothes, and/or “All of you Jolie-Pitt girls love to get good grades” and etc. These way each individual child gets to shine as part of a group that enables them to see themselves as positive achievers or positive “whatevers.” These parents are causing irreversible damage to a helpless little girl, even if she wants so much to shine on her own. Someone needs to counsel these parents to tell them it is far too soon to impose gender transfers. Gender is not always easily accepted, but there are easy steps they need to employ right now to allow this little child to accept hers. When she gets older, with a more developed brain (age 14 or so) THEN her wishes can be investigated and WITH the help of an expert, Shiloh can be carefully lead to take the role of a gender to which she was not assigned (if that is still her wish). NOT NOW! Her brain is too pliable and immature. Right now she is simply being guided with the utmost error in judgment. Being interested in so-called “boys” activities does not mean that a young girl is then “assigned” a male role.
what are you talking about. clothes do not a gender make, how do you know who picked them for her??? do you live with them? might you be making an utmost error in judgement?
You’re kidding, right? Kate? If so, bravah
ignorant is most definitely what comes to my mind when thinking of Brad and Angelina.
um. yeah.
I chose to read this as a Colbert-esque satire. It makes it pretty lols.
someone should send in a “helicopter” to “airlift” that girl out of there “ASAP.” where is the justice.
hilarious.
(mocking usages of quotations mark is my new “fave” activity.)
seriously, not being rude. :)
I was a tomboy growing up and my parents totally let me dress as I pleased. Hmmm, now I’m 22 and, yup, no damage. I even dress less tomboyish. Shocking!
Enough with the ignorant idea that children are too stupid to create their own identities. Only they can know themselves better than any ‘mature adult’.
There are plenty of transgendered people who identified their genders didn’t match their sex at a very young age.
People cling to this idea that your identity’s influenced heavily by what’s forced onto you while growing up because we all know that is what most heteronormative parents do with their newborns. They go out of their way to reinforce rigid gender roles ‘belonging’ to their child’s sex.
When I was in preschool my parents took me and my sister shopping to pick out our school clothes. We each got a set amount of money to spend and all I bought was an Oshkosh denim dress with pink buttons even though my parents explained to me that was all my money.
I did have other clothes already but I refused to wear anything else and after a while the school asked my parents if we needed financial assistance.
But then it was like I got all my dress wearing needs taken care of and didn’t want to wear one again for about 12 years. I owned so many t-shirts and baggy jeans.
So c’mon press, stop worrying that lack of a dress will make Shiloh a big scary lesbian. Those kids are freakin’ ADORABLE.
You’re right Autostraddle, I did miss the concert in Austin. But I did see photos a friend posted from the March Against Hate yesterday in Austin and they made me cry a little bit (and I am SO NOT a cryer).
Oh, please. Allow personal style.
i think shiloh is totally adorable, but i’m even more glad as i read the comments to find i am not the only girl here who was SUPER girly. as in, when i was in preschool the teachers sent a note home because i wouldn’t get in the sandbox because it was too dirty and would mess up my dress.
preschool clothing choices have not much (nothing?)to do with sexuality, in my opinion.
My father learned to do all kinds of fancy braids and stuff because up to the age of 12, I always liked my hair done very intricately, with flowers and sparkly hairpins and stuff. And I still ended up gayer than a gay pride march of gay people in Gaylandia.
At gay-o-clock on Gaysday?
During the month of Lezbruary!
Lezbruary!
…im using that.
*bowing down to the gayest one of all*
Oh hey guys for people living in NY ‘ Toe to Toe’ is playing at City Cinemas in the East Village! Autostraddle U field trip!
I don’t get what the big deal is. Three year olds don’t have personal style, they wear whatever the hell they want or what their parents put on them. I mean Jesus people, she’s a toddler, just because she has a bowl cut doesn’t mean she needs to come out of the closet.
I was at the Austin show. It was amazing! Also, Austin has a bunch of lezzies apparently way more than Dallas or Houston.
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I only wore boys clothes till I was at least 10 or 11. Now I get super excited when my super girly little girl shows interest in more boyish things because I can relate to it better. I have to remind myself not to push one or the other on her. It’s important to let her wear and play with what she wants.
shiloh is fucking adorable. especially with her sister in the purple dress! she is the most stylish young tomboy i have ever seen. i mean, i wore “boy” clothes when i was little, but mine were more in the vein of soccer shorts and oversize tshirts. all year round. that was back when i thought umbro was a brand name. anyway, isn’t wearing clothes like that and being a tomboy better than the alternative? the alternative being the 5 year old girl my sister babysits, who adores miley cyrus, gyrates around wearing a bikini top and sweatpants and says to my sister “pretend i’m really skinny.” wtf, really.
yea, and also super jeals of her sneakers. and that hat. slash all her clothes; i wish i dressed like her today.
but you can climb trees in dresses. shit, i do it all the time.
Shiloh is my new idol.
Zahara , who is much older than Shiloh, must bullying Shiloh into choosing boys clothes, while she chooses girlie clothes. You never know, Zahara maybe a mean little girl. Angie and Brad does not know what kind of persons Zahara’s parents are. Sometimes, these personality traits, one of these being a bully or domineering, are hereditary or genetic. People are born like that and even if given the right environment, the hereditary traits from the real parents still take over. Poor Shiloh. I hope Brad and Angie should be around Shiloh and Zahara more and observe their behavior dynamics and save Shiloh from Zahara before it is too late. Being bullied can destroy a person, especially if it occurs at a young vulnerable age.
Or ummm Shiloh just prefers to wear comfortable clothing? Like I did when I as little?
No one was bullying me into being a tomboy. Just FYIz.
Or maybe they were just so good and subtle at it, you didn’t notice? THINK REAL HARD. Look out for reverse psychology. “Why don’t you wear this pretty dress?” when they really want you to do the opposite and become a dyke.
What is this I don’t even…
I honestly assumed it was a joke… ?