“Lily Thought About Marilyn [Monroe]. Then She Said, ‘It’s A Funny Thing About Marilyn. Nobody

— mimi evangeline, from girlhood is godhood

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

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

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

AUGUST: THE TRUE ENDING OF A YEAR

unknown / @nobodysflower / paul d'amato / mary oliver / @gaycommunist / justine kurland / @sioltach / alida nugent / raymond carver

“Medusa lost her beauty—or rather, it was taken from her. Beauty is always something you can lose. Women’s beauty is seen as something separate from us, something we owe but never own: We are its stewards, not its beneficiaries. We tend it like a garden where we do not live. Oh, but ugliness—ugliness is always yours. Almost everyone has some innate kernel of grotesquerie; even fashion models (I’ve heard) tend to look a bit strange and froggish in person, having been gifted with naturally level faces that pool light luminously instead of breaking it into shards. And everyone has the ability to mine their ugliness, to emphasize and magnify it, to distort even those parts of themselves that fall within acceptable bounds. Where beauty is narrow and constrained, ugliness is an entire galaxy, a myriad of sparkling paths that lurch crazily away from the ideal. There are so few ways to look perfect, but there are thousands of ways to look monstrous, surprising, upsetting, outlandish, or odd. Thousands of stories to tell in dozens of languages: the languages of strong features or weak chins, the languages of garish makeup and weird haircuts and startling clothes, fat and bony and hairy languages, the languages of any kind of beauty that’s not white. Nose languages, eyebrow languages, piercing and tattoo languages, languages of blemish and birthmark and scar. When you give up trying to declare yourself acceptable, there are so many new things to say.”

— What If We Cultivated Our Ugliness? Jess Zimmerman (via kuanios)

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

“i knew everything when i was young”

“the admirable crichton” - jm barrie (1918) // the man with the axe - lorde (2021) // picture of alana zimmer // massa - tyler, the creator (2021) // first love/late spring - mitski (2014) // painting by peter brown // this is me trying - taylor swift (2020) // “nothing new” journal entry - taylor swift (2012) // cardigan - taylor swift (2020)