June 2013
41 posts
Apologies for the lack of posts/original posts at the moment, I’m super super busy and stressed trying to organise the house and find new housemates…Back to normal in a couple of weeks!
Do any of my London followers need a room from August? We have 2 double bedrooms (£570 pcm) and a single room (£530 pcm) going spare! 4 floor Victorian terrace in zone 1-2 (7 min walk to Aldgate East/Whitechapel/Shadwell, plus excellent bus routes and close to main road so v safe). ALSO you get to live with 3 fabulous queers including the friendliest oversharing lesbian you’ll ever meet (that’s me). Can provide pictures next week! We’re a super inclusive household, it’s pretty big and we have a small outdoor space. Also we’re thinking of getting a cat but if you’re allergic we wont.
So they’ve found out that Prince William’s great-great-great-great-great grandmother was ‘at least part Indian’, and the guy on the radio says that they hope this will “torpedo race based ideas of intelligence”. Because apparently millions of *actual Indian people* being intelligent wasn’t enough evidence of that. We had to wait for predominantly white, British royalty from a country with a history of brutal colonialism to prove it. One who had the best education money can buy and still got average to sub par grades if I remember rightly. Thank you Prince William for showing us through your own shining intellect that all Indian people aren’t stupid.
Red lipstick makes me feel like I could cut a man’s heart out with a high heel shoe and fucking eat it.
You either know what I’m talking about or you don’t
“Men celebrated our sexual liberation — our willingness to freely give and enjoy blow jobs and group sex, our willingness to experiment with anal penetration — but ultimately many males revolted when we stated that our bodies were territories that they could not occupy at will. Men who were ready for female sexual liberation if it meant free pussy, no strings attached, were rarely ready for feminist female sexual agency. This agency gave us the right to say yes to sex, but it also empowered us to say no.”
—bell hooks in Communion: The Female Search for Love (via daniellemertina)
Seriously though what is it about a girl in a shirt
Hey lovely followers, do any of you live in Preston (UK)? My amazing friend Rachel has just moved there and she wants someone to hang out with. She has blue hair and likes Lord of the Rings, adventures, and ridiculous leggings. This is her Tumblr …
you are just awesome. like more than awesome. and i love you so much!
This is very cute but I am forever going to wonder if you are someone I know in real life or not?! Thank you anyway!
Okie dokie so I saw your post on the weight issue and I dunno I just sort of got upset because I feel like abuse over weight is a problem for both sexes I mean like I'm not trying to offend you or anyone that agrees with the ideas presented by the picture I just don't agree with it because like I am overweight for a male my age and height and i feel like i have to live up to this standard that has been set by thw women in my life who gush over hot thin muscley men (continue in next ask)
“And the idea of a perfect body exists for both sees like women are made out to be these thin high cheek boned godesses and men are shown as these buff god like figures who are made out of marble you know and it makes me feel like a fat lump of gross so I don’t think it’s such a ‘Patriarchal beauty standard’ because it exist both was like I’m sure if women were asked to go out by a larger man there is a chance they would disagree the same way a man would so it needs to be seen As a problem for both sexes not just the one I mean i understand it is more widely recognized as a problem for women and that is quite true but the problem exists for men as well but in todays society I feel like men are just expected to man up, lose some weight and deal with it I’m really sorry if I offended you or anyone else I probably worded this whole thing terribly I just wanted to express how I felt on the subject and if I am wrong in any way please feel free to explain how so :P”
Firstly, the post in question is not explicitly about any one gender. The people illustrated have breasts, yes, but that doesn’t mean that the message can’t apply to anyone who doesn’t. As we know, your body and your gender don’t always correlate, so there’s that. I think the issue is that you’re assuming ‘patriarchy’ means ‘cis men’. It doesn’t. Patriarchy is a social system that disproportionately favours cis men. It can also have a hugely negative impact on them. Feminists recognise this and want, phrasing it lightly, to tear it the fuck down (hence why the whole ‘men’s rights’ movement is redundant, but I won’t go into that here).
