Category Archives: This is a Woman

Talking Sexism at the Home Depot. Like You Do.

BY bonnie

The other day I was at Home Depot in line behind two kids buying candy bars (which was… weird. I mean. In my day we bought our candy bars at 7-11). A little girl, about eight, paid for the candy for herself and her older brother. I don’t really know what was going on because, I mean, lots of reasons. Because I was thinking about my own purchases (sadly candy-free), because I am notoriously oblivious, and because it’s really none of my business. I guess I assumed a parent had given her some money for her to share with her brother and planned to meet the kids just beyond the entrance.

It was the cashier’s comment that caught my attention.

“When you’re older, promise to never pay for a boy again, ok?”

Like. What?

It’s this weird sexualization of children, I think, that bothered me more than the sexism itself – although I hadn’t dug that deep quite that quickly. I just knew the whole thing felt inappropriate to me.

Inappropriate? Yep.

It’s not appropriate to make every thing a child does about their future sexuality. It’s not appropriate to make blanket demands of a little girl about what kind of woman she should be once she’s grown. I know the cashier didn’t mean it that way and I know that so many people every day make comments like that with completely innocent intent. And that’s the problem, really. That we are conditioned by society to think that something dark is innocent, and then we, in turn, condition the next generation. It’s the building blocks of the patriarchy.

And to be clear here I am not saying that it is sexist for a woman to allow a man to pay. I’m not saying she should always or even sometimes pay. I don’t know. I don’t give a shit what people do. I can’t make rules like that because every person and situation is so different. A wise friend once, in giving me step-by-step dating instructions (because sometimes 30-somethings need that sort of thing), told me that it’s generally best, in the beginning of the relationship at the very least to just follow social tradition and expect that the man will pay. That makes total sense. So, you see, I am not, in any way, against women allowing men to pay for dates or candy at the Home Depot.

But to tell a child who you don’t even know that there is just one way that things are done – to make her promise to follow that particular social norm – feels wrong to me. To assume that the things she is doing today are ultimately leading up to a romantic encounter at some point years from now is gross on every possible level. We are so used to doing this sort of thing that we don’t even see what it is that we are doing. Because the sexualization of children isn’t limited to the obvious. It’s not just t-shirts for kindergarteners that say “FLIRT” across them. Every time we align a child with an adult’s sexual role, we are sexualizing the child. Every time you make a comment about a toddler having a boyfriend, or how a baby boy is going to break girls’ hearts someday, you are making adult comments about a not-yet-sexually-mature person. This girl at Home Depot wasn’t on a date. This girl didn’t even have boobs yet. She was wearing a bright yellow summer shift dress with her hair up in a ponytail – she could not have looked more eight-years-old if she’d tried. As she and her brother left he asked her what the cashier said and the girl grinned and told him, “I’m not allowed to pay for boys ever again.”

I was going to just let the whole thing go because, honestly, I can’t police the entire world. Even though I’d be really, really good at it, I just can’t tell everyone how to live and then make sure that they follow my rules. But the cashier dragged me into it.

“Don’t you think so, though? That she should never pay for a man?”

“Uh. Well. I guess I just don’t think we should reinforce gender roles in kids.”

You guys. I have social anxiety. I scored a 92 on this test. It’s really hard for me to talk to people I don’t know, let alone have opinions at them. But I was being asked a direct question and I couldn’t just pretend to agree because I am just as physically incapable of being inauthentic in that way as I am physically incapable of making small talk. This is me. I can’t talk about the damn weather if you paid me, but I will get directly into a deep discussion on sexism and gender expectations for children within five minutes of seeing you for the first time ever. I might be shaking and unable to make eye contact, but we will have this conversation.

Thank god I’m cute.

Then the lady told me – I swear I am not making this up – “It’s not like I told her to not be a lesbian or anything.”

I blinked. I tried to connect the dots. I blinked some more. What?

