Deviant, Defiant, Non-Compliant

Just a heads up, this post is only nominally about cosmetics, so if you're here for shiny polishes you might disappointed.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed I've put out a huge glut of new designs for my Etsy over the last week, but there are two that  I wanted to talk about, because they really mean quite a lot to me. They're the distillation of a lot of thoughts I've been having about feminism, and generally the experience of being a woman, These designs were specifically inspired by a dear friend who despite being much younger than me, inspires me every day.

Deviant!

This is the first design I want to talk about - a fairly simple one, just a cute little banner that says "Deviant" over my signature indie polish background. (If you're interested, the polish is a discontinued one from Darling Diva called Erotic City) But the meanings I think you can take from this simple word are rather complex.

Women's behavior, and in particular women's sexuality, has always been a minefield of do's and don't. So many unspoken, invisible walls around every action, and stepping over these lines, even if we didn't know they were there until we'd crossed them, defines us as "deviant".

George Romney - Lady Hamilton as Medea

This idea that women's sexual pleasure is something bad or wrong can be traced back all the way to the Greeks, where "good" noble Greek women were expected to be matronly and chaste. Kept cloistered until they were married as young virgins, they were expected to produce heirs but the idea of women actually enjoying the process was unheard of. Women in mythology who succumbed to passion were deemed "evil" (See Medea, among many other examples), and women in society who were caught committing adultery were entirely excommunicated from Greek society, unable to even attend sacrifices. At the same time male sexuality, while nominally expected to be enjoyed in moderation, was allowed rather more leeway for expression.

The Victorian Era was famously repressive of sexuality, but again rather more so of female sexuality than male. The only orgasm a Victorian woman could expect was at the hands of a doctor should she be diagnosed with "hysteria" - a practice which, on the upside, brought us the basis for the modern vibrator.

Even now, after the Sexual Revolution of the 60's, female sexuality is still widely expected to come second to male sexuality. Women's magazines are full of tips to enjoy sex more, but the number of tips devoted to his pleasure rather than hers underlines the idea that women's enjoyment should never come at the cost of male enjoyment. Women are now largely taught that being sexual is okay - thank goodness - but there still remains the idea that there is such a thing as being TOO sexual. Have sex, but not too much. Explore the dating landscape, but don't sleep with too many people. Get kinky every now and then, but only in a way that straight men find hot.

Graphic by Definatalie

But it's not just our sexuality that gets women labelled as "deviant" - if I've learned anything from the Fat Acceptance movement it's how horrifying some people find the idea of women simply being larger than is "acceptable". Don't even get me started on the endless struggle that is trying to enact the simple idea of "No Diet Talk" in the average office. Now THERE'S a deviant concept.
Speaking of talking, even though women talk almost the exact same amount as men in everyday settings, we're still labelled chatterboxes, gossips, and nags. Hell, even a woman daring to be taller than the average man can get some people clutching their pearls in horror that a dainty, delicate woman could dare to take up so much space.

All these unspoken, invisible walls, trying to hem women into a tiny little box of "acceptable." Acceptably sized, acceptably quiet, acceptably sexual, and acceptably small. Well balls to that.

Defiant!

And that's where this second design comes in. (For the polish nerds, the background I used for this is Exhilaration from Powder Perfect) As much as I would like to encourage every woman to trample the invisible maze that surrounds us with reckless abandon, I can't. There are consequences still to being deviant. In the awesome comic Bitch Planet, women deemed "non compliant" are disappeared to a prison planet for the rest of their lives - while we're not quite there yet, the fact that there are consequences for non-compliance is undeniable. In an example from my own life, politely asking my co-workers not to comment on what I was or was not having for lunch led to complaints to management about my "attitude". Bigger actions can lead to bigger consequences.

I really can't recommend Bitch Planet enough. Make sure to view this full size to see the wonderful fake ads!

But it's not hopeless! There are things you can do, things you can say, every day to try and push at those walls that surround us. It can be as simple as ignoring that socially implanted voice in your head that tells you to shush at parties, because you don't want to be seen as the loud, deviant woman.
Try not to be ashamed of your sexuality - there's no such thing as too sexual, and so long as all parties are consenting adults no kink is too weird. There are great groups out there like Twisted Sisters in Sydney who are more than happy to help you find your way!

There are things you can do that don't even require talking to other people! Read awesome female created comics like Bitch Planet, and  Lumberjanes, and Gotham Academy;go see awesome female directed movies like A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. Buy from indie jewelers doing cool subversive things like Fancy Lady Industries! Support female creators doing cool stuff with your money, and help them to say the things you feel you can't say!

So how about you, dear readers? Are you deviant and/or defiant? What are things you do to show your defiance, big or small?

Can You Blog It? Yes You Can!

Someone asked me about starting their own blog this morning, and asked specifically, "But isn't starting a blog cliche?" To save that poor person from having to read a barrage of Facebook messsages, this post is my response. 

