All you can do is the best you can do.

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

Most of us have a very human and natural fear of not being in control. We think we can ward off bad things by staying on top of stuff and making the right choices. We have a feeling of deserving what we get and getting what we deserve, especially if it's something good.

Thin people are heavily invested in the idea that they're thin because they're doing something right. And in contrast, fat people are fat because they're doing something wrong.

They think they know how they would feel in a fat body (or, in some cases, they have been fat and know how they felt). They think they would feel ugly and undesirable and miserable, they think (rightly) that they would be treated worse, and they need to believe that that could never actually happen to them. They need to feel like they've put in the effort and therefore don't deserve to be fat, and so they never will be. Fat people, on the other hand, have obviously messed up and deserve not only to be fat but to be scorned for it.

This mindset is by no means exclusive to issues of size and weight. People are out here believing in their heart that they could never become poor or homeless or sick or whatever. And sure, there's such a thing as thinking too much about the potential for travesty. We need to focus on other things besides the spectre of death to be present in life.

The ENTIRE THING i like about this pairing in the FIRST PLACE is that they're EQUALS rhrhaghasdgkhgarhgh

and like there's nothing wrong with people writing whatever they want with one hand down their pants or whatever, that's fine and i don't judge, but this was a comment on the thing i wrote! which like, really specifically was not that! so.

ok i'm normal now. promise. (no)

Oh drop the fic link, this sounds like my shit. I appreciate when someone is like hey, you know, you're an adult here, things aren't just happening to you you're also making choices.

But the biological determinism of sex roles strikes again....The one who puts it in is in control we all know this....it says so in the bible....

Sorry I'll stop being snarky. This is such a fandom thing, it's not unique to HR at all, and I never really found a good single word for it---something like infantilization, or vulnerability kink, or woobification---but it's this intense desire to turn a character into a hurt sink who is only ever wronged, and must be comforted and aided. (This is not just a fanfic thing: the masterclass on this in the literary world is A Little Life.)

(Sorry this next bit is such an aside from your post but I got going there)

It's really fascinating actually I'd love a psych / lit class on this entire nexus of tendencies. Because I think there's kind of a spectrum where you have like, woobification on one axis and then identification on the other. So as a super simple cut you get kind of a punnet square:

high identification / high woobification: hurt comfort, you get to imagine yourself as being this weak morally pure little waif receiving care

low identification / high woobification: whump, the fascination with pain and suffering in an object

high identification / low woobification: power fantasies, competence fantasies, being able to imagine yourself as this mensch that pain bounces off of

low identification / low woobification: I think this is mostly external forces that act on the story, like a villain you as the author don't identify with but also don't sympathize with

In this fandom people are often putting Shane deeeeep in that high/high corner. Less so here on tumblr for sure but I see a lot of it via twitter.

As for *why* Shane rather than Ilya (mostly)....well I do think a huge amount of it is just top/bottom stereotype stuff. But I also think people find Ilya harder to identify with because he's foreign, and even more avoidant than Shane, and Storrie portrays him with this coldness early on that makes it easy to project a lot of strength onto him, even though with access to his internal monologue we know that Ilya is grappling with *more* insecurity than Shane is.

But yeah, I agree, there's a lot of this kind of mapping that happens in fandoms-- not just in writing but in people's analysis and reactions to a show, they do a ton of mapping characters/archetypes/plots onto ideas they already have in their mind. And yeah, Shane is definitely pegged in a spot in that punnet square that I don't think Reid intended at all.

I think you've said elsewhere, and I've certainly thought, that actually Ilya is kind of Reid's woobie, but like. She's a pretty competent writer, so by that I mean he's her guy she likes to chew on. This doesn't mean she hates Shane! She made Shane a fantastic little bitchy guy who I love a lot, and I bet you anything the fandom would feel a lot differently if they'd found literally anyone but Hudson Williams to play him. Because Williams is beautiful, yes, and also has these beautiful wet eyes, yes. I do think he added a ton to the role, really added some nuance in some places, and I love his beautiful wet eyes and his perfectly transcendent pout. But. yeah. If they'd found someone who was less gorgeous I am certain people would have a very different read on the character.

The Baltic States have yet to receive acknowledgement for the horrors that happened here from ones that did this to us, let alone an apology.

The Baltic States have yet to receive acknowledgement for the horrors that happened here from ones that did this to us, let alone an apology.

LOT of thoughts about this thus far...

the (lack of) faces. ?????? rn i just don't get it, but i've already talked to people who viscerally despise it

WHY ARE THEY ALL WHITE IF YOU'RE AIMING FOR DIVERSITY ? pleeeease this is so basic. and i see nary a wrinkle!! where is age in this equation?

fascinating that the CI is pushing boundaries lately that even university museums are ignoring... & honestly, even if they're fumbling, I respect Bolton for it. i mean, i don't respect the lagerfeld retrospective, but between Superfine, Women Dressing Women, Camp...it's a good trend.

