real power is going outside knowing you look ugly and also knowing that if you chose to perform femininity in accordance with patriarchal standards you could look attractive, but genuinely prefering to look ugly and not feeling bad about it. feels good feels organic
Me: shows up to work merely clean and well dressed like all the males there
Boss: you look tired
Me: 🖕
I was in a job orientation once and the instructor was talking about appropriate work attire and literally said “and women….please wear some makeup” and everyone laughed. I, who was not wearing makeup nor do I ever, raised my hand and asked “What’s the required amount of makeup for men?” And that was an amazingly wonderful awkward silence.
I remember someone posted an article once about how during victorian times i think the tuberculosis “look” became the new beauty ideal for women, like unhealthily skinny, pale skin, glowing (with sweat due to fever), rosy cheeks, etc and i for real think about that almost every day because its like. We never had a chance lmao
DUDE I DID A WHOLE PAPER ON THIS. It was a huge Romantic fad for both men and women. It was considered specifically the poet’s disease (the umbrella “artist’s disease” was syphilis, so many composers had it holy shit, it was probs why Beethoven went deaf) and women and poets were seen as especially susceptible because of their sensitivity specifically, not necessarily miasma. It got to the point of popularity where a good poet and handsome man were both consumptive that none other than Lord Byron once wrote to a friend that he wished he had it cause then he would get all the ladies. Alexandre Dumas wrote about the same thing when he was remembering his youth in Paris. This wasn’t just England, it was all over Western Europe. (Also fun to look at: the treatments and prescriptions given by doctors to cure tb, I ended up banging my head against the wall when I was researching it)
THIS is what it is to be female in the world. It is not a privilege. It is not a “doesn’t happen on western countries” thing. This is what is every girl experiences everywhere in the world. This is society making us a “thing” for consumption and not teaching boys to act like humans instead of teaching girls to monitor everything they do.
So uhh today I was chastised by my sociology professor when I said that FGM and child marriage are inherently wrong and constitute human rights violations regardless of where/why they’re practiced. He said I “can’t think like that” and that I wasn’t using the sociological perspective of cultural relativism. I’m amazed that I managed to stop myself from screaming, but somehow I did and now my blood’s just been quietly boiling all day instead. And my doctor wonders why I have high blood pressure this young… Jesus FUCKING CHRIST
he’s right though. Why do your cultural values and moral imperatives have more value than anyone else’s?
BECAUSE WOMEN AND GIRLS DON’T DESERVE TO BE MUTILATED IN ANY COUNTRY, ANY CULTURE, ANY FUCKING CONTEXT, PERIOD. FUCK YOU ETERNALLY.
women: we deserve full bodily autonomy
some inbred fucktard: idk bro this seems kinda racist maybe if you took into consideration how important oppressing women is to my people you’d underst
“When men are oppressed, it’s a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it’s tradition.” — Letty Cottin Pogrebin
“The low-maintenance woman, the ideal woman, has no appetite. This is not to say that she refuses food, sex, romance, emotional effort; to refuse is petulant, which is ironically more demanding. The woman without appetite politely finishes what’s on her plate, and declines seconds. She is satisfied and satisfiable.
A man’s appetite can be hearty, but a woman with an appetite is always voracious: her hunger always overreaches, because it is not supposed to exist. If she wants food, she is a glutton. If she wants sex, she is a slut. If she wants emotional care-taking, she is a high-maintenance bitch or, worse, an “attention whore”: an amalgam of sex-hunger and care-hunger, greedy not only to be fucked and paid but, most unforgivably of all, to be noticed.”
Christ, this article made me legit well up in tears at work…
“Women talk ourselves into needing less, because we’re not supposed to want more—or because we know we won’t get more, and we don’t want to feel unsatisfied. We reduce our needs for food, for space, for respect, for help, for love and affection, for being noticed, according to what we think we’re allowed to have. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we can live without it, even that we don’t want it. But it’s not that we don’t want more. It’s that we don’t want to be seen asking for it. And when it comes to romance, women always, always need to ask.”
Create a mess 