Short version: No, it's not. If you want to do it, do it. It doesn't matter if a million other people are blogging, or none. If blogging means something to you, if you have things to say that you need to say, then just say them. Damn the man, damn the haters, and blog it anyway.

Long version: I feel like the question "Isn't it cliche?" is actually a couple of other questions in disguise. What you're really asking when you ask this is, "Isn't wanting to force my opinions on other people obnoxious?" and "Do I really have anything worth saying, when so many other people are talking already?"

The first question is easy to answer. No, it's not obnoxious to start a blog. It's just opening a Blogger or Wordpress account, typing in some words, and hitting publish. There's nothing inherently obnoxious about it, it's a neutral action. There are obnoxious ways to go about it - insisting everyone refer to you as "Blogger Extraordinaire", or refusing to talk about anything else with anyone for months at a time, for example. But the act of starting a blog, of carving out a little space for your voice, is not obnoxious. This fear of being obnoxious applies to men as well, but I've noticed it's particularly prevalent in women. Women are specifically taught by the patriarchal society we live in that their voices are less important, that their thoughts are less worthwhile, and that they should take up as little space as possible. 

As Chimananda Ngozi Adichie put it, "We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, 'You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise you will threaten the man." Putting our thoughts in a blog is audacious, and in direct opposition to this idea that we should be small. That's why it feels uncomfortable - but also why you should give it a shot.

Which brings me to the second question -"Do I really have anything worth saying, when so many other people are talking already?" Honestly, I don't know. Maybe you don't. Maybe everything you want to say is already being said in exactly the same way you would say it, by someone else. But somehow, given the variety of humanity, I doubt that.

You don't have to be an expert in whatever you want to write about - oftentimes writing about the journey of learning how to do what you want to do can be just as interesting as a flawless How To. You want to write a baking blog, but you can't bake? That's okay, write about your baking disasters! People love cake wrecks, they really do.

Maybe no one will read it. I can't promise you massive readership, or popularity, or huge mainstream success. But if you're blogging about what you want to see, expressing the things you feel you need to say, then I can promise you one thing: satisfaction.

If you're wanting to start a blog because it seems like the thing to do, but you don't have anything you really want to say, then my advice is don't. If you don't bring anything of yourself to your blog, then it will be boring, and it will be obnoxious. But if there's something you need to say, that you want to say, something you want to see in the world that you can't see out there yet, then go ahead and do it. Are you a plus sized person of colour with a physical disability who wishes there were more beauty blogs from your point of view? (Hell, considering how whitewashed beauty blogging is, you might feel this way just for being a person of colour) Then do it yourself! Start that thing, make what you want to see real. 

Can You Blog it? Yes You Can!

XoJane and Already Pretty Guest Posts

Can you believe XOJane were kind enough to have me back AGAIN so soon? If you were excited by my Polish Jewellery 101 guide, you'll love my Polish Jewellery 102: Advanced Pendanting. 

Of course, if you're too lazybusy to DIY, there's always my Etsy store for all your premade sparkly needs.

In an amusing co-incidence, my monthly post at Already Pretty has also gone up on the same day, so take a mosey on over and join the conversation about hair, age, and respectability.

Self Esteem, Selfies, and Teenage Monsters

I was asked last week to weigh in on the apparently endless debate about selfies. This time it was a blessed change from the "are the selfies feminist" discussion; instead the issue at hand was The Children. "Selfies are ruining our children's self esteem" was the main gist of the discussion, and I'm sure you can probably guess where my opinion fell. But it got me wondering how differently I might have viewed myself if I'd had access to digital cameras, beauty apps, and Instagram when I was growing up. I can safely say these things didn't effect my pubescent self esteem because I simply didn't have access to them. But what if I had?

I was an enormously self conscious teenager - I'm sure this is hardly a shock. I've met very, VERY few people who didn't feel like some sort of hideous monster for most of puberty. Being self conscious and concerned with your appearance is just something that comes with being a teenager for a lot of people - I don't think technology created that, and personally I don't think technology is necessarily making it much more prevalent. I've meet teenagers now who insist on wearing makeup all the time so they'll look "acceptable" on Instagram - but there were plenty of girls in school with me who insisted on wearing makeup all the time to be "acceptable" just for showing up to school. I don't have children, so I wouldn't presume to tell anyone how to raise theirs. But I can offer my own experience as someone who grew up during the transition from film, offline photography to the digital, share everything age. I'm sure there are some people who have been adversely effected by the increased availability and focus on selfies. But speaking for myself, as photography became more flexible, dynamic, and all pervasive, I found my acceptance of my own image evolving right alongside the technology. Far from making me more self conscious or self loathing, taking a metric shitload of selfies has made me more comfortable in my skin than I've ever been.

As with pretty much any rapidly changing technology, the "rise of selfies" has been trumped as something to panic about in recent years. The fact is though that selfies are not a new thing. At all.  Even assuming we're limiting the definition of "selfies" to photographs rather than paintings, the very first one was taken in 1839, by an amateur photographer named Robert Cornelius.

