Love™️ Cont.

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

“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)

  The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar

LAST ONE BORN IS NORMAL IS HAPPY IS FREE WINS

hasan minhaj, homecoming king / sing street (2016 + 2022) / little women (2019) / @/feefal_ on twitter / ferris bueller's day off (1986) / beef (2023) / the banshees of inisherin (2022) / jackie kay, "got you" / beth ann fennelly, "two sisters, one thinner, one better dressed" / michael torres, "my brother is asking for stamps" / the king of staten island (2020) / maggie stiefvater, the dream thieves / chelsea martin, "mcdonalds is impossible" / jonathan goldstein, ladies and gentlemen, the Bible!

On Friendship, Falling in Love and Falling Apart, pt. 2 (pt. 1, pt. 3, pt. 4)

Ode to Friendship, Noor Hindi

The Truth Has Three Sides, Sabrina Benaim

I've Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth (Summer Song), Fall Out Boy

Autumn, Patty Dickson Pieczka

Unknown

Unknown

Nature Poem, Chen Chen

Planet of Love, Richard Siken

Ever Yours: The Essential Letters, Vincent Van Gogh

Just Like Heaven, The Cure

Speeches for Dr. Frankenstein, Margaret Atwood

The Dialogue of Desire and Guilt, J.D. McClatchy

Someplace Like Montana, Ada Limón

Cold Solace, Anna Belle Kaufman

Fleabag (2016-2019)

Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out, Richard Siken

Your Love Finds Its Way Back, Sierra DeMulder

The Diaries of Katherine Mansfield

Moments, Mary Oliver

oh how the horror of existence eats away at my heart but look how i cling on to the simplest acts of compassion, kind gestures, easy natural connections. bitter as i am i can't help looking at the world as if it's handmade just for me. i love loving, i love loving people. i love a soft love. no drama. no loudness. no doors being slammed. a silent love. steeped into the heart like a strong tea. jasmine scented. a love nurtured and moulded delicately with sturdy hands on a potter's wheel. a love made with love. a love to live for. a love that makes you want to stay alive, for tiny birds and the sky, for the ocean and the charcoal night. dying is no feat, we die all the time. if you are a lover, you must do the unthinkable, you must live. for you will be remembered and you will be immortalized in every bit of beauty that ever graces this earth.

notes on medusa 

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

“Male culture ensures that women’s anger is not taken seriously (and thus that women’s anger will not lead to social change) by defining anger in women as pathological. Broverman et al. (1972) found that mental health professionals judged aggression to be a trait associated with a healthy man, but not a healthy woman. Feinblatt and Gold (1976) found that more girls than boys were referred to children’s mental health centers for being defiant and verbally aggressive. Aggressive girls described in hypothetical case studies were rated both by graduate students in psychology and by parents as more disturbed, as being more in need of treatment, and as having poorer prognosis than boys described with identical problems. Hochschild (1983) found that males who displayed anger were thought to have deeply held convictions, while females were considered personally unstable.”

— Dee L. R. Graham, Loving to Survive (via reading-blog)