talking about flters and real beauty vs fake beauty and cultural standards etc always makes me think about all the victorian and edwardian novels i read, where the things that people thought about beauty were recorded at length. recently ive been reading a lot of Thomas Hardy (best known for Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure) and there’s so much discussion of the beauty of people, particularly love interests, both men and women. and these writers, and their eras, and the culture of the eras, was of course obsessed with beauty and youth and also artificial beauty (being the eras of the really transformative corsets, not to mention some of the earliest industrialized or modernized beauty products or processes), as all human societies are to a greater or lesser extent in their own ways, but the thing that sticks out to me in reading these books is how beauty is not the singular or even the most important aspect of a person’s overall attraction. if someone has a beautiful face or figure, it is mentioned, but never to the obsessive, fixated extent that physical beauty is isolated from and elevated over all other features in modern american/western culture. there are plenty of protagonists or love interests in these books who are described as not young, or not remarkable, or not pretty, or even ugly or frightening, but nevertheless compellingly sexy and attractive, or simply interesting, or worthy in some way.
its weird that the cultural consciousness has become seemingly ignorant of non-physical attraction. like that anon that was in my inbox talking about how they were “normal looking’ and therefore “needed” filters in order to “compete” with attractive people. it’s a weirdly mercenary and capitalist view of the social economy, first of all, which absolutely is not zero-sum no matter how badly the social networks want to convince us that it is. but there was never a single mention from that person about their ability to charm or entertain or attract using anything except a fake photo of themselves. wild. im fuckin worried about them! im worried about every young person how has brain worms
when i was about 4 and starting to become aware of how much adults were obsessed with my appearance because i was dainty and blonde and could do a passable shirley temple imitation, my parents gave me a very serious lecture about what physical beauty actually meant: i didn’t work for it, it was given to me genetically. and someday, maybe sooner or more suddenly than anyone could predict, it would be gone. if accident, illness, or hardship didnt get me, old age eventually would. so with that being a certaintly, i had better build a life and a personality on something other than my looks. and i said, ok. every day i get older im more grateful for that advice and the fact i decided to take it to heart instead of trying to gamble on Being Hot for long enough to get job security. which is also a valid career choice but it’s a risky one. always better to have a fallback just in case.
im of an age rn where a lot of women in my peer group are starting to get a very hunted vibe about the impending end of their youth, which is valid. theres nothing foolish about it, its not their fault, theyre not stupid or somehow lacking because this is an issue in their lives. but im noticing that i am significantly less freaked out by, idk, how long ago the 90s were or whatever, because i have been expecting to get old since i was in kindergarten. and i had adults around me who were just like “hey this is what old people look like and what bodies do over time. its not a big deal. everything on tv is fake btw”. i didnt get out unscathed, ive had eating disorders and all sort of weird brain-body problems.
my advice i guess if i have any is to go outside and really look around you. notice how almost every single woman, and most men, has at least some cellulite, even if its just when theyre sitting down or whatever. notice how everyone has blemishes and zits. most people have some dandruff. if someone is wearing makeup, it’ll be cakey or balled up or smeared or uneven or clumpy even if it’s just a bit. everyone over the age of about 20 will have stretch marks somewhere, even if they aren’t visible except in certain light. i was under the impression i didnt have many until one time seeing a picture of my butt in FULL natural light and finally saw the entire surface of both cheeks was covered in straitions, they just were hard to see most of the time because im the color of drywall and scars tend to be light. it’s really easy to spot hair extensions and wigs and fake nails and fake tans and shapewear once you figure out how to see it. and none of these things take away from someone’s character.
there’s a strong argument to be made that when corsetry was the norm, no woman was expected to simply be the shape of the corset unless she was actually wearing it. photographs and drawings of women in the 19th and early 20th century were retouched a bit as all photos have been, yes, but they were not retouched to make naked women appear to be corset-shaped. THAT is new. people are now getting surgery to be corset-shaped. and like, i dont think anyone should not be able to look however they want if they want to have that surgery. that is one meaning of cyborg feminism, probably. what i dont want, is for anyone to ever think that’s a normal way to look (except for veryvery tiny mathematical outliers, the Barbie Hips Georg of instagram) WITHOUT surgery or shapewear. which i see a lot now. i saw an instagram fashion designer with a very obviously surgically-altered body answer a question in her inbox about how she maintained her figure with some nonsense about diet and exercise. so now some (probably young) person out there is thinking that if they just do intermittent fasting enough, theyll look like a woman with butt and boob implants, a BBL, fillers, etc. that person probably thinks that if they arent able to diet and exercise good enough, they will fail at looking that way through their own laziness and lack of work ethic or whatever. i see that mindset constantly, especially in young women.
