Reblog if you are an adult woman (single, married, mom, non-mom, whatever!) professional, who did not give up fandom, fanfic, or fanart when you “grew up.”
AND WHO ARE YOU?
(I’m 43, single Mom, massage therapist, dance teacher, professional writer - still addicted to fanfic! My fandoms are Inception, Star Wars, MCU, and video games.)
Bringing this back almost 7 years later. Still active in fandom! Adding The Untamed/ CQL / MDZS to the list. 🌸
Rebellious girls in the 1920s wanted to anger and shock their Victorian-era parents, so not only would they bare their knees with short dresses, but they would also paint pictures to make sure an onlooker didn’t miss their risque hem length. Rolled stockings became a fad with the shorter hemlines, and girls would go get roses, butterflies, ocean scenes, or their dogs’ faces painted on their knees to further push their boundaries. Much like with most makeup in women’s history, this wasn’t just an act of creativity, but an assertion of independence. After World War I, more women gained financial independence with work, broke away from chaperoned parlor dates, and became a part of the public by walking the city streets without a guardian. The new generation felt a need to express this clear break from the old era of Gibson Girls and Victorian women, and they did so with the help of paint and knee rouge. “Because of rolled stockings and short skirts they, like their fair owners, are emancipated,” The San Francisco Examinershared in 1925. The girls were no longer wearing the oppressive corsets of the previous generation, which is partly why rolled stockings became a fad — there was nowhere to clip their hosiery to.
Painted knees were also an experiment in owning sexuality. Rouged knees would seem flushed (hinting at sex,) and painted knees would bring attention to body parts that were stigmatized just a few short decades back. But these moments of self-rule were oftentimes punished, as students in Ohio Northern learned in 1925. Girls had been drawing roses on their knees, and the dean called an emergency meeting to get them to stop. “It was intimated that some of the professors had not been able to do their best work owing to the profusion of knees in certain classes, that it is difficult for a mere male instructor to think of the Einstein theory, for example, with a tastefully decorated knee — well, staring him in the face, as it were,” The San Francisco Examiner wrote. The fad eventually fell out of vogue, but it resurfaced again in the 1960s — during an era where skirts rose in hemline, women pushed for independence, and embraced their sexual freedom once more. Painted knees were the perfect compliment to mini-skirts and Bermuda shorts, and a student interviewed for The News in 1966 said that she painted her knees so often that she could “put it on faster than face makeup.” (source)
I didn’t quite know what Velma meant when she sang “I’m gonna rouge my knees and roll my stockings down” but now I do and I’m happy
Ah poor male professors, always so weak to resist any female body part “staring them in the face” 🥺
Macbeth (1948) dir. Orson Welles The Witches of Eastwick (1987) dir. George Miller Stardust (2007) dir. Matthew Vaughn The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018 - 2020) The Pale Horse (2020) dir. Leonora Lonsdale Hercules (1997) dir. John Musker, Ron Clements Sleeping Beauty (1959) dir. Clyde Geronimi The Black Cauldron (1985) dir. Richard Rich, Ted Berman Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996 - 2003) Halloweentown (1998) dir. Duwayne Dunham A Wrinkle in Time (2018) dir. Ava DuVernay The Craft (1996) dir. Andrew Fleming Charmed (1998 - 2006) Hocus Pocus (1993) dir. Kenny Ortega
Resenting the male gaze but also being obsessed with how you’re perceived by others
Margaret Atwood /// Susan Sontag /// Real Men - Mitski /// Shame is an Ocean I Swim Across - Mary Lambert /// Birds of Prey (2020) /// post by jitterati /// Liquid Smooth - Mitski /// Jennifer’s Body (2009) /// Bravado - Lorde /// Diagnosis - Cynthia Cruz
i'm never getting over the fact that romance as a genre, as the HIGHEST selling genre, exists largely because straight women fantasise about being loved and treated kindly by men and men constantly make fun of this because they think it's just that unrealistic that they could cherish women and that women are stupid in the first place for wanting such an impossible thing
men also insist women are mysterious creatures and nobody could possibly know what they really want while billions of words have been published telling them exactly what to do.
I died! Source (X)
queens
I've been thinking a lot about the enormous hate-boner that society has towards middle aged women. Middle aged men are allowed to exist freely in public. They can talk super loudly, get into public arguments, complain, and even yell to somone from across the street. But if a middle aged woman did any of those things, people would roll their eyes and call her an unsufferable mega-Karen.
The stereotype of the middle aged suburban mom is endlessly mocked and made fun of. Men of the same age can spend all of their free time playing fantasy football, watching college sports, and watching porn and no one judges them negatively. But the second a woman wants to put a "Live, Laugh, Love" sign in her house and start a recipe blog she's fair game to laugh at for being insufferable, cliched, and annoying.
It's amost as if society views beauty as being a woman's only positive trait. And when that fades, they are left as nothing more than loud, annoying, harpies that absolutely no one wants to listen to.
