i am here on this earth i don't know why i don't care why i'm just trying to figure out the universe and life and love and why peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth so if you want to know such things i'd suggest you read this if you're into gossip i'd go somewhere else.
So this is a totally useless rant, but as a skinny girl, I’m getting extra, extra tired of fat-shaming.
I work for a corsetier at a Renaissance Faire. We sell corsets. Not flimsy bullshit costume corsets; like real, durable, waist-training corsets. Today a woman came in with her boyfriend, so I helped her pick out a corset and try it on. While her boyfriend—who was decidedly enthused about the whole corset thing—sat watching me lace her in, he told me, grinning, “Of all the good jobs at the Renaissance Faire, I think you have the best.”
I shrugged in agreement. “I touch butts and reach down cleavage all day; I mean…” Because we like to be a bit rakish at the Faire, and, y’know, it’s true. Tying people into corsets pretty much invariably requires getting handsy.
The couple laughed at that, and the boyfriend said, “That’s the job I would want!” But then he chuckled again and said, offhand, “Or maybe not; while we were looking at the racks, there were some pretty big sizes on there!”
Our sizes are all done in inches, and the biggest we make is a 46. And you’d better believe our large sizes sell. For a second I wasn’t sure what to say to the guy’s comment, but I answered him casually. “We get a lot of beautiful big ladies in here.” Because we do. “We make corsets for real women, not Barbie dolls,” I added. Wasn’t trying to be smart, just kind of tossed it out there because that’s the line we like to use when people ask about larger sizes, and because, again, we do.
The boyfriend went quiet at that; I didn’t think anything of it, I just kept on lacing. A moment later, he said, a little awkwardly (but sincerely enough), “Didn’t mean to be offensive.”
I quickly smiled and brushed it off, said he wasn’t, said I was just saying. (Don’t want to make the customers uncomfortable, you know?) And that was the end of it. His comment had rubbed me the wrong way, but it wasn’t a big deal. Now, I wear a 20-inch corset. I’m a few cup sizes short of being one of the Barbie dolls. Like his girlfriend, I’m one of the “hot chicks”; he doesn’t have to worry about offending me by implying that I wouldn’t be fun to poke and pull at.
Honestly though, of all the people I fit sexy technically-undergarments to in a day, fat girls are maybe my favorite people to lace up. Because they are just so damn happy that we have stuff that fits them. They are so damn happy that the corsets we make in their sizes are all the same pretty, shiny colors and cool flower/dragon/skull/etc. prints that the smaller corsets are, not ugly beige and boring “granny” colors. They are so goddamn happy that at least one (of several on the grounds) corset shop carries things that they can wear, that they actually want to wear, and that they look fucking awesome in. This is only my second season working, and we’ve fit 60+ inch waists and double-K busts. The only people we’ve ever had to tell sorry, we don’t have anything that fits them, are twelve-year-old kids.
It’s half-wonderful, half-heartbreaking how excited those women get. Women who say with sad smiles, when we ask if they want to get fitted, “Oh, no, you don’t have anything that fits me,” and then are stunned when we’re 300% confident that yes we do, and we have options. Women who can’t stop smiling and looking at themselves in the mirror after we’ve got them laced in.
I had a lady last week whose waist I measured (cinching the tape tight, as per procedure) at 41 inches—honestly not all that big. So she picked out a 41-inch corset to try on. I could tell halfway through getting her laced that it was going to be a bit big for her, so I mentioned it and said she might do better to try a smaller size. She started crying on the spot. She was so overwhelmed; she couldn’t believe someone had just told her that a 41 was too big. She told me about how hard clothes shopping was for her, how her mother would tell her she needed an XXXL instead of an XXL, how she had recently lost weight but still couldn’t wear certain colors because they didn’t fit or she wasn’t confident enough.
She did end up getting her corset, and after I checked her out she asked if she could give me a hug, so we ended up standing there hugging each other for a minute. While we did, I told her, “Do not ever let anyone tell you any bullshit. You are gorgeous.” She said, “I have a new boyfriend and he keeps telling me that.” I told her he was right, and to just keep telling herself she’s gorgeous; it was okay if she didn’t always believe it, but to keep telling herself anyway. (That’s how I talked myself through shit when I had bad anxiety.)
We all know fat-shaming is bad. The stupidity, fatphobia, and misogyny of it has pissed me off since I first became aware of it. But working with clothing, especially as figure-hugging and precise as corsets, has given me a new perspective on it—how much it affects people and just how shitty it is. Like, what does it say that I had a grown, only average-big woman crying into my shoulder because she was so overjoyed not to be the uppermost extremity of what a manufacturer can clothe?
