Hey ladies—are you weirded out by the strange sexual power dynamics in Twilight? So is Buffy the vampire slayer, and she's got something to say about it. Like to hear it? Here it goes.

Jezebel linked to this amazing remix video by Jonathan McIntosh, who edited together scenes from Buffy and Twilight to make it seem like waxy, broody Edward Cullen is trying to put the moves on our favorite demon killer—and she. Is. Not. Amused.

Now, our girl knows from ridiculously good-looking, brooding vampire honeys. So when she tells you that stalking maketh not a courtship, you should listen to her. The awesomeness of this vid helps alleviate some of the sadness I feel about the upcoming Buffy reboot movie, which will feature neither Buffy, nor the Scoobies, nor, it seems, Joss Whedon. At least there's the upcoming animated series to look forward to.

Photograph of Twilight star Robert Pattinson by Martin Bueau/AFP/Getty Images.

Tags: buffy the vampire slayer, remix, twilight, vampires

Dame Helen Mirren (my #1 girl crush) is currently starring as Phèdre at the National Theatre in London (my #1 arts institution crush). Stuck Stateside this summer? You're in luck: Starting on June 25, the National will be beaming the production to cinemas around the world.

Filmed theater is always a little bit dicey, but I'll chance it for the opportunity to see La Mirren play the iconic Athenian queen who's crazy in love with her stepson. (Let's see, would Cristina Nehring approve?)

Click here to see a list of venues around the U.S. that will be showing Phèdre. Act fast: Tickets are already sold out for the first New York performance.

Photograph by Dave Hogan/Getty Images.

Tags: helen mirren, london, national theatre, phèdre

I remember being taught in art history that the Venus of Willendorf, the Paleolithic sculputure of a gloriously zaftig female, was probably carved by a man as a shamanistic fertility figure. Now the New York Times has an article about a stunning discovery of one of the oldest figurative sculptures ever found, another “Venus,” this one dating from 35,000 years ago. She has pendulous breasts, a capacious stomach, and, as the Times puts it (have they ever used this phrase before?) "a greatly enlarged vulva." She was meant to be worn around the neck. Isn't it likely, however, that these sculptures were carved by women as fertility figures for themselves? And that once upon a time women thought the ideal female body required exuberant flesh.

Tags: fat, fertility symbol, women's bodies.

As of Friday, Britain has its first female poet laureate: Carol Ann Duffy. She is a writer who favors plain language arranged "complexly" rather than what she has called "Seamus Heaney words" like "plash." She is also openly bisexual and much has been made of that in the press. Coincidentally or not, America's poet laureate, Kay Ryan, is a gay woman who favors plain language arranged complexly too. Women are coming into their own, it would seem; just this weekend, I was talking with a poet friend who felt very powerfully that women were about to become a major part of the next generation of poetry here and abroad; she's a teacher, and she felt the power and range of her female students was extraordinary and, somehow, new.
Britain's poet laureates hold the job for a term of 10 years, unlike American poet laureates. They also have to write poems to honor royal occasions, unlike American poets. It'll be interesting to see what Duffy, with her slyness, does with those moments. Here's a poem of hers called "Words, Wide Night":

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

Tags: carol ann duffy, poet laureate, poetry