"we're gonna reuse the mannequins in future exhibits" ok hmm. some of them, sure. (the sinead burke one is already a reuse from Women Dressing Women.) On the other hand, the white-corset one?? HYPER-specific body shape there. And the larger ones...sure, they're realistic, but the ideal museum mannequin is one that is not only specific to an era's silhouette but also able to be used for multiple garments, styles, etc. These really can't be used for anything but 21st c. stretch clothing. (the bust isn't even uplifted for a bra, for ex.) Very limiting. I don't see these being used for historical dress at all :( (Ideally, they would make mannequins that have thinner bodies & thicker necks, arms, etc. so that you could pad out the torso to exactly what is needed and the external bits would match in thickness!)

i LOVE seeing the chiuri suit on a fat mannequin! solid yay. would love if they have more info about any 1940s uses on larger bodies, since that's the New Look Bar Suit.

Also excited to see michaela stark stuff!

I am really curious what the narrative here is going to be, esp. as there seem to be different sections - "pregnant body," "corpulent body" etc. How is that going to relate to "Costume Art" ?????

Addendum to prev: One big issue I had with Sleeping Beauties was that the main exh theme seemed very disconnected to most of what was actually in the exh. I am...sensing that that might happen again.

What do you mean, most mannequins are a size 2? I know that sizes aren't standardized, but most fashion mannequins are a 24" waist - size 0. The kyoto mannequins are between 20" and 0", depending. (waist cutouts.) What are you talking about, Bolton?? what am i missing? oh, you know what, i bet it's the bust size

i hope they asked emma mcclendon (who has published abt mannequins & diversity and did the 2017-18 body exhibition at MFIT) to consult.

“All the Ba-zooms Go”: Industry Ideals and the Aesthetics of Size in Dress Collections (2024), an article in Dress that specifically deals with the Costume Institute and Diana Vreeland's curatorial legacy re: body ideals and fatphobia

a chapter in Fashion’s Missing Masses: The representation of marginalized populations in collections and exhibitions of dress (2026) on the presence of plus-size clothing in museum collections in the US as well as the fatphobia in curation. this one opens with a discussion of the plus-size mannequin in Women Dressing Women

both are derived from my MA thesis, Fat By The Wayside: Size Exclusion in Collections and Exhibitions of Dress (2022) which includes several hundred pages of interviews with museum professionals about this topic & their experiences. I wrote it 5-6 years ago and it got less editing so it's a little rougher, but hey, it's free to read!

Enjoy.

For example, a couple years ago, while learning Spanish, I encountered the word for a store, "la tienda." I thought "huh, that's a lot like tener (tiene) - the word for store in Spanish literally corresponds to 'to have/keep'. How interesting!"

"I wrote a eulogy for my best friend last week. Then I read it to him. At the pub. On a Tuesday."

He was alive, holding a pint, looking at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I have.

I'm Mick. I'm 70. The man across the table was Barry. Seventy-two. Best mate for 46 years. Met on a building site in 1979. He dropped a plank on my foot. I called him something unrepeatable. He bought me a pint after the shift. Haven't gone a week without talking since.

Three months ago we went to a funeral. Bloke we'd worked with. Cancer. The eulogies were beautiful - people saying what he meant to them, things they'd clearly never said to his face. And all I could think was, he can't hear any of this.

Every beautiful sentence. Every "he changed my life." Said to a room of crying people and a box of wood.

I turned to Barry. Whispered, "What a waste."

Drove home. Couldn't sleep. Because I realised, if Barry died tomorrow, I'd stand up and say extraordinary things about this man. Things I've never said in 46 years. And he'd be in the box, missing all of it.

So I wrote them down. Took a week. Harder than expected - not finding the words, but admitting I had them.

Rang him. "Tuesday. The Crown. Need to read you something."

"Have you joined a book club?"

"Just come."

Same corner table. Pint of bitter. Crisps. I pulled out the paper. He saw my hands shake.

"Mick. What's this?"

"Your eulogy. I'm reading it now because I'm not wasting it on a day you can't hear it."

"Have you gone mad?"

"Probably. Shut up and listen."

I read it. In a pub. To a man very much alive and very much uncomfortable.

I told him about the plank and how it was the best injury of my life. About the night he drove forty minutes in rain to help change a tyre. About how he rang every day for three months after my divorce and never once asked "Are you alright?" - just talked about football and weather, because he knew I didn't need a question. I needed a voice.

I told him he was the funniest man I'd ever known and his jokes were terrible and both things were true. That he'd been a better father than he thinks. That his wife's a saint and he knows it. That I'd have been a worse man without him.

He didn't look at me. Stared at his pint. Jaw tight. Doing that thing men do when the feelings arrive and they'd rather swallow glass than show it.

When I finished, long silence. Then he picked up his pint, took a sip, and said,

"You're paying for the next round. And the one after."

That was his answer. Perfect. Because Barry doesn't say "I love you too." He says "you're buying."

But in the car park, he hugged me. Not the quick back-pat. A real one. Thirty seconds. Neither let go first.

And he said quietly into my shoulder, "Don't read that again at the real one. I want new material."

Who would you write a eulogy for - while they're still here?

Don't wait. The flowers can't hear. The box doesn't laugh. Say it now. At the pub. Over a bad cup of tea. You'll feel ridiculous.

They'll look uncomfortable. It'll be the most important thing you've ever done.

Read them the speech while they can still hug you in the car park.”

Rain

by Peter Everwine (1930-2018), Published 2008