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for @augustsjanes — we are each other’s mystery ♡

adam smiley poswolsky / bts, in the soop / nicole callihan, the end of the pier / henry james, the portrait of a lady / hanya yanagihara, a little life / holly warbs, swim / sarah kay, no matter the wreckage / david whyte, consolations / @piglitzart (x) / jacqueline woodson, weight / avatar: the last airbender, s3 ep6 / wicked, for good / sedat pakay, james baldwin & friends, istanbul / schnall, harber, stefanucci, & proffitt / @euritsua (x) / jean little, oranges / c.s. lewis, the four loves / anne magill, by the river / taylor jenkins reid, the seven husbands of evelyn hugo / isabel norton / pinterest / bts, friends / lorde, a world alone + pinterest / holly warburton, the old aquarium / lany, pink skies / jeanette winterson, written on the body / @edomrode (ig) / arnold lobel, frog and toad are friends / @piglitzart (x) / conan gray, best friend

“Ladies. Has it ever occurred to you that fairy tales aren’t easy on the feet? […] No, really, think about it. Think about the little mermaid, who traded in her tail for love, got two legs and two feet, and every step was like walking on knives. And where did it get her? That’s a rhetorical question, of course. Then there’s the girl who put on the beautiful red dancing shoes. The woodsman had to chop her feet off with an axe. There are Cinderella’s two stepsisters, who cut off their own toes, and Snow White’s stepmother, who danced to death in red-hot iron slippers. […] There was this one woman who walked east of the sun and then west of the moon, looking for her lover, who had left her because she spilled tallow on his nightshirt. She wore out at least one pair of perfectly good iron shoes before she found him. Take our word for it, he wasn’t worth it. What do you think happened when she forgot to put the fabric softener in the dryer? Laundry is hard, travel is harder.”

— Kelly Link, from “Travels with the Snow Queen”, Stranger Things Happen

The Knight Wonders What, Exactly, He Rescued by Jeannine Hall Gailey

can you do a web weaving about ocean/sea being metaphors for love?

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

SEAY, Love Is The Ocean

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Edmund Dulac, ‘The Little Mermaid Saved The Prince’, from The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen

Titanic (1997) dir. James Cameron

Bobby Darin, Beyond The Sea

Nikos Kazantzakis in a letter to Harilaos Stefanidis, written c. June 1924

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Uncle Yanco (1967) dir. Agnes Varda

Veronica Rossi, Through the Ever Night

The Kooks, Seaside

Vincent van Gogh, from The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

https://instagram.com/p/BJ4TOcwAJTj/

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

“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)

No two women have the same experience. All feminism is founded not on actual essential unity, but on political coalition and affirmation of shared political needs and goals.

Race, culture, class, birth assignment, religion, and countless other factors mean all women experience womanhood differently. Excluding trans women because we have a different life experience misses the point that all women have different life experiences. This idea isn’t even new, its not even specific to trans women, its literally the point Crenshaw and Collins and Mohanty and countless other woc and third world feminists have been making for decades now.

The woman who eschews femininity, who is content with her natural shape and size and smell, who is impatient with the lengthy rituals of femininity, is condemned by both sexes. To women, she is an uncomfortable reminder of the extent to which they have abandoned themselves to the demands of men. To men, she is a threatening warning that their domination is not total and that women still have the power to regain themselves. 

- Anne Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police

notes on medusa