“Stop saying 15 year olds with weird interests are cringe, they’re 15” this is true however you should also stop saying adults with weird interests are cringe because who gives a shit
To wit:
I want to share some wisdom from my high school art teacher.
In my AP Art class, there was a girl who was just starting to experiment with mixed media. At this point she was still playing around, trying to decide what direction she wanted to go with her portfolio. So one critique day, she brought in an abstract canvas with some rhinestone highlights and painted and real peacock feathers. She loved sparkles and peacock feathers so she thought she’d try introducing them a *little*. And after everyone had given some input, the teacher gave her his advice, VERY roughly paraphrased here:
“So here’s the thing… I do not like this style. These are just elements that do not speak to me personally, but I see that you like them, and you’re doing interesting things with them.
“My biggest critique is, I only merely *dislike* this piece. I want you to make me HATE it. Go crazy with the things that you like. Don’t hold back trying to make it palatable to people like me. Because I am NEVER going to like it. And if the audience does not like it, it should drive them crazy seeing how much YOU love it.”
Her portfolio was chock full of neon colors and glitter and rhinestones and splashes of peacock feathers and it was a delight. Our teacher despised every piece lol, but she got great marks and I think even won some awards. And more importantly, she was happy and proud of the results. Because she didn’t limit herself by trying to appeal to people who were never going to enjoy what she enjoyed.
Takeaway here: be as cringe as you want. Don’t limit yourself based on other ppl’s tastes. They’re not you, and you are incredible 💕
having a child has taught me that every toddler is completely justified in their frustrations and tantrums because learning how to do something you have literally never encountered or heard of before is insane. and being expected to be completely calm in the face of this constant barrage of overwhelming information is doubly insane.
i got charlie a sticker activity book and it occurred to me i have to TEACH someone how to unpeel stickers. it’s SKILL that requires DEXTERITY and FINE MOTOR ABILITY. i thought it was obvious that you have to curl the page a little bit to create a break in the cut so the sticker comes up.
obviously a fucking BABY wouldn’t know that because they have no background experience to inform their thought process. OBVIOUSLY. and OBVIOUSLY the LITERAL BABY wouldn’t get it right the first few times. it would OBVIOUSLY take practice. lots of it.
i hate this feeling. it’s so obvious. why are children treated so badly when they’re learning everything for the first fucking time. why do people treat children so horribly and expect so much. they’re brand new. why didn’t i get the same grace i give to my child? why did no one have patience for me? why, when it’s this easy?
So Mattel came out with different Barbie body types a couple years ago, right? There’s your normal body, but there’s also Curvy, Petite, and Tall now.
Around the same time, they came out with the Made to Move body, which has a ton more articulation than your normal Barbie.
Customizers love the Made to Move body, because hey, a lot more fun positions to put a doll in for photographing. But now Mattel has started making the Made to Move dolls with the additional body types from above. We’ve gotten a Curvy Made to Move doll so far, afaik.
This Queen Elizabeth doll, though? Is the first time there’s been a Petite Made to Move body released by Mattel. So customizers were buying it up not out of any care about Queen Elizabeth — but they were buying it to pop her head right off and use the new body for other dolls!
The thing i like the most about tumblr is learning tiny details about communities i would otherwise not even be aware of. thank you for this info
Casual reminder that The Washington Post is owned by Nash Holdings, which is controlled by good ol’ Jeffery Bezos.
Was going to keep this in the tags BUT I think it’s important people understand that sturgeon caviar is only a luxury in the first place because of colonization. Anishanabae and other Great Lakes area tribes (and I’m sure more I’m just speaking where I am from) have been fishing Sturgeon for literally thousands of years. Besides consuming the fish eggs and meat we also made glue from its bladder, bags from its skin and used the oil from the fish as well. Sturgeon is important to many of our tribes traditionally and spiritually. So much so we even have Clans in honor of the Sturgeon. Than European settler-colonizers showed up and like they decimated Buffalo populations to starve Natives they did similarly with Sturgeon. When they pushed our people onto reservations they also created laws and legislation to keep us from fishing and hunting in our own ancestral lands. Than they built fisheries and Damns, destroying habitats and overfishing sturgeon to near extinction.
a lot of people in the notes are saying “this is the opposite of what happened with Lobster” so I wanted to point out that no it is actually exactly what happened to lobster.