I think this negative judgement has a lot to do with why women are coerced into spending so much money on anti aging products.
Middle-aged women also have the ability to educate and support younger women. Middle aged women protect their daughters. They become less timid as they gain confidence in their own abilities. They have the experience to start seeing through and standing up against the way they were treated as young women. They start finding meaning in themselves and their passions, rather than men.
Fuckability plays a massive part in the way we view women as they age, but so does power. Older women are the fun killers, having more experience and confidence in dealing with men's bullshit.
Connections between older and young women are essential in the dignity and safety of young women and girls. Denigrating and dismissing them is an important function of the patriarchy as it maintains male dominance.
All mothers I’ve ever known were effectively single mothers, even when they had a husband.
a LOT of women agree with this but men like….. universally object its hilarious
case in point. And it’s actually the mom on a call and not the dad.
Tbh I predict a lot of post covid divorces. This is a very common story.
Eyyyyy this is why I'm a single Mom BY CHOICE! Ladies, I hope all of you who would like to be a Mom someday will consider this option if A) you are queer or B) you really can't deal with this shit. Sperm bank all the way, baby!
Those links for all asking Deadly history of women using perfume as poison -Girlhood, medusa and female rage -The allure of gothic horror -Essays and thoughts on girls in horror -Why girls get hungry in horror -Mothers and witches -Women in horror -The female poisoner -female werewolves -Monstrous women - Catherine Lundoff -Female cannibals and consumptive horror -Horror films directed by women -Women, killer plants and annihilation -Female identity within the gothic genre -Women in horror - the vvitch -the vvitch, female sexuality in horror -Angela Carter - The beast is female sexuality -Body horror/monster reading list -Consumptive horror
READ THE LINK. This woman was wild.
READ THE LINK. Do you love badass ladies? Olde-timey scandals? Vintage newspapers? READ THE LINK
Awesome
Link is broken???
ALL 👏🏾 OF 👏🏾 THEM 👏🏾
This post goes harder than any post has ever gone before.
the sheer amount of Fucks Not Given in these photos is creating a Black Hole Of Ungiven Fucks, sucking in all the bullshit over the Fuck You event horizon and trapping it so the bullshit can’t escape. It’s gorgeous.
“Witchcraft is remembrance. There was a time when you were free. Remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed naked in the sunlight–remember. You were wise woman and healer, you were huntress and amazon–remember that. You say you have lost all recollection of it; remember. Your bones remember. When you invoke your past, your heroines, your goddesses, your dreams–it is yourself you call to life. Remember who you are.”
— -Les Guérillères, Monique Wittig
I periodically feel so fucking sad for women in history. I feel like birth control in countries where it is widely used has made women forget an aspect of male cruelty and sociopathy that is now less apparent (giving the illusion that men have improved when only women’s defences against men have)—the fact that for most of history men could live with a woman for decades and not care that they were slowly killing her with endless back-to-back pregnancies which not only resulted in early death more often than not, but also in a total smothering of the woman’s spirit and talents. I saw a quote by Anne Boyer the other day that called straight relationships for women “not only deadly, but deadening”—as I was reading Jill Lepore’s Book of Ages, a biography of Benjamin Franklin’s sister Jane, who was bright and loved reading and wrote some poetry, but had little time to make anything of her life in between her 12 pregnancies. Benjamin Franklin’s mother had 10 sons and 7 daughters. What could they possibly accomplish when their husbands kept impregnating them year after year after year throughout their entire adult life?
Charlotte Brontë eschewed marriage longer than most (writing to Ellen Nussey that she wished they could just set up a little cottage and live together) but she finally married at 38, became pregnant, and died before her 39th birthday. If she had married younger would Jane Eyre exist? I was reading that biography of Charity & Sylvia last month and comparing their life together in their little cottage to the life of their married female relatives, which was honestly hell on earth. One of Charity’s sisters had 18 children. Charity’s mother had 10 living ones, and probably some additional stillbirths. She gave birth to her first child age 19, in 1758, then to a pair of twins in 1760, then another child in 1761, another in 1763, another in 1765, another in 1767, another in 1769, another in 1771, another in 1774, another in 1777. Charity was the last child and her mother had been sick with tuberculosis for months when she became pregnant with her, and she died soon after giving birth.
I wish people would call this murder—this woman was murdered by her husband, like countless other women who do not ‘count’ as victims of male violence because straight sex is natural, pregnancy is natural, childbirth is natural. But when after 20 years of nonstop pregnancies this woman had tuberculosis and suffered from severe respiratory distress, severe weight loss, fever and exhaustion, and her husband impregnated her again, her death was expected. He must have known; he just didn’t care. This woman’s sister—Charity’s aunt—remained a spinster and outlived all of her married sisters by several decades, living well into her eighties. (Ironically, male doctors in her century asserted that sex with men was necessary for women’s health. The biographer quoted from a popular home health guide which said that old maids incurred grievous physical harm from a lack of sex with men.) And this aunt had the time and liberty to develop her skill for embroidery to such an extent that two museums still preserve her embroidered bed drapes. She accomplished something, she nurtured her talent and self. Her name was also Charity, and I find it interesting that Charity’s mother named her last daughter, whose pregnancy & birth killed her, after her childless, unmarried sister.
