Seriously though like, I missed the boat on this whole radical honesty thing. I guess everyone wants to be true to themselves now? That’s…great…but like you’re really only ever going to meet a select few people you can be totally honest with about everything. Lie to strangers! Lie to authorities! Like damn didn’t you have parents that told you never to tell people on the phone that you were home alone? When the interviewer asks if you ever experimented with drugs, you say no! This is not a therapy session! He’s got no business asking you that anyway! Lots and lots of people are not entitled to your vulnerability. Damn.
I follow my grandmother’s rule: it’s only a lie if they have a right to know.
I feel like back when I was young (c. 56 million years ago) skepticism wrt consumer culture and especially shopping as a purported form of activism was much more robust. I don’t know what’s happened exactly since to create our current environment in which it seems a go-to, nigh Pavlovian response to issues is, “What can I buy to help?” Strikes are treated as advertising opportunities. Here’s How to Shop During This Protest Action. It’s, uh, fucked up. Everybody is constantly issuing (unpaid!) product recommendations, and whenever possible—whenever a convenient event occurs—framing it as some kind of activism or solidarity or whatever. It isn’t. There are situations that necessitate an implicated category of purchase, of course, and one should always avoid going against immediate labor concerns at a bare minimum. “No ethical consumption” doesn’t mean all consumption is equally unethical, et cetera. But often there’s no need to make any purchase! Were you already definitely going to a buy a bag of chips when an ad for Frito-Lay alternatives crossed your dash, or were you influenced?
I get bonked once (1) and my cute colleague is suddenly less cute and also shorter?? 🤔🤔🤔
Sue Zhao, Dialogues on Love // At Breakfast, Laurits Andersen Ring // Ada Limón, ‘Before’ from Bright Dead Things // Andrés Lozano, Day Job 1 // via @shhhitsfine
I’ve been thinking about Howl’s Moving Castle and how Sophie’s curse is a physical symbol of her self belief of being romantically unlovable (especially after growing up with beautiful, sought after women in her family.) How Howl tries to undo the curse the moment she steps into his castle but he *cant* because Sophie doesn’t want it to be broken. How, in the film, Sophie gets so close to breaking the curse in the field, but hearing Howl call her beautiful went against her self views, so she reinforces her sense of self by turning 90 again.
And the way that her love and kindness make her younger again and again. How film Sophie sacrifices her long hair, perhaps what past Sophie would have seen as her only beauty, for Howl but she’s grown so much that she still remains young, perhaps even confident about her grey hair, showing that Sophie no longer links her appearance to her lovability or worth and she learned to accept herself as she is. In this essay I-
This essay is a group project now and y’all are pulling your weight
“A new UN report has found at least 90% of men and women hold some sort of bias against females.
The “Gender Social Norms” index analysed biases in areas such as politics and education in 75 countries.
Globally, close to 50% of men said they had more right to a job than women. Almost a third of respondents thought it was acceptable for men to hit their partners.
