some stuff isn’t just a trope, you know? in the movies, we’re introduced to women who are “experts” who have trained for years, who live and breathe and are willing to die for whatever the male main character has never even experienced before. and then he takes the reigns and upstages her, instantly, with a little bit of friendly bewilderment because, come on, it’s not antifeminist, he’s just good, he’s standing there having shown he’s actually more powerful than she’ll ever be - and we buy it. and then we go home and when we live and breathe something we still ask ourselves. “am i actually good at this? or is some fool going to walk into this presentation eighteen minutes in and offer a sarcastic and biting correction?” we wait for the man to show up and prove that, despite awards and training and an excellent job position, we’re actually just secretly incompetent.
the trope isn’t just setting up for us “this man is good at what he does” – the fact that the trope demands our male hero upstage the woman says: even an incompetent man will always be better than the best woman. he could have upstaged the sage boss or whatever other male in power exists in the movie. but he doesn’t. he upstages the woman to earn his pack order because she is, intrinsically, the weakest link. the real fight will be man against man. it always is.
and i wish, i wish it stopped outside of the theater. but the number of men who try (gently) to assure me that they’re actually better at what i have multiple degrees and years of experience in - it tells me it worked. men are always looking to be the hero, to interrupt, to upstage, to flip the woman on her back and expose her to all your fellow men - see! for someone who has been doing this forever, she’s just another woman. i am reminded by a man this is called mansplaining. i said “it’s a system of silencing women” and he said, “no, it’s just an accident.” in the movie, he sees himself pointing to my equation on the board, having just walked in. “here’s the flaw,” he says. in the real life, i’m too frustrated to speak. in the movie, he’s inevitably right.
elle woods flipping her hair and saying what, like it’s hard? was a funny line. it’s funny because in every other movie, it’s said by a guy.
Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.
love is sweet poison: atticus / the wicked king - holly black / love slowly kills - adrian borda / fresco / romeo & juliet act 5 scene 3 - william shakespeare / the death of sophonisba - giambattista pittoni / seerat / the aeneid - virgil
being gay is just like. damn it tattoos are expensive. damn it piercings are expensive. damn it getting your hair dyed professionally is expensive. damn it combat boots are expensive. damn it therapy is
One of the weirdest things as a Millennial is explaining DIY to younger generations. Like, before we were couture, punk/alternative/goth/gay fashion was cheap and lowkey crappy. Army surplus boots and Doc Martens hurt to break in. Black was a popular hair colour because you didn’t have to bleach your hair first so you could do your own hair in the bathroom sink. You sewed patches onto a jean jacket because it was cheaper than buying a custom graphic t-shirt. If you wanted jeans ripped, you ripped them yourself. The point was fashion that was accessible to kids in Middle America.
But now the bar is so much higher and nobody gets Home Economics anymore. :/
tbh, this is something a lot of Alt kids need to learn, and need to learn NOW.
Shit was cheap because that’s what we had access to. Cheap n dirty and now.
You picked up jeans second third or even fourth hand and yea they had tears in them. Don’t know how to sew, that’s fine, use safety pins! We used waxed floss to sew on our patches because we knew it was stronger than thread but ALSO we had access to a random needle left lying around and the floss in the cabinet.
It didn’t used to be High Fashion. It was us, in our basements and our friend’s rooms, doing things we saw other kids doing…. but ALSO, it was just… part of the lifestyle. We didn’t know leather care like we do now, but we know it NOW because of Gay Leatherfolk for the most part. We used red and black hair dye, yes, because we didn’t need to bleach it. We also used really dangerous methods to bleach our hair…. don’t do that.
Learn from what’s available to you now and be safer definitely, but don’t forget the DIY roots of the movement. You don’t need to be decked in Blackcraft and Dollskill to be cutting edge. You can paint your jacket yourself and use fabric modpodge to seal it, y’know? Then it’s truly one of a kind…. not the same jacket you’ll be seeing on a thousand other alt people at the next concert.
It’s crazy to me now seeing people get their green hair or whatever at a salon for like $100+. I remember in high school someone would get a bottle of developer and everyone would get whatever color they wanted, and we’d all do our hair in someone’s kitchen (whoever had the best sink sprayer, usually). Like, back then, if you wanted a COLOR you usually couldn’t get it at a salon. You had to buy the colored dye at the record store.
Are you part of an alternative community? Queer? Goth? Metal? Punk? Any sort of not-particularly mainstream? LEARN TO DIY.
When I was in school, we used Kool-Aid unsweetened packets to dye our hair. You can use it to dye wool yarn (an animal protein fiber) and it lasts forever, and hair is also an animal protein fiber, so it dyed us just as easily. If you wanted extra longevity, you mixed it with a little vinegar. Goth accessories didn’t appear in stores before Hot Topic, so we made our own with second hand clothes and scads of black lace.
Make Do and Mend, the subcultures edition.
If one did want to learn some DIY sewing skills, you coulkd try:
Muppets Supernatural with Misha Collins as the only human character. However, he is constantly carrying around and manipulating a muppet “vessel” because the muppets won’t talk to him otherwise
oh mY GOD and every time he tries to speak without wearing the muppet vessel all the surrounding muppets shriek and cover their ears and glass windows break all around him even though he is speaking at a totally normal volume and with no identifiable differences with how he speaks wearing the vessel i am CACKLING
Pet peeve: People who yelled at you and made you angry but try to joke with you a few minutes later because they can’t stand the atmosphere they created
