ladies, women and girls

 By LAURA FISHER

It takes a great deal of effort to manufacture and maintain any star persona, and that labor is particularly stark in the case of children, who grow tall, lose their baby teeth, and shed the babyish manner that is at the core of their appeal to audiences. Childhood is ephemeral by nature, and the specter of obsolescence haunts every child performer.

Shirley Temple’s persona was more or less frozen at six years old. At the moment of her earliest success in 1934, Temple had exactly fifty-six golden ringlets, round eyes, chubby cheeks, and stocky legs.

The first image in the 1935 film Curly Top is that of a child’s overturned head of glossy ringlets. Holding her head still for a beat, the child looks up, gazes into the camera, and breaks into a toothy, dimpled smile.

Contestants at the first longest hair competition in Lithuania, 1992

"For a few sweet months back in the fall of 1993 at the European School of Luxembourg, a popular high school boy with long hair and a taste for grunge music turned his attention to a shy girl from a grade below who hid behind books, and was partial to flannel shirts and Doc Martens."

“‘She was timid and mystical, Ophelia-like in her black boots, but I knew her shyness concealed something quite formidable,’ recalled Mr. Sibson, an Englishman”

“’She was listening to Bjork before anyone else was,’ Mr. Sibson said.”

"said her sister, Elisabeth van Lawick van Pabst-Koch."

"By this time, she was dividing her time between Paris and New York, swirling through the fashion world creating art and designing sets."

"Ms. Koch, always ready to travel whenever the occasion presented itself, instead suggested they meet in Sarajevo in June and then make the trek to a birthday party a friend was giving in Puglia, Italy."

"They rented a stone hut called a trullo amid olive groves and the foxes. They drank wine under the stars."

"There was no ring, but the stars and the moon were out. So were the animals and the dragonflies."

"Her mother, Disja Koch-ter Kuile, who gives art lessons, and her father, Robert B. Koch, a retired steel industry executive"

"an elaborate surprise visit arranged by Mr. Sibson and Ms. van Lawick van Pabst-Koch."

“‘I had no sense of Atlanta,’ he said. ‘I would watch CNN and see these women with big hair, and think wistfully, “That’s where Anne is, and she seems nothing like those big-haired women.”’”

"He knocked on the door, only to have it swing open to reveal Mr. Koch, also holding a heart-shaped balloon"

"Ms. Koch’s dog, Sir William Sugarplum"

"Ms. Koch’s sister, who is a milliner in Beijing"

"The word ‘starling’ holds multiple meanings for the couple, who believe they are creatures from the stars."

"The morning after the wedding, the couple took their respective clans to that Southern icon, the Waffle House. ‘It was not my kind of food,’ confessed the groom’s mother, Ruth Harrison Sibson-Windsor, who was making her first trip to the United States from Canterbury, England. ‘But the service was friendly.’"

“’Our lives will be our honeymoon.’”

kate eichhorn, the archival turn in feminism: outrage in order  (via karaj)

give me this book now.