“I didn’t think you were,” I said. “It just reminds me a little bit of when my daughter broke her tooth last summer and the dentist told her that girls can’t skateboard.”

That pushed a button. “It’s nothing like that!”

“It kinda is, though. I just don’t think we should make blanket statements based only on her gender for her entire life right now.”

And at that point the cashier totally switched gears. I don’t know if she actually meant it when she told me that I was right and she just hadn’t looked at it that way or if she’d made a decision to let the crazy feminazi think she’d converted a sexist-heathen to the flock so she could get on with her day of selling lumber and Snickers. I’d love to believe I’d had some impact on how she sees things, but I just really don’t know that people are that willing to change viewpoints that quickly for someone they’ve never even met.

What are your thoughts on this? How would you feel if someone told your daughter something like that? Would it bother you or would you feel comfortable with it? Do you feel like it’s part of sexualizing children, or is it strictly a gender role comment?

Review, This is a Woman

Where I Pimp the New Prison Show

BY bonnie

actual line from this fucking show

Things I love about Orange is the New Black:

1. The theme song by Regina Spektor.
Think of all the roads
Think of all their crossings
Taking steps is easy
Standing still is hard
-“You’ve Got Time”

Those lyrics are my new favorite lyrics.

2. The diversity.
The cast is made up not only of really freaking awesome actors (Natasha Lyonne! Lordy how I love her), but it’s also by far one of – if not the – most diverse casts I’ve ever seen. We’re not talking Hollywood-style diversity where the fat chick is a size 12 and/or wacky or stupid in some way. I’m talking actual damn diversity. In color, but also in size and shape and age and sexuality and gender and religion and personality. I cannot express how much I love seeing reality actually represented on television for once. Way to go, Netflix! Take note, Hollywood.

3. The humor.
Refer to the above chicken comment.

4. The heartbreak.
I mean. I don’t, like, love when my heart breaks. Or at least it’s not socially acceptable to just admit that you kinda actually love stories that make you cry like a baby. At least not using the words “heartbreak is super cool, guys!” So let’s just say that the writing makes you love the characters so much that when something heartbreaking happens you’re right there with them. Grab kleenex.

5. The character depth.
In flashbacks throughout the episodes you get to know the characters through their backstories, and you begin to see how people can come to make the terrible choices they make from time to time. It teaches sympathy, I think, for people who really are in federal prison right now. They each have their own story, too. They aren’t just faceless villains, they have stories full of heartbreak and love and humor, too.

6. The writing.
See again the chicken comment. Actually, I mostly just wanted a chance to refer to the chicken comment. I mean, really, all these other items on this list are basically talking about how awesome the writing is. This whole paragraph is redundant. But when chickens are involved I’m totally OK with that.

I really can’t recommend this show enough. Speaking for TIAW, this is exactly the kind of show I want to see more of in the future. Well-written shows filled with diverse, real-looking actors playing characters complex enough to be real. Imagine if all shows were like that. If we all saw ourselves represented in the media. I don’t doubt body image issues would begin melting away. So go watch it. And love it.