the surgery isnt the issue. the look itself isnt the issue. the filters themselves arent the issue. the issue is that on none of these images, is there an indication of what has been changed or how. the brain damage effect of filters would be lessened, i think, if everyone KNEW which images had been altered and how. so maybe thats the answer? mandatory labeling? i dont know. what’s terrifying is that the average adult human in america cant tell from a glance what has been altered in a photograph, no matter how clumsily, because they simply dont have a template for what a real human looks like anymore. the false images have supplanted the real images, the actual memories of alive humans that you know and have met or lived with.
if you go into any of the shittier men’s spaces online you will find threads for posting pictures of “beautiful girls”, and it is page after page after page of teenagers in full makeup, hair extensions or wigs, circle lenses, facetuned, bodytuned, surgery, etc, and then hundreds of men yearning and fanning themselves over her “natural beauty”. dont go looking for this stuff, it will permanently fuck you up to know what a basic guy on the bus is thinking about women every day. dont do it
but i also seriously predict a backlash into “natural” looks after this current madness, similarly to how the 1960s saw the rise of the hippie girl with swingin titties, pit hair and no high heels after the consumer beauty madness of the 50s. of course the 60s beauty ideals were in some ways just as fake, but there was some authentic yearning towards a freedom from capitalist bodies as well. so when that happens send me $20: paypal.me/3liza. should be in like the next 4 years or so. thanks
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#you know that one xkcd with the hunting-abandoned-pets-for-sport discourse? #that’s how I feel about beauty discourse #I am *completely* not plugged into this scene #and every once in a while I come across a missive from this‚ fucking‚ dystopic universe #do *all* allos have to deal with this kind of shit?? #I hope y’all get through okay in there #(this also gives me a very different perspective on aging discourse) #(it really rubs me the wrong way how many people assume that if one wants to avoid aging it’s because one wants youthful *beauty*) #(when to *me* it seems obvious to want youthful *functionality* and youthful *stability*) #(I’ve got one of those bodies that doesn’t really visibly change between ~13 and ~30) #(I’m 27 now and I’ve had this face for so long that even my faceblind ass can recognise it!) #(*not* looking forward to the day that I look in the mirror and see somebody else!) #(and more importantly I’ve been acquiring new chronic conditions almost every year since I was 23) #(and I shudder to think how many maluses I’m going to be operating under by the time I’m 40 or 50 or 60) #((…although in fairness it seems like some of them might not be permanent after all?)) #((some of my keloids seem to be fading and almost never give off growing pains or itching)) #((I still often itch *immediately* after sweating but it doesn’t consistently last until I rinse the sweat off anymore)) #((maybe someday I’ll be able to breathe outdoors again‚ or lie on a mattress without feeling every goddamn spring)) #((that would be nice)) #tag rambles #discourse cw? #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #aging cw
#qntm is very good at writing the kind of fiction that he writes #but the kind of fiction that he writes feels like having acid dripped into your brain #his time-travel meta is excellent but I cannot honestly recommend his fiction unless you are *exactly* the right sort of person #if you *are* that sort of person then you should absolutely go for it #(that being said I do kind of like the concept of) #(the guy who spun off a temporary disposable fork to hold a meeting) #((the meeting being so top-secret that even *he* couldn’t know what went on in it)) #(and then the alpha self gets assassinated mid-meeting and the fork is like) #(”welp guess I gotta be alpha now‚ *somebody* has to”) #(”wait fuck I have no idea how to care for the vessel I’m sleeved in”) #(”what does this thing even *eat*”) #SCP Foundation #tag rambles #amnesia cw #death tw
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #Doctor Who #covid19 #tag rambles #the future is another country: make sure to get your shots before you go #(and it has disturbed me for some time that no companion ever seems to consider this) #(the Red Panda Adventures went a little far the other direction but at least they *thought* about it) #((in RPA the Nazis invent time travel but can’t use it)) #((because anyone they send through promptly catches several extinct strains of disease at once and dies)) #illness tw #death mention #(((re: that post going around a while back about how fiction often gives the Nazis too much credit))) #(((and they were actually *much* less competent creators than–especially–occult!AUs tend to portray them as))) #(((I would like to be clear that at least two or three other entities in RPA invent time travel and *none* of them have this problem))) #(((only the Nazis have failed to build proper safeties into their time machine))) #P.P.S. can I just say that it’s *especially* disturbing that the companion who literally #goes to *an infectious-disease research facility from the year five billion* #and is *explicitly told that the struggle against disease is perpetual because viruses are constantly evolving* #*still* never expresses concern about her safety or cross-temporal transmission or *any* of that #like damn you were so close #and yet
NSFW servers and channels will still be allowed on Android devices and on desktop, but I know a lot of iPhone users who use Discord for kink and sex work and this update will completely cut you off from that on your device.
