no boys allowed in the room!!!!

Oh dear.

both friends who posted that are Mormon

but don't know each other, as far as i know

my god

That's not just philosophically offensive, it's linguistically horrifying and racially insensitive, to say the very least. Stay classy, Mormons.

lolaz

I've been reading game of thrones for the past couple of days and have yet to read the original post on tiger beatdown but read the professor feminism post and LOVED IT. but yeah, game of thrones is not a feminist text by any stretch, i know that much and i'm like halfway through the first book - i love how every servant girl has is "young and slender", gah, unnecessary perviness. plus all the refs to rape and a women's place and etc etc. and yet as a book i find it totally entertaining (as well as ridiculous, with repetitive prose and nonsensical metaphors, etc). i will read the TB post soon though and likely agree with it, while still finding GoT entertaining, if only bc it's 'fantasy'. which also brings up the whole geek girl thing, which i was reading about earlier today too. and then, coincidentally, a friend posted this - http://ittybiz.com/death-threats-online/ - on her fb and i'm like o_O and yet not completely surprised - misogyny, alive and well and totally disgusting and sad.

Undoing what we've been taught - to be good, to accommodate, to hold our tongues, to fear - is truly difficult and requires daily practice, i've found, and a supportive community of women and men, which, for many women, can be really hard to find. But i think we know in our bones what our power is, and when we can't express it, that blockage kills our spirits slowly, whether we know it or not. And i'm just like, at this point, fuck that. The unique power of women has been not only overlooked for too long now, but outright quashed, literally put to death. why? because it is some serious stuff. In an ideal world, it works in harmony with men's power, which is also, as we know, some serious stuff (not to mention all other energies/powers between and beyond, but that's another point). In this non-ideal world, it's just seen as a threat, imo. But i think that's changing, slowly slowly and with great effort. And in a way, i'm glad for the internet assholes who out themselves in such public ways as misogynists - at least it's a tangible piece of proof that we can talk about among all the other proof that has been dismissed as mere "feelings", that sickening pit low in the gut that tells us this shit is just plain wrong. It pisses me off to no end, that's for sure, but living my life in a pissed-off fashion doesn't seem to work for me, so that's why i practice undoing the good-girl lessons and just saying what works and what doesn't for me, according to my gut and my heart and my brain. It is work and it is hard! And it's meant i've lost my footing so many times in the past couple of years, but always picked myself up and gotten closer to the good gut feeling because of it. My tolerance for living any other way is extremely low now and my awareness of bs is high, but so is my awareness of all this awesome stuff that women (and some men of course!) are doing to build new (if small) paradigms.

It's kind of funny that I'm reading GoT because there's so much fighting in it, and for me the last thing that's going to solve our problems is fighting, at least not in the warring sense. Maybe in the sense of how people who love each other very much sometimes fight, to get the blarghrrarr energy out of their systems and get back to the core of the matter of being kind to each other. hm.

But i think we know in our bones what our power is, and when we can't express it, that blockage kills our spirits slowly, whether we know it or not.

Holy... wow. This is amazing and so true.

Robyn always dependably amazing on the things unseen.

I solved my suit problem, sort of. After concluding that Lane Bryant is still the Devil's Own Source for Plus Size Clothing, my shopping companion and I decided to hit up Macy's and LO. They had some suits. Unfortunatelyyyyyyyyyy the two suiting lines are not cut well for my figure (which is pretty hour glass) so any jackets that fit in the bust were of David Byrne proportions everywhere else (which is too bad because there was actually a WOOL BLEND SUIT that was on sale 40% off and I was going to buy that fucker and never worry about a suit again, except the fit was off). So but anyway, I ended up buying what is probably a wholly inappropriate black and white kind of zebra print jacket in a very cute, modern cut and heavy knit (so it's got a lot of body and it does not look knit until you get right up to it) fabric and I love it. The End.

PS this is a job interview but like I said, it's a long shot for many reasons so I'm not too worried about sticking to the straight-and-narrow superconservative black suit attorney path. Plus it's internal and they see what I wear to work every day so they aren't going to be like "OMG HOW DARE SHE," but rather more like "Oh, that's kind of conservative."

ZEBRA-PRINT <3 <3 I'll bet that jacket is just dashing.

While we're here, I found this funny little advice column today. I'm probably the last person on the internet to trip over it, but maybe you'll like this, too: Dear Sugar.

No, *I'm* the last person on the internet to trip over it. Very pleased it exists.

Laurel! I may need to do desperate fabric shopping in NYC next weekend! I still have not gotten fabric for the f'n wear-to-my-own-wedding dress!

G Street Fabric here in DC used to be awesome for clothing fabric, but in past years it has converted 80% of its real estate to home decor fabrics (like for curtains and shit) + crafting crap (quilting fabric, felt, etc.).

