Macy's to cut 7,000 jobs, slash dividend

I swear to you family....just yesterday I was standing in front of Macy's on 34th Street with Mia Amber discussing this very thing!!

By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO – NEW YORK (AP)

— Macy's Inc. announced Monday that it will eliminate 7,000 jobs, almost 4 percent of its work force, and cut capital spending, reduce its contributions to its employees' retirement funds and slash its dividend to preserve cash amid a severe pullback in consumer spending.

The Cincinnati-based department store chain also announced the national rollout of a plan to localize merchandising to specific markets, which it began in some regions last year.

The company, which also delivered downbeat earnings and sales forecasts for the year on Monday, said it plans to integrate all its geographic divisions into a single unit.

Macy's shares fell 4 percent Monday to close at $8.59.

Macy's said the job cuts, which include some unfilled positions and 1,900 being eliminated in the restructuring, will come at corporate offices, stores and other locations. The company employs about 180,000 people.

Macy's announced last month — on the heels of the worst holiday shopping season in decades — that it would close 11 stores, affecting 960 employees. The company expects the additional actions announced Monday to lower its annual selling, general and administrative expenses about $400 million per year starting in 2010.

The company also slashed its quarterly dividend to 5 cents from 13.25 cents. The dividend will be paid on April 1 to shareholders of record March 13.

"We just believe that this is a time when nothing should be considered a sacred cow," Macy's Chief Executive Terry J. Lundgren said in a conference call with analysts on Monday after the announcement.

The news from Macy's came as the government released yet another batch of bad news on consumers' financial health: Consumer spending fell for a record sixth straight month in December as financially strapped households, worried about rising layoffs, increased their savings rates to the highest level since May, federal officials said Monday.

Department stores have been especially hard-hit by the poor economy as shoppers cut spending and turn to discount stores. Last month, Fresno, Calif.-based department store chain Gottschalks Inc. put itself up for sale and said it had filed to reorganize in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Dallas-based Neiman Marcus Group Inc. said this month that it was cutting about 375 jobs, or 3 percent of its work force.

Macy's began testing the localization strategy in 20 regional markets last spring and expects the reorganization to be complete beginning in the second quarter this year.

Lundgren said the strategy has worked well so far, pointing to the fact that 13 of Macy's 15 top-performing geographic markets in December were part of the pilot program.

The idea is to concentrate Macy's top talent in local markets and better stay on top of trends by grouping Macy's stores nationwide into 69 geographic districts of 10 to 12 stores each. Twenty of the districts — in the Midwest, Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest — were created as pilots in spring 2008 and will remain in place.

In a phone interview with The Associated Press on Monday, CEO Lundgren acknowledged that he would have preferred to take more time with the national rollout. But, given the weak economy, he said, "You have to take action now."

Lundgren said he is looking at the company as a "clean slate" and is "starting from scratch" as he spearheads the overhaul. He also said he hopes Macy's will improve on inventory turns as a result of the restructuring.

He declined to comment on how much inventory will be down this year but said that, given the localization effort, the merchandising team will be better able to eliminate duplications in a given merchandise category in a given market.

Also as part of the restructuring, Macy's central buying, planning and senior management and marketing functions will be located primarily in New York.

Corporate-related businesses functions such as finance, human resources, legal, property development and company purchases will be located primarily in Cincinnati.

The localization began last year as the company struggled with disappointing sales in some markets where the Macy's name replaced a local favorite as the company absorbed May Department Stores Co. in 2005.

Macy's moves received kudos from Wall Street analysts.

"The environment is giving (Macy's) the opportunity to streamline its infrastructure," wrote Liz Dunn, an analyst at Thomas Weisel Partners LLC in a note released Monday. "We believe that (Macy's) regional buying strategy has been an impediment to profitability."

Also to reduce expenses, Macy's is eliminating merit salary increases for executives in spring 2009 for performance in 2008, and it will cut its contributions to employees' retirement accounts this year.

Assuming the economy will remain challenging for the year, the company is reducing this year's capital budget to $450 million, or $100 million to $150 million less than the $550 million to $600 million previously announced and well below the original $1 billion budgeted.