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#Discord has been going downhill for some time #god I’m so tired of all this shit #both the NSFW purges and #generally having to keep migrating from one messaging service to another as each one fails and/or turns against its users #(I don’t use iOS but the writing’s on the wall‚ you know?) #(and the bastards at Discord *have* already forced me to give them a phone number‚ which I was *not* comfortable with) #((no they were not fooled by a VoIP)) #we should just fucking email each other #for a more IM-y email interface I’ve been hearing some intriguing things about Delta Chat #mutuals if you want to exchange email addresses hmu #Discord #tag rambles #PSA #disappointed permanent resident of The Future
all the movies and tv shows over the next few years that will have to decide if they’re canon compliant or a canon divergence no plague au
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#I have already started seeing this happening with web serials and it’s beautiful #also‚ like‚ there are more than two options here #I had a dream recently where I had time-manipulation powers #and in the dream I discovered that in my original timeline the plague was unusually *late* #most timelines have a coronavirus pandemic in 2015 or late 2014 #there is absolutely nothing stopping you from setting a story in one of *those* timelines #you could totally split the difference and set a story in a significantly *post*-plague 2020 #the characters wander through a grocery store chatting and about 5 – 10% of background patrons are masked #”yeah‚” a character offhandedly mentions in one episode‚ ”I can’t make it ’cause I got COVID-14” #”don’t worry‚ I got my booster this year so I’m gonna be fine just gotta stay home for a bit” #it’s never at the forefront‚ it’s never a major plot point‚ it’s just casually there in the characters’ past informing their present #(I feel like this might be helpful for certain kinds of emotional processing?) #tag rambles #covid19 #illness mention #writing
There’s no reason to be afraid of component-level repair. Nowadays, a lot of stuff is made out of like four big parts, and the manufacturer tells you to replace the entire big part when it fucks up. It makes sense for all involved: the repairperson gets done quickly, the customer is happy that they don’t have to learn how things actually work, FedEx gets bigger boxes, and the manufacturer gets to sell a $300 replacement board for a $450 thing. What divides this kind of person from you and I, humble reader, is the desire to go deeper.
There are many motives that drive a person to consider the bottomless pit that is component-level repair. Simple curiosity. A desire to save the environment. Not wanting to let them “get one over” on you. Cheapness so severe that it borders on mental illness. Whatever the reason, all throughout the world, people are diving deep in the quest to truly understand their shit.
Sometimes you have to understand that shit better than the people who made it. After all, if they were all that bright, then it wouldn’t be broken, now would it? They’d have used the $2 part instead of the $0.17 part, like you’re about to. Now, the entire infrastructure that makes Western civilization possible has failed you, and it’s just you and your soldering iron, socket wrench, oxy-ace torch, or surgical scalpel. Finish, and you will believe you are a god. Fail, and – it was broken anyway, but at least now you sound smarter when you bitch about it at the bar.
So get out there right now, and go find something that’s busted and too expensive to replace. Then tear it apart, and figure out what tiny annoying piece of shit is making this big annoying piece of shit not work. You owe it to the rest of humanity, or at least your ego.
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#unreality cw? #(this blog’s *other* posts make it pretty clear that the blogger is a fictional character) #(but *this* one seems–while somewhat exaggerated–essentially true) #I *do* find scalpels and solder and whatnot kind of scary #(especially since usually the thing I am looking to tinker with isn’t *completely* broken) #(so I *could* very well make things worse) #but I think it’s good (if likely supererogatory) to *understand* repair even in cases where #you prefer to outsource the actual process to experts #it gives you a sense of things like ”which repairs are worth making” and ”is the repairer quoting you a price of $X fucking with you” #and for that matter ”which model should I buy bearing the possibility of future repairs in mind” #since sometimes the difference between ”DIY” and ”let’s outsource this” and ”nothing we can do about it” is in #how much the machine was set up to *allow* for repairs #(I’ve been getting into smartphone nerdery and have learned a lot about the importance of unlockable bootloaders and removable batteries) #tag rambles
#food #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #honestly I’m pretty pleased just to see a Chinese restaurant with pictures of every single one of its items #a lot of them just give you the name of the item–just the name! no description!–and expect you to know what that means #I’ve gotten burned many times on #foods that are made exactly the same in every American Chinese restaurant I’ve ever been to but are very different in Canada #(and then of course there’s the stuff I’ve *never* had and still don’t have enough information to know whether I want to try them!) #here’s a tip that’ll save you the ten years of grief I had: #don’t order the sweet and sour chicken in Canada #order the *lemon* chicken #Canadian sweet and sour chicken batter is this vast fluffy bullshit #while lemon chicken is roughly the same as what you know and love from the States #(at some places they fry lemon chicken breasts whole and *then* cut them into strips but close enough) #tag rambles
Dr. : do you experience any of these (Covid) symptoms?