Turns out Mr. Cornelius was kind of a fox.

By the time I was attempting to navigate the twisted morass of "growing up", photo technology had come a fair way since Mr. Cornelius ducked awkwardly in front of his camera. There were technically digital cameras around, but I didn't have access to one until I was well into my 20's. There were, however, plenty of film cameras around. Disposable cameras were available everywhere, and relatively cheap, so I had a fair few opportunities to fool around with these as a teenager.

I still have at least one of these hanging around undeveloped..

Something about film photography that's hard to explain to people who've never done it is just how  painfully slow, rigid, and unforgiving it is. You only get 24 chances on a roll to get a picture right, and there's no way to preview the results before it's developed. You'd just have to wait and see. Assuming you take the roll to a photo shop to be developed the very instant you finish taking the pictures, it would be a 2 hour wait to see your results at the VERY least. More likely you'd be waiting a couple of days, even a week to see how any of the photos came out.

Once the picture was developed, for the average photographer, there was no changing it. Photo manipulation is, technically, as old as photography itself, and there have always been certain techniques available to alter photographs after developing.

An example of tools used for these early photo manipulations

However, very few amateur photographers would have been getting out the gouache and charcoal sticks. Most people using film cameras, especially to take selfies,  just took a picture, crossed their fingers, and hoped for the best. This process didn't exactly encourage a great deal of experimentation, especially if you didn't have a lot of money to spend on developing endless rolls of unusable pictures. However, the rigidity of film photos did give them an air of undeniable truth - if it was in a photo, it was assumed to be true. There was a perception that cameras don't lie (even though there are actually hundreds of examples of film photographs being complete bunkum), an idea that they could only capture what's really there. The physicality, the difficulty for the average photographer to change a photo once it was taken, gave film photos a certain authority.

The authoritarian perception and extraordinarily slow process of film photography, could be pretty unhelpful for a developing young teenage ego. Any photographer will tell you that the same person can look VASTLY different depending on poses, lighting, expressions, outfits and makeup. The camera might not lie outright, but it only ever shows part of the whole, and sometimes not the part you'd prefer it to show. It takes time and experimentation to figure out how to take a photo that highlights the parts of you that you like best. As a teenager, I would sometimes only get my picture taken once or twice a year, because it was a pain in the backside to pull out the camera, get the film developed, get the pictures back.  It was also super awkward to try and take them of myself, when I couldn't even tell if it was in focus or not until I got it developed. Taking photos was largely something saved for "occasions", and I only played around with photos of myself for fun every now and then. As a result, there are maybe 20, 30 pictures in existence of me between 14 and 18. How could I possibly figure out what poses, what lighting, what expressions worked for me with a data pool that tiny? I had no idea what suited me, so naturally the majority of the photos taken when I was a teenager were dreadfully unflattering. To my malleable teenage mind, this meant that OBVIOUSLY I was hideous. I mean, there was undeniable proof, in those photos, right there! The camera doesn't lie! I believed that film photos showed the "real" me, and the "real" me was ugly.

Good grief, that was appalling hair. Lookit my wittle button nose tho!

The arrival of digital photography changed so much about how people take photos in general, and definitely changed the whole way I personally viewed photography.  As someone who began taking photos with film and later moved to digital, I can tell you that simply being able to see the photo immediately completely changed the way I approached photography. Not sure if that shot came out in focus? No worries, check it out, delete if need be, and take another. There's always another shot available, you can always try one more time. The pressure to make every frame count is completely dissipated, and  suddenly I felt free to experiment, try new things, to play around. The rate at which you learn what does and doesn't work for you in a selfie is sped up exponentially when using a digital camera. Instead of having to wait a couple of days to learn new things (positive or negative), you can see the results and adapt immediately. The ever expanding storage capacity of each new generation of digital cameras encouraged me to take more and more photos, and with every photo I learned more.

Hmm, if I tilt my head to the side, it makes my cheekbones really stand out...

Whoops, that's too far. Less tilt needed!

I could see in these photos proof that my image was fluid, changeable. With film photos I always seemed to make the same face, and stand in the same way, probably because I had so little practice I just automatically snapped into "photo mode". But when playing with a digital camera of my own, I had the flexibility to try a million different things, to see just how different I could make myself look. Sometimes my experiments went well, and I thought I looked good in the results. Sometimes I thought I looked awful, and deleted the pictures just as fast as I could. Sometimes my selfies turned out not "pretty" as such, but interesting all the same.

At this stage though, my selfies were still relatively isolated. I was one of those people that refused to get a mobile with a camera in it until the very last possible moment, because I didn't see the point in discarding my trusty Nokia 2210 until it was literally falling apart. This meant my selfies were all taken on my stand alone camera, and had to be transferred to my desktop for resizing and possibly a little tinkering before I could share them. It also meant my online presence was relatively small - it was kind of a pain to have to sit down and specifically "be online", so I mostly hung around small, sheltered online spaces where I already knew everyone.