My 90yr old Irish Catholic grandpa doesn’t miss with my gender. He’s never gotten my name wrong, or my pronouns, never even faltered over it.
It’s all so natural too: son, big man, young man…
We’ve never talked about it. He’s the only one who hasn’t pushed for details. He just accepted it and carried on because it’s not a huge deal.
It’s so comforting.
My dear that’s called Alzheimer’s
I wasn’t going to respond to this, I looked at your blog. Your irrational hatred and bile directed towards trans people is palpable and pathetic. This was intended to upset me.
But I now have a chance to talk about who my grandfather is.
You see, I find it interesting that you claim the only way my 90yr old grandfather could possibly be so accepting is if he was dying of one of the most horrible diseases known to man, a condition which eats your brain from the inside out and turns you in an angry, scared shell of the child you once were while your family has to grieve you long before you’re dead.
You find it easier - and evidently prefer - to believe that to accept me, my grandfather must have Alzheimer’s rather than any other reason.
Why is that easier to believe than a man who lived through (not was born during, not was around for, lived through) the Second World War and the aftermath, seeing footage of the concentration camps and meeting refugees would be accepting?
A poor builder and a farmer who worked alongside queer men and deaf men and the few people of colour in Northern Ireland in the 1950s and was himself barred from many places of employment and education due to his religion?
This man, whose oldest son was born the year the British army began occupying his country, who lived through the Troubles and was automatically considered suspicious and dangerous through an incident of birth? A man who helped raise six children - most of them boys and therefore in great danger of the army turning their guns on them for playing kid-games - in a time of civil war where it didn’t seem to matter which side you were on, the bombs and shootings could get you either way? A man who once was taken hostage by the IRA?
My grandfather’s oldest son - my dad - was the first in his family to go to university and there he met and fell in love with a Protestant woman. This was before the Good Friday Agreement, when the civil war was still happening, and if my grandparents had a problem with it - they never let said to my mum.
(My grandpa and my mum don’t really get along, but that’s more to do with me being a premature baby and tensions over my survival and disagreements on how to look after me. My mum and my Nana? Thick as thieves.)
They certainly never let it slip to us when we came along because it wasn’t important anymore that we were something many people in Northern Ireland would have preferred to not exist. It didn’t matter.
He voted in the Good Friday Agreement in hopes of stopping the conflict. He spent a lot of time listening to me about the bullying I was facing for being - unbeknownst to me at the time - queer and disabled. He just told me that being happy was far more important.
Being trans? It does not matter. Of course it doesn’t matter to him because he’s seen worse things in the world.
He’s ninety years old. He’s still out on the farm, he’s still studying history, he’s still sharp as fuck. I’ve seen someone die of Alzheimer’s. I know every bit of it and it’s not him. Besides, I’ve not medically transitioned in anyway yet. He’s only seen me presenting fully masc for six days in person. Two years in total. If he had Alzheimer’s he’d be calling me by my deadname and using she/her.
And he’s not unusual. Outside of your echo chamber, most people are fine with trans people. Most people don’t care. Most people are accepting. They may not understand, they may not use the right words, but they’re accepting.
I do find it interesting that once again the TERF tactic is try and wrestle autonomy and self-control away from people who don’t follow your bigoted stances. Autistics must be being manipulated. Trans men are clearly confused little girls. Children obviously can’t understand their own minds and bodies.
My grandfather must have Alzheimer’s.
Of course my view of a world I’ve seen in a Tumblr textpost must be more correct than the reality everyone else lives in.