A Cosplaying Bunny

Happy Super Tutu Day, everyone! 🤍

To celebrate Tuesday, the 22nd, I’m giving away free fanmade merch, including jacket grades of my own fantasy enamel pins (both variants!) and a jumbo vinyl sticker ~

Please see below Read More line for rules and details on how to enter.

🦢🩰🦢🩰🦢🩰🦢🩰🦢🩰🦢🩰🦢🩰🦢🩰🦢

Because it always blew my mind, as a kid, that adults talked about summer break like we children were the ones who got spoiled by having so much time off. And now, as an adult, I don’t understand where exactly the brainwashing set in for those adults to think that the children who got time off are the ones spoiled instead of thinking how severely fucked up it is that adults barely get any time off?

I just did the math, because I can, on how many additional free days kids actually get. And by “additional” I mean that I discounted every weekend and every national holiday from this equation, even when they were in the middle of the school break they were subtracted from the days off here.

In the year 2023, a pupil in my state has 56 days off.

And, considering I also did go to college, I also did the math for college students, because I know college students have way more free time than high schoolers.

In the year 2023, a college student in my state has 114 days off.

What really fucks me up about this is that this is how we’re building people up. Kids go to school, they have 56 days off in the year with a month long break during summer, then they graduate and go to college and then they get 114 days off with a three months break over summer.

And then they’re dumped into work life and it’s like “here, you have 25 to 30 vacation days, depending on the job you have, use them wisely”.

H… How are human being supposed to healthily adjust to that? I don’t understand how that’s not supposed to completely fuck you over. You go to school for 9 to 13 years, depending on your age and what school model you visited, and if you start working right away, your free time gets cut in half.

But if you actually go to college after, first your free time doubles for 3 to 5 or more years and then it gets cut into a fourth over night?

Humans are creatures of habit. You adjust to these things, your body adjusts to getting that free time to heal itself, to regenerate. And school and university is where you “just” learn. Work is where you actually have to, well, work. But here, this is where it’s no longer deemed important that people have time to themselves…?

The suddenness and the severity of it is just extremely fucked up.

GF: we could just…pretend and make noises by the wall–

- the cashier scanning your groceries is not being careless or bad at her job, this store times the cashiers so she is clearly trying to stay on time and not get in trouble. This blew their minds that someone would be timed at a "no skill" job (their words not mine)

- the drive thru employee is not trying to be rude or annoying by greeting you too soon: they are required to greet you within a few seconds of your car setting off the sensor.

- the employees at this retail store are not trying to be pushy: they are required to greet you within a few seconds of you entering the store

- the cashier is required to ask you every single question they ask. And they hate it more than you do.

- the cashier is not dumb or "doesn't know how to X" because they had to call a manager for it. Every place I've worked for the past 5 years has been rolling back what employees are authorized to do, and they HAVE to call a manager. They know exactly how to do the thing, they are not allowed to and the computer likely will require a managers code to unlock that function. This confused them.

- the cashier knows the line is long, you don't need to tell them that. If they could call up another cashier they would have already.

- and a more work/life balance related one: my dad scheduled a family thing and assumed i could get the time off. What shocked him was that 1. It wasn't paid time off, and 2. It was denied, so I couldn't come til after work and thus was late. He has worked a job with generous PTO and accrued vacation days that schedules 6 months ahead for the past nearly 30 years. He absolutely was horrified to find out that I have to ask permission for unpaid time off and still couldn't be approved.

- funny followup to my dad's shock: I had been at my most recent job nearly a year and he was asking why they haven't promoted me yet. I was thrown off because why would they. He apparently assumed that since i 1. Showed up on time/early to every shift. 2. Had received positive verbal feedback wrt my performance from managers. And 3. Hadn't quit. That they would automatically start to move me up the ladder. It hurt my heart to shatter his wholesome view of how workplaces work now.

I feel like much of this is common knowledge for all of us, and yet my parents and many customers who haven't worked in the service industry in the past 10-20 years have no idea how this stuff works now.

Her house is hers. She bought it and furnished it with money she made in her own job. In STEM, in politics, in healthcare, in fashion, in academy, in customer service. Her credit card is in her name (women in the US couldn’t have their own regardless of marital status until 1974). And it’s all pink and fashionable because femininity and badassness aren’t mutually exclusive. No matter who you are, you can be anything.

That’s why Barbie’s slogan is “you can be anything”. Teaching these ideals to little girls is why Barbie was created. Empowering women and empowering femininity is the original meaning of the Barbie doll. It’s not that you have to be all this to be a woman, but if you are all or some of this, you too are awesome.

And somehow pop culture deliberately changed that narrative. Sexualised, bimbofied, and villainised her, when she actually isn’t responsible for the impossible beauty standards — people are, she’s just a stylised, not-to-scale toy like most others.

Men are frothing because he’s just Ken and I guess they were expecting her to be just Barbie, but that’s exactly what Ken is. Canonically. A badass woman’s himbo boyfriend.