Lady Links, This is a Woman

Lady Links 8.9

BY bonnie

$awesome at math$

~TIAW on Tumblr and Pinterest.
~This was going around a couple of weeks ago. It’s a comparison (using… food?) of porn to real-life sex. I have not actually seen a crapton of porn in my life, so I find it interesting that many of these numbers were a surprise to me. I guess it goes to show how much influence porn has over our cultural view of sex. *sigh*
~This is a really interesting article. I started skimming it the other day and got about 30% of the way through before I had formed a solid opinion. Now that I’ve finished it, however, I don’t know really what to think. In the article, a thin woman who struggles with her own body image (as many women of all sizes do) makes a comment about not wanting to be fat. Was it a derogatory comment, biased against overweight? Absolutely. But do thin women not get to talk about their own body image issues just because they are thin? That’s not really fair either, is it? Perhaps we should do that thing here where we listen openly to everyone’s point of view, and together we can gently discuss these issues. Maybe that way we can grow together and finally end this body hatred too many women of all sizes and shapes suffer from.
~”To suggest that one’s belly, body hair or tattoo is ‘distasteful’ and should therefore be covered in the name of etiquette is the very worst sort of body fascism. If your children are traumatised by the sight of a fat person in a bikini, a bit of cellulite or a caesarean scar, then may I tentatively suggest that you aren’t raising them correctly. If seeing someone hairy wearing something skimpy renders you ‘unable to eat your lunch’ then I’m afraid my diagnosis is the problem is with your brain, not their body. We are all naked underneath our clothes. We all have a body and few of them are anatomically ‘perfect’. Grow up.” <-- From this article.
~Dear Men, “You shouldn’t be a feminist because you want to protect your womenfolk, or because you think it’ll get you laid. You should be a feminist because you should fucking be a feminist.” Word.
~I really really REALLY don’t understand how a shirt insinuating that girls can’t do math gets through the production process without someone in the company pointing out that, hey, you guys? maybe this is a tad sexist? WTF, Children’s Place? Still, this post brings up some other questions dealing with the more subtle layers of gender-designed clothing. I know when I was pregnant with my son in 2005 and did not know his gender it was really hard to find gender-neutral newborn clothes. Once he was born, it was really hard to find boy clothes without sports stuff on them (we are so not sports people). It’s worth thinking about.

Geek, This is a Woman

The Doctorette

BY bonnie

See what I did there? DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?

If you are a Whovian you probably know they’ve announced the actor who will play the next Doctor, after Matt Smith leaves the show later this year. If you are not a Whovian, you might want to keep reading anyway because this deals with more than just nerd stuff. If you don’t know what a Whovian is, get thee to Netflix right now and start watching Doctor Who. You’re welcome.

Brief summary for non-Whovians: The Doctor is a time-travelling alien (known as a Time Lord) from the planet Gallifrey. Instead of dying, the Time Lords have the ability to regenerate into a new body. This process happens with various levels of control involved – the Time Lady Romana chose her second incarnation, the Second Doctor was offered a choice of several images by the Time Lords as part of a forced regeneration (SPOILERS), and the Ninth Doctor calls it a “dodgy process” and states that me might wind up with two heads, or no head at all. My understanding, or feeling, is that the amount of control over the process is in proportion to how much one is injured at the time, or how rushed the process is. Since the Doctor is nearly always dying when he regenerates, he has very little control over how he winds up looking, and it is insinuated that he’s just lucky to have so far always had the usual number of limbs.

So the debate, then, is what happens if the Doctor regenerates as a woman?

He’s not going to just yet – the next actor to play the Doctor is also a man. While I’d love to see the Doctor played by a woman someday, I really am relieved it’s not happening right now because the current head writer of the show is fucking sexist as hell. I don’t want him having any control over a female Doctor, and I don’t want him in charge of setting the precedent. Luckily, he seems to be against the idea of the Doctor regenerating into a woman anyway; yesterday he gave this quote: “I like that Helen Mirren has been saying the next doctor should be a woman. I would like to go on record and say that the Queen should be played by a man.” WHAT EVEN THE FUCK, MOFFAT?

Here’s a great post listing all the reasons Moffat is a douchebag.

But that’s not what I wanted to write about today. There are plenty of posts about why we need a female Doctor (and probably just as many posts arguing that he should always be male). What I wanted to share was the process I went through before accepting the idea that he might someday switch genders.