My job rocks and it’s really rewarding, but sometimes it highlights some of the ugliest shit about society. I’m so glad I work at a shop that’s not bullshit about body types and operates with more people in mind than just scrawny white chicks like me. The fat women I work with are a ton of fun to lace up, and they’re so much more than their size—they’re cool, they’re smart, they’re funny, they’re sweet, they’re great to talk to, and yes, they’re hot. I’m so damn done with them getting short-changed and shamed by petty fucks who refuse to make them nice clothes, who refuse to even try to work for them, who refuse to consider them pretty. This whole rant was useless and won’t get read, but I had to vent because it’s been driving me nuts.
So actually, screw you, random dude. Fat girls are the highlight of my job.
Going to add this bit: I’m overweight. I’m not really big, but I’ve always had issues with my weight and the shit I get from people. I was actually getting fitted for a corset and was told I needed to go down a size. So I understand how that girl felt. I know that it’s “just a number” and it shouldn’t bother me, but that made me feel awesome.
I read every word of this and it made me want to cry and buy a corset.
*hits the reblog button IMMEDIATELY*
OP WHAT REN FAIRE ARE YOU AT? I WILL BUY A DAMN CORSET FROM YOU RIGHT NOW
I don’t get how people have been waking up since 2012 hearing the same stories of police brutality and black people being murdered nearly all of them ending in no justice for the lives lost and those affected and still think cops are good and that there are just a few bad ones
32-year-old black man Philando Castile died in the hospital Wednesday night after being shot by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, during a traffic stop. The aftermath was captured live on Facebook video by his girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds. “We got pulled over for a busted taillight in the back,” Reynolds says in the video. “The police just, just…he’s covered.“
“He’s licensed to carry,” Reynolds explains, “He was trying to get out his ID and his wallet out his pocket, and he let the officer know that he had a firearm, and he was reaching for his wallet, and the officer just shot him in his arm.” The video is extremely graphic, read more for a full description.
Update: Although the demand for answers is only getting louder, based on police union contracts and police bill of rights legislation, the name of the officer who fatally shot Castile isn’t likely to be released anytime soon.
Update: Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has issued a statement on Philando Castile. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has initiated an independent investigation at the state level, according to Dayton’s statement. But Dayton is going even higher to get to the bottom of all this.
I can’t believe I still have to ask you all to not reblog the video of a man getting killed. Please respect black people, even in their deaths.
Why is it disrespectful though? The whole world needs to wake up to the reality of the situation. Some people don’t believe things to the extent they deserve until they see it with their own eyes. The video is the one thing that might actually get those fucking pigs this time.
I understand if you personally don’t want to see such graphic content for whatever reasons, but we gotta get his story out there.
It’s disrespectful because every time a black person dies, we have to see their deaths put on public forums with no type of viewer discretion. The fact that I’ve seen a young boy’s body lying in the street with a pool of blood extending from his carcass, a man get choked to death on the street while he pleaded for his life, and now I gotta see a man get shot at point blank range, all real life events and not snuff shit, is unacceptable. It has been proven by studies all the time that people in society don’t empathize with black people’s pain, and I honestly think that’s why everyone is so okay with just watching a death and then scrolling about afterward. But I’ve seen people die in real time, and the silence in the air after a person goes limp in reality is the same to me behind a screen. So many of you act as though it’s a necessity to see someone’s death to believe that we’re dying. It isn’t. It never should be, and it never will. You can reblog the story without the video.
Yesterday in Baton Rouge the cops killed a 37 year old black man named Alton Sterling (the video’s very disturbing, so fair warning.) This is the one summer in a long time I decided to go up north to escape the Louisiana heat and I’m missing my friends and feeling guilty for being away from my community as they decide how to respond to another murder by police in our state.
I made my comic Your Black Friend after I overheard a white woman in a hip coffee shop tell the white barista about how she had just called the police on a black man coming out of his back yard (his own back yard it turned out.) because she felt “sketched out” by a man who’s only crime was leaving his own house in his own neighborhood. I was not sure if she was unaware that a call like her’s is all the police need to show up and start assaulting and (very often) killing black people, or if she had called for that exact reason. Optimist that I am I assumed that she called the police because she’s reflexively afraid of black people and not actively trying to kill us with police. So I got up an approached her.
“hi,” I said. “look, you can’t help but be racist that’s your burden, but I want you to know that when you call the police and tell them that there’s a scary black person around you put every single black person in this community in danger, even the nice light-skinned ones in cute coffee shops. So do me a favor, don’t call the police. Stay in your white suburb. I don’t want my friends or myself killed just because you can’t handle being around black people.”
I know we’re supposed to be a nation of ideas and debate, but I just turned and walked the fuck out while she stared at me with her mouth open. Apparently she went up to the barista and said something like, “that guy called me a racist, can you believe it?” So obviously she missed the larger point of what I said.