Chronically ill people:
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#fortunately Canadian quarantine laws later added a pre-existing-condition exemption #(although thanks to my pollen issues being degenerative I *still* ended up #calling off sick for two days for what turned out to be a new pollen manifestation) #((lesson learned: pinch your masks shut *very* tightly! tape them if you have any doubts! #autumn pollen will get in through the slightest crack and it will fuck your shit *up*!!)) #(((it sure is convenient though that COVID and pollen take the same primary preventative treatment‚ very efficient))) #even after it stopped being Literally Illegal to show up to work while having an allergy attack #I still really didn’t want to deal with confusion/uncertainty about what I had (including internal uncertainty) #not counting commuting I’ve spent…maybe two or three cumulative hours outdoors this entire year? #(although really I suspect most mask ”failures” back in the day were actually from not wearing a mask at work) #(which is no longer an issue and I will *never* let the franchise owner take my mask away from me again) #((I’m glad I finally consulted my doctor about options in November 2019 even though I haven’t really been able to follow up on it properly)) #((I have official medical records dating back to before the pandemic #indicating that I require a mask in areas with sufficient air mixture with the outdoors!)) #((*suck* on it Meta-Boss!)) #anyway‚ I’ve noticed my co-worker with the chronic cough #(who‚ perhaps not unrelatedly‚ is also my only co-worker who seems to genuinely give a shit about the plague) #has not coughed in my hearing once since he returned to work in May #but he *does* clear his throat a lot more often #I infer that he is consciously suppressing his cough so as not to freak people out #tag rambles #covid19 #allergies #illness tw #in which Brin has a job
I wrote this as a tag ramble because it felt like a tag-register kind of post, but I’m running out of space in the tag box and also I don’t want to discourage people from responding to me (apparently a lot of people interpret tag rambles as followers-only posts? and it’s certainly more effort to quote them, in any case), so here it is:
#the great thing about living with your parents is that it gives you potentially as much as two or three decades to figure out #where the fuck you’re going to find platonic nesting partners after they’re dead #(the other great thing is that you don’t have to spend years trying desperately to make your savings outpace the rise in house prices) #(because you can just take over your dad’s HELOC) #(but that’s *somewhat* tangential to this post) #I guess I could *try* living alone for a while but I don’t think I’d like it #I could probably *tolerate* it and there’d be *some* upsides #but yeah it *is* very inefficient #and it seems like it would be rather lonely and frankly kind of dangerous #(I have this suspicion that a lot of the lifespan benefits of marriage are simply from having a housemate) #(someone to take care of you (and also of basic household maintenance) when you’re sick) #(someone to hear you choking) #(someone to find you passed out on the floor) #(someone to hug you in lockdowns so you don’t break down from touch deprivation) #one-breadwinner households were a historical aberration and their time has ended #it’s time to spruce up the homestead system to make it less dependent on having [living family] [that you like being around] #(okay I went and looked up homesteading and maybe that’s not *quite* the right word) #(I think it’s just that most of the family-sized communes I know of #–that *weren’t* forged in the extreme pressures of San Francisco†– #are homesteads) #((I mean *ideally* it’d be good to have enough skillsets and executive function and physical function and land between us that #we *could* retreat into self-sufficiency in a crisis)) #((but “division of labour is good” extends beyond the household level)) #†I really don’t want to live in San Francisco‚ please don’t make me move to San Francisco just to find a commune
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#tag rambles #reply via reblog #death tw #adventures in human capitalism #illness mention
Friends don’t let friends give their entire extended families COVID.
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#AAAAAAAAAAAAAA #today in We Live in a Horror Movie: the ”the call is coming from inside the house” edition #(personally I am *not* a clueless horror-movie protagonist and I have been keeping an eye (so to speak) on my sense of smell) #(when I was in quarantine I kept a bottle of peppermint oil on my bedside table) #(and opened it once or twice a day to check if my nose was still working) #((it was)) #(also remember that that’s for times when you’re *not* wearing a mask) #(if you’re currently wearing a mask having a sense of smell that’s *too good* is the bad sign because it means problems with your mask seal) #(if you’re wearing an N95 the correct level of sense-of-smell to have *is* in fact *zero*) #(for a surgical-shaped mask you should get occasional whiffs of stuff but little or no background scents) #(that includes cloth‚ though the occasional whiffs will likely be somewhat more frequent than they are with a well-made #–(not churned-out-for-2020 shit)– #disposable) #((yes‚ you can smell that surgical masks aren’t as good as N95s; yes‚ it’s scary)) #tag rambles #illness tw #covid19 #Yankee Candle #embarrassment squick?
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