This Would Be Great, But Can We Please Do Something To Stop The Big Property Management Groups From Buying

This one is always worth sharing.

This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.

So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while.  But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not.  Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.

This is how we got here, yeah.

My cartoon for the latest issue of New Scientist.

Another normal conversation with a female fan.

I look at the world, and I say, "Why don't we try this? We can't really make things worse, can we? And this would be justice. This would be justice."

happy PRIDE i’m here i’m queer and i believe the land should be given back to the proper indigenous stewards.

Damn, this is good to know. The weakness of something that relies on reporting from the public.

this has been happening a few times and now twice today that someone in my notes was marked a terf on shinigami eyes and I kneejerked to "oh shit what are YOU doing in my notes" before doing my due diligence and seeing if this is a correct mark and blocking

95% of the time if the url isn't a giveaway, a few keyword searches on their blog will show they're a terf, if not their bio or pinned. but now 4 different people in a week were trans.

I thought okay doesn't mean they aren't a terf so I dig deeper. And all 4 of them were non-exclusionary trans people who had reblogged or posted something recently defending various trans groups who get a lot of shit on tumblr. Trans people talking about transandrophobia, talking about tearing down transmedicalism, accepting trans people with "unconventional" expression/genders, or advocating for intersex folks in a way that challenges popular binaristic ideas on this site

This is wildly disappointing. All four of these people are clearly not terfs, but as I sat here I realized they are groups of trans people who get accused of being a terf by other trans people as a way to silence crucial community conversations that move us past bio and gender essentialism.

I'd urge people to do second looks at blogs marked as anti-trans and verify before just going off of the mark (not just for this but always as a good rule) and I'd hope if you are a trans person who marks trans people as anti-trans for challenging binaries and essentialism, you knock it the fuck off

I mean, I’m in.

Sadly, I know full well this is true. Came WAY too close to being homeless once, but food? There's options for food.

Yeah, absolutely gotta reblog it.

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

That's a good idea, honestly. Maybe even offer both?

Instead of offering an “ad free” version of tumblr for $4.99 a month, why doesn’t Tumblr offer an adult version (age verified) for $4.99 a month? A site where adults can be adults. Imagine this, a magical place where erotic art creators would be able to display or exchange their art with others, without the fear of being harassed (deemed explicit, have their messaging ability taken away, shadow banned, or terminated). Millions of users would gladly subscribe.

Please reblog this message if you agree.

A special feeling of joy

There is a very special feeling of joy when you write a game, pour your heart and soul into it, then take it to a convention, and play it with a bunch of strangers... and they tell you that they want to play it next year! That's IT, right there. It's wonderful.

SO much validation!