I think we, as humans – actually, perhaps more correctly, within our collective society – are more strongly tied to gender than the Time Lords must be. I know the Doctor as a man. He has always been a man. We become tied to the identities of the people we know. I suspect this is mainly cultural – if a person wants to change their first name, they are met with resistance from the people around them, yet if a woman wants to change her last name when she gets married no one bats an eye. Changes to one’s identity are accepted so long as they fit within the norms we’ve been raised with. To have cultural norms is human and not necessarily always a bad thing, but we must keep in mind what is and is not cultural when we approach new experiences. So, culturally we feel the need for people to remain as they are; we feel safer in a world we know. Major life changes are upsetting, even if they wind up being okay in the end. That was the first aspect of things I needed to face. Just because I know the Doctor as a man doesn’t mean he won’t still be the Doctor as a woman. He is somewhat different in every incarnation – sassy, silly, dark, or light – but he is always the Doctor. He always loves humans, he always fights for good and peace and love, he always carries darkness with him, he’s never ginger, I’m always in love with him. Being a woman really won’t change any of those eternal aspects.

But, I reasoned, he calls himself a man. Therefore he must identify as a male. And then I began to think about this on a level that only the truly nerdy ever contemplate fiction with. Because English – or any human language – is not the Doctor’s native language. If the Time Lords have a biological ability to regenerate into other genders, I assume their language must deal with this in a uniquely Gallifreyan way. Sweden has recently adopted a gender-neutral pronoun into their language; it’s not an impossible concept. So the Doctor translates his language into what fits best with the people he’s surrounded by.

I think it boils down to the fact that we humans don’t have this biological ability built into us so it makes it hard for us to comprehend the idea that it might be a part of another species. Our discomfort with it is our issue, not the Doctor’s. Knowing that and embracing it – the idea that it IS hard to wrap my brain around – made it easier for me to wrap my brain around. Embracing my limits as a human enabled me to expand them. Which is some sort of inside-out catch-22 or something. It’s like a mobius strip of thinking (possible new tagline for this blog).

Besides, the subject has been broached before when Joanna Lumley played (one of) the Doctor(s) in this Red Nose day comedy bit that you need to watch right this second because it is awesome.

I have become completely comfortable with the idea of a female Doctor and I hope in the near future we get to meet her, just as I hope that in the near future we get to meet a Doctor of color. As long as Moffat is in charge I’m glad that he is not the one setting the precedent for what a female Doctor would be like, but someday I hope we get to see a woman drive the TARDIS.

Lady Links, This is a Woman

Lady Links 8.2

BY bonnie

It’s my half-birthday today! Sometimes people give me a weird look for saying that but dammit, I’m gonna have as many birthdays as possible. CAKE.

~TIAW on Tumblr and Pinterest.
~”The truth is many women will never regain the shape they had pre-pregnancy and there is nothing wrong with this.” <-- EXACTLY.
~So it turns out that making people feel like shit isn’t actually the first step to making them want to be healthy. WHO KNEW? /snarkasm
~This is a cool thread that poses the question, what would famous classical works of art look like if we applied today’s photoshopping techniques to them?
~Lululemon isn’t making plus-sized yoga pants to be KIND to plus-sized women. After all. They wouldn’t want to insult us by charging more and since that is the only option…
~Here’s a cute song that will make you realize that you actually have a lot more in common with velociraptors than you realized.
~Amanda Palmer is awesome. As usual.

Lady Links, This is a Woman

Lady Links 7.26

BY bonnie

How long does it take to recover from a week like last week? I mean. Really. I’m still too flighty and distracted to get anything done. So here are the links I have for you. I didn’t make you a doodle this week. I’m sorry. Or maybe you’re welcome. One of those.

~TIAW on Tumblr and Pinterest.
~Here’s a cool video from the PBS Idea Channel about BMO from Adventure Time and what she represents for feminism. Hint: Adventure Time is fairly awesome.
~You need to see this. And share it with everyone.
~This article has a perhaps misleading headline, but is overall very SOAM-ish about Kate’s after-pregnancy body. And Kate? I think I love her.
~”No, I do not have something better to do with my time than try to make the world a better place for girls and women.”