Macy's said it expects to earn between 40 cents and 55 cents, excluding one-time costs, for the year that ends next January.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters project earnings of 87 cents per share.

The company predicts its same-stores sales or sales at stores opened at least a year will fall between 6 percent and 8 percent in the year that ends in January 2010. Same-store sales are considered a key indicator of a retailer's health.

The company reports its fourth-quarter earnings results on Feb. 24.

This is just not good family....not at all....7000 jobs???? That's a WHOLE LOT of people out of work!!

"My major problem with the world is a problem of scarcity in the midst of plenty ... of people starving while there are unused resources ... people having skills which are not being used." - Milton Friedman

Leonard Nimoy's Full Body Project Revisited

This is another great article that I found on the "Manolobig.com" site (It's a plus themed site that I have bookmarked because it's really well put together....) I found an old NY Times article on Leonard Nimoy and his "Full Body Project" Exhibit that debuted back in 2007 (this one obviously got past me, cuz I'd never heard of it before now.)

BEFORE we begin, let’s get one thing out of the way: Yes, Leonard Nimoy is more than happy to do it — the Vulcan salute, the gesture that launched a thousand spaceships. He does so easily, effortlessly: palm outward, fingers extended, the index and middle finger smashed together, the ring finger and pinky touching, the thumb sticking out on its own.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
ROLE MODELS Leonard Nimoy’s “Full Body Project”
features nude obese women.

“People ask me all the time,” Mr. Nimoy said, carrying saucers of coffee and tea into his art-filled living room off Central Park West. He placed them next to galleys of his forthcoming photography book, which sat near a copy of “Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West,” by Margaret R. Miles, and a folder of news clippings on obesity.

“You see what I have here, about the health guidelines for models?” he asked, pointing a long, tapered finger toward the file.

The basso profundo voice was unmistakable, his words occasionally clipped with his native Boston accent. “They now have to have at least a certain weight to qualify,” Mr. Nimoy added. He looked pleased. This is a subject that speaks to him.

He knows that he is an unlikely champion for the size-acceptance movement; body image is a topic he never really thought about before. But for the last eight years, Mr. Nimoy, who is 76 and an established photographer, has been snapping pictures of plus-size women in all their naked glory.

He has a show of photographs of obese women on view at the R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Mass., through June; a larger show at the gallery is scheduled to coincide with the November publication of his book on the subject, “The Full Body Project,” from Five Ties Publishing. The Louis Stern Fine Arts gallery in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston have acquired a few images from the project. A few hang at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York. (Their explicitness prevents the images from being reprinted here.)

These women are not hiding beneath muumuus or waving from the bottom of the Grand Canyon à la Carnie Wilson in early Wilson Phillips videos. They are fleshy and proud, celebrating their girth, reveling in it. It is, Mr. Nimoy says, a direct response to the pressure women face to conform to a Size 2.

“The average American woman, according to articles I’ve read, weighs 25 percent more than the models who are showing the clothes they are being sold,” Mr. Nimoy said, his breathing slightly labored by allergies and a mild case of emphysema. “So, most women will not be able to look like those models. But they’re being presented with clothes, cosmetics, surgery, diet pills, diet programs, therapy, with the idea that they can aspire to look like those people. It’s a big, big industry. Billions of dollars. And the cruelest part of it is that these women are being told, ‘You don’t look right.’ ”

Mr. Nimoy, who divides his time among homes in New York and Los Angeles and on Lake Tahoe, in California, admits that before he began this project, it had never occurred to him that beauty might be culture driven, that a fat body in Africa is treated quite differently from one in the United States. “In some cultures their weight is a sign of affluence: their husbands can afford to feed them well,” he noted.

His enlightenment came about eight years ago, when he had been showing pictures from his Shekhina series — sensual, provocative images of naked women in religious Jewish wear — at a lecture in Nevada. Afterward, a 250-pound woman approached him and asked if he wanted to take pictures of her, a different body type. He agreed, and she came to the studio at his Tahoe house. She arrived with all sorts of clothes and props, “as if she were playing a farmer’s wife in a butter commercial,” he said.

