My aesthetic: when you take off your glasses on a highway and all the lights go soft and smudged, a trail of amber behind you like a quiet afterthought
imagine… Alma Deutscher: Finding Cinderella
Musical prodigy Alma Deutscher aged 11 (seen here with younger sister Helen), is staging her first full-length opera, Cinderella.
Composer, pianist, violinist… Alma learned to read music before she could read words. She began playing the piano aged two and at four years old she was composing her own music.
Okay, but seriously on the topic of straight people being so overly concerned about their children being exposed to homosexuality…
As some of you know, I am a makeup artist in a holistic beauty boutique in a very wealthy area of eastern New York. The week before Halloween I was offering simple costume makeup designs for both adults and children. So my last client of the evening was a 15 year old girl who came in to get her makeup done for the Halloween dance at her school. I was enjoying a conversation with both the girl and her mother when suddenly the topic of transgender came up. I got a little nervous because I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when I hear people speaking negatively about these sorts of topics and as I mentioned, my store is in a very upscale, white, conservative area…
Anyway, the girl starts telling us that her friend prefers to be a boy now. She says it very simply and comfortably and it made me happy to see her talk about it as if it was really no big deal.
Her mother says
“How does she even know what transgender is though? She’s a little young to be making a decision like that. I really think the media is taking things too far with all this gay stuff. I’m not against it or anything, but didn’t you just tell me two boys in your class are dating too?”
The girl said that yes, two boys she knew were dating and another boy she knew was gay also. (And she also corrected the pronouns her mother used for her friend)
“I don’t mind that she knows that homosexuality is,” the mother said. “But I don’t think it should be taught at such a young age. Did you know it’s on Disney channel now?”
It took me a moment to respond, I just kept painting the girl’s face until I could figure out what I wanted to say.
“Well,” I said. “We tend to teach heterosexuality literally from the time a child is born. Most children’s books and movies are even centered around a romance of some kind like a Prince and a Princess for example. There’s rarely a children’s movie that comes out where the main male and female character don’t end up marrying each other in the end. If we don’t have a problem flooding our children’s minds with heterosexuality from the time they are able to sit up and watch a movie on their own, what is so wrong with showing them two boys or two girls being in love? We aren’t showing them sex. We aren’t showing them anything inappropriate. Since when is love inappropriate? If we show them love in all it’s forms (be it gay or straight) from an early age, they will see that it’s all perfectly normal and natural and maybe we can finally put homophobic the past…”
The woman considered this for a second and then said “I just feel like they see it and then they start to think that they might be too.”
“And maybe they are. But isn’t it better for them to know that it’s okay? They aren’t hurting anyone.”
Then the girl said. “No ones going around just thinking they are gay because they know what gay is, mom. I know what a chicken is, that doesn’t mean I’m going to wake up tomorrow and start clucking.”
I loved this kid. I hope she does well in all of her endeavors
I love the weirdly specific rules that go with answering a riddle. Like, “I Have Two Eyes But I Cannot See: What Am I?” And the answer’s supposed to be the word ‘iridescent’ because ‘two *i*’s’ right, but like. Why can’t the answer be like… A guy with really bad cataracts. Someone wearing a blindfold. My uncle’s dog. Like why does it gotta be deep
me, reaching into my dresser drawer for black pants: I hope this isn’t the pair with big holes worn in the inner thighs
Marie Kondo, gently over my shoulder: why is a pair of pants you find unwearable still in your dresser drawer
me: oh shit that’s right!! The dresser is for clothes that under some circumstance I might conceivably wear!!
Marie Kondo, beaming proudly: Yes, that’s correct!! These pants must have been your favorites. How wonderful that they were so comfortable and practical that you wore them out. But now since they no longer function as pants, you should move them from the drawer where you keep your functioning pants!
me: Yes thanks I got it they’re in the fabric basket now
Marie Kondo, fading back into the darkness: I love what you’ve done with the kitchen!!
the poetic cinema in the movie Holes when it shows Kate Barlow in the schoolhouse and drops of water are falling on the book she’s reading and you think the roof is leaking again even though Sam fixed it but then it shows that it’s actually because she’s crying and then Sam walks in and looks at her tear stained face with the softest expression and says, “i can fix that.”
i love that one old timey 1910s trans dude who has a tiny wikipedia page for himself that he earned entirely due to him starting fights in bars and being the city’s hottest casanova
i don’t want to look “hot” i want to look alluring, haunting, bewitching. i want to look like the kind of person hozier would write a song about.
Micha, 16, non-binary, they|them. Writer, artist, part time blogger. I like music, books, photography, and social equality. Header and Icon are both orginal artworks by me.
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