I’m sorry you’ve struggled with society’s reaction to your weight. There’s no reason that post can’t apply to you as well. I don’t think anyone is disputing that oppressive beauty standards harm men as well as women. But the standard that you perceive to have been set for you has not been set by the women in your life. It’s a part of patriarchy. It’s a product of the (male dominated) media, who push unrealistic, predominantly white ideas of beauty, and outdated versions of femininity and masculinity onto us, so that we keep buying their magazines and we keep watching their movies and we keep buying expensive products in order to get closer to and try and achieve the goal which they have created. It’s a massive fucking con, basically, and it’s there to distract us and keep us too busy to see the wider issue and try to dismantle this system. Recognising this is the first step to freeing yourself from it. Don’t blame those women, because they are under the same pressures as you, and more besides.
Lastly, try and see things from a female perspective. It is considerably easier to find cis men who fall outside of the ‘conventionally attractive’ box in the media- old men, fat men, ‘ugly’ men- can usually be found represented in a positive light. As fully dimensional people capable of a range of emotions. Capable of being sexy. Look at Seth Rogan and Jonah Hill, for example. Look at older male news anchors. When women don’t conform to beauty ideals, they’re often boxed into stereotypes- the older woman whose sexuality is either stripped from her or amplified, who is turned into a ‘cougar’. Fat women, forever resigned to being the bubbly best friend. Look at the red carpets and the magazine coverage of them. Scores of men of different ages and sizes, all looking dapper in a tux, while on the next 5 pages women are judged with great big red circles drawn around the bits of them that don’t match up to scrutiny.
I’m not trying to erase your problems. I know they’re very real. The body positivity movement is for you, as well. So is feminism. I know it’s super hard, but work on feeling better about your own body and forget about anyone else’s opinion on it. If anyone judges you on your appearance, they’re not worth knowing anyway.
my parents definitely did not raise me to be a queer feminist filled with the wrath of a thousand enraged dragons and yet here i am
- what she says: i'm fine
- what she means: the bourgeoisie is just as necessary a precondition for the socialist revolution as is the proletariat itself.
Can anyone help me settle a dispute with my girlfriend? Do you think jumpers or cardigans are more practical?
- Called my mum this morning and she didn't pick up, but she just started talking to me on Facebook.
- Mum: Just noticed you called me, are you at work?
- Me: Yes. I had to call you
- Mum: Why what's up?
- Me: To tell you that I was listening to the news this morning and they said that the Tories have said that if they win the 2015 election they're going to withdraw the UK from the EU convention on human rights.
- Mum: Wankers
- Me: The country is going to shit and is being run by pantomime villains
- Me: We have 2 years to start a revolution
- Mum: But I'm usually still asleep at 8.25
- Me: You can't overthrow the government if you're still in bed at half past 8 in the morning.
- Mum: No but I did all that in the eighties.
- Mum: On a side note my balcony is all flowery now.
The Vagenda: Ruffling The Feathers of Fashion →
vagendamag.blogspot.co.uk
This is about the Debenhams LookBook. I usually love Vagenda but I’m not totally sure about this article. Here’s a quote:
“The LookBook works through being both startling and understated. There are models posing in clothes. So far, so predictable. But it’s the fact that the models include a Paralympian, a size eighteen woman and someone of sixty-plus that makes it a little more magnificent than your average set of images. There is Philomena Kwao, aiming to be the first black plus-size supermodel, and Kelly Knox, who was born without a left forearm. The line-up was chosen by Caryn Franklin, fashion commentator and co-founder of fashion diversity initiative All Walks Beyond the Catwalk. On the selection process she noted, “The casting took a long time to find the right balance of skin tone, size, age and individual physical characteristics. You can’t charge for this within a commercial project because the enhanced budget would be offputting for the client, so I did it as a gift to the project. Debenhams were already paying out extra to employ 9 models, not 2 [the usual LookBook allocation], so we were all investing in it.””
I really appreciate that using models outside of the thin-white-girl mould is a huge step for high street chain. I don’t want to disparage that, and I hope it’s a step towards more varied models becoming more ordinary and acceptable across the fashion industry and encouraging a culture of body positivity instead of body shaming.
