February Feats 2022

My favourite month has arrived! Spring is coming and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

• You can find my favourite tweets of the month over here and here.

• I compiled my favourite tweets about love for Valentine’s Day.

• I read and review Elvira’s new memoir.

• I know that it’s older, but I’ve kept the song Gypsy by Lady Gaga on repeat for about two weeks now.

• I made garlic confit and I’ll be real with you - it looks way better than it tastes. And that’s coming from someone who adores garlic. By cooking it down, it actually makes the garlic flavour quite mild so it’s truly not worth making again. I put a boatload of it on some toast and it was beyond lackluster. One more con? Expect to be gassy as hell if you eat this stuff.

• I tried a sample of this Tata Harper (christ that name) cleanser and it was really good. Thankfully there are cheaper, better options out there (literally anything in the tea tree line at The Body Shop), but this was great to try.

• I was getting pretty sick of the Spotify commercials in my (free) account, so I made to the movie to Apple Music to try their three month trial. We shall see how it goes. (That goddam Stone Cold Steve Austin & Ice-T commercial may have been the final straw to leave Spotify.)

• I went to Sarabeth’s for their Restaurant Week lunch menu and it was extremely good. I love blue cheese and pear together in a salad, why can’t that be as common as caesar salads? And the mussels and fries were heavenly.

• I have been in such a funk with nail polish lately, every colour seems to look disgusting. I got a short, red, gel manicure recently and had to remove it within a week, it was so repulsive to look at. What is my problem? …What’s that? You don’t care? Hahah. Honestly, same.

• I finally tried SLT (it’s one of the options when you try ClassPass for a free month trial), and what even is SLT? It’s like if spin classes + pilates classes had an obnoxious baby. And you know what? NOT FOR ME. I think I hate any pilates class that uses a machine.

• In love with the larger citrus green tea candles that just came out from Trader Joe’s. Fucking love a wooden wick.

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Citrus Green Tea candle from Trader Joe’s, February 2022

• Two new things I made for the first time this month? Risotto and scallops. It’s well known how annoying risotto is to make yourself since it’s such a long process, but I didn’t fully grasp that concept until I did it firsthand. And it wasn’t even that amazing, so that was a letdown. As for the scallops? Very fast and extremely easy.

• Had dinner at the extremely cute French place La Petit Joie in Brooklyn with Diana. Love any place that does oysters rockefeller every night of the week. Also, can more restaurants bring back BYOB? It’s so thoughtful to even offer.

• I tried out this Ulta eyeshadow palette and it came off with hand soap. The quality of makeup these days is just wild. And the prices keep going up, WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE?

• Went to The Independent in midtown and their mussels and harvest salad were truly memorable. Great place to go if you’re in the area seeing a show.

• Tried the new french toast soft serve at Milk Bar and yes it was good, but not as good as their apple pie soft serve.

• I have found my new favourite hair mask: AG Hair Colour Savour Mask. I’m not sure if it’s for all blondes or just dyed blondes, but I love it. You’d think the bubblegum scent would repel me, but I find it whimsical. Of course it’s made by a Canadian company.

• There was a beautiful, pre-spring day so I took Baby Dog to Central Park and just look at this mug.

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Baby Dog in Central Park, February 2022

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Baby Dog in Central Park, February 2022

• I bought some gorgeous new address labels from Zazzle. Are you doing this? You really should. Don’t you want to be better than everyone else?

• So I went to Suprema Provisions finally and look the burger was good, but not nearly as good as the burger at Sparrow Tavern in Astoria (or even The Spaniard). Their mushroom pasta was saucy and great. And I never thought I’d say this, but I think it’s time to retire burrata from all restaurant menus. It is always the same. Always uninspired. We need to move on with ours lives, I think.

• Okay, so I bought some eucalyptus to hang from my shower head (pardon me for being DEEPLY ORIGINAL) and unlike every Pinterest pin that encourages you to do this, I fully recommend NOT EVEN BOTHERING. It’s pointless. There is no smell. There is no point. And I think it might attract moths (!), but that last point is unconfirmed. Instead, if you’re really obsessed with this idea, just buy a can of this eucalyptus shower mist. You spray it into the hot water and it does actually make it seem like a steam room for the length of your shower.

• Went to Van Dam diner in Queens with Irene and it’s like you fell into 1983, loved it.