His wife, Susan, who was assisting him, said, “No, we want to shoot nude.” So the model removed her clothing and lay down on the table. At first Mr. Nimoy was very nervous, he said.

“The nudity wasn’t the problem,” he said, “but I’d never worked with that kind of a figure before. I didn’t quite know how to treat her. I didn’t want to do her some kind of injustice. I was concerned that I would present this person within the envelope of an art form.”

But soon he relaxed into it, lulled by the clicking of the camera and the woman’s comfort with her body. He placed some of the shots in various exhibitions, and they invariably garnered the most attention. “People always wanted to know: ‘Who is she? How did you come to shoot her? Why? Where? What was it all about?’ ”

He decided to pursue the subject further and was led to Heather MacAllister, the founder and artistic director of Big Burlesque and the Fat Bottom Revue, a troupe of plus-size female performers in San Francisco. Ms. MacAllister died in February of ovarian cancer, but something she said to Mr. Nimoy in one of their first meetings struck a chord. “ ‘Any time a fat person gets on a stage to perform and is not the butt of a joke — that’s a political statement,’ ” he recalled. “I thought that was profound.”

Initially, he was interested in replicating Herb Ritts’s popular image of a group of nude supermodels clustered together on the floor, and a Helmut Newton diptych of women clothed and then unclothed in the identical pose. Ms. MacAllister and some of her friends agreed to be his subjects. He then posed the women to simulate Matisse’s “Dance” and Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase.”

The responses have ranged from joy to horror. One formerly obese woman said the photos terrified her; she said they recalled a picture she kept in her wallet as a reminder of her former self. Other women have thanked Richard Michelson, the Northampton gallery owner, for displaying the images, and even asked if Mr. Nimoy wanted to photograph them.

“I am actually amazed at how little negative reaction there has been,” said Mr. Michelson. “I attribute this in part to the gallery setting, and the fact that Northampton, Massachusetts, is perhaps the most liberal city in the most liberal state in the nation.”

“We do overhear some reductive ‘Is Nimoy into fat chicks’ comments when the gallery room is first entered,” he continued, “but in fact the fun nature of the work and the quality seem to shut people up by the time they leave. I’ve had a few crank e-mails with snide remarks, but not a one from gallery visitors.”

The Big Fat Blog, a Web site devoted to fat acceptance, wrote about Mr. Nimoy’s photographs in 2005. A woman calling herself Nellicat wrote in response: “I’m 5’5" and weigh between 130 and 135. But I don’t feel as comfortable in my own skin as I should. I look at those women strutting, posing, laughing, and I feel real envy towards them. There they are, posing for a man (!) knowing that the whole world will be able to see them naked (!!) and they are LOVING it. Oh, to be that free! To be that comfortable and beautiful in your body — I truly envy them.”

Though most people think of performers as naturally more unabashed than the rest of us, Ms. MacAllister said it is sometimes difficult for them, too. “We get scared and struggle w/self-acceptance and self-love just like you,” she posted on the blog at the time. “Just want you to know that ‘freedom is not free’; the freedom you see us enjoying is the result of constant hard work and eternal vigilance against the ‘tyranny of slenderness.’ ”

Mr. Nimoy was born in Boston to Russian Jews; he speaks and reads Yiddish. He began acting at 8, but his big break came at 17, when he was cast as Ralphie in a Boston production of Clifford Odets’s “Awake and Sing.” In 1966, he landed a gig on a little television show called “Star Trek,” which ran for only three seasons but would resonate for decades. He spent two seasons on “Mission Impossible” and in 1971 went to U.C.L.A. to study photography. He didn’t graduate, but he has a master’s in education and an honorary doctorate from Antioch College. He hasn’t acted since 1990, choosing to devote himself to art collecting, voiceover work and various philanthropic endeavors, including an artists’ foundation he and his wife run.

Most people know him as Mr. Spock, the terminally rational Vulcan with the famous hand signal. (The signal, which he said was his design, is actually rooted in Judaism. It represents the Hebrew letter “shin,” the first letter in the word Shaddai, which means God.)

