purposefullylackadaisical

Latest Posts by purposefullylackadaisical

“A woman sits up straight: she’s on edge. She leans into the cushions: she’s provocative. She leans over to another woman: she’s a gossip. She holds the other woman’s hand: she’s queer. She holds an apple in her hand: she’s a temptress. She slices the apple: she’s tame. She slices your heart out: she’s a bitch. She wears a heart at her throat: she’s a beauty. She wears a silk tie at her throat: she’s butch. She wears a silk camisole: she’s a slut. She’s slutty: she’s a celebrity. She celebrates herself: she’s got nerve. She’s celibate: she’s pathetic. She’s empathetic: she’s a sweet thing. She sweetens the deal: she’s a honeypot. She hones her tongue: she’s a shrew. She’s shrewd: she’s deadly. She’s dead: she’s innocent. She’s a virgin: She’s on edge.”

— 20 Ways by Eva Heisler (via hush-syrup)

that’s literally why she’s so me

Don’t know who this quote is by but it’s been stuck in my brain like a leech for days

“call me medusa for my monstrosity is not mine to bear, but yours to fear.”

— a.c  (via onceuponapenis)

notes on medusa 

if any of yall are interested in poetry and learning how to read, analyse, and appreciate a poem, check out this free course by the University of York that goes in-depth about reading poetry! i’m taking it now and it’s really good, 10/10 would recommend to anyone who is even a little bit interested in poetry

“How as a girl, in cut-off jeans and a skimpy string-bikini top, I lay in the back of a pick-up truck, the better to bronze my young, bare flesh. How I wanted to scorch myself, then; how I wanted to burn my beauty onto the very eye of love. How lovely, the way we wreck ourselves on the world; how we shine in it, too.”

— Cecilia Woloch, ‘Girl in a Truck, Kentucky Highway 245’, in Narcissus (via antigonies)

“This new focus on the more real, intimate side of girlhood has been largely rewarded by viewers and corporate partners alike. But what makes young women in particular so poised to take up this conversation, and ultimately profit from the interest of their (largely female) audience? For one, demonstrating high levels of personal and emotional intelligence is a prerequisite for being an idealized vision of a successful young woman. Many of these emerging trends in pop culture — yes, even in niche YouTube videos — indicate society’s intense interest in women developing a heightened awareness of the self. Feminist theory has long held that women practice self-surveillance (and therefore self-discipline) because of the immense pressures they face. From the expectation that girls know their specific body “type” (curvy on top! petite! pear-shaped!) to find the ideal jeans fit, to the myriad wellness and self-help circuits that focus on turning inward to find healing, to the health and diet fads that are rooted in self-diagnosis and self-treatment, girls and women are believed to find success through knowing and monitoring themselves intensely. The question is, if more and more gurus are turning inward, seemingly more interested in taking care of the self, then how do they continue to encourage other people to buy products that are largely focused on outward appearance? That’s where their established position as beauty experts comes into play. Buying products is one thing — but buying the right products signifies self-knowledge and the ability to care for oneself. Retail spending is blended with political and social freedom, something girls’ studies scholar Anita Harris calls a “linking of neoliberal ideologies about individual choice with a distorted kind of feminism.” Girls’ ability to make purchases is often seen as empowering, in its display of personal wealth amassed and its demonstration of knowing oneself best. The young women on YouTube have deftly manipulated this ethic to their advantage. There are only so many videos one can make about eyeshadow palettes or bubble bath before finding a new narrative through which to talk about them.”

— How YouTubers Like Zoella Capitalize On The Self-Care Movement (via thecrownedgoddess)

paperswallow:

When I say girlhood I mean to bleach and bind and braid. I mean that soft gape-mouthed mirror face. I mean the slight, tight discomfort of hair scraped into a ponytail lifting the skin of the forehead. I mean pleasure-pain. I mean knowing how to hurt. I mean the fixed quality of attention bestowed by your best friend as she grips your chin to apply your lipstick, half-sensual half-ritual all hush, like communion. Sad as Sunday night television. I mean following those flow-charts in teen magazines that tell you which movie star you’re going to marry, looking for clues about the unknown quantity of yourself. I mean the sense of waiting for upheaval. I mean having an itchy soul. I mean girls are cruellest to themselves. I mean a fire in a dollhouse. 