I didn’t know Alton Sterling, but watching him being attacked, pinned to the ground and shot in the chest is deeply horrible. I can’t help but see in him my father, my half-brother, my friends and myself. And his death is the result of some unnamed person calling the police and telling them that he had a gun.
Someone might say, “maybe he mouthed off” or “maybe he pushed one of them.” And maybe that’s true, but if you knew what it was like to regularly be trying to go about your day and have the police stop you and humiliate you on a regular basis, then you’d understand why someone would lose his mind. I see white people flip their shit over parking tickets all the time and then they want us to be like Buddhist monks all the time.
I’m not stupid, I saw the cops that shot down unarmed civilians during Katrina go free or get slaps on the wrist, not to mention more recent murders and rapes by police that have gone unpunished. I’ve lived in America too long to know that if I was shot by a cop tomorrow he’d be back to work next Tuesday. Which is not to say nothing should be done. We need to fight this.
I want to restate what I was trying to say to the lady in the coffee shop:
The police are killing us out here and your fear of black people is making it worse. You are acting and supporting the murder of black people by both calling the police and feeding into your internalized fear and distrust of black people. Your fear is not our problem, it is yours and you need to fix yourself or stay on the wrong side of this fight.
And it is a fight, we should be in the streets, in city halls, in police precincts, everywhere. If you have family, friends, or loved ones that are police you need to engage them, especially if they’re black . This needs to end and it will only end when we’ve torn down everything that maintains and reenforces the oppression on black people and all people.
Can we talk about how the Deadpool movie, which the media has largely referred to (in so many words) as a fuckboy’s wetdream, not only gives a female sex worker an empathetic role, but treats her and her work more respectfully than about 99% of so called feminist media?
.
At no point does the movie imply that Vanessa is tainted because she is a sex worker. At no point does the movie imply that Vanessa is unworthy of love because she is a sex worker.
At no point is Vanessa portrayed as “broken.”
At no point does the movie imply that being a sex worker makes Vanessa a bad girlfriend. At no point does Deadpool ask or expect Vanessa to sacrifice her job for their relationship.
At no point is Vanessa slut-shamed for her job, by either protagonists or villains.
Think about that.
Denigrating sex workers is so taboo within the Deadpool movieverse that even the villains won’t do it.
We know that Vanessa experienced sexual abuse, and that it’s shaped the person she’s become and influenced the choices she’s made. The movie clearly acknowledges that sexual abuse is real, and that it is damaging, and that people who experience sexual abuse struggle to lead “normal” lives and get “normal” jobs.
But the movie never hands sexual abusers the mic.
There is no sexual abuse porn in this movie. There are no voyeuristic rape flashbacks. There are no misogynist monologues. The audience learns about Vanessa’s abusive past from Vanessa, on Vanessa’s terms, through Vanessa’s own words.
This seems like the bare minimum of dignity any female character should be granted, yet so much media fails to meet this extremely low bar.
The movie makes it very clear that Vanessa has a life outside of sex work. She does not live on a stripper pole. Sex work is something Vanessa does. Sex work is not who Vanessa is. She has an apartment. She wears pajamas. What other fictional universe can say the same? I can think of one tv show, but that’s about it, and that show’s viewership is nothing compared to Deadpool’s.
Now on the one hand, I’m not necessarily happy that Vanessa’s character arc revolves almost entirely around her romantic relationship with the lead male protagonist. But on the other hand, I find it very refreshing to see a sex worker in the media whose character arc does not revolve entirely around the fact that she is a sex worker. Hate to say it, but for sex workers in the media, being relegated to the role of love interest is actually a step up.
Most feminist media would rather pretend sex workers don’t exist than write storylines of any kind for them.
This.
And the people who call Deadpool a fuckboy’s wet dream sure as heck didn’t watch the same movie I did.
The movie has:
A very funny moment in which the joke is on those who assume that sex workers have abusive pasts, not on the sex worker. (The comparing abuse thing gets ridiculous enough that they’re both clearly lying).
The male lead repeatedly posed in female come-on positions. This one is my favorite:
He’s even on a bearskin rug in front of a fire. The humor in this pose is “Haha, isn’t it silly to pose a character like that.” It’s designed explicitly to make people think about how commonly female characters are shown in these kinds of ridiculous poses. Going to tell me that’s not a feminist visual joke?
An under-age female character who is never sexualized. Yeah, this girl
Look at that. A practical costume, her breasts are minimized rather than emphasized. We only see Negasonic Teenage Warhead as badass, not “cute.” And she’s treated like a teenager, not a child or an adult.
Oh, and Deadpool doesn’t rescue Vanessa in the end. He throws her a weapon so she can rescue herself. Which she does, because she’s badass.