In 2002, he published a book of photographs entitled “The Shekhina Project.” Shekhina is the feminine aspect of God; the photographs are sensual, erotic images of women draped in phylacteries, religious garments typically worn by Jewish males. The pictures were very controversial within the Jewish community: some people objected to the nudity, while others were offended by women in traditionally male garb. On the latter point, Mr. Nimoy said that he was not the first to put forth the idea. “There are historical writings of famous Jewish women, daughters of rabbis, who have done that,” he said.

He expects his second book to provoke an equally strong reaction, though he hopes the audience will gain a new perspective on the issue and learn something.

As for whether people will think he has a fetish, he said he can’t help that. “I just have no way of dealing with that,” he said with a laugh. “People will think what they’re going to think. I understand that.”

And what of his own attitude toward fat women?

“I do think they’re beautiful,” he said. “They’re full-bodied, full-blooded human beings.”

He doesn’t necessarily find them sexually attractive. “But I do think they’re beautiful.”

Go Leonard!!! Anybody know who the models were in these photographs and where they are now?

To view the Full Body exhibit in its entirety: www.leonardnimoyphotography.com

"I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand."

- Robert Mapplethorpe

Fat or "Fat Euphemism" - Which One Are YOU?

Yo! Family.....

I found this article on www.The-F-word.org and I thought it was really interesting, so I am re-posting it for you all to check out too!

Kudos to French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier for casting 51-year-old former French supermodel Inès de la Fressange at this week’s Paris couture shows. Gaultier, it seems, regularly likes to step outside rigidly-drawn fashion lines — he caused a storm two years ago by sending plus-size New York model Velvet down the runway in a revealing black corset.

There was some talk then if Gaultier’s choice of Velvet was more satirical than an altruistic attempt to show the diversity of beauty, but I think his choice of Fressange reaffirms his stated desire to “show that beauty can be universal.” My only sticking point is in the media coverage of Fressange. Read the description below of Fressange on the runway and then look at a shot of her taken during the show. Do the descriptions of her (emphasized by me) match the reality shown?

As the voluptuous 51-year-old strutted down the runway, the crowd cheered this one-time French queen of the catwalk.

Fashion models “are not just 14-year-olds,” Mr. Gaultier said later. “There are no [age] barriers to beauty.” The French designer explained that the curvy Ms. de la Fressange embodied the sexuality demanded his raunchy Spanish themed show, which also featured high-waisted pinstripe pants for women, suspenders and elbow-length gloves.

“Voluptuous” and “curvy” are subjective descriptors, sure, and by neutral definition, they indicate a full and well-proportioned figure — not a fat figure, mind you, but a proportioned one. But in the mainstream media and especially the insane alternate reality known as fashion, such terms are usually used as euphemisms for the dreaded F-word… FAT. Case in point: The same media outlets that ran the story on the “curvy” Fressange above are the same venues abuzz with talk of a “curvy” Jessica Simpson.

The inanity of the media and the skewering of our perceptions on reality aside… I’d like to talk about fat euphemisms in general. Camryn Manheim culled a list of fat euphemisms described of her in reviews in her memoir, “Wake Up, I’m Fat!“:

Rotund	Heavy	Colossal
No Slenderella	Plump	Ample
Heroically Proportioned	Overweight	Stout
Couch Potato	Hefty	Matronly
Oversized	Robust	Big
Full bodied	Zaftig	Large
Wide-ish	Large	Immense
Generously Proportioned	Enormous	Grand
Heavyweight talent	Corpulent	Plentiful
Gravitationally challenged

To this, I’d add other popular terms: fluffy, plush, plus-sized, juicy, chubby, big-boned, queen-sized, as well as the aforementioned curvy and voluptuous (Feel free to add any terms I’ve missed to this list).

Fat euphemisms really dig at the heart of the overall theme here — the demonization of fat is, in fact, the primary reason why I titled the site as such. Food and feminism, also dreaded F-words for many, just conveniently happened to also begin with “F” — alas, the-F-Word was born. Fat euphemisms do not exist because fat people do not know they’re fat and are thus deluded into using cutesy terms to describe themselves. Fat euphemisms exist because people do not want to label themselves (or others) as “fat” — and ergo, all the negative implications associated with the three-letter adjective. Even some self-described fat admirers admit to struggling with using the term fat.