[ID: excerpt from The gender of sound, Anne Carson

“Putting a door on the female mouth as been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death.”

poetry line by Meggie Royer @writingsforwinter

“A woman’s first blood doesn’t come from between her legs but from biting her tongue.”

excerpt from Hunger makes me, Jess Zimmerman

“The low-maintenance woman, the ideal woman, has no appetite. This is not to say that she refuses food, sex, romance, emotional effort; to refuse is petulant, which is ironically more demanding. The woman without appetite politely finishes what’s on her plate, and declines seconds. She is satisfied and satisfiable.”

excerpt from The unruly woman: Gender & the genres of laughter, Kathleen Rowe

“…voices in any culture that are not meant to be heard are perceived as loud when they do speak, regardless of their decibel level.”] 💔

— Angela Carter, from The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography, c. 1978.

a short collection on catering to men. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012) A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen (1879) The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (1993)

Carrie (1976) dir. Brian de Palma // Wuthering Heights -Emily Brontë // Jennifer’s Body (2009) dir. Karyn Kusama // White Oleander -Janet Fitch // Ginger Snaps (2000) dir. John Fawcett // Wolf Like Me -TV on the Radio

thoughts on death and marriage and girls

(sophocles, antigone 891-4, c. 441 bce; ovid, metamorphoses x.1-7, 8 ce; phrasikleia kore inscription, 550-530 bce; euripides, iphigenia in aulis 1502-3, 405 bce)

inspired by @regenderate and @risissecupido and also joan breton connelly and nicole loraux

harry styles for rolling stone magazine / matty healy for dazed magazine 

the love club, lorde | sharp objects, gillian flynn | lady bird dir. greta gerwig | class of 2013, mitski | white oleander, janet french | girl in progress dir. patricia riggen | writer in the dark, lorde | little fires everywhere, celeste ng | electrick children dir. rebecca thomas | mythological beauty, big thief

“Godhood is just like girlhood: a begging to be believed.” — Kristin Chang

“I was a girl gulping a woman’s grief.” — Melissa Febos

“If I could do girlhood again, I’d ask to be scarier. Less whimpering—more pyromaniac urges, more flirting with kerosene.” — Sally Wen Mao

“to live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing”

Love™️ cont.

— Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas

“I did love you. I even loved your hate and your hardness” —“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” by Tennessee Williams

—“Poor Little Rich Boy” by Regina Spektor

“Kaling being a total boss lady seems to only make him love her more. An audience member asks if he is going to marry her, to which after only a slight pause he says, “I don’t know.”” —B.J. Novak about Mindy Kaling

“Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before we ask someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.” —The First Bad Man by Miranda July

“But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms.” — A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

“She still loves him. This is the fact she wakes up to each morning. She checks it, sometimes, a tongue probing an aching tooth, making sure it still hurts.” —Salt Houses by Hala Alyan

—“State of Grace” by Taylor Swift

“I don’t write this letter to put bitterness into your heart, but to pluck it out of mine. For my own sake I must forgive you.” — De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

“My love for you is more/athletic than a verb,/agile as a star” — Sylvia Plath

“I think I see the difference now, between loving someone from afar and loving someone up close. When you see them up close, you see the real them, but they also get to see the real you. And Peter does. He sees me, and I see him.” ― To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han 

― Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart by Sarah MacLean

post source

four adventures of reinette and mirabelle (dir. éric rohmer, 1985)

grey tickles, black pressure by john grant

source unknown

lost in the supermarket by the clash

whisper of the heart (dir. yoshifumi kondo, 1995)

hard feelings by lorde

ladybird (dir. greta gerwig, 2018)

bag of bones by mitski

oldest daughters have more de-escalation training than cops do

why is love ordinary and cruel?

everything I remember of him could belong to any woman who fell in love with any man in this city.

— Gwen Benaway, from day/break

Jazmine Hughes

Trista Mateer, Honeybee

Elaine Castillo, America Is Not The Heart Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Ijeoma Umebinyuo, ‘Confessions’, Questions for Ada Mohamad Hafez, Baggage series Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited Anne Carson, ‘The Glass Essay’, Glass, Irony, and God Margaret Atwood, ‘November’, You Are Happy Richard Siken, ‘Boot Theory’, Crush

Do you have something on Platonic love?

well, there’s definitely elements of it in the love tag, but i haven’t really differentiated between romantic and platonic in the tag system. concepts like love as attention etc aren’t strictly defined as either imo & also, it definitely depends on the context of the specific text/the author i feel..? it’s all tangled up and complex!

anyway, there’s this one which just came across my dash 😳 i think it fits this theme well! and this platonic love quotes by @4400lux​ is an absolute gem 💓