When I see women reblog my post about Sophia Tolstoy’s misery with her 13 children, adding comments like “thank god marriage is no longer synonymous with this”, I wonder if they realise that men have not magically become any kinder or more concerned about their female partner’s health and fulfillment, it’s just that women now have access to better ways of protecting themselves from their male partner’s indifference to their health and fulfillment.
More women
Thank god they decided to make more
I’m all for deeming Dolly our Lady and Savior
margaret atwood was right
The rest of the article is worse, including pearls of wisdom such as:
“my ob-gyn advised me to schedule an induced labor, which helps to kick-start contractions … That gave me about five days to obsess over my beauty routine and what to pack in my hospital bag. And obsess I did. First matter of business: book a manicure and pedicure. If you have a scheduled birth like I did, a prehospital mani/pedi is important on so many levels. My freshly painted nails helped me feel put-together and polished”
“If you’re not having a scheduled birth, make sure your nails are always done and keep your preferred polish in your hospital bag in case you need a quick touch-up.” (because nail polish fumes are great for a newborn baby, right?)
“I did a quick blow-dry and started to feel light cramps in my stomach. I had a feeling the contractions were about to start, but I powered through and did my makeup the same way I do it every day.”
“After getting an epidural, I wasn’t really thinking about my beauty routine anymore.” GEE, I WONDER WHY
This is so appalling why are women forced to do this like you’re going to shit yrself in front of a room full of medical professionals your entire body is going to be bruised from pushing a human out of your vagina. Why must we be pressured to perform femininity during labor. No one cares about your face everyone is paying way more attention to your vulva, which is stretching to accommodate at least six pounds of person sliding out of your uterus…!
Who broke these women
but this is innate :) there’s no outside pressure on women to be beautiful no matter what :) it’s her choice :) :) :) if it makes her feel good it’s empowering :)) i’ve given thousands of dollars to sephora
this is fucking terrifying to me. you’re giving birth! how pretty you look doesn’t matter! women shit themselves giving birth, your doctors aren’t gonna care that you don’t have eyeliner on while pushing an infant out ur vagina omg
Not to mention this is dangerous. You’re not supposed to wear makeup or dark nail polish because they wont be able to check your vitals correctly. The oxygen readers dont work with dark nails. The doctors wont be able to see if you’re turning blue if you got foundation caked on covering it. You arent allowed to wear makeup or have dark nails for any surgery, why the fuck is it allowed during labor?
Let’s dispense with the notion that you shit yourself while giving birth, okay, first of all. I think that idea scares a lot of pregnant women. It scared the life out of me, but I’m here to tell you, it didn’t happen. (Though, pregnant people? it’s OKAY if it does. Really, anything goes.)
Moving on. The idea that makeup would even stay on during labor is beyond me - but that was my experience, with natural childbirth (no drugs, no epidural, etc.) You sweat, and whether you’re crying or not, your eyes are pretty much watering anyway. I can’t even imagine makeup? Seems a waste.
Turning blue due to lack of oxygen: YIKES this actually did happen to me! Because my babbs was born face-up, his little spine was pressing against my aorta, how fun! The doctor did not believe me that this was happening, even more fun! And I wasn’t even wearing makeup or nail polish, he just plain didn’t believe me.
To answer “why is it even allowed during labor” I think the answer to that question is that sometimes there’s just no time to remove any of it. I went into the hospital at 4:30 AM and was left alone in triage after a nurse had told me a had a whole other day to wait before he came out. He was born at 8 AM after I yelled and hollered for someone to get the fuck in there because his head was literally coming out of me. I think even if nurses had believed he was on his way out of me, there wouldn’t have been time to be removing any makeup or nail polish or even jewelry at that point.
But anyway, makeup? You’re not really thinking of how spectacular your winged eyeliner is when you’re getting stitches up your cooch, so I really do not understand the point of that. You spend the rest of the day carrying a squirt bottle to the bathroom every time you pee, so... yeah, getting that perfect glossy lip was not high on my priorities, at least.
why DO teenage girls go through a witch/occult phase? I had tarot cards and a spellbook and I knew a group of girls who messed with ouija boards and another who had ghost hunting equipment. “oh yeah Cindy’s just going through that girly phase where she tries to raise the dead.”
theory - we want power and know our culture doesn’t want to give us any?
Addendum: witches are one of the few cultural figures of female empowerment that don’t derive their power from their relationship to a man.
Holy shit
They’re searching for power from within rather than power from without. Society disempowers women; witchcraft, Paganism empowers them. Any more silly questions?
Sorry, it’s a “phase?”
“General.”
HERE COME THE GENERALS
RISE UP.