Giveaway!, This is a Woman

And the winner is…

BY bonnie

Wow. Sorry I fell off the face of the planet for a few days. It’s just that last week we drove up to LA and that night Sunset Boulevard tried to pick a fight with my bumper (but my bumper was all nah, man, I’m a lover, not a fighter and we left with only a metaphorical black eye) and then I didn’t sleep that night (because that is how my brain rolls these days) and then the next day we headed home from Sonja’s house but first stopped at a local mechanic who we found on the Car Talk website who fixed my bumper with no wait and for free because they are awesome, and then we had to find a gas station and then we drove home but halfway home my tire pressure light came on so we stopped at ANOTHER mechanic who fixed or maybe “fixed” the issue but then the light kept coming on the whole way home and I read in my car’s manual but it just said to go to a Toyota dealership (way to be helpful, Toyota) and no one could really tell me if I was safe or if we were all going to die a fiery death because my tires all exploded at once or something so we basically just hobbled home taking a break every half hour or so and it took SIX HOURS to drive what normally takes two. So we had damn potatoes for dinner. BUT THE WEEK DIDN’T END THERE. BECAUSE COMIC CON. But I’ve already traumatized you with that massive run-on sentence so I’ll save my second Comic Con post for later. (Not that my Comic Con post will traumatize you. It won’t. I’m pretty sure.) Just know that I’m only now beginning to become human again and I apologize for the delay.

So. The winner is…

Elliott was all, “Why does she have to sign it if she MADE it?”

Ais, I’m gonna shoot you an email RIGHT NOW and ask for your mailing address so that I can send you the book.

Thank you to everyone who participated! I am going to look up all your suggestions for female characters and compile them into a post here to share with everyone. Just. You know. In a few days.

Review, This is a Woman

Brave, A Queen’s Story

BY bonnie

In my giveaway (that ends today! go enter now!) of a signed copy of Eleanor & Park, I asked what your favorite unconventionally awesome female characters were. I am loving the answers! Some of them I am nodding along with and others I’m writing down to learn more about. Haley brought up Merida from Pixar’s Brave, and so, in honor wild red hair I thought I’d repost the review I’d wrote last summer. This was originally posted over at This is a Woman shortly after the movie was released, but not shortly enough that I actually remembered all the details. (Thank god I’m cute.)

PS. This week has been not only busy but also cumbersome with too much Oedipus Rex and multipletrips to the mechanic. I will try to get to posting some Lady Links for you, but I just can’t promise it. I’m sorry!

******************

Last weekend I took my kids to the drive in to go see Brave. It was fabulous. If I’d been smart, I’d have taken notes. But as it turns out, it didn’t even occur to me that I should write about it here until this past weekend. So we’ll have to make due with my memory of having seen it only once over a week ago in a venue that is somewhat distracting (my kids seem to be allergic to each other and break out in the MOM, S/HE TOUCHED ME’s if they come within six inches of each other. Which. They do. When they’re sitting in the back of a small station wagon).

OK. So. SPOILERS!

The movie is, as you are no doubt aware, the story of a spirited young girl with amazing hair, arguably the best accent on the planet, and amazeballs skillz in archery. She’s strong-willed in all the best ways and takes a stand against centuries-old tradition when it doesn’t suit her and what is best for her own life and personal growth.

Only. That’s not what this movie is about at all.

Well, OK. It is. But the story is more about Merida’s mother, Elinor.

It’s about a woman who grew up and had no qualms with the status quo. She was perfectly happy to grow up and be the queen she was expected to be, to live the life that was planned for her. She had zero desire to ever put her weapons on the table. In fact, she had zero desire even to own weapons of her own at all. She was not in touch with her inner Wild Woman in any sense.

And then she had a daughter who was the absolute embodiment of Wild Woman and who was physically, mentally, and spiritually incapable of being anything else. (We all need to have such people in our lives, whether not not we spring them from our loins.)

