Actor/Singer/Nerd

(source)

Alternative US National Park Service Twitter is giving us LIFE. 

an artist draws a piece about how women alone don’t have to be sad that they’re alone, they should relish in it, which i thank him for giving me permission to do. the result of his work is half-nude ladies draped like linens over their couches, flashes of thigh gaps and open lips, breasts swelling pleasantly, a yawn and a stretch that shows off her hipbones. 

the only evidence i have that i’m normal is considered comedy. our reality is comedy. lying in bed under three covers, bra off but sweater on, laptop positioned directly under lack of a chin: that gets a laugh. in the movies, the quirky girl in a cute-ugly but somehow flattering pajama set gets caught at the supermarket and it’s a nice romantic scene where we find out how awkward it is for her to exist without makeup, without her best effort to please sexually. she sees her boss or her cute friend or whatever else makes us laugh and cringe and the next time we put on “real clothes” before we go out shopping.

the real world exists somewhere outside the picture of women. we come home and strip off our bras, but instead of that being a still image of a delicate female stepping away nude, it’s a moment of our peacefulness. the narrative so often stops here, us heading our improbably slim legs to the bedroom. but instead our breasts don’t always hang evenly, instead some of us do not have breasts, instead we swipe a hand over our tired faces and smear our makeup but are too lazy to take it off. our bodies crack and crunch and do not stretch like a cat but instead in weird directions, we rush out our breath and slouch and barely keep our eyes open. we lie with our thighs touching and our stomachs hanging because it’s comfortable. we sling ourselves undainty over whatever will support our weight. our showers consist equally of staring into the void as of unflattering angles while we wash; our bodies never come pre-shaved and for some reason our underarm hair is really persistent or our leg hair is dark and shows even after shaving or maybe both. our sleepovers mostly feature netflix and wine, getting food on our faces, eating until our stomachs make round pleased hills, talking trash and swearing up storms more than we paint our nails. we don’t go to the store in cute-ugly clothes, we go because we forgot to buy tampons or we dropped all our rice on the ground or because we’re human and we need supplies to survive. 

there is a very strange body-positive rule where somehow, we always end up under the slogan “beautiful.” our loneliness, our adulthood, our moments where were are not even being judged - i should remind you that those are beautiful too. but the truth is that you don’t need to be beautiful. and these moments in particular, that belong to you: they’re yours, they don’t need to be told that they exist in some plane of desirability. who cares if they’re ugly, if they’re truly self-serving and unflattering and indelicate. when you are home, you are finally human, returned to skin that itches in awkward places and ugly habits and it’s okay. they won’t show you a version of that without laughing about it, but we are real, we don’t keep ourselves perfect in even our peaceful moments. it’s okay. i know you might be worried what happens if you get a partner or roommate and they learn you live this way, that you’re messy and