I have one more fabric store option in the area, which I will check tomorrow. If that is a fail, an NYC fabric store must save me? Where should I go????? I'm not spending very much on wedding crap, so I am willing to splurge on fabric for this dress--I won't say "price is no object," but is not a totally huge object or anything.

My dad always preached how good girls "listen" (he'd always tell the same stories about how he was first attracted to my mother because she truly LISTENED to him, blah blah) and don't chase boys ("good girls don't chase boys"), and he now has three extremely loudmouthed, opinionated daughters. Good work, pops.

daria, everybody goes to Mood but I'm not so sure about that place. I haven't been seriously fabric shopping in a few years (fell down on my sewing) but you have to go to the garment district 38th/39th/40th Sts between 7th & 8th Aves, iirc) and poke around, and I specifically have had very good luck at Paron Fabrics (and their sale annex!). Man I would LOVE to go with you, but I'll be on Long Island. :(

I mean I'm sure Mood is great but it's also kind of expensive and full of really annoying people due to its recent fame on that show.

Mood is the one my mom mentioned why because she saw it on Project Runway

for horseshoe, primarily:

S@rah Ruh1 was bff's w/my first freshman roommate at college. They listened to country music and got nostalgic over horsey girl's books they'd liked as kids. They also made up country-flavored nicknames for their vaginas. S@rah called her vagina, Patsy, iirc.

!!!

thank you!

this was almost 20 years ago, so i may not rc

Did your bff call her vulva Eddy? Oh, wait, that's not country-flavored

Listen this is not only for girls by any means, but I just wanted to offer it to all the ilXXors because of this thread and things we've talked about. I hope you find it enriching. I did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs

^ canadian!
andrea dorfman's film "love that boy" is actually really good if totally bizarre in many ways <3

i just, i... http://feministryangosling.tumblr.com/

i really like it

lol I saw that yesterday. He doesn't really do it for me. Like, at all. I feel like everyone loves him right now but I don't really get it.

for me it's a combination of him being a good actor and being the weird, hot canadian boy next door

idgi either. Have only seen him in Drive afaik though.

he's attractive, but not swoonsome. also not a young gun.

I was watching From Hell again the other day and I realized that Johnny Depp really is my platonic ideal of a pretty boy crush. I'm just crossing my fingers that he can manage to age gracefully and avoid plastic surgery so I can carry this crush into Johnny and my shared old age.

This looks recent, no?

http://www.yaare.com/wp-content/themes/gazette/2010/01/Johnny-Depp4.jpg

That works for me. Carry on, Johnny.

I like where this is going, too:

http://images.askmen.com/photos/johnny-depp/85073.jpg

Wait, that's not the one I meant to post, but it will do and also I'm about to be late for work due to posting pictures of Johnny Depp on the internet which is a smidge embarrassing at my age.

haha but he is so very swoonworthy. i usually don't care too much about movie stars, but sometimes they've just got that something, as an artist at the very least, that is attractive beyond their idealized movie stardom. johnny depp is the pinnacle of this imo. also he owns an island.

i think this was posted in the ok-cupid thread (?) but i wanted to post it here for posterity too - it's a good read - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-single-ladies/8654/1/

I don't know why it took me so long to read that article, despite it's having been posted in a few different places. Many beautiful things in't.

i would actually like to have a discussion about it on a thread, but can't figure out which thread, i mean, there must be one about marriage and being single that suits it.

Robyn, I want to talk about it to. Do you think we need to open it to dudes, or can we do it right here?

there is the 'why aren't women married' thread which is where this article was also posted:
Why aren't women married?

oh okay i didn't see that! thx :)

I followed the hairpin discussion about this article to another hairpin comment about a long-ago letter, and found this quote:

"There is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life. " - Milton Glaser

I repost it here not because it's only meant for women (obv) or only applicable to romances--the speaker's advice is that you use it for every interpersonal relationship you ever have in your life, which sounds about right--but because sometimes the other dynamics at work in "relationship"-relationships obscure this good-or-bad response that I/we have to the other person, obscure it SO ALMOST-WHOLLY that I can't hear myself.

That test is OTM.

lol I just said this to Laurel offboard but I'm always tired. I love the idea of this test but this might be confusing me for me because how to tell if it's the person or if, you know, I'm just tired! ;) I actually think this is totally otm too.

I think of it more as energized vs enervated.

Good call.

I think we bring out behaviors that are toxic to ourselves to that test, too, so if the same thing happens over and over and the thing that those occurrences have in common is ME, my job if I want to feel better is to start thinking about what's in my tote bag at the ball game. Or...something. Crackerjacks, anyone?

I hadn't seen this before just now but I sort of really want to see this film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2UZZV3xU6Q

That has Cory Booker interviewed in it and Metric as the soundtrack--wtf did *I* make this movie??!

:)

i did not realize that this was Jennifer Siebel's project! that kinda adds a "twist"