“History is made up of fragments and absences. What is left out is as significant as what is included.”
— Illuminations (1968), Walter Benjamin
young cow in cosmos /acrylic and crayon on illustration board
“Some nights I wish I could go back in life. Not to change shit, just to feel a couple things twice.”
— 6pm in New York- Drake (via bl-ossomed)
Listen, if performing femininity is an “empowering choice,” then it needs to be an actual choice. Meaning that woman can opt out of it without negative consequence. Meaning a woman can go to an academic event without heels or in a simple suit and still be “professional.” Meaning that a woman can go to a job interview without a full face of makeup and not be “tired” or “disheveled.” Meaning that a woman can walk around in shorts with unshaven legs and not be a dirty, unclean gremlin. Meaning that a little girl can play and break barriers and like STEM while wearing jeans and a t-shirt and not be considered less empowered or “just trying to be a boy.”
Meaning that a woman’s femininity and womanhood is not contingent upon the extent to which she buys and performs a time-consuming, expensive, uncomfortable mold of a very specific type of packaged femininity.
This isn’t even going into the effect these double standards have on women who in some way, by their very existence, do not fit the standard white western beauty mold and are expected to perform hyperfemininity to be “women” at all. I.e. women of colour esp. darker-skinned women of colour, hijabi women and tznius-keeping women, fat women, disabled women, trans women, etc.
Xia Yifan, Zhang Hang and Lin Zhengjie by Lu Ziye for Fucking Young! Magazine - May 2020
“Life is confusing, like one day you’re the happiest person alive and tomorrow you hate everyone and everything for no logical reason”
20aliens-deactivated20200625
The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams by Alessandra Sanguinetti
“So, what if, instead of thinking about solving your whole life, you just think about adding additional good things. One at a time. Just let your pile of good things grow.”
— Rainbow Rowell