Friday , August 27, 2010
Style Icon: Courtney Love
Once upon a time I knew somebody who knew Courtney Love; it was then revealed to me that Courtney Love is a supreme liar. Which is something everybody probably assumes anyway, but it kind of really rattled me for a while. I've since stopped caring, but not because I don't care about Courtney in general. (Nay, there's a fair possibility that at age 110 my earbuds will still be blasting Hole songs into my head as I sing along and flail around stupidly just like Liv Tyler in that scene from Stealing Beauty.) The diff is that now I love that she lies.
The deal with life is there are three kinds of liars. One invents weird, fantastical hooey just to have something interesting to say; another speaks untruths as a means of escaping blame for their wrongdoing. The third kind of liar, the one we're most concerned with here, is given to telling tall tales for the sake of piecing together a persona that they can't quite measure up to. That's exactly what Courtney Love is like. Some of the time, anyway. Most often it's less about lying and more about exaggerating the hell out of everything, or at least exhibiting a seductively wackjob sort of megalomania. She says things like, "I'm a catalog artist: I compete with Bob Dylan," and you nod and go "Okay, yeah," and then you remember that Courtney Love has only ever recorded four studio albums, and Bob Dylan probably has a few more than that.
Some people get really riled up over that shit, about Courtney Love claiming her four-album catalog rivals Bob Dylan's four-zillion-album catalog, but I think it's grander than grand. I love exaggeration and hyperbole; I love blowing stuff way the hell out of proportion. Despite being a stick-in-the-mud Capricorn, I'm also a hopeless romantic, and I will always embrace every last one of romantic's lovely synonyms (i.e., extravagant, exaggerated, wild, imaginative, fantastic, improbable, unreal, fanciful, impractical). Those are all beautiful things to be. Imagine if you always had to experience and process life exactly as life really is? That would just be the pits!
So this is why I will never shout "Balderdash!" or "Poppycock!" or even "Dude, get the fuck outta town, seriously" in Courtney Love's face. And while I don't really understand all that much about fashion, I'm pretty certain that there's some sort of self-mythologizing involved - and not (to rip off Courtney Love ripping off those old Barbizon ads) in a "Be a model, or just look like one" kind of way. Also, for the most part, I love her dresses and wish I could wear them too. I'm not so enchanted by the Courtney Love repertoire of imagery as I used to be (the tattered lace and little-girl barrettes and that whole gothic-riot-grrrl look from the Pretty on the Inside and Live Through This eras), but I still get so inspired by her fucked-up lust for pretty things. Not just because I really like it when "messy" and "glamorous" get all mixed up together, but because there's some kind of shiny, stubborn joie de vivre there that seems to endure despite a whole lotta really dark shit going down. And I've quoted this CL quote here before, but now I'm gonna give it to you again: "If you can't embrace your daily life properly with an enthusiasm that's unfettered, like a child, then fuck you." I think that's probably one of my favorite things anyone's ever said. AND THAT'S NO LIE.
Tags: Barbizon Modeling School, Bob Dylan, Courtney Love, Hole, joie de vivre, liars, Liv Tyler, lying, megalomania, repertoires of imagery, romanticism, style icons, the burdens of being Capricorn
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Posted by Liz in Icons |
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excellent post. yes, courtney is kinda crazy, but it's part of her odd charm. i just wish she'd stop shopping on etsy for a bit and release her new album, which so far sounds divine.
By chloe on May 24, 2009 12:19 AM
thank you, chloe! i want the new record too...hopefully by now they've worked out the 'paranormal difficulties' or whatever.
By Liz
on May 24, 2009 2:12 PM
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By Roseanne Plastow on June 22, 2010 12:48 PM