#body politics
Every grey hair is proof you survived.
Digital illustration of the back of a brown fem with a long ponytail. Their hair is black with grey streaks, and they’re wearing a beige 2-piece jumpsuit that has fringe. The back of their jacket reads ‘every grey hair is proof you survived.’ The background is a desert scene.
OH hi babe.
Let’s dive right on in cause I got a problem.
I have had a very long standing interest in wellness. I’m talking, I started reading about herbs and Indigenous remedies, family remedies, food as medicine etc way back in the early 90s. I’ve always leaned towards treating myself in a holistic manner, I like to look at the whole picture of how my body works and how to support it working as…
Hello babes. It is yer problematic fave Auntie and I got beef.
We’re going to be talking about wellness, fatphobia, misleading shit a bunch of people say and how we can do better.
Recently I was doing some research, apparently this whole virus situation has sent me running back to my juices and berries witchy ways. That means I’ve been doing a lot of reading.
Listen wellness people…y’all.
One of…
Dyed armpit hair is the latest body positive trend no one saw coming
Pink, green, blue, purple — the options are endless. No, we’re not talking about crayons. We’re talking about armpit hair.
In an interesting twist, the debate over whether or not women should shave their underarms seems to recently have evolved beyond razor talk. Indeed, it’s no longer about whether or not you shave, but rather what you do with the hair you do keep.
This is making me seriously consider growing my pit hair back out.
Post link
Last night I shaved my legs,pits, and pubic hair (see links for pictures). I hadn’t shaved my legs and pits in half a decade, and I hadn’t shaved my pubic hair in more than a year and a half. I loved not shaving. I loved feeling the wind in my leg hair. I loved surprising people with the fact that I didn’t shave my pits. I loved feeling like I was still a little bit radical.I loved having hair on my cunt, because it helped weed out douchebags, I liked the way it looked, I enjoyed not having to deal with the shaving, and because it helps reduce infections. I’d even started pulling on my pubic hair while I masturbated, after MLAM did that to me a few times.
I didn’t shave because my feelings about my body hair changed. I did it because my owner told me to. I’m visiting him at the end of this week, and he finally gave me the order I’d been expecting for a while. He instructed me to shave, telling me to take before and after pictures for this tumblr, to explain that he is taking away my “stupid little feminist hissy fit shit.” I used to say that I wouldn’t shave for any man because I liked having the body hair and if some guy didn’t like it, tough. My owner tolerated that for a while, but planted the idea of making me shave in my mind, fucking with my feminist beliefs, making me wet thinking about him making me do that for him.
He’s let me keep my hair for a long time, longer than many owners would indulge a little feminist bitch like me. Let me hold on to this idea that I’m a strong, independent woman who can make decisions about her own body. We both know now that’s not true. I’m a toy for him to play with, including deciding how I will keep my body hair.
Having to do this was not unexpected, but it was a big deal to me. Not shaving may seem like a passive thing, since shaving is an action one chooses to take. But in this society, women are expected to shave, and I’ve gotten more than a couple of people online tell me I was gross or unattractive because I don’t shave. I was actively, and aggressively, deciding to not shave. It became part of my identity.
And now it’s gone. My owner has control over my past, present, and future, and can fuck with them however he likes. He decides what aspects of my identity I get to keep, and what aspects I have to get rid of.
I just finished taking the “before” pictures of my leg, pit, and pubic hair. Time to say goodbye to the past five years. I made a firm decision to stop shaving my legs and pits. I didn’t want to do it anymore, and I didn’t care what men thought. I wanted to see what it was like. I was being all radical and unique. I liked the way it looked and felt.
I’m going to miss the hair. I don’t want to do this. It upsets me and I feel like crying. I was never going to shave for a man’s sake ever again. I didn’t need any man to approve of my appearance or grooming choices. And now look at me. Undoing years of my life because a man told me to. Because all I want is to please him. Because following his orders and making him happy gets me wet.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but I’ve basically made Reaction Junkie the manager for my barely used okcupid account. He responds to people, trolling them when they’re awful enough. This time, he decided to offer some advice, in what I thought was a pretty gentle way. Of course, the guy did not handle that well.
In my okcupid profile picture, I’m looking totes adorbs wearing an LGBTerrific shirt with a rainbow on it and, over that, an open rainbow flannel. (Also a miniskirt and awesome teal tights and adorable chucks.) Y'all how cute I am, and who doesn’t like rainbow? Well, this guy, apparently.
I do say I’m interested in casual sex, but I also say I’m not interested in hookups or one night stands, and that I only want to have sex with/play with people who I would be friends with.
My favorite parts about this exchange are:
1.“Fucking rainbow bright”-How is that an insult?! That’s a pretty fantastic combination of words, and I may have to start going by it as a nickname. If my tumblr gets deleted, I’m totally having that as my next one. Also, he sent that message like 7 minutes later, which means he was still mad.
