Friday, August 19, 2011




This film is an entire chapter of Women Who Run with the Wolves. It's a feminist adaptation of Blue Beard and can be analyzed on a psychological level to mean that the part of a woman that is weak and naive must die. A stronger, more whimsical and natural woman must take her place. Blue Beard maps the terrifying landscape of adolescence and womanhood, revealing the dead bodies of our kind who refused to fight for survival.

I’ve got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don’t want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I’d rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before ‘thin’. And frankly, I’d rather they didn’t give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls.

JK Rowling
  1. You are better off without a man. We are told our whole lives that nothing we aspire to can be as great as being a spouse or mother. That so rarely works out in our favor. Why not, instead of needing validation in the form of a man you become the person you were always meant to be. There’s nothing wrong with coupling up and having kids, but when that’s all you feel you should be? You’ve come to a very dark place.
  2. This extends into wanting a relationship. Before you say, “No one finds me attractive,” or “I’ve always wanted to find that special someone,” you need to realize that you are under-rating yourself. You are putting your self-worth into another persons hands. And no matter how much they just adore and love you, you are not going to feel better about yourself. It’s all nice and well to have someone stroke your ego, but no one can give you the self-confidence you deserve.
  3. By the way, that’s a terrible reason to want to be in a relationship.
  4. Coupling up should happen because it’s what you both want and pleasant. Nothing is more important than reciprocation. Don’t fool yourself. Know yourself.
  5. And this doesn’t mean that you do not deserve what you want or that you can’t find it within yourself or with another person. Perhaps you’re at an impasse. Ultimately, you don’t truly need them to continue on. So you’ve got to choose the action that will cause you both happiness, whether that’s parting ways or giving it a little more time.
  6. OMG, no one else will find me attractive! Wrong, wrong, wrong! Given that you leave the house (or even if you don’t), at least one or more people will like you. The first person that finds you attractive should be YOU. The second can be a stranger you’re passing on the street, a friend, a lover, an old grocer that smiles nicely at you.
  7. It doesn’t matter what others think. People will frown at you, laugh at you, & generally send you terrible messages. You’ve got to set those aside and in the end discard them. You know that on a bad day you treat people unfairly and it’s not truly personal. So why should you become so full of self doubt and self loathing over what some insensitive fucker said once three months ago? What someone very close to you said years ago?
  8. The most beautiful and inspiring people in the world are committed to everything else besides vanity. Basically, they don’t care that they’re famous or beautiful. They’d give anything for people to talk about their family or their ambassadorship to China or what the weather’s like. More than that, they don’t understand the attention they’re getting and the terrible self-loathing they inspire in others. They want everyone to love their bodies and who they are. They want people to care more about the world and less about getting a nose job or the condition their hair’s in.
  9. That’s just it, isn’t it? You shouldn’t be shallow. Do you think your life will change if you suddenly woke up one morning and were “one of the beautiful people?” I doubt you could handle the bad attention you would be getting-attention completely directed at the person you are on the outside and not the inside. Everyone thinks you’re barbie. They objectify you and ridicule you. They don’t care about your interests or your amazing personality or your talent. In the door you go. Now what? Hope you can manage to stay there or your fingers are going to get jammed.
  10. A sad fact: being glamorous really will get you far ahead of others in life. But so what, really? We can all be glamorous and we can all find opportunities to take our talents and passions where they will be appreciated. You will also never have to doubt that you got there based on hard work and dedication instead of the ability to look like every other Paris clone.
  11. Good luck.


the perfect imperfection

It seems that you minimize the huge and primary role that man plays in degrading woman. Songs, films, lewd comments day in and day out. It is a privilege to be sheltered from the harsh reality that men see women as inferior. The average man does not respect females. Chemically, they respond to women as if they were objects. Scientific studies and general human experience have proven this terrible fact. You should not blame women, who are the victims of society, for reinforcing objectification. They are not the ones to blame. No, but they are the ones who will change everything.

My response. Loads of females blame their own sex for the indecent way women are treated and made to feel about themselves. This is the biggest load of horse shit ever.


Re: http://ashley-nixon.blogspot.com/2011/07/perfect-imperfection.html?showComment=1311912561244#c1320330343278347345



The Body Image Post


Often times, I read your posts, dear followers, about how you wish you could get tons of plastic surgery or loose weight. It makes me wish that you knew how beautiful you are.

You are beautiful with or without make up, with or without loosing that weight. I see pictures of you and the thought of your face permanently changing terrifies me.