Then I got a net capable phone, with a camera, and seemingly in the blink of an eye - well, a blink of my ancient, slow eyes anyway - my social world exploded. Taking the leap from a stand alone digital camera to a net enabled mobile phone camera meant my self portraits could now be taken literally anywhere, at any time, with no forward planning required. With a tap of the screen, I take a picture of my lunch, share it across five different social networks, and see people's responses without putting my sandwich down. With the explosion of photo manipulation apps available now, I often don't even have to stop walking to touch up or resize a photo anymore, let alone transfer it to a desktop computer. I can take a photo, review it, manipulate it and share it all in a couple of minutes from the one device. Some of you probably think that's totally normal, but I'm sure at least some of you are old enough to understand what a staggering development this is.

Back in my day, we could "run out of film"!

Naturally, since it's so ludicrously easy to take selfies and share them now, lots of people are doing it, and some are doing it quite a lot. Self portrait photography is no longer a specific activity requiring specific equipment for a lot of people - it's just a part of their everyday lives, as is the inevitable feedback that comes from sharing anything in a public place. About here is where a lot of concerned parents groups start getting a bit panicked. Phrases like "camera ready generation" start getting thrown around, and people fret that now they're taking photos of everything all the time teenagers will be obsessed with always looking as attractive as possible. Parents (understandably) freak out that their teenagers are posting pictures and being told they're ugly, and that this will ruin their self esteem forever.

I can't honestly say that I think parents are wrong to worry. There is some nasty fucking shit, and some dreadful fucking people out there, who love nothing better than pissing on other people's self esteem. Bullies and assholes are not a new phenomenon, and being picked on as a teenager is hardly new either, but sharing selfies online does open you up to an extraordinary volume of assholes. It used to be you only had to worry about the bully at your school - now you can be attacked by someone on the other side of the world without even leaving your room. It can be enormously dangerous, and very possibly harmful to squishy little teenage minds and their baby soft self esteem.

It's not all assholes and nasty comments out there on the Big Wide Internet though, and I think the positives of sharing selfies are often brushed over in favour of focusing on the potential negatives.
Since getting a net capable phone with a camera, and especially since starting this blog, I've shared approximately a million pictures of myself online. I'll often take five or six pictures of myself before I even get to work at the moment - although to be fair that's largely so I can capture my makeup before I forget I'm wearing it and rub it all over my face.  I've taken so many photos of myself, both for fun and for this blog, that I know what I look like from pretty much every angle, under every light - and some of these angles are not pretty.

Ack, I'm all forehead!

Wait, now I'm all chin

Agghh, ENORMOUS cheekbones!

In addition to learning my bad sides though, I also know now there are angles from which I look rather pretty indeed. I've even practiced enough that I can recreate the most flattering ones at will. I've played around with the so-called beauty apps, and had a glimpse of what I would look like with airbrushed skin, or ludicrous manga size eyes.

I gotta tell you, the size of my eyes in this picture kind of creeps me out

Do I have flawless skin, or is the saturation so blown out you can't see anything?
You'll never know the truth!

Playing with apps, and Photoshop in general, has given me a much clearer understanding of what's behind the curtain of the airbrushed photos I see in the media around me. We all know intellectually that they're retouched and altered - but there's always a little part of you that wonders how much. If you don't know what sort of enormous changes can be achieved with photo manipulation, it's hard to really visualise how models can look before retouching. There are a lot of before and after demonstrations around on the net, but speaking for myself, doing it to my own face was so much more compelling than seeing it demonstrated on a stranger. I would like to think that running their selfies through a beauty app could demonstrate the same thing for a teenager.

I've taken photos from every angle, good, bad, and indifferent. I've tinkered with my image until it's unrecognisable, then put it back together again. Digital photography and selfies have allowed me to collect such a huge pool of data that it's became impossible for me to define myself as truly "ugly" anymore - I no longer believe believe that photos show the "real" me, because I've captured so much variation I don't think there is such a thing as a definite, "real" me. There's only how I look right now, and I find that enormously comforting and reassuring. If I don't like how I look right at this second, it's okay because in five minutes I'll probably look different. If I don't like how I look then either, I can tinker with the photo until I do like it. I can create my own image, exactly how I want it, and that sort of control is absolutely thrilling.

Sharing my selfies has also been enormously comforting and reassuring, for me. I know that not everyone is so lucky, and as I mentioned previously, there is a big wide pool of assholes out there who are all too ready to put in their two cents. As much as they would hate to admit though, the assholes are not the whole of the internet. There is enormous good that can be done, and comfort that can be shared by sharing images that counter popular media. The way people, especially women, are depicted in mass media doesn't look like any person I've ever seen, but sharing selfies is a way for everyone to help fill the gaps left by advertising and movies. This is particularly relevant for teenagers trying to get a sense of who they are and how they fit in the world.

 

As I said previously, I thought I was a grotesque monster when I was a teenager. Comparing yourself to people as they're portrayed in mass media is always a losing game, but I did it anyway. I didn't look like any of them, and I thought I was the one that was wrong. Comparing myself to the people I knew in meatspace didn't help either. There were only 40 kids in my year, so let's say there were about 20 girls my age in my town that I could compare myself to. Unsurprisingly, given the enormous variety humans are capable of, I didn't look like any of them either. I thought I MUST be the one who was misshaped, malformed, because I couldn't see anyone who looked like me. But now I can open Tumblr and see 20 people who look just like me go scrolling past, in outfit posts or makeup shots or just plain "I feel cute" selfies. I know it's not just me who's made like this, and that makes me feel so much better about this funny squishy body I'm in. Having access to so much more data has changed the way I view myself for the better - I don't feel like a monster anymore.

An enormous dork, for sure. But not a monster.

This potential effect of sharing selfies is one of the reasons I make a point of sharing unflattering photos of myself every now and then, especially if they're funny. I don't want people looking at my blog or my Twitter and thinking I look perfectly poised all the time - because I most certainly don't, and neither does anyone else. Just because you haven't brushed your hair today is no reason you That  can't join in the sharing too! I was inspired to share unflattering pictures by other (braver) people who did it first, and I hope that by joining in, I can help inspire other people to keep the cycle going and see just how much of the wstaggering variety that is human beings we can capture.

Keep in mind when I talk about how much sharing selfies has done for my self esteem that I'm white, cisgender, and have no major physical disabilities. I did essentially look like everyone else in my town as a teenager, as much I didn't think so at the time. I was essentially playing the self esteem game on one of the easier settings. If being exposed to the diversity of images that widespread selfies offers changed my life so much, imagine what it could do for teenagers growing up in places where they don't essentially look like everyone else - for teenagers playing on a much harder setting than I did.

So are the positives worth the negatives for teenagers trying to navigate puberty and come out the other side with some sort of self esteem? I can't speak for every teenager, but speaking for myself, I wish I'd had access to the net and selfies and all the good that comes from sharing and viewing them as a teenager. I think it would have taken a lot less time for me to realise that I'm not a monster, and that I never really was.

What do you think? Would you, or do you approve of your children sharing selfies on social media? Do you wish you'd been able to do all this yourself as a teenager? Are you a teenager currently wishing photos were much less easily shareable? Do you think the good outweighs the potential negatives?

I'm A Bad Fatty and I Don't Care - Brainy Femme Repost

This post originally appeared on Brainy Femme - I'm going to be reposting particularly relevant posts from Brainy Femme over here from time to time. 


I have a confession to make, and you might want to sit down for this because it’s kind of shocking. I a fat woman - that much is clear from any picture ever taken of me. But I’m also a fat woman who has no interest in losing weight. I am a “bad fatty”.

"Glutton" by the amaing Natalie Perkins,
available as a print from Fancy Lady Industries

If you’re not familiar with the terminology, this is the best primer I’ve seen on the subject.* Even if you’ve never heard the phrase “good fatty” before, if you’re even a little aware of the unwinnable weight war that woman can get locked in, you’re guaranteed to be familiar with the assumptions this terminology describes. Fat people, and especially fat women, are supposed to be ashamed of their fat. We’re supposed to be aware of, and acknowledge, that our fat is a failing - of willpower, of morality, of character. We’re supposed to be either constantly willing to explain in depth, to anyone who asks, our excuse for being fat; or alternatively if we have no “acceptable” excuse, we’re supposed to be doing everything in our power to become a more “acceptable” size.

Me, I don’t have an excuse for the size of my arse, acceptable or not.  I don’t have any medical conditions that I’m aware of that prevent me from losing weight. The women on my mother’s side of the family do tend to be bottom heavy, but my mother is tiny, so it’s not like my genetics are inescapable. I’m not an athlete, so I can’t attribute any of my kilos to muscle. I mean, I’m sure there’s some in there, and I’ve always had big muscular horsey thighs, but I would be seriously reaching to attribute any significant proportion of my weight to muscle.

Indie Feminism

Last Sunday, an amazing hashtag sprung up on Twitter, in the wake of the horrific killings in Santa Barbara (allegedly) committed by loud and proud misogynist Elliot Rogers. One brave woman (who's now predictably had to go into hiding) started an online conversation talking about how widespread male violence and harassment of women really is, using the hastag #YesAllWomen. Stories poured in, much faster than anyone could possibly read them all. @RahRah wrote a deeply moving piece that I think captures the sheer overwhelming volume of this outpouring, and naturally, I got good and involved.

At first it was thrilling to be a part of a conversation so huge, to know that there were so many other women out there with experiences just like mine. But then the trolls arrived, and it quickly turned from exciting to frustrating, to stressful, to distressing. By Friday I was just DONE. I couldn't handle one more man telling me how I should do feminism better, one more asshole calling Mr.Reluctant Femme names for defending feminism, one more cowardly deadshit telling my friends who've been assaulted that they deserved it. I usually put a great deal of effort into remaining reasonable when I talk about feminism. I don't actually think saying things like "Kill All Men" is all that helpful. But I was burned out, angry, hurt, and just DONE. I was really starting to feel like killing all men. So I made this, because it made me laugh and I needed a laugh.

In case you can't read it, the little label says "Male Tears"

Put On Your War Paint - Girl Gang Makeup Tutorial

I sadly lost a friend very recently, and I'm still working through a lot of how I feel about that. You can read more about all the sad and painful parts of it over here, but in this post I want to do something a bit different and celebrate one of the really positive aspects of my friendship with Chloe, rather than just mourning her loss.

You see, Chloe and I both had a tendency to get a bit...angry. Okay, that's a total understatement. Even when talking across the world, we could wind each other up to an absolute frenzy of delighted ferocity, so I can only imagine what would have happened if we'd ever been in the same place at the same time. Chloe had far more reason to react violently to people that pissed her off than I did; she'd been through an absolute fuckton of shit, and comparatively nothing particularly bad has ever really happened to me. But we both got the same fierce joy from the idea of punching out the teeth of people who deserve it, and I took a lot of comfort from her acceptance of my burning desire to break some faces when I got angry. I always felt like that urge, that desire for violence was something to be denied at all costs, and hidden at all times. But Chloe not only accepted that part of me, she actively encouraged me to get it out and explore it - intellectually at least, since the fact is I would be a dreadful physical fighter. We agreed that should we ever get into a physical fight together, I could do the kicking because of my powerful horse thighs, but she would have to do all the punching because I'd be sure to break my hand. One day, while complaining about people we wanted to punch that we weren't allowed to punch, and imagining what we might do about it if we could, we came up with the idea of starting a girl gang.

This image created by BabsBabsBabs

Not just any girl gang - the punkest, femmest, most misandrist girl gang ever. We were going to ride into town on bright pink, bedazzled, loud as fuck motorbikes, and start fights with sexist assholes. We were going to kick in teeth, break arms, and punch the wind out of people until they understood that women are not to be trifled with. We were going to have jackets, like The Pink Ladies, but way more punk, in pink denim with studs and dripping letters and artfully tattered edges. We were going to have tattoos across our knuckles that spelled out MISANDRY.* There would be No Boys Allowed, and it was going to be BAD ASS.

Season of the Coven

It's been a while since I've done one of my patented Polish+ posts, but at last I've got a polish and topic that are plenty exciting to fill up a post - today we're talking about witches!

I picked up Crow's Toes Season of The Witch quite a while ago, and while it's a really lovely polish, I didn't have much to say about it until the most recent season of American Horror Story rolled around. I've been a fan of American Horror Story from the first episode, and while the last season tried to jam about three times as many plots as would actually fit into it, I thoroughly enjoyed the most recent season, Coven. If you haven't finished it yet, maybe jump off after the pretty nail pictures because there will be spoilers aplenty!

Before you go though, be sure to stop and take a look at this beautiful polish, Season of The Witch. Crow's Toes Nail Color are known for their wide variety of stunning duochromes and multichromes, and Season of The Witch is no exception to the excellent I expect from this brand.

In Defence of Twitter Feminism

This is something I've been wanting to talk about for a while, but a recent flurry of derisive articles decrying "twitter feminism" and online activism in general have brought it back to the front of my mind. I'd rebut these articles directly, but plenty of much smarter people have already got that under control. What I want to talk about is this whole perception that what happens on Twitter doesn't really matters in the scheme of things, the idea that Twitter in particular is just a bunch of spoiled brats complaining to empty air. I want to talk about this idea that "twitter feminism" doesn't matter, that all the discussions and movements are without substance because it's not happening in the "real world."

I think this is total, utter, bullshit.

Why are Women the Marshalls of Fun?

This post is going to be one big long rant about heterosexual people problems, so if that's not something you're interested in, consider yourself warned.

The marketing team behind Xbox have been working their little butts off lately, attempting to completely blanket all and every media with the glorious news that the new console is nearly here, OMG, let's set off fireworks etc etc. At first, the only thing I found annoying about the campaign was how totally comprehensive it was - I am perfectly aware the new console is coming out, and would really like it if I could stop reading out it now. However, considering this is from a company that are pretty notorious for making sexism related PR bungles, over saturation is a pretty small niggle. I actually even saw an ad for the new Xbox that I liked! They released a cute little ad called "His and Hers" that depicts a hot girl demanding her boyfriend turn off the soccer so she can kill some zombies, and while it's a little pandering, it's also pretty fun.

I don't think my hair has ever been this perfectly styled, but otherwise this is a pretty
accurate depiction of a girl gaming.

Then I came this charming little customisable letter put out by Xbox (and very swiftly redacted) as part of the promotional effort for their new console. If you click on this to view it full size you should be able to read the text.

DC Comics: Accidental Feminists?

Today I've got another special guest post for you! Please extend a warm welcome to my guest blogger Mr. Reluctant Femme - otherwise known as Alex Hardison. He normally writes excellent sci-fi,and has been published in noted webzine Flurb, but today he's agreed to tread unfamiliar ground and put together a non-fiction work for the first time since he escaped Uni on two subjects extremely close to his heart - Batman and feminism.

  I've often thought that the ongoing theme of surrogate family was one of the most interesting elements of the whole Batman world . The Bat Story begins when Bruce Wayne, playboy millionaire, loses his parents to random violent crime. He naturally then takes a sacred vow to fight against the criminals who plague his city for the rest of his days, and takes up the cape and cowl to become our beloved Batman. This is of course, too great a task for any one man, even one completely awesome as Batman, so he recruits a range of companions and protégés over the course of his crusade. In return for their help in his ongoing crusade against crime, Wayne attempts to raise, teach, and nurture his team in a way that his parents were never able to raise him. Mind you, how WELL he raises them is a matter of some debate. He’s not exactly the warm, light hearted father figure most children would hope for.

Serious Bat Business is Serious.

 Batgirl: Year One, Scott Beatty, Chuck Dixon, Marcos Martin and Alvaro Lopez

You Can't Take My Selfies from Me

I usually don't blog about internet activism events, but there was a hashtag going around this morning that gave me way too many thoughts to confine it to Twitter, where I usually do my most impassioned ranting.  Basically, Jezebel published an article condemning selfies on feminist grounds, and a large portion of Twitter reacted by posting endless selfies with the hashtag #feministselfie. Personally, I love this kind of immediate, groundswell response - it's one of my favourite things about being on Twitter. The way ideas bounce from one person to the next, to the next, and on in ever expanding ripples is something I find deeply fascinating, and I always love watching an idea sprout into a "thing", spreading seeds across the wilds of the internet.

ANYWAY, I have a lot of thoughts about this particular event, and for once I decided to jump on the bandwagon and dash something off before the zeitgeist rushes past. So let's talk about this Jezebel article. I don't actually read Jezebel a lot these days, because a lot of the articles they post make me really angry and I just don't need extra angry making things most days. However, a lot of people do read it, and a lot of people are influenced by it, so I feel like it's worth examining at least some of the problematic things they publish.

I'm going to start with this little gem here;

"Selfies aren't empowering; they're a high tech reflection of the fucked up way society teaches women that their most important quality is their physical attractiveness" 

Knowing your Nose

I've got something a little bit different for you today - my very first ever guest post! The author of today's post is Sam, a fascinating lady who's been globe trotting as long as I've known her, and really should write more often than she does. I've been prodding her to write something for me for a little while, and after having surgery on her nose for sinus issues, she's very kindly put some thoughts together on what her new nose means to her.


Two weeks ago I had surgery on my sinuses and my nose.  As a result I was adorably helpless, and this made me miserable. 

I have never aspired to be a quirky supporting character in the story of a man's life, but rather a walking, breathing person of my own.  But I happen to have been a long-term relationship with a 'real-adult' so while I resent the idea, the quirky supporting character descriptor  may not actually be that far off.  I often feel as if I am not a 'real adult' and that I am faking it.   It's hard to feel fiercely independent when you lived with someone who is so ridiculously capable.  I sometimes think that if I was going to write about my experiences in our relationship I would call it 'Being Lois Lane'. This fear of being a supporting character is something I carry with me most of the time in my everyday life.

It's Time To Squash The Bug

(Because a lot of outside material I've used for this post will be triggering in terms of trans phobia, hate speech, and violent threats, I've linked them instead of putting in screenshots. Please don't click through if you feel these links might be harmful to you)

I'm going to get into some pretty heavy feminist politics today, so while I know some of you are tempted to flick past this entry, I'd ask that you stay and hear me out, at least for a little while. This is super important stuff, and the whole point of this post is to try and spread information about some of the heinous shit going on out there in the name of feminism to people who might not be aware.

A lot of my readers will already know a lot of what I'll be writing out here, so consider this a primer that you can link to people who ask what the hell you're on about when you talk about TERF's. But if you're one of those people who tries to stay out of politics, to stay out of "Capital F" Feminism, I'd ask that just this once, you listen for a minute. I promise there will be more pretty pictures later - but today I want to get serious.

Optional Highlights: Why Can't We Choose The Face That Fits?

There's been a little flurry of discussion in the last week on the "makeup-free" and "natural beauty" movements in the last week - my blogging hero Autumn Whitefield-Madrano from The Beheld was over at HuffPost Live sharing some insightful thoughts on the matter, and my journalism hero Clementine Ford has been talking about the same issue over at Daily Life. I'm not really sure what's really blown it up on this particular occassion, but it's been an ongoing discussion in lots of feminist circles for a really, really long time now.

Makeup Free Mondays over on The Beauty Bean

Manic Pixie Dream Girls: Not So Fun Actually

Just a note before we begin - it's been pointed out to me that not everyone inhales pop culture commentary like I do, and many of you haven't actually heard of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope before. It's an old stereotype, but the name is relatively recent, so if you want to read more about what I mean when I use it there are good introductions on both Wikipedia and TV Tropes.

The stereotype of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is one that annoys the fuck out of me. This single trope has completely ruined Before Sunrise, and countless other films like it for me. My boyfriend watches Before Sunrise, and all he sees is an incredibly romantic movie. I watch it, and all I can see is a magical girl who shows up with no history and no future, and helps the male protagonist realise what’s truly important to him in life over the course of a night, only to conveniently disappear the next day. And then I start ranting, and things go kind of red tinted, and then I wake up and my boyfriend is suggesting we never watch Before Sunrise again.

"Tell me your problems scruffy man, and I shall solve them in a sultry French accent!"

I’m sure it comes as no surprise then that  I was very interested to read Laurie Penny’s essay I Was A Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and enjoyed it thoroughly. She brilliantly summarises one of the things that bothers me about this stereotype the most; the prevailing assumption that all Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s only exist in order to help a poor, lost man discover something wonderful about life and love, without any goals or ambitions of their own. I absolutely agree with Penny that this trope encourages women to put their male partner’s dreams and ambitions before theirs, and I know that I’ve done this myself. To be honest though, it’s not what really gets under my skin and fires up my fury at this stereotype. I’ve never felt particularly compelled to be a hero, of anyone’s story. I like to help – it’s what I like to do, and what I do best, but I’m not a leader. There are women that could be leaders though, and SHOULD be leaders, that are being held back by this idea that quirky, interesting women only exist to make men more interesting, and I think THAT is fucking bullshit.

It's time for justice: violence against sex workers needs to stop

This post is going to be about some grim, violent, and possibly triggering stuff. I'm also going to be talking about the sex industry, but I promise not to put in any NSFW pictures.

Some horrible shit has gone down in the last fortnight or so, but today I want to talk about the recent spate of violence against sex workers that has sparked an International Day of Protests set for the 19th of July. These protests are attempting to at least draw attention to, if not change, a culture of stigma and silence that still hangs over sex work; a culture that makes sex workers ideal targets for violence, because even if caught the perpetrators are unlikely to be prosecuted as severely as if they hurt someone who isn't a sex worker.

Image courtesy of Gender Across Borders

Top Ten Questions Poly People Are Sick Of Being Asked

There are a couple of things about me that I don’t talk about as much as I used to, just because they’re not really a part of my day to day lifestyle anymore. They’re still a part of me, they just…well, they don’t come up nearly as often as they used to. One of these things is my queerness, and I’ve talked a little about that here. But not only am I queer, I’m also polyamorous.

This means simply that I prefer non-monogamous relationships. Currently, I’m only involved with Mr. Reluctant Femme, and he’s only involved with me. However, just as not having touched any boobs this week doesn’t make me less queer, our lack of other partners currently doesn’t make us less polyamorous. I saw a call over on Poly Means Many for posts about assumptions, and I thought a fun way to broach this aspect of my life would be to write up two 101 type posts on the subject. Usual disclaimer applies - I can only speak for my own experience with polyamory, and don't want to speak for every poly person, everywhere.

Tomorrow I’ll be answering Ten GOOD Questions About Poly, because it’s something that people are often curious about, and I’m happy to answer interesting, respectful questions.

But today I’ll be going through the Top Ten Questions Poly People Are Sick Of – stupid, assumptive and sometimes outright offensive questions that people in non monogamous relationships get ALL THE TIME and that we really, REALLY wish we could never hear again. These are all questions I've either been asked myself, or been told about by friends, so these are all real things that people have ACTUALLY said. You might be surprised by just how rude some people can be about how you choose to run your relationships - or hey, maybe you won't be surprised at all. So get comfortable while I get into my ranty pants!

Don't Owe You A Thang

This is one of those super serious posts I do every once in a while - if you're triggered by mentions of sexual violence, or violence in general, especially against trans people, you're probably going to want to give this one a miss. I try to stay away from topics that I think will be too upsetting for too many people, but in this instance it's precisely because the whole thing is so upsetting that I feel the need to write it.

I want to talk about trans* people, and how cisgendered people treat them.

You might not be familiar with these terms, so let me do some quick definitions for you. I like to use the term trans*, because the asterisk indicates it refers to a wide variety of identities under the "trans umbrella".

 

Janeway Has A Posse

Since we got together some four years ago now, Mr. Reluctant Femme and I have been working on converting each other to all the pop culture that the other previously didn’t like. He turned me around almost completely on Batman, taking me from a point of view where I thought the whole thing was quite ridiculous to a place where I not only know there was more than one Batgirl but I also have a favourite. I, in my turn, have turned him on to the awesomeness of (parts of) the X-Men comics through my unwavering and perhaps irrational loyalty to them through good and dreadful writers.

Art by Eddy-Swan on DeviantArt
Yes, I like Wolverine. No, I don't care what you think about that.