• Truly sorry for telling you about this, but if I had to hear about it so do you: lip blushing. One more reason that this world hates women. If I had any real money, I’d buy up as much ad space as I could and just have signs that tell women, “Hey you! You’re good! You don’t need to buy anything to be better! Relax!”

• And speaking of buying things to make you feel better, I just bought these strappy black heels and they feel so lovely & I can’t wait to destroy anyone in my path the first time I wear them.

• I also bought these Steven Madden heels online and does that man hate women? Or just their feet? The most uncomfortable shoes I’ve ever owned. Returning as soon as possible.

• I was in Harlem so I went to Oso for their happy hour (good guacamole, I want to go back mainly to try the cake place next door) and then to Lido for their happy hour, which was fantastic. I love when a happy hour menu gives a fuck. Definitely want to go back to Lido for a meal.

• What I watched this month:

  • Tried rewatching The Mindy Project and while the first few seasons are pretty good (Morgan is the best character by far), I just couldn’t get into the entire series again for some reason. I think I stopped around the episode where she talks about how she doesn’t like men seeing her naked ever. Some things are just better as a memory, I guess.

  • I’m rewatching old Sex and the City episodes to get the AJLT taste out of my mouth and they’re all pretty hit or miss. Samantha is so much funnier than I remember, which was been great. Also, you know when Carrie is with Aiden and he has his dog Pete with him - did you ever notice that this dog is NEVER excited to see Carrie when she enters a scene? I get that it’s not real life and he’s just a dog on a set, but it made me laugh so much that this dog just does not fucking care about her. Pete was right all along. Also, for all the credit that this show gets for the outfits, good god are there a lot of terrible wardrobe decisions. But I guess that’s part of the good thing about it maybe? Like not everything has to be your taste or even look good - it’s more important to be fun and confident and have these characters wear what they think looks good? What side am I even on?? Do I hate the show or not?? Look, even I don’t know.

  • The John Mulaney SNL: Why did I watch this one specifically? Who knows. I don’t think I even like him, but it was a really good episode. Makes zero sense, but I was dying at the monkey sketch.

  • The Worst Person In The World: I liked it! Not as much as I thought I would given how highly praised it is, but it was nice to be in a theatre. (And that chocolate peanut butter pie slice at The Angelika? Oof. Always worth it.)

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Chocolate peanut butter pie at The Angelika, NYC

• I made this sesame garlic chili oil noodle dish that suhuuuuuucked. I think I need a moment away from Half Baked Harvest. So many misses lately.

• Recipes I want to make this month:

  • Tuscan Kale Salad with Gorgonzola Croutons - I always forget how much I love blue cheese.

  • Truffled Garlic Bread with Ricotta - okay, this looks maddeningly incredible. I could either make this myself OR I could visit any North Italia restaurant where they have it on the menu… which is just a two hour drive from me to the Pennsylvania location… mental note…

  • Hummingbird Cake Scones with Mascarpone Glaze!! Christ!!

  • Prosciutto, Peas & Orzo - my love affair with orzo has not ended.

  • Banana Sheet Cake with Walnut Streusel and Rum Glaze - can sheet cake come back in style already? Fuck.

  • Grilled Asparagus Caesar Salad - love new ways to ingest caesar dressing.

  • Lemon Almond Pudding Cake - pudding CAKE? This must be the future.

Some things I’m looking forward to this month: I won a lottery ticket to see Harry Potter on Broadway this coming week, obviously I want to find and drink the space Coke, I really want to try the happy hour at Bistro Les Amis (the poutine looks Canadian), the second season of Stanley Tucci’s Searching For Italy starts on March 13th, my best friend Harmeet is coming for a visit (!), I found a place in NYC serving Steak Diane (!!!) so that’ll likely be my birthday meal, I got a ticket for opening night of the Broadway play Birthday Candles with Debra Messing on the 18th, and I will most certainly go get my free birthday gifts from The Body Shop, Sephora, and Ulta. (And I mean… should I drive two hours purely for some amazing garlic bread? I’m thinking I should? That sort of tracks with who I am as a person? Also it’s my birthday soon? And the world is slowly but surely burning? And garlic bread might solve everything? And by “might” I mean “definitely will”?)

If you have any interest in reading what went on in January, come on over here.