Why put yourself through the pain of believing that you are ugly? If you truly believed it would be healthy to weigh 90 lbs or if you had been in an airplane crash and had facial burns and scarring, I could understand. But you are letting insecurities and fear of being alone guide you.

There are people who would spend the rest of their lives eternally grateful to look like you, to just look like a normal person or be healthy. Although it’s not your intention, in hating the way you look, you are taking your beauty for granted.

It’s simple. Our culture’s view of beauty is contrary to the natural woman. It tells women they are not good enough as they come. What a horrible illness this perpetuates- the vile hatred of woman’s body and image.

Love your body. Begin a revolution. Don’t blame other women, because they are victims of hatred and an objectifying, disrespectful culture. Be an example and inspire others to love who they are.

You don’t have to start out loving your entire self. You don’t have to start out liking every part of your body. You can start small, by becoming conscious of the way you light up when you smile or even the gap between your teeth. Knees, elbows, delicate ears. Love something.

I promise you, if you continue on the path of hating the way you look, loosing weight and surgery will not fix you.

The only hope is to see that you are not only beautiful, but that you are not your body. Who you are is something that can’t be measured. If you don’t love your body, you do not know yourself.

Make an effort to change and be a part of a revolution


Ladies, We Can

You gave up, you didn’t try hard enough, you never even gave yourself a chance…

There were probably circumstances. People called you “emotional” when the real problem was you’d lost hope.

The truth is, if you’re not dreaming, if you’re not doing things for yourself, you will loose hope.

When you loose hope, it kills you. You will die without hope.

In order to live, you need to dream and believe in yourself.

The most important thing is to not judge yourself, to tell yourself you will not be disappointed any longer. Reach for the things that are truly the most important to you and do them.

You can, but you won’t if you’re too hard on yourself.

Now that I’ve told you the secret to living, I promise you that if you hold on to hope, even the smallest one, you will become who you were meant to be in life.


The only reason you don’t find yourself beautiful is because you have seen all your lowest points that you often keep secret from people you fancy. However who is to say that a person can’t find you still beautiful even after all the flaws are exposed?


Write Yourself a Letter with the Wisdom of 100 Years

Charleene never wanted my parents to have a child, but when they took her to a showing ofThree Men and a Baby she seemed pleased to know I was on the way.

I “came to my senses” riding a Shetland pony. It was tied to a small horse walker in the local skagg’s parking lot. My father stood next to the other parents and took a photograph. Just a few days ago, my mother left the apartment for Virginia.

My father drove me to my grandmother’s house, which was right around the corner. She had all of my toys in a closet and spent time answering the questions I had. Since this was my first memory and the first sliver of consciousness, I had many questions.

I remember my father cried in his room. When I tried to go to him he yelled and my grandmother took me away.

In my dreams, I remembered my mother. I had no word for her, because she wasn’t around. Confused, I called Charleene and my father mama.

It’s odd that my first memory is of riding the shetland pony and that I only remembered my mother through dreams. But it’s possible I had a previous awareness that I blocked out when she left because it was painful.

Charleene loved me. When she died I was inconsolable. The day my father and I moved out of her house for good, I remember her roses were still blooming in the middle of winter. A deep snow covered the ground and I circled beneath the trees that were planted at my birth.

Today, when I level with myself, I think of Charleene. I wonder what that old, busy woman would say to me now. She put a hand on my shoulder as I walked and brushed my hair to one side, always concerned over some minor detail. Drove into corn fields and laughed happily. Spit out the car door. Affectionately called me “a basket case.” Mowed the lawn at 72.

In my desk drawer rest her large spectacles and driver’s license. Sometimes I put them on and pretend to be old and fussy like her, to know as she did that nothing ever truly leaves us.

Not every day, but often I hear Bye Bye Blackbird in the back of my mind. I sing it as my grandmother did to me.

Pack up all my care and woe, here I go, singing low bye bye blacbird


“Let’s stop acting like women who choose to be feminine are somehow colluders, betraying the movement, bamboozled into thinking that they want to be feminine. Let’s stop denying women their own autonomy by telling them that their expressions of femininity are bad and wrong.

Antifemininity is misogynist. What you are saying when you engage in this type of rhetoric is that you think things traditionally associated with women are wrong. Which is misogynist. By telling feminine women that they don’t belong in the feminist movement, you are reinforcing the idea that to be feminine and a woman is wrong, that women who want to be taken seriously need to be more masculine, because most people view gender presentation in binary ways. This rewards the ‘one of the boys’ type rhetoric I encounter all over the place from self-avowed feminists who seem to think that bashing on women is a good way to prove how serious they are when it comes to caring about women and bringing men into the feminist movement.”

