O'Keefe, Monroe, Kahlo, Nin | Fashion to Flogging, Our Muses Rule!

Georgia O’Keefe’s Sustainable, Slow Living New Mexico Lifestyle AOC LIving

RedTracker| Our new writer and my FB friend Lisa Catherine Brown delivers another essay for AOC, this one focused on O’Keefe’s life in the New Mexico, desert. I sent a teasing note to Lisa this afternoon, that perhaps I should be jealous.

With no marketing help from me, Lisa’s article A Day of Peace | For 24 Hours, Give Peace a Chance is back in the top read spot at AOC. Last week it was there for several days. Nothing makes me happier than to have an article on peace — if even for a day — beat out my writing on learning to love our own vagina.

Our smart readers know this is all connected in one grand female-centric view of our world and our bodies — a view embraced by growing numbers of men and women.

Female Body As Battleground

I found myself in rather intense dialogue with Paris last evening, over my article France Sozzani’s Petition Fights Pro Anorexic Websites | Vogue Italia. To paraphrase, a high-ranking member of the fashion world said: “Anne, you make preposterous assumptions about people’s intentions and what they are thinking, when they say and do things. No one has these thoughts for real.”

After reminding him that Paris is the center of independent thinking on the planet — so why not mine — I explained that our tag line isn’t “from fashion to flogging, telling women’s stories” for no reason.

I did not suggest that he read Aristotle as an example of what renowned men think about women, because …  as an American woman, you just don’t tell a Parisian man to read Greek philosophy. It’s the ultimate insult.  An Italian man, perhaps — he may even adore you — but not a French man.

The dynamic growth of our websites and your unheard of reader loyalty give me confidence in explaining to this VIP that there is a method to my madness, even if it is female logic. The degree of his upset told me that I had hit a bulls-eye — with not only my argument — but in the unyielding, logical, factual line of reasoning in presenting my beliefs.

With Love to our Muses

After all, we have many muses at AOC: O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo, Marilyn Monroe, Anais Nin, Isabelle Allende. Dead and alive, they are hovering spirits and angels, moving us forward into excellence, recognition and a growing force to be reckoned with.

We are small, but we are mighty — with 250,000 of you this month on our side. Not too shabby for a couple of crazy women.

Lisa thanks you just as I do. As for our fashion monasticism trend and — in select cases, — fashion misogyny argument with select designers, it’s here to stay. MWAH! Anne