& here’s a couple from the friendship tag 

this one! / two / three (this one has i’d say the strongest focus on the ‘all friendship is romantic’ slant) / to sit in hell with you / the heartbreak of friendship

a lot of these themes come up in a few of the above but it depends on what type of relationship you’re considering? they’re all forms of platonic love but perhaps there’s different trappings to them like: 

the mothers tag / other familial love which. i don’t think i have tags for currently oops...

there’s also the whole ‘the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’ angle, love for found/chosen family! !! there’s quotes in some of the above links :’) 

love for humanity! for yourself !! for strangers (this compilation!!) just the inherent connection... the love we all send out to the world 🥺 

love for nature!! for being alive!! would highly recommend mary oliver’s poetry for this... and the love for your pets, again off the top of my head, would rec ‘dog songs’ by mary oliver, it’s very sweet 

& have a couple of other quotes n stuff! 

this tenderness photoset by wing shya about brotherhood 

this very sweet story about kafka and the doll traveler (or tumblr post here) !! “Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.”

God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.

- ray bradbury

The other element of friendship is tenderness.

- ralph waldo emerson 

Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. 

- c.s. lewis

For me, friendship has always been the most accessible of relationships — certainly far more so than romantic love. Friendship, I learned, provided a buffer in the interplay of emotions, a distance that made the risk of intimacy bearable, a space that allowed the other person to remain safely another person. (...) You can tell how strong the friendship is by the silence that envelops it. Lovers and spouses may talk frequently about their “relationship,” but friends tend to let their regard for one another speak for itself or let others point it out.

- andrew sullivan

...the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

- david whyte

“But today, when the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love – all love – love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a cafe.” 

- jeanette winterson 

ok these are, for the most part, friendship focussed but going to stop now otherwise this post would be wildly long aha but i hope this helps! 💓

ARTICLES I READ THIS WEEK AND ENJOYED, BY GENRE.

— feminism and race.

atlanta spa shootings: how we talk about violence by holly honderich

does your daughter know it’s ok to be angry? by sorya chemaly

hunting the men who kill women: mexico’s femicide detective by meaghan beatley

my mum was born into one of ireland’s mother and baby homes – this is why everyone should know her story by molly mulready 

pm, are you listening? here are our stories. hear us roar (tw for rape, sexual assault)

red river women by joanna jolly (tw for murder and violence against indigenous women) 

the grooming gap: what “looking the part” costs women by mindy isser

when did recipe writing get so… whitewashed? by priya krishna (with yewande komolafe)

women’s suffrage and the democratic peace by joslyn n. barnhart, robert f. trager, elizabeth n. saunders, and allan dafoe 

— fine arts.

a brief history of death by nir baram

a rainy day with ruskin bond by mayank austen soofi

arthur rimbaud: the aesthetics of intoxication by enid rhodes peschel

crying in h mart by michelle zauner

eleven by sandra cisneros

nick cave’s letter to a fan grieving their loved ones

sadako and the thousand paper cranes by eleanor coerr

sunflower sick by sara heise graybeal

— history and science.

cricket and politics in colonial india by ramachandra guha

scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain by yudhijit banerjee

the cosmos from the wheelchair (the economist obituaries)

the death of the department store and a dwindling middle class by jason pallant, sean sands

the gruesome history of eating corpses as medicine by maria dolan

— politics:

amazon has transformed the geography of wealth and power by vauhini vara

caste and politics: identity over system by dipankar gupta

implicit bias against asians increased after trump’s secretary of state and others popularized “chinese virus” by eric w. dolan

making pledges was the easy part but it’s a long road to net-zero emissions by angel hsu

note: some of the articles are behind paywalls, but can be read for free with outline.

“How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying, our mothers? Or divorcing, or not divorcing, our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left?”

— Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Smoke Signals (Sherman Alexie)

being a woman is thinking ur the ugliest person ever and then coming across a photo of u as a kid when u had already started to hate ur appearance and realizing u were so cute and then u do this every so often for the rest of ur life and u never learn

Every time I wrote your name, I lied. Every time I wrote your name, it was the truth.

1.Clarice Lispector | 2.Nickie Zimov | 3.Warsan Shire | 4.Pablo Neruda | 5.Madeline Miller | 6.Nickie Zimov | 7.Madeline Miller | 8.Vincent van Gogh | 9.James Joyce | 10.Nick Lantz | 11.Ocean Vuong | 12.Nickie Zimov | 13.Richard Brautigan | 14.Keaton St. James