2.The idea that guys who want relationships apparently hate flannel and rainbows-What is that about? I could get if he was saying I wouldn’t get attention from men because I seem like a dyke (although that’s still dumb, and also, hello, not just into dudes), but what about flannel and rainbows implies I’m not relationship material? Will someone please explain!?
3.“Fucke”-This makes me think of old timey spelling, like shoppe, and that pleases me to no end. I may have to start spelling it like that.
4.The fact that he messaged me wanting to to text, and as soon as I rejected him, I’m cheap, unclean, and need to shave my face- Classic sour grapes. You don’t want me? OH FINE THEN YOU’RE UGLY AND FAT AND NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU AND I’M GOING TO GO HATE MASTURBATE TO YOUR PICTURES NOW BYE
5.The fact that he implies he’s a lousy fuck-I believe him 100%
6.The suggestion to shave my mustache-Huh? I mean, yes. I have hair on my upper lip, like how mammals do. But it’s fine and blond, like all my hair, and none of my pictures are closeups of my face or have enough resolution that you could see the hair. Someone has some weird bullshit sexism going on about hair.
There was more to this conversation. Let me know if y'all want me to post some of it.
Post link
“Motivated by a strong desire to show that "average is beautiful,” Lamm has decided to make his designs come to life with a doll called “Lammily.”
Lamm decided to take matters into his own hands after being bombarded with questions about where to buy a Barbie of normal size. The entreprenuer is offering prototypes of his toy to the first people to donate to his CrowdtiltOpen campaign, but his plan is to eventually be able to distribute the doll widely online and in retail. The longer term vision also includes embracing diversity by creating dolls with different ethnic backgrounds and body types.
The trend towards heavier sexualization of girls’ toys may have finally reached a tipping point with consumers. There’s a clear demand for toys that are realistic and appropriate for young girls, and many parents, if they knew there was an option, would buy them.
We’re seeing incredible momentum in the toy industry, and its not unrealistic to think that soon the empowerment of girls won’t be something companies even have to think about anymore. It will be automatic. But until then, Lammily will most certainly do.“
having a lot of feelings re: menstrual politics/poetics
because there’s so much essentialism around talking about periods (yr a woman because yr body does this thing) and there are girls who don’t have periods, and boys who do, and everything that’s About Periods in the world of scholarship uses the language of woman completely unthinkingly. and i don’t want to participate in that, i wanna be called out, hard, if i participate in essentialism. on the other hand i totally believe there are a zillion ways to talk about periods and other gross/awesome things bodies do without invoking gender essentialism. i am interested in the body as a site of excess, an inability to be contained/controlled; bodies defying capitalist logic, of the emotionality of bodily processes, of the ways people scratch new meanings over top of culturally constructed ones.
last night my menstrual blogger post was reblogged by someone posting about how feminists need to stop staying up all night thinking about their periods (linked with the statement: seriously, fuck gender politics sometimes)(see, this is what i’m talking about, the person said)
1. calling someone a feminist to get them to stop talking is really gross and misogynistic 2. OVERSHARE IS QUEER PRAXIS. 3. criticizing people for talking about their bodies sounds to me a lot like shaming.
i will keep thinking and talking about my oozing body and i encourage you to do the same.
menstrual bloggers: we out here
“if there were a cure for your disability, would you take it?”
Recently I’ve been having a little bit of disability related angst. A lot of times people ask me “If there were a cure for your disability, would you do it?”
It’s true that my disability is a burden to me sometimes, but not in a way most people would think. I think people assume that I would want to be cured so that I could walk or drive or do things like that. But really the biggest hurdle to me is the social stigma surrounding disability. People only pay attention to people with disabilities if they can use them as inspiration, porn, or as cute little sidekicks to boost their ego, but as soon as they get bored they just kind of cast us aside and move on. I wish that people wouldn’t patronize me, I wish that people would be attracted to me, or not act like they deserve a special place for being attracted to me. I wish that they would take me as seriously as an adult, because I’m 24 years old and people still talk to me like I’m a small child.
It’s not so much that I want to be able-bodied, but I would kill to just have 10 minutes to not be perceived as disabled. Just 10 minutes. Because sometimes it really does wear you down and it is really upsetting. You can’t just pick and choose which parts of someone are salvageable and make a new person out of that because that’s just not how life works. My disability has influenced every other aspect of my identity. So, if you reject my disability you reject every other part of me.
I feel like the issue at the crux of that whole cure question is “Would you rather exchange your disability if you could have a wholeness of your humanity instead?” but I would counter that my disability is my humanity. Just because someone is disabled that doesn’t automatically mean that their quality of life must be inherently less than an able-bodied person. I have more strength and wisdom and experience in my pinky finger than most able-bodied people do in their entire body.
So if you wouldn’t mind please kindly take your shitty eugenics hypothetical elsewhere! My body does not need a cure. Society’s attitudes do.
Nicely said