- Get Your Anti-Femininity Out Of My Feminism, S.E. Smit


Thursday, May 19, 2011

Gold Digger

One thing I've begun to notice lately bothers me: men like to think women just want their money.

Men who insist women are "gold diggers" want to feel in control. They want to believe we're not after some fairy tale romance. They want to think we're fake—that cash comes first. Because that justifies their own failure. Yeah, they cheated, but we wanted money. Yeah, we got child custody, but we only wanted their money. If it wasn't about money we should have known who they truly are and been complacent.

"If I was richer I'd still be with her," Cee Lo Green whines. Men want to think we run off at the first show of power/money. So why do we shell out money for gas and rent to be with their broke asses? Why do we "slum it" when we could hypothetically sell out for the "man?"

I'd quickly loose respect for any man who insisted I only wanted their chump change. The wise woman insists that any money exchanged between partners will "almost even out." Psychologically, it might not—not if the whole structure of a relationships becomes about the money and not the passion.

Fretting that someone wants your money is denying that you are still madly in love with that person and unconditionally. It's denying that you shell out money in the hopes of being happy. Feeling owed dues amounts to treason in love.

No one wants to be a "comfort girl." Not when her deepest desire is true love.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Announcement: New Tumbr


http://bubblemechanic.tumblr.com/

Bubble Mechanic is about women breaking out of prison. Glamorous, real, and without shame. Filling the hole society has left us with magic and love. http://bubblemechanic.blogspot.com

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

preach

For women, getting angry is socially unacceptable, even when the anger is over violence, discrimination, misogyny, and other forms of oppression. Anger is unacceptable because angry women are women in touch with their passion and power, especially in relation to men, which threatens the entire patriarchal order. It’s unacceptable because it forces men to confront the reality of male privilege and women’s oppression and their involvement in it, even if only as passive beneficiaries. Women’s anger challenges men to acknowledge attempts to trivialize oppression with “I was only kidding.” And women’s anger is unacceptable to men who look to women to take care of them, to prop up their need to feel in control, and to support them in their competition with other men. When women are less than gracious and good-humored about their own oppression, men often feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, at a loss, and therefore vulnerable.

Allan G. Johnson

Monday, May 2, 2011

Clap your hands

"I want to live in a world where little girls are not pinkified, but where little girls who like pink are not punished for it, either. We can certainly talk about the social pressures surrounding gender roles, and the concerns that people have when they see girls and young women who appear to be forced into performances of femininity by the society around them, but let’s stop acting like they have no agency and free will. Let’s stop acting like women who choose to be feminine are somehow colluders, betraying the movement, bamboozled into thinking that they want to be feminine. Let’s stop denying women their own autonomy by telling them that their expressions of femininity are bad and wrong.

Antifemininity is misogynist. What you are saying when you engage in this type of rhetoric is that you think things traditionally associated with women are wrong. Which is misogynist. By telling feminine women that they don’t belong in the feminist movement, you are reinforcing the idea that to be feminine and a woman is wrong, that women who want to be taken seriously need to be more masculine, because most people view gender presentation in binary ways. This rewards the ‘one of the boys’ type rhetoric I encounter all over the place from self-avowed feminists who seem to think that bashing on women is a good way to prove how serious they are when it comes to caring about women and bringing men into the feminist movement."

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Yes, it's the second of the month, and...

My eyes have tears in them. 'My eyes,' I think, 'Is it hormones?'

I remember terrible fights with my father as a teenager. Him telling me to get on the pill already and that women become irrational on their periods. As if that were a bad thing. I hope he didn't mean to say those things, but what I took from those sayings was that being a woman meant being less than a man and being mental. It was something you had to carry around with you like a chip on your shoulder and fix at any given opportunity.

I've realized that men put so much effort into telling women what to do with their bodies and to "even out those hormones."

But you can't grow if you're too worried about having feelings at all.

My body is giving birth to me right now. I'm leaving the "I'm so awkward, no one loves me, and I'm cheap" feeling, to grow into more beautiful thoughts.

I'm experiencing an altered state, but the end result will be that I will have experienced all the negative thoughts and emotions I've had my entire life only to understand that they're so untrue and have no power over me.

I'll be done with the negativity.

Then I'll be ready to become multiple. This time is for shedding weakness.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Salience

"Salience" was not a word I had heard spoken aloud before. I definitely didn't know what it meant. Before I entered college, I never wondered how important or relevant information was. I just assumed it had its merit, but every day we are surrounded by headlines and bylines promising our every wish will be fulfilled.