But I think it’s hard to foster change without constant debate and criticism, and my criticism of this (the Debenhams LookBook and the Vagenda article) is that it doesn’t go far enough. Being ‘plus size’ or ‘curvalicious’ (christ, why does fat have to be such a dirty word) doesn’t stop at size 18. Those women are beautiful, sure, but where are the size 22s, the 24s, the 30s, who society doesn’t instantly deem acceptable as soon as they step into a wrap dress and a pair of heels? Where are the women without great bone structure and impeccable cheekbones? There could also be a lot more racial diversity; the models are predominantly white with only a couple of exceptions that I can see. The older model looks amazing but she sure as hell doesn’t look like most 60+ women that I see. You know, the ones who I would hazard a guess are a large part of Debenham’s consumer base. Kelly Knox, a Paralympian born without a forearm- fantastic, but would we see a woman with a facial disfigurement? I’m really not sure, because if there’s one thing these women have in common it’s a conventionally pretty face. Where are the women without ‘perfect’ skin? With cellulite, stretch marks, scars? Where are the trans* people, the people that don’t conform to the gender binary?
I don’t want to sound too negative. I think what Debenham’s are doing is a thousand times better than the usual alternative. I know it’s impossible to represent everyone all the time, but I want to see people represented who don’t always get to see themselves represented in media in a positive light. I want models who shock people into wondering why they’re shocked.
So sometimes I get messages or nice asks about my Tumblr and it’s really really cool, so thanks guys, but also I find it really odd because the most productive thing I did this weekend was my food shopping where I pretty much wandered around Sainsbury’s muttering to myself about the price of soy mince, and today I found laundry that I haven’t done for over 6 MONTHS, and I have a mug on the doorstep that has grown new life, and if I didn’t have a job I would definitely fail to get dressed every day and basically these just don’t seem like things that are conducive to fanmail, but it makes me really happy anyway, so, thank you.
May 2013
101 posts
Zappafish
So my friend explained to me the whole Tumblr thing today. I asked if there were pictures of jellyfish there. She said most likely. Cue me spending the next several hours looking at pictures of jellyfish and reading about jellyfishy things. There was one jellyfish tidbit stood out to me the most. So much so that I felt that it was first post worthy. And so here we are. (It is now 3am. Oh god whyyyy?)
So there was this guy called Ferdinando “Nando” Boreo. He loved both jellyfish and Frank Zappa. But mostly Frank Zappa. So much so that he devised a cunning plan. Step one. Get a Marine Biology degree. Step two. Acquire a research job and then apply for funding to research local jellyfish. Why?
“My strategy was a simple one. That fauna was not well known; I would find some new species for sure; once I had found them I would have to give them a name; I would dedicate one of them to FZ; I would tell him about it; he would invite me to visit.”And it totally worked. On hearing that Nando was naming the species Phialella zappai after him, Frank Zappa said “there is nothing I would like better than having a jellyfish with my name.” and invited him over to his place where they spent 2 days doing most likely super awesome cool fun stuff and then became BFFs and lived happily ever after.
Apparently the whole naming animals after celebrities is quite a common thing. Examples include a blind cave beetle named after Hitler, a horse fly named after Beyonce and a fungus named after Obama. And yes, I totally just did put those three people in the same sentence together.
So my housemate/the Australian contingent of our girl gang got Tumblr today. It’s already begun. She’s been glued to her laptop for the last 3 hours.
As the strains of ‘Popcorn’ reach my ears from Covent Garden for the 73rd time this week, I fantasise about diving from the office window down to the piazza, bodyslamming the offending street performer and quietly sobbing “Why?”. “Why?”, I ask, as I stare desperately into his eyes.
“It is illegal for women to go topless in most cities, yet you can buy a magazine of a woman without her top on at any 7-11 store. So, you can sell breasts, but you cannot wear breasts, in America.”
—Violet Rose (via c-icatrix)
Last night at about half past ten I microwaved myself a tin of baked beans and tiny veggie sausages for dinner and got a beer out of the fridge and I felt genuinely thrilled at my ability to provide for myself, like a real adult (I’m 23), and then I realised I am actually becoming Lumpy Space Princess.
Going camping in the New Forest with Holly next weekend ahuigufgjkahoasuhui so excited, I am going to pretend I am a hobbit the entire time, definitely a bit scared of the ponies though.
