Why I am a Goblin Queen:
My email used to be goblinqueen@davidbowie.com. Sadly, this email no longer exists, but I still like the identity of Goblin Queen. Here’s an email I wrote back when I first obtained that email address explaining its genesis:
I've recently decided that AOL is one manifestation of evil in the world. I think this for a number of reasons. I've been noticing that it promotes very stupid and degrading stereotypes of both genders and terrible values about sex. Some examples are: if you go to the AOL Men page you can sometimes find a link that says: "Why do women play hard to get? Find out here." If you go to the AOL Women page you can sometimes find a link that says: "Number one way to snag a man: Play hard to get. Read more here." Caroline and I recently took an “Are You Sexy?” quiz on AOL. It informed me that I was Too Tame (it appeared to base this verdict on my habit of biting my nails and my lack of Victoria's Secret underwear (though one of the reasons I don’t have fancy underwear is that I often don’t WEAR underwear, but the quiz didn’t give that as an option) and told me that I must be insecure about my body and confused by the conflicting messages society sends to women about whether they should be sexual. (Alright, maybe that's true, but I don’t think the criteria the quiz used to make that determination were valid.) It told Caroline she was a Serious Seductress, but that she was compensating for an inner sense of inferiority and that her amped-up sexuality was probably turning men off. What was that about conflicting messages? It's not just that; I'm tired of having some product pushed in my face every time I try to sign on, including some pretty absurd ones ("Real Simple: a magazine for people who want to simplify their life"); I'm paying for this service; I shouldn't have to suffer such intrusive advertising. In general, I think AOL is the purveyor of the most banal, lowest-common-denominator, un-self-conscious media content I have come across in a long time. Soap Opera Digest is *much* better reading, let me tell you. There was this one really sweet story about this blind wallaby who only had human friends because all the other wallabies picked on him, until this other wallaby came to the wallaby ranch, fell in a pond and also went blind, and then the two blind wallabies became friends and snuggled together nose to nose. It even had a picture of one of the blind wallabies, and it was really cute; it even had scrunched up little eyes. It made me really want a pet wallaby, but Grushenka [my erstwhile pet rabbit] is sort of shaped like a wallaby, anyway. She also has really powerful hind legs that she sometimes stands on, and she hops around. But one cute animal story just does not make up for the rest of the bad stuff on AOL, and I don't want to support it with my patronage any longer, so I decided to find a new ISP. Well, a new ISP I have found, in the form of BowieNet, which is cheaper and way cooler than AOL, and it affords me the opportunity to have such a cool email address it cannot be expressed in words. I'm really into my identity as the Goblin Queen (the role I would have liked to have, um, enacted in Labyrinth given my fascination with Jareth as a six-year-old). I also considered youhavenopoweroverme@davidbowie.com, but I decided goblinqueen was better for a number of reasons. Obviously it's shorter, but there are others. Youhavenopoweroverme has the whole defiant thing going on, but I never especially wanted Jareth to be defied. It's also just a quote. But with goblinqueen, I create a character who did not exist in the movie--I'm carving out an imaginary niche for myself in an imaginary world. The Goblin Queen is still a powerful figure; she reigns dually over the realms of empowered femininity and gratified desire. And the great thing is, having it both ways was what Labyrinth was all about (pun retroactively intended). It's not one of those bullshit click your heels, choose home and hearth and the world turns black and white flicks--no, Jennifer Connelly stands up to Jareth, gets her kid brother back, but this choice doesn't mean she has to give up her fantasy world; all the furballs show up in her room at the end. So in true binary smashing, liminal space occupying, fuck that old virgin/whore dynamic style (i.e. Labyrinth's style), I have made myself goblinqueen@davidbowie.net. I'm so giddy.
My email used to be goblinqueen@davidbowie.com. Sadly, this email no longer exists, but I still like the identity of Goblin Queen. Here’s an email I wrote back when I first obtained that email address explaining its genesis:
I've recently decided that AOL is one manifestation of evil in the world. I think this for a number of reasons. I've been noticing that it promotes very stupid and degrading stereotypes of both genders and terrible values about sex. Some examples are: if you go to the AOL Men page you can sometimes find a link that says: "Why do women play hard to get? Find out here." If you go to the AOL Women page you can sometimes find a link that says: "Number one way to snag a man: Play hard to get. Read more here." Caroline and I recently took an “Are You Sexy?” quiz on AOL. It informed me that I was Too Tame (it appeared to base this verdict on my habit of biting my nails and my lack of Victoria's Secret underwear (though one of the reasons I don’t have fancy underwear is that I often don’t WEAR underwear, but the quiz didn’t give that as an option) and told me that I must be insecure about my body and confused by the conflicting messages society sends to women about whether they should be sexual. (Alright, maybe that's true, but I don’t think the criteria the quiz used to make that determination were valid.) It told Caroline she was a Serious Seductress, but that she was compensating for an inner sense of inferiority and that her amped-up sexuality was probably turning men off. What was that about conflicting messages? It's not just that; I'm tired of having some product pushed in my face every time I try to sign on, including some pretty absurd ones ("Real Simple: a magazine for people who want to simplify their life"); I'm paying for this service; I shouldn't have to suffer such intrusive advertising. In general, I think AOL is the purveyor of the most banal, lowest-common-denominator, un-self-conscious media content I have come across in a long time. Soap Opera Digest is *much* better reading, let me tell you. There was this one really sweet story about this blind wallaby who only had human friends because all the other wallabies picked on him, until this other wallaby came to the wallaby ranch, fell in a pond and also went blind, and then the two blind wallabies became friends and snuggled together nose to nose. It even had a picture of one of the blind wallabies, and it was really cute; it even had scrunched up little eyes. It made me really want a pet wallaby, but Grushenka [my erstwhile pet rabbit] is sort of shaped like a wallaby, anyway. She also has really powerful hind legs that she sometimes stands on, and she hops around. But one cute animal story just does not make up for the rest of the bad stuff on AOL, and I don't want to support it with my patronage any longer, so I decided to find a new ISP. Well, a new ISP I have found, in the form of BowieNet, which is cheaper and way cooler than AOL, and it affords me the opportunity to have such a cool email address it cannot be expressed in words. I'm really into my identity as the Goblin Queen (the role I would have liked to have, um, enacted in Labyrinth given my fascination with Jareth as a six-year-old). I also considered youhavenopoweroverme@davidbowie.com, but I decided goblinqueen was better for a number of reasons. Obviously it's shorter, but there are others. Youhavenopoweroverme has the whole defiant thing going on, but I never especially wanted Jareth to be defied. It's also just a quote. But with goblinqueen, I create a character who did not exist in the movie--I'm carving out an imaginary niche for myself in an imaginary world. The Goblin Queen is still a powerful figure; she reigns dually over the realms of empowered femininity and gratified desire. And the great thing is, having it both ways was what Labyrinth was all about (pun retroactively intended). It's not one of those bullshit click your heels, choose home and hearth and the world turns black and white flicks--no, Jennifer Connelly stands up to Jareth, gets her kid brother back, but this choice doesn't mean she has to give up her fantasy world; all the furballs show up in her room at the end. So in true binary smashing, liminal space occupying, fuck that old virgin/whore dynamic style (i.e. Labyrinth's style), I have made myself goblinqueen@davidbowie.net. I'm so giddy.