The story begins with various arguments between Elinor and Merida over what Merida should and shouldn’t be doing. After begging and begging her mother to hear her, Merida ultimately loses her shit and rides off into the night where she stumbles into a magic circle of stones, not unlike Stonehenge. Her horse refuses to enter the circle, but Merida is in her element here. On the other side of the stones, a path lit by will-o’-the-wisps appears, and she follows it. According to Wikipedia, a will-o’-the-wisp leads you from the safe paths. YES. Safety, in terms of the growth of our psyche is bullshit. Safety is what Elinor’s life has always been about. Safety is the opposite of what Merida lives for. Safety will never guide you forward spiritually or psychologically. Take the unsafe path. Follow the will-o’-the-wisps.

The will-o’-the-wisps lead Merida to a witch. I want to give props here to Pixar for making a witch who isn’t a villain. It is so easy to make witches the bad guys. After all wise women, both in folklore and in real life, have for centuries been made out to be bad witches. It’s so ingrained in us now to consider them bad, that we have largely forgotten that once they were revered. In Brave the witch is the method in which Elinor learns her biggest lesson. Merida begs for help and is granted a cake to serve her mother which will help her to change her mind about Merida’s future. Only, the witch doesn’t say exactly how that change will occur. True wisdom and growth doesn’t come from an outside source changing your mind for you. That is oppression. Elinor lives oppression. She needed something to help her to grow from the inside. And the witch knew that.

So Elinor is changed into a bear.

Merida witnesses this and is horrified at what she’s done. Because she, too, is oppressed, even if it is to a far lesser degree. On a realistic level, she just totally screwed up her mom’s life and possibly caused her death. On a spiritual level, she caused that big change, and that, too, is scary.

They run off into the woods where they try to find the witch again and ask her WTF, but she knows damn well that she has to be gone. She leaves them a cryptic message, telling them they have to fix this on their own. Because if it was simple, no one would have learned anything, and Merida would have been even further ostracized.

In the morning, they find there is no kitchen staff out in the woods to fix them breakfast so here’s where the work begins.

Step 1: Elinor must rely on Merida for her very survival. She doesn’t have the first clue about surviving in the wilderness. But Merida, like Katniss, knows her way around a bow and arrow and so has a very good advantage out in nature.
Step 2: Elinor must learn to feed herself from what nature provides. She is still hungry even after Merida’s hunted breakfast, so Merida takes her to a stream and tells her to catch some fish so she’ll be able to feed herself for a lifetime.

Because how better to find your Wild self, than by being wild?

And then there are some adventures and some mending of a tapestry-family-portrait that I forgot to tell you about earlier (Elinor had been working painstakingly for years probably on this tapestry and Merida sliced it in two, separating herself from her family CORRECTION: Apparently I remembered it wrong, it was Elinor that Merida separated from the family in the tapestry) and some more adventures and time is almost up for Elinor. If she and Merida don’t fix this, like, NOW, she’ll be a bear forever. The whole town is out to get Bear-Elinor, and her own husband is at the forefront. Merida keeps shouting the truth, but no one listens. Suddenly, the actual bad-guy-bear comes in and pins Merida and Mama Bear Elinor takes over and KICKS HIS ASS. It is symbolic of love, of motherhood, of her final test in becoming who she is meant to be. And things are mended and she is herself again. Naked.* Isn’t that exactly what such an amazing growth experience does to us – leaves us totally naked, right in front of everyone? At least in front of the important people.

The story was more about Elinor than Merida. About her transformation, about her growth, about her journey to find her psyche. The story was about Merida, too. She grew in her own way in this movie; she stepped into her role as Wise Woman for the first time.

I hope there are countless more movies like this for our daughters (and sons!) to grow up with. And also for us to learn from.

*Naked in a Pixar/Disney way. She was totally covered. That doesn’t make it less important. Just less porny.

Giveaway!, This is a Woman

Win a signed copy of Eleanor & Park!