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Untamed by Glennon Doyle - A Review

I got this book as a gift and knew nothing about the author or the book beforehand, and it was so good. I love it when you know nothing of an author or book and then can read it unbiased and with completely fresh eyes. Favourite parts ahead.

• I love this line: “I have a son and two daughters, until they tell me otherwise.”

• This line: “That day, I began returning to myself - when a kind woman revealed to me that being fully human is not about feeling happy, it’s about feeling everything” reminds me so much of this other paragraph that I’ll forever love.

• “When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself.”

• “I’ve seen what happens out in the world and inside our relationships when women stay numb, obedient, quiet, and small. Selfless women make for an efficient society but not a beautiful, true, or just one. When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who have detoxed themselves so completely from the world’s expectations that they are full of nothing but themselves. What we need are women who are full of themselves. A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say and do what must be done. She lets the rest burn.”

• I’m not sure if this part will have much meaning out of context, but I love it: “The Ache is not a flaw. The Ache is our meeting place. It’s the clubhouse of the brave. All the lovers are there. It is where you go alone to meet the world. The Ache is love. The Ache was never warning me: This ends, so leave. She was saying: This ends, so stay.”

• “If you are uncomfortable - in deep pain, angry, yearning, confused - you don’t have a problem, you have a life. Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.”

• I’d never heard the term selah before and I love it. “Selah is found in the Hebrew Bible seventy-four times. Scholars believe that when it appears in the text, it is a direction to the reader to stop reading and be still for a moment, because the previous idea is important enough to consider deeply.”

• Fully agree on the statement: “The woods are NOT for people.” I still don’t understand why this isn’t a universal opinion.

• “We don’t control the turbulence or tragedy that happens to our families. The plot of our lives is largely out of our control. We decide only the response of the main character. We decide whether we will be the one who jumps ship or the one who stays and leads.”

• “It must be so lonely to be a man. It must be so difficult to carry by yourself all the things we were meant to help each other carry.”

• “Self-hatred is harder to unlearn than it is to learn. It is difficult for a woman to be healthy in a culture that is still so very sick. It is the ultimate victory for a woman to find a way to love herself and other women while existing in a world insisting that she has no right to.”

• “Blessed are those brave enough to make things awkward, for they wake us up and move us forward.”

• “Everything doesn’t have to be terrifying, after all. This is just life, and we are just people trying to figure each other out. Trying to figure ourselves out.”

• “It is a blessing to know a free woman. Sometimes she will stop by and hold up a mirror for you. She will help you remember who you are.”

• “We took wild sexuality - the mysterious undefinable ever-shifting flow between human beings - and we packaged it into sexual identities. It’s like water in a glass. Faith is water. Religion is a glass. Sexuality is water. Sexual identity is a glass. We created these glasses to try to contain uncontainable forces. Then we said to people: Pick a glass - straight or gay. So folks poured their wide, juicy selves into those narrow, arbitrary glasses because that was what was expected. Many lived lives of quiet desperation, slowly suffocating as they held their breath to fit inside.”

• There isn’t a specific part that I can highlight, but the author really makes a great case for being with women. Women are just… better? In all ways?

• “It’s not: I love you no matter which of my expectations you meet or don’t meet. It’s: My only expectation is that you become yourself. The more deeply I know you, the more beautiful you become to me.”

• “Depression and anxiety are not feelings. Feelings return me to myself. Depression and anxiety are body snatchers that suck me out of myself so that I appear to be there but I’m really gone. Other people can still see me, but no one can feel me anymore - including me. For me, the tragedy of mental illness is not that I’m sad but that I’m not anything. Mental illness makes me miss my own life.”

• “I have been conditioned to mistrust and dislike strong, confident, happy girls and women. We all have. Studies prove that the more powerful, successful, and happy a man becomes, the more people trust and like him. But the more powerful and happy a woman becomes, the less people like and trust her. We become people who say of confident women, “I don’t know, I can’t explain it - it’s just something about her. I just don’t like her. I can’t put my finger on why.” I can put my finger on why: It’s because our training is kicking in through our subconscious. Strong, happy, confident girls and women are breaking our culture’s implicit rule that girls should be self-doubting, reserved, timid, and apologetic. Girls who are bold enough to break those rules irk us. Their brazen defiance and refusal to follow directions make us want to put them back into their cage. Girls and women sense this. We want to be liked. We want to be trusted. So we downplay our strengths to avoid threatening anyone and invoking disdain. We do not mention our accomplishments. We temper, qualify, and discount our opinions. We walk without swagger, and we yield incessantly. We step out of the way. We say, “I feel like” instead of “I know.” We ask if our ideas make sense instead of assuming they do. We apologize for… everything. Conversations among brilliant women often devolve into competitions for who wins the trophy for hottest mess. We want to be respected, but we want to be loved and accepted even more.”

