So after going through the Fat Bodies section in General Women Studies Class, I was left a bit uneasy. And you can’t blame me, like how can I accept the fact that the media wants to control what women put in their mouths and constantly blame regular women for the way they look? It’s all pure nonsense. Whatever happened to embracing one’s curves, however they look, big or small? I just don’t understand it. It frustrates me greatly.
gender
When Were We Happy?
Photo by Marie C.
Recently while I was perusing my Tumblr I came across this post. At first I was just going to scroll past, but then I decided to actually stop and look at it.
Don’t Censor the Bush/The Politics of Pubes
Today I want to talk about pubes.
For many people, deciding how to groom their pubic hair is an issue fraught with anxiety, and women in particular are bombarded with images of completely smooth, hairless thighs and bikini lines that we are supposed to emulate and admire. We’re told to shave it, pluck it, wax it, sculpt it—it doesn’t really matter what method we use, as long as we’re rid of our unsightly hair. This standard is so pervasive that women’s pubic hair is now widely slandered as unhygienic (patently false), barbaric, and, above all, pornographic.
*pics of pubes after the cut* Continue reading
I Know This Pretty (Slutty) Rave Girl…
Jamming onstage to Doctor P during Stacked: Miami. RIP blue hair.
If you’ve ever heard me talk about my musical interests, you’ll know that I’m a massive basshead. I love everything about the Electronic Dance Music community, from the art of making heartfelt kandi bracelets and the secret handshake used to trade them, to the PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect) motto, the flow arts (hula hoop dancing, poi, and flow wand) performances during a show, the ability to walk up to anyone and potentially make a new best friend, to the infectious energy radiating from the crowd. Being introduced to the EDM scene allowed me to express myself with reckless abandon, whether it be through dance, hooping, kandi-making, or interesting costume-like getups. But there’s one thing I don’t love about this community- the amount of slut shaming in response to girls wearing rave outfits that attempt to be both cute and comfortable.
TW: Sexual assault, death mention, slut shaming, drug mention, rape culture
Embodiment, Women and Drugs
An acquaintance of mine recently made a pretty generalizing statement that sparked some dissonance in me. My friend and I were chatting about a celebrity entering another stint in rehab and he said to me, “Drugs really kill a woman’s face. Us men are lucky.” As I ingested some chunks of this comment, a river of thoughts came crashing in.
Shrinking Women
I recently came across a Youtube video entitled “Shrinking Women,” which is a piece of slam poetry written and performed by Lily Myers. It discusses the topic of bodies and the space they take up. I found this piece to be profound and it immediately reminded me of this course.
Women in Public ≠ Public Property *TW assault*
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the issue of women’s bodies being viewed as public property. From cat calls to groping, it seems that many men have a clear sense of entitlement to women’s bodies in public spaces. This way of thinking and acting is incredibly prevalent in our society, and the cultural encouragement of this behavior is especially disturbing. I recently watched several videos by Stuart Edge and Andrew Hales that completely condone this type of behavior by harassing women and then playing it off as a fun joke.
He called me a waste
The guy I went to prom with called me a waste the day I came out to him. He looked me in the eye and said this with a smile on his face as if it what he were proud of what he just said. This wasn’t the last time something like this had ever been said to me. On multiple occasions I have been called “selfish”, “unfair”, and “a waste” by a number of men because of my sexual orientation. And on every one of these occasions I ask them all the same question, “Why?”. Continue reading
Club Affairs
typical club attire
The media consistently portrays an image to women that they must be sexy in order to attract men. Magazines and television shows depicts images of women wearing short skirts, high heels, heavy makeup, and shirts that show their naval in order to be sexy. The media and popular culture alike encourage women to flaunt their cleavage, silky legs, buttocks, and etc. Normal and acceptable club attire requires women to wear a tight short dress or skirt with high heels. These women are constantly being bombarded by sexual advances from men who assume these women are inviting this attention because of the way they are dressed.
When I started going to clubs at the age of eighteen, I wore the expected scandalous clothing and thought nothing of it because it was normalized. I would have felt out of place if I covered my body, while everyone else was showing off their assets. One night at the club, I was wearing a short and tight zebra print dress. The dress hugged my tightly and I was wearing very tall black high heels. I received a lot of attention in that dress from men mainly and I began to feel confident (not that it should have). One man in particular was originally conducting himself in the appropriate manner by asking me to dance and inquiring if I wanted water. As the night drew on, we still continued to hang out at the club. Once the night was over he offered to walk with me and my group of friends to my car. Before I approached my car, this guy held my hand tightly and forcefully tried to kiss me. Scared I started yelling and one of my close guy friends rushed to my aid. When my guy friend asked what he was doing he stated that “it looked like she wanted to do than just dance with at the club”( because of the way I was dressed). At that moment I realized the very message that I thought I had to uphold of being sexy due to the media almost cost me my safety.
In this country women are under a great deal of pressure to be feminine and one of the ways to achieve that femininity is to have a sexy appeal. Many women get blamed when they are rapped in this country because people claim if “she hadn’t been wearing that outfit, no guy would have assaulted her” yet the media claims in order to attract a mate one must appear sexy. That statement directly correlates to blame the victim phenomena. No woman invites rape because the act is nonconsensual in nature. The effect of being perceived as sexy in this country has both negative and positive connotations.
Dysmorphic Friends
One of my closest friends is a fashion stylist. She chooses outfits, hair, makeup, and general looks or moods for photoshoots for natural makeup companies and independent designers. I have modelled for her in the past even though I am not a model and don’t look like a magazine model. I also model for my own Etsy store, selling vintage clothing. My friend has had eating disorders since puberty and I have not. I feel that her eating disorders are a sign of privilege and she feels that my “poverty genes” and post thyroid cancer synthetic metabolism are a sign of privilege. The arguments are frequent and comical.
I feel that it would be insulting to her profession and life’s path to say that her involvement with fashion feeds her disorder, so I often try to tell her eating disorders are a result of a sexist, competitive capitalism, a first world problem, and that if she stops aestheticizng the super young and super thin, wheat colored waify girls with vacant expressions, she won’t hold herself up for comparison to them. I tell her to keep her job but change her aesthetic, make it weirder, and I tell her she’s a misogynist. Then I go on like a hypocrite and smooth out my hair, put makeup on, and have my boyfriend shoot photos of me for Etsy, to make money. And I do make money. But recently, editing and cropping photos of myself, I feel like I look OOLLDD. So I call my friend and ask her for a disorder that will make me less old, less short, less frizzy, less dark, less tired. And there isn’t one. I’m really not sure what I’m aestheticising, but even though I’m perfectly happy with my weight I still feel the need to critically tear apart whatever I can about my own image, down to my assymetrical smile or uneven hair texture or slightly more almond shaped right eye than left one. Little little minute stupid details. All while knowing that I’m making this image public by my own free will, by my need to pay the bills and put gas in my car to get to school. Because those waify wheat colored girls are out there, and my tiny little capitalist enterprise is knowingly in competition with them, and growing up in the 80s and 90s, between Debbie Gibson and Kate Moss, I never felt that my features were pure or innocent, only exotic and “olive olive olive”, and now getting older.
Can a woman be this self-critical and also be a feminist?
Unruly Bodies 