Dictionary definitions for fat as a physical attribute include “plump; having too much flabby tissue; plentiful; abundant” etc… However in common usage, the word fat has been bastardized to also mean, to name just a few, “sloth; greed; laziness; character flaw; shortcoming; dirty; unattractive; embarrassing; lack of willpower, control; unhealthy.” For many people, especially those outside the size acceptance community, fat is a derisive, mocking term usually wielded as a verbal weapon of inner mass destruction — fat-ass, fat whale, fat bitch, fatty — so the natural inclination is to shy away from it much as anyone would any other horrible expletive. The media uses fat euphemisms to avoid coming off as attacking or insulting while still yet conveying its message that OMG, CELEBRITY X HAS GAINED WEIGHT! to image-obsessed readers. Kate Harding has written an excellent article summing up these points — read her story, originally published in Harriet Brown’s new anthology “Feed Me!” here on Salon.com.

I’m fat. Two short words, and yet it’s taken me nearly a lifetime to be able to utter them. I’m not big-boned, I’m not zaftig, and I’m certainly not fluffy. I’m fat. I also wear glasses, sport short hair I pay good money to have colored red, am short, have brown eyes and tend to dress like the before footage of guests on “What Not to Wear.” I’m fat. So what?

I prefer the term “fat” to describe myself in lieu of what I think to be silly fat euphemisms and synonyms, but I recognize that not everyone is so thick-skinned (no pun intended). I now use the word regularly even in conversations with others, but even I have to admit, hearing “You’ve got beautiful curves” still sounds much nicer than “You’re so fat.” In my academic research, there’s no getting around the use of clinical terms like “overweight” and “obese,” although I inwardly cringe each time I type them out (overweight? over whose weight?). In my personal parlance, I also like the word fat because fat is an equalizer, lumping all of us who are not of weights socially deemed to be “normal” into one big fat group of cultural deviants. It removes the barriers we construct between ourselves and forces us into the realization of just how narrow(ing) social constructions of weight and beauty harm us all, fat and thin.

For me, each time I use the word fat neutrally or better yet, positively, it chips away at the ugliness that has come to be associated with the word. How about you? Have you reclaimed the word “fat”? If so, how? And if not, what are some of the reasons why?

Damn. This is a really good article fam.....for more curvy chick themed articles...check out the site: Click Here

"I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas." - Agatha Christie

RED CARPET ARRIVALS: Derek Blanks Website Launch Party

The curvy girls were in full effect at celebrity photographer, Derek Blanks new website launch party in Atlanta. But of course Real Housewife, NeNe Leakes & her husband Gregg were there! Derek did a phenomenal job with Nene's new look!

I actually became a fan of Derek Blanks when I saw his pictures of Jennifer Hudson....his work with NeNe just took me over the top! He is definitely on my "To Do" list of photographers that I'd like to work with.

I found some pics of the party from Derek's My Space page, and although I don't recognize any faces other than NeNe's & Gregg's, I am so very impressed that so many curvy girls came out and did the "Step & Repeat".....AND he posted them.

I don't know who the Curvy Divas are but they all represented properly, so that earns them a spot here!

His site address is http://www.dblanks.com/, Check it out....homeboy is THAT good!

Congrats on the launch and continued success in all that you do!

"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” - Elliott Erwitt

Dwight Eubanks from Real Housewives of ATL to get his own show?

lol....You KNEW it was coming right family? I mean he was the most memorable character to come from The Real Housewives of Atlanta.....

Dwight Eubanks–the 6th ATL Housewife and NeNe’s gay BFF–has confirmed that he is indeed getting his own reality show. (Hmmmm....is it me or does it seem like Bravo is giving out reality shows like they're Chiclets? What's up with THAT?)

In addition to owning the Purple Door Salon in Atlanta, he’s opening his own boutique. Featuring, of course, She by Sheree.

No word on if there will be actual clothes in place of sketches this time around.....




"A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience". - Elbert Hubbard