• “Playing dumb, weak, and silly is a disservice to yourself and to the world. Every time you pretend to be less than you are, you steal permission from other women to exist fully. Don’t mistake modesty for humility. Modesty is a giggly lie. An act. A mask. A fake game. We have no time for it.”

• “When I see a joyful, confident woman moving through the world with swagger, I’m going to forgive myself for my first reaction because it’s not my fault, it’s just my conditioning. First reaction: Who the hell does she think she is? Second reaction: She knows she’s a goddamn cheetah. Halle-fucking-lujah.”

• And my most favourite few lines of the entire book: “If women trusted and claimed their desires, the world as we know it would crumble. Perhaps that is precisely what needs to happen so we can rebuild truer, more beautiful lives, relationships, families, and nations in their place. Maybe Eve was never meant to be our warning. Maybe she was meant to be our model. Own your wanting. Eat the apple. Let it burn.”

• Oh and one last part. It’s perfect.

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Honestly, it was such a good book. Everyone should read it.

(Thank you, Marla, for introducing me to it!)

The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West - A Review

I’ve been waiting for this book of essays to come out for months and it was so, so worth the the wait. I know it’s asking a lot, but can this woman please just write a book every year? Or every six months? That’d be great, thanks. Favourite parts ahead!

• “This moment in history is about more than individual interactions between individual people. Those matter, too - it matters how you made your subordinate feel with that comment, and it matters quite a lot that the woman on the bus went home and sobbed after you groped her - but, as Rebecca Traister wrote in December 2017 on The Cut: “This moment isn’t just about sex. It’s about work.” It’s about who feels at home in the workplace and who feels like an outsider - which, by extension, dictates who gets to thrive and ascend, who gets to hire their replacements, who gets to set their children up for success, who gets credit and glory, and who gets forgotten. It’s about who feels safe in public spaces and who doesn’t. Which is to say, it’s about everything.”

• “We gobble up cable news’ insistence that both sides of an argument are equally valid and South Park’s insistence that both sides are equally stupid, because taking a firm stance on anything opens us up to criticism.”

• “We kept letting Adam Sandler make more movies after Little Nicky, because white men are allowed to fail spectacularly and keep their jobs.”

• There’s literally an entire chapter on Adam Sandler movies that is perfection. You have to read it. Seriously, just pick this up at a bookstore and read that one chapter, if nothing else.

• I loved all of her points about how there was endless discussion about The Ted Bundy Tapes when it came out earlier this year and how we debated whether this murdering monster was handsome or not. And how that same type of debate is somehow in the same arena as when people debate whether Elizabeth Warren is “likable” or not.

• There’s a part in the Ted Bundy special where the judge sympathizes with Bundy and goes on a ridiculous tangent about how it’s “such a shame” that he turned out that way when he had so much potential, it’s truly disgusting to see a judge commiserate with a rapist and murderer, but it happened and it’s wild to see. “That anecdote is often held up as evidence of Bundy’s charisma - even the judge sentencing him to death was seduced by that smirk, that finger wave. But it is the most blatant, overwhelming evidence we have for the opposite. Men don’t need charisma to succeed. It doesn’t matter if men are likable, because men are people who do things, who don’t have to ask first, whose potential has value even after it is squandered.”

• “Chasing likability has been one of women’s biggest setbacks, by design. I don’t know that rejecting likability will get us anywhere, but I know that embracing it has gotten us nowhere.”

• Absolutely in love with the fact that she loves the movie Clue as much as I do.

• I really liked the chapter that she discussed Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP, even if I did wish that she went in on her/the brand harder.

• So in love with the chapter where she talks about South Park and its creators. I’ve always hated that show, it’s never been good, and I can’t understand who the hell would be into it. It’s never been funny, edgy, smart. Insane that it’s still on.