BY bonnie

This is my copy. Win your own.

I loved Gilmore Girls. For a ton of reasons. But one of them was that they had a character on the show – Sookie – who was overweight and it wasn’t even a thing. Imagine that. A fat person whose weight wasn’t the most important aspect of their character, and who wasn’t weird or overly awkward or stupid or gross. It’s almost like it was just a part of life to be around people of all sizes. Weird, right?

/snarkasm

My friend Rainbow is an author. Recently her second book, Eleanor & Park came out. And there are a lot of things I love about this book – the characters are complex and realistic, the music is fantastic, the storyline is painfully beautiful. You can read John Green’s own review here. I really can’t add anything to it. Except to say that Eleanor, like Sookie, is fat and normal. Her size isn’t the issue in the story. It’s just an aspect of her like her red hair or her freckles or the way she dresses or her insecurity. Rainbow recently wrote this about Eleanor’s size. And if I didn’t love Rainbow already I’d have fallen head over heels for her right that second.

So there are a lot of reasons I love this book, but the main reason that I’m telling you about it here is because we need more stories out there in the world where characters are different in some way and it’s not the main thing about them. We need more fat characters who are just friends and people and not there for their fat hilarity. Fat characters who are funny and sad and full of love and fear and hope and cynicism. Who are not necessarily nice, but who you love with all your heart and you wish you could scoop up into a big hug and a nice, safe life. Who are complex like real people.

I want as many people as possible to read this book. Including you. So I am giving away a signed copy to one reader. Rainbow’s going to be in my neck of the woods this week so I plan to go to a couple of book signings (I may or may not be a groupie) and I’ll have a copy signed for you on Friday, once I know who the winner is.

Deets:
How: Leave a comment here on this entry! I’d love to hear what other awesome female characters you love in books, movies or TV. Not necessarily fat characters, but someone who doesn’t fit the mold, who stands out as unusual, and who you find inspiring. So leave me a comment here telling me about a character you love, if you have one. If you don’t have one, then you definitely need to read this book so leave a comment either way! Make sure you include a valid email address so I can contact you.

When: Contest will end Friday at noon Pacific time, and I’ll announce the winner as soon as I can after that (bear with me as this is looking to be a very busy week).

What: One person will be chosen at random from the comments and will win a signed copy of Eleanor & Park, and probably some swag from Rainbow’s upcoming new book Fangirl (which I haven’t yet read, but I’m hoping I might get to do a giveaway for as well in the near future).

UPDATE: The giveaway is now OVER. But! Hey guess what! My friend Bethany is ALSO giving away a copy of E&P! Double your chances to win at her blog here.

Lady Links, This is a Woman

Lady Links 7.12

BY bonnie

~TIAW on Pinterest and Tumblr.
~We’re not fat enablers. We’re new shoe hoarders. OK. Well, it’ll make sense once you read the article.
~MOST AWESOME 12 YEAR OLD.
~How to Live With Anxiety. I agree on basically all the points here. Fantastic article.
~The most incredible selfie I will probably ever see. This woman took photos of herself just after her baby was born. JUST after. Like before birthing the placenta. They are bloody and messy and holy crap they are beautiful. You can translate the page at Google Translate.
~We’ve all seen those images that show us what a woman would have to look like if she had Barbie’s measurements, but I like this project which shows what Barbie would look like if she were an average woman.
~Here’s a pretty incredible article about the archetype of Manic Pixie Dream Girl. It goes into what’s wrong with so much of Story these days, and how we, as women, try to find ourselves in characters. I’m tall and not at all petite and when I was younger I would have done anything to have been a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. But, looking back, maybe it’s better that I didn’t fit that physically. Maybe it’s better I couldn’t find a group to fit into. Cause I found Me instead.
~Dustin Hoffman will make you love him more than you adready do.
~The Beauty Industry would like you to remember how disgusting you are as a human animal and here can they help you with that?