Some jerk gets richer every dollar we spend at the grocery store buying magazines and popular self-help books. As long as they look presentable and promise results writers make bank.

I'll admit that it's hard to feel interesting. I don't have some hot-button issue or craze to write about. Inconsequentially, I'm going to pass right through the internet without comments or readers. I'm not going to pretend I'm well versed in feminist ideology or literature. Heck, I'm not going to offer opinions on articles from websites.

I just want to share my humble opinion about what it means to be a woman and spread a positive message—something I feel too few people do.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

girlVirus



A lovely find today.

The Magic of Being a Woman

The thing I often consider is having children—particularly a daughter. It was during a long road trip that I first thought about that first "Welcome to Womanhood" I might have in the future. The first thing that struck me is the difficulty of believing that being a woman is magical and empowering.

When I was twelve, I didn't believe my own mother when she told me how wonderful it is to be woman. Why would I in our society? It took me many years to start believing.

The truth is that women possess a unique energy! I've felt it so many times throughout my life but am finally aware what this energy is.

Many cultures believe that when a woman is on her moon she has more medicine in her than any man present, because she has the power to recreate and give birth to herself.

What does it mean to give birth to yourself? What does it mean to be reborn? It means that you are physically and emotionally changing from one form to another.

As women, we are cleansed and change, discarding the parts of ourselves we don't wish to carry on with.

Have you ever felt an energy at your fingertips or pulsing through you? This is the energy and magic of being a woman.

Although my future daughter may not believe me, I hope to give her all the encouragement to discover this for herself. I want her sexuality and nature to be a private and special gift. My one wish is that women could begin world wide to believe they are magical beings, capable of creating the person they truly are.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Secrets to Loving Yourself

"As the saying goes, never let yourself get too hungry, angry, lonely or tired."

When I was a child, I was loved but faced inconsistency from my parents. They divorced and involved me in a fourteen-year custody battle. My parents' mental health was also poor. One would appear and the next moment disappear. This inconsistency caused me a lot of pain.

To cope, I created multiple personalities. As my home life became more and more unstable, I turned heavily to these personalities to outlet my love, make decisions, and deal with the guilt and shame I felt surrounding my circumstances. They were tremendous help—they gave me hope and allowed me to feel in control of my life.

When I lost them, I lost the tools to cope with the ongoing issues. Loosing the personalities I'd created made it even harder going to university. I developed severe anxiety, which meant I wasn't able to connect with the people around me and my teachers.

I skipped classes and became even more out of touch. I was depressed and so unhappy I frequently thought of ending my life.

When I stopped believing in the personalities I created, I stopped being able to love myself and be happy. For the past year, all I wrote in my journal were suicide notes. I'd once had a passionate dream of becoming a writer but grew to feel useless and meaningless. I thought it'd be better to die.

Someone once told me the only reason people attempt suicide is because they want to change. I've spent the last year considering what I want to change and discovered that I don't want to die because I love myself.

While suffering from depression, I often felt disappointed in others. I felt alone in the world and wondered why, but I also realized that I would never truly be alone, because I had the capacity to love myself.

Those personalities were fragments of my true self. While I thought I hated myself and thought it'd be better to kill myself, I also thought that deep down a part of myself cared for me. I couldn't explain this understanding. It felt inaccessible to me.

Then, one night a couple months ago, I sat down and wrote a love letter to myself, radiating with love I hadn't felt in years. It was a powerful experience after only being able to write suicide notes for a year or more. And any time I'm feeling sad, I talk to myself when I'm alone in my car. I'm able to access the part of me that cares so easily now. Maybe it looks crazy, but to me it's the only time I can calm down and not feel overwhelmed.

One of the secrets to truly loving yourself is to speak to yourself in the second person. If you say, "I forgive you!" it has a completely different effect than saying "I forgive myself!" or "I forgive me!" To explain, one sounds like a request and the first sounds like the powerful reunion between friends.

The secret of loving yourself is also the secret of creating yourself and accepting the power to be multiple and infinite.