• Maybe I’m really reading into it, but there’s a tiny part where she mentions that PETA sucks and I can’t stop all my little inside screams - it’s hard to find somewhere who dislikes all the same stuff as you.

• “Men think that misogyny is a women’s issue; women’s to endure and women’s to fix. White people think that racism is a pet issue for people of color; not like the pure, economic grievances of the white working class. Rape is a rape victim’s problem: What was she wearing? Where was she walking? Had she had sex before?“

• “Whenever talk turned toward solutions, the panel came back to mentorship: women lifting up other women. Assertiveness and leaning in and ironclad portfolios and marching into that interview and taking the space you deserve and changing the ratio and not letting Steve from accounting talk over you in the morning. During the closing question-and-answer period, a young woman stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice electric with anger, “but all I’ve heard tonight are a bunch of things women can do to fight sexism. Why is that our job? We didn’t build the system. This audience should be full of men.”

• “Sexism is a male invention. White supremacy is a white invention. Transphobia is a cisgender invention. So far, men have treated #MeToo like a bumbling dad in a detergent commercial: well intentioned by floundering, as though they are not the experts. You are the experts. Only 2.6 percent of construction workers are female. We did not install that glass ceiling, and it is not our responsibility to demolish it.”

• When talking about what men can actually do to help women: ”“Do you ever stick up for me?” sounds childish, but I don’t know that gussying up the sentiment in more sophisticated language would enhance its meaning. It isn’t fun to be the one who speaks up. Our society has engineered robust consequences for squeaky wheels, a verdant pantheon from eye rolls all the way up to physical violence. One of the subtlest and most pervasive is social ostracism: coding empathy as the fun killer, consideration for others as an embarrassing weakness, and dissenting voices as out-of-touch, bleeding-heart dweebs (at best). Coolness is a fierce disciplinarian. A result is that, for the most part, the only people weathering those consequences are the ones who don’t have the luxury of staying quiet. Women, already impeded and imperiled by sexism, also have to carry the social stigma of being feminist buzzkills if they call attention to it. People of color not only have to deal with racism; they also have to deal with white people labeling them “angry” or “hostile” or “difficult” for objecting. What we could use is some loud, unequivocal backup.”

• “I know there’s pressure not to be a dorky, try-hard male feminist stereotype; there’s always a looming implication that you could lose your spot in the boys’ club; if you seem too opportunistic or performative in your support, if you suck up too much oxygen and demand praise, women will yell at you for that, too. But I need you to absorb that risk. I need you to get yelled at and made fun of, a lot, and if you get kicked out of the club, I need you to be relieved, and I need you to help build a new one.”

• The entire chapter about the complications with Joan Rivers is such a great one.

• “You can hate someone and love them at the same time. Maybe that’s a natural side effect of searching for heroes in a world not built for you.”

• Okay, so the only thing that we strongly disagree on is her previous love for Adam Carolla. Always hated that man.

• ““Common sense’” without growth, curiosity, or perspective eventually becomes conservatism and bitterness.”

• “There are pieces of pop culture that you outgrow because you get older. Then there are pieces of pop culture that you outgrow because you get better.”

• “Art has no obligation to evolve, but it has a powerful incentive to do so. Art that is static, that captures a dead moment, is nothing. It is, at best, nostalgia; at worst, it can be a blight on our sense of who we are, a shame we pack away. Artists who refuse to listen, participate, and change along with the world around them are not being silenced or punished by censorious college sophomores. They are letting obsolescence devour them, voluntarily. Political correctness is just the inexorable turn of the gear. Falling behind is preventable.”

• Talking about Ricky Gervais:” “People see something they don’t like, and they expect it to stop,” he said. “The world is getting worse. Don’t get me wrong, I think I lived through the best fifty years of humanity, 1960 through 2015, the peak of civilization for everything. For tolerances, for freedoms, for communication, for medicine! And now it’s going the other way a little bit.” “Dumpster fire” has emerged as the favorite emblem of our present sociopolitical moment, but that Gervais quote feels more apt and more tragic as a metaphor: the Trump/Brexit era is a rich, famous, white, middle-aged man declaring the world to be in decline the moment he stops understanding it.”