I’d actually call Deadpool a feminist movie, and an important one. Why?
Because they probably tricked an entire bunch of fuckboys into watching a feminist movie ;).
So, why was it so feminist?
Two words: Ryan and Reynolds.
Ryan Reynolds wanted to do this movie. He wanted to do this movie for years. Reynolds is basically a Deadpool cosplayer who managed to convince a movie studio to pay him a lot of money to be a Deadpool cosplayer.
Guess what Ryan Reynolds also is?
A feminist. He says he’s going to push for even more badass ladies in the sequel. (I think we’re going to see Vanessa with superpowers. They had her long enough to expose her to the agent, if not to activate it).
I’d love to see Vanessa with superpowers, and I enjoyed the hell out of Deadpool.
I forgot one, and an important one.
When we are shown the strip club Vanessa works at, it is not filmed the way movies always film strip clubs.
It’s filmed as if we were going to an office. It’s just “this is where Vanessa happens to work.” No low shot angles to show off women’s bodies, no soft porn music.
Just very…matter of fact.
Can we also bring up that Deadpool does NOT shame Negasonic’s name choice? It screams OC but he’s still supportive of it.
Of course he’s not gonna shame it, it’s the best fucking thing he’s ever heard in his life and he’s pissed at himself that he didn’t think of it first.
I fucking adore Deadpool’s interactions with NTW. Showcasing her ability to fight without actually pushing her and still protecting her (pushing her to shelter) when shrapnel is flying. Insisting, “look away child!” until she complies when he does something that might expose himself- acknowledging in fact that she IS a child (because she is)
Also his behavior towards his client at the beginning of the film. He doesn’t oggle at or take advantage of her- a pretty low bar to set but. DEADPOOL TREATS TEENAGERS AS TEENAGERS AND IT’S GREAT.
This is actually v important and needs to be reblogged
Gonna just share this:
My European Studies professor decided a few weeks ago to take a Friday and instead of following the syllabus, he spent the entire hour and a half comparing Hitler’s actions from a European perspective to that of what Trump is doing in America. He never repeated a single point, and even used video and photos like this to show the comparison.
To make things better, he had us do an in class assignment for participation points. He first played a clip on youtube of one of Hilter’s speeches, subtitled and 3 minutes long. He then played a clip of one of Trump’s rallies. Our assignment? Copy down every single sentence that matched in translation down on a sheet of paper or a word document that wasn’t repeated. The person with the closest amount to what my professor found got a candy bar.
My professor found, in just three minutes of a speech, that Trump matched 65 different phrases/sentences to that of Hitler’s translation.
65 nearly identical phrases used in his speeches. Take a moment to think about that.
Keep Lavish Diamond Reynolds, her child and the entire Castile-extended family in your prayers today. Lavish is said to have finally been released from police custody. Now she must begin to work to rebuild her and her child’s life, after witnessing and documenting Philando Castile’s execution by Minnesota police. We uplift their courage, and mourn for a loss no one should have to face. #farfromover
In myth, Hades’ most remarked upon traits are 1) how responsible/reliable he is, 2)how sober-minded he is, 3)how dedicated, implacable, and long-remembering he is, and 4)how boring and grim most of the other Olympians think he is to be around. Oh and notably, that if you play him a song he likes, he’ll basically give you anything you ask for(though not without conditions).
Hades is, canonically, a gigantic nerd. If they’d had trainsets, he’d have been the Olympian who collected trainsets, meticulously corrected with exacto knife and hobby-paints the errors toy-makers introduced to those trainsets, and then endlessly talked about those trainsets to anyone sat next to him at Thanksgiving Dinner :| When he wasn’t trying to rope them into an interminable discussion about gardening or divine law, that is :| :| He’s the sort of god who frequently handed out punishment like giving someone a million-piece puzzle where every piece is shaped the same, that resets itself at the start of every day if you don’t complete it, and then he keeps the last piece on his person at all times as a secret private joke for eternity because he finds you personally distasteful(not even because he’s mad at you or hates you particularly; he just doesn’t like you as a person) :| :| :| He is. A Gigantic. Nerd.
He’s also like one of the only gods who is faithful to his wife. And he listens to her like when she asks for a soul to be released and he’s like “But honey, the rules.” And she just gives him that look and he goes “Yes dear,” and lets the soul go with the easiest freaking instructions ever in a myth. And the human still fucks it up. Not his fault Persephone, not Hades’ fault this time. Essentially, Hades is sorta like the accountant suburban dad who collects really specific figurines and gets really grumpy when people mess up his lawn. Do you know how hard his wife worked on those roses? He is calling his attorney. Oh wait, he is also an attorney.
Filed under: Favorite Myths
Everybody knows it’s Persephone that you’ve got to watch out for.