Postcard from the Volcano by Wallace Stevens

Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion-house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said of it became

A part of what it is . . . Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

Secrets to Loving Yourself

Today, I found To My Daughter, With Love: A Mother's Memory Book by Donna Green. I hadn't ever looked through it and was surprised to find a type--written letter my mother taped to the front, of course for me to read one day! It's a declaration of self-esteem and it reads:

MY DECLARATION OF SELF ESTEEM
I AM ME,
IN ALL THE WORLD, THERE IS NO ONE ELSE EXACTLY LIKE ME. THERE ARE PERSONS WHO HAVE SOME PARTS LIKE ME, BUT NO ONE ADDS UP EXACTLY LIKE ME. THEREFORE, EVERYTHING THAT COMES OUT OF ME IS AUTHENTICALLY MINE BECAUSE I ALONE CHOSE IT. I OWN EVERYTHING ABOUT ME—MY BODY, INCLUDING ALL ITS THOUGHTS AND IDEAS; MY EYES, INCLUDING THE IMAGES OF ALL THEY BEHOLD; MY FEELINGS, WHATEVER THEY MAY BE—ANGER, JOY, FRUSTRATION, LOVE, DISAPPOINTMENT, EXCITEMENT; MY MOUTH, AND ALL THE WORDS THAT COME OUT OF IT, POLITE, SWEET, OR ROUGHT, CORRECT OR INCORRECT; MY VOICE, LOUD OR SOFT; AND ALL MY ACTIONS, WHETHER THEY BE TO OTHERS OR MYSELF.
I OWN ALL MY FANTASIES; MY DREAMS, MY HOPES, MY FEARS.
I OWN ALL MY TRIUMPHS AND SUCCESSES, ALL MY FAILURES AND MISTAKES.
BECAUSE I OWN ALL OF ME, I CAN BECOME INTIMATELY ACQUAINTED WITH ME. BY SO DOING I CAN LOVE ME AND BE FRIENDLY WITH ME IN ALL MY PARTS. I CAN THEN MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR ALL OF ME TO WORK IN MY BEST INTERESTS. I KNOW THERE ARE ASPECTS ABOUT MYSELF THAT PUZLE ME, AND OTHER ASPECTS THAT I DO NOT KNOW, BUT AS LONG AS I AM FRIENDLY AND LOVING TO MYSELF, I CAN COURAGEOUSLY AND HOPEFULLY LOOK FOR THE SOLUTIONS TO THE PUZZLES AND FOR WAYS TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT ME.
HOWEVER I LOOK AND SOUND, WHATEVER I SAY AND DO, AND WHATEVER I THINK AND FEEL AT A GIVEN MOMENT IN TIME IS ME THIS IS AUTHENTIC AND REPRESENTS WHERE I AM AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME.
WHEN I REVIEW LATER HOW I LOOKED AND SOUNDED WHEN I SAID AND DID, AND HOW I THOUGHT AND FELT, SOME PARTS MAY TURN OUT TO BE UNFITTING. I CAN DISCARD THAT WHICH IS UNFITTING, AND KEEP THAT WHICH PROVED FITTING, AND I INVENT SOMETHING NEW FOR THAT WHICH I DISCARDED.
I CAN SEE, HEAR, FEEL, THINK, SAY, AND DO. I HAVE THE TOOLS TO SURVIVE , TO BE CLOE TO OTHERS, TO BE PRODUCTIVE, AND TO MAKE SNESE AND ORDER OUT OF THE WORLD OF PEOPLE AND THINGS OUSIDE OF ME.
I OWN, AND THEREFORE, I CAN ENGINEER ME.
I AM ME AND I AM OKAY.

I wanted to share with everyone. Read it over and I hope the words resonate.

True Love

Do you believe in true love?

"True love begins when nothing is looked for in return." — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

My dad always pontificated that true love only comes after years of being together. He'd been through three failed marriages but still believed in true love. Well, he explained, someone who truly loves you will always be there. You have to work hard to be in love and it takes sacrifice. It's not the kind of sacrifice that makes you suffer—instead it leads you to happiness.

While I believe my dad, I don't think you have to be in a good or long-lasting relationship in order to experience true love. You know that your mom truly loves you. Maybe you haven't talked in years, but that doesn't change the fact that the first person you were truly in love with was your mom. It might not be romantic love, but it is true love. Not everyone goes on to experience a romantic relationship.

Beside that, how can you tell the difference between loving someone and being in love with "the one?" How can you tell you were meant to be with someone your whole life?

" Maybe true love is a decision. You know, a decision to take a chance with somebody. To give to somebody. Without worrying wether they'll give anything back. Or if they're gonna hurt you, or if they really are the one. Maybe love isn't something that happens to you. Maybe it's something you have to choose." — Love and Other Disasters

If you already made that decision, there's really nothing to worry about. Things are only as complicated as you make them.