• “Adam Carolla isn’t angry because he’s being silenced; he’s angry because he’s being challenged. He’s been shown the road map to continued relevance, and it doesn’t lead back to his mansion. He’s angry because he’s being asked to do the basic work of maintaining a shared humanity or else be left behind. He’s choosing the past. Gervais and Carolla are not alone in presenting themselves as noble bulwarks against a wave of supposed leftwing censorship. (A Netflix special, for the record, is not what “silencing” looks like.)”

• Talking Louis CK: “Less than a year after his vow to retreat and listen, CK made the laziest and most cowardly choice possible: to turn away from the difficult, necessary work of self-reflection, growth, and reparation, and run into the comforting arms of people who don’t think it’s that big a deal to show your penis to female subordinates. Conservatives adore a disgraced liberal who’s willing to pander to them because he’s too weak to grow. How pathetic to take them up on it.”

• “Like every other feminist with a public platform, I am perpetually cast as a disapproving scold. But what’s the alternative? To approve? I do not approve.” - This is probably my most favourite line in the entire book

• “Not only are women expected to weather sexual violence, intimate partner violence, workplace discrimination, institutional subordination, the expectation of free domestic labor, invisible cuts that undermine us daily, we are not even allowed to be angry about it.”

• “I’d been taught that when ordinary people try to do activism, they look stupid. Of course now I know that there is no effective activism without the passion and commitment of ordinary people and it is a basic duty of the privileged to show up and fight for issues that don’t affect us directly. But maintaining that separation has served the status quo well. It keeps good people always just shy of taking action. It’s tone policing. It’s the white moderate. But it’s changing.”

• “Diet culture is a coercive, misogynist pyramid scheme that saps women’s economic and political power.”

Definitely the best thing I’ve read all year. GO BUY!

“I would much rather be the ‘obnoxious feminist girl’ than be complicit in my own dehumanization.”

— Kathleen Hanna

“Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.”

— G.D. Anderson

Aziz Ansari

http://thisislizheather.tumblr.com/post/130288135329

Harry Connick Jr.

Harry Connick Jr. talking about his daughters dating on Ellen.

Fury of the Day – “Women Have Come A Long Way!”

In the context of talking about how men and women are each treated in society, I heard someone say this the other day and I keep thinking about it. Every time I hear it said aloud, it stays with me for a few days. Mainly because after it’s said, everyone around that person usually agrees with the thought and then moves on.

Am I the only one who wants to scream "HOW?!" at these people? Is it just me who thinks this is an insane statement? There are hundreds of daily reminders that show me that women haven’t come very far at all and I feel like, if anything, we’re in a weirder place now. There are tons of specifics I could get into, but the main one on my mind right now is this illusion of equality that we all seem to think is in full effect (in the media, specifically). 

When I see a billboard of Nicki Minaj’s full ass hanging out next to a billboard of Kanye West in a buttoned up fucking TRENCHCOAT, am I supposed to think this is normal? We’re really working towards equality here? I’m not saying that it’s wrong of her to choose to present herself that way, I’m saying that it’s fucked up that I’m supposed to think it’s normal and not give it a second thought. The fact that he’s presented in a manner where he can be judged for his talent and she’s presented in a way for you to rank her fuckability – that’s fucking terrible to me. I’m not saying she’s awful, I’m saying this wild notion of “women coming so far” is complete fucking garbage to me when examples like this one completely surround our lives. Especially when we’re living in a time when we’re constantly being told that a woman’s worth depends almost completely on her exterior. Is that a dramatic statement to make? I really don’t think it is. If she had some pants on in that shot, would her album have still hit number one? I don’t fucking know, but it’s shitty that I have to wonder that.

Another thing I hate is that if you have an opinion on public figures who show a lot of skin, you get put into one of two categories.
1.    The prudes, who think showing any kind of skin is a sin. 
2.    The women who shout things like, “She looks fucking good! What’s the problem?”

I don’t want to be in either of those groups, I don’t belong in them! I love the way that I look and it doesn’t harm me that she’s showing anything off. I don’t care if she looks good or if she looks shitty, why do we have to be talking about how she looks at all? Shouldn’t we be more concerned about why objectifying yourself has become the new social norm? 

