My grandmother is a bitter old crab with nothing good to say about anything, but she does have a few good stories. She confronted the woman my grandfather had been cheating on her with - this other woman had no idea he was married, and was righteously angry.
The two of them schemed together. My grandfather’s mistress drove her convertible to the construction site where he was working. As he approached the car, she said, “Why didn’t you tell me you were married?”
“Married?! I’m not married!” he said.
My grandmother sat up in the back seat, where she’d been lying down, and said, “You won’t be for much longer.”
reminder that 30 isn’t old, it’s very normal to not accomplish everything in your 20s, and that it is never too late to learn that thing you’ve always wanted to learn. you’re always growing. that’s a good thing.
Gee i dunno, maybe the way they had her spread her legs and make an o-face???
She has to pose, he gets to play
Asking “what’s sexual about this” is almost insidous. Sure, she’s not naked and she’s not performing any sexual acts, but that’s not what sexualization necessarily means. The girl-child is looking longinly,
languishingly into the camera. She has her legs in a short dress spread, her lips separated, and very much make-up making her look older. She is passive, for the camera/viewer, while the boy is active, joking, playing, relaxed and as a child, respected as a child. I’m sure someone might say, “but that’s you sexualizing her, with your gaze” but come on, who are we kidding here? We know the industry sexualizes young girls, we know this isn’t a coinscidence. We know this is the pattern, the model for woman according to the male gaze or woman performing for the male gaze, and we know she is 13 and that everyone knows she is. And we know this destroys girls.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS
Protect Millie Bobby Brown.
(Also, as the grown-ups, that’s our job - not hers).
The stories of women in my family who were forced into lives they didn’t want and didn’t utilize their passions breaks my heart. My grandma wanted to be a journalist and write about the injustices she saw inflicted on disabled ppl while she was volunteering at a state run institution as a teen. Her father decided that she was “too fat and stupid” for college and forced her to get married at 17 or else he’d make her homeless. As a kid she told me that she wished people believed that she had meaningful opinions on events around her. One of my great grandmothers wanted to be an artist but was pressured into marrying a man who beat her. She stayed up late each night when her children were in bed writing poetry and pasting it over elaborate collages she mad herself. We still have stacks of these notebooks she created but was never allowed to do anything with. My mother wanted to be an operatic singer and was considered a musical prodigy in her town because she taught herself three seperate instruments by 13. When she was 18 she met my then 30 year old father who emotionally manipulated her into giving up her dreams to start a family with him. As a kid I would hear her up at night playing the violin or doing vocal exercises until she became too depressed to practice anymore. Like idk y’all there’s a quiet type of violence in the way women’s talents are devalued and brushed aside in favor of bullying them into “traditional” roles that ultimately don’t fulfill what they wanted for their lives. We’ve lost so much art, music, writing, science, and happiness to misogyny.
me: okay this summer I will study the languages I want, I will download online grammar and vocabulary books, I will look for online sources and actually open the duolingo app