The fact that the majority of us have somehow been tricked into thinking that a woman in the public eye who shows off the majority of her body consistently is somehow “empowered” and “strong” blows my fucking mind. Yeah, of course, anybody can do whatever the fuck they want – but if that’s the logic here then where the hell are the strong, powerful men with their dicks hanging out? Why have I never seen Jay-Z’s chest?! Why aren’t those photos shoved down my throat? That’s not the culture, I get it. My point is that you can be strong and empowered and not photoshop a thigh gap onto your latest Instagram photo. You are not “helping women”. 

Another thing I hate? The argument of, “Sex sells.” Once I get going on these opinions and someone says that? Conversation over. And not because I want the conversation to be over, but because that’s the little “Well, whaddya gonna do about it?” answer that we’re all so comfortable with hearing. Yeah, it’s true. Yeah, this is the world we live in. I feel like there was a time when that statement made people more mad, but now? It’s so fucking commonplace there’s no emotional attachment to it anymore. As though we’ve somehow become beings who have fully accepted that women are only valuable based on how good they look and that’s just the way it is. 

Someone please tell me what justifies someone classifying women as having “come so far.” Is it because we’re allowed to vote now, is that when this argument started? ‘Cause that was almost a hundred fucking years ago and it wasn’t a “women’s issue” then, it was a human rights issue. People don’t approach black people and congratulate them on how far they’ve come because there’s an understanding that THAT WOULD BE RIDICULOUS. It’s an insanely condescending statement to make towards anyone and should infuriate everyone. 

We have not fucking come very far at all.

Bic Pens For Her

Other than the times that she scares people on her show, I don't really have an opinion on Ellen. (Those scare pranks? Oh, man are they great. Just in general. So funny to see someone's scared reaction.) But anyway, yeah - no real opinion on Ellen. Seems okay, I guess. But this is just great. (Thanks Adele for posting it originally and showing me!)

Annoyance of the Day - The Weirdness That Surrounds The Word 'Feminist'

Feminist: a person who supports feminism. 

Feminism: The advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. 

How can this be any clearer?! 

What's my description of feminism when some idiot asks me "what it means" to me? My understanding is that if you're a feminist, you want the same stuff for men and women. That's it. Pretty simple.  

Some people I've come across (colleagues, acquaintances, lovers, strangers) usually think one of two things if the topic of being a feminist comes up. (Sidenote: I am never the one to bring this topic up. Why? Because most people are morons who don't know how to act like a normal human being when that word is uttered in their presence, so I tend to steer clear of it.)

Thought #1: A feminist hates men.

Or the brilliant Thought #2: A feminist thinks women are above men and should be seen as such.

Both these thoughts obviously get me going because I just want to scream about all the things that are wrong with those words. And honestly, I'm usually so enraged at the ignorance of ideas like that to want to continue and tell someone why they're not very smart. If only I had this article printed and always with me in my purse. 

I really can't stand it when I get into an argument with someone and the question of, "Well, do you have a man pay for your dinner? Do you like it when a man holds a door open for you?" happens with the guise of telling me that if I do these things, then I can't be a feminist. First of all, these questions hurt my soul. I should not have to prove my feminist beliefs to anyone, ever. No one should. That's ridiculous. But if we're being real here, I love it when someone pays for my dinner. Not because I'm a woman, but because I have no money! Would I ever expect someone to pay for me because I'm a woman? Well, since I'm not a sub-level human being, no! I'm not crazy! Any people who expect someone else to pay for them are just not good people! Or married. (And also, whoever is in front should hold the door open, that's just common sense/kindness!)

On another note, I also can't stand it when I read article titles that start with, "Can a beauty editor be a feminist?" or "Can so-and-so be a feminist?" Look up the fucking definition of the word! EVERYONE can be a feminist, assholes. Even murderers! (As long as they're murdering men and women, I mean.) Almost anyone can be one!  (Probably not rapists... yeah, they'd be pissed to find out that I was getting paid as much as them.) And likely, if I know you, you are a feminist. My mom and dad are, both my brothers, my boyfriend, all my friends - whether they know it or not. I wouldn't surround myself with people who didn't want me to get just as much stuff as them. Doesn't make any sense. 

And I know this topic has been covered again and again on a million sites, but it's on my mind a lot, so I needed to say something about it all. The negative connotation of the word feminist will probably never change, I get that. But I can still scream about it from time to time.

(Sidenote: the "colleagues" I mentioned above consist of my dry cleaner, the electrician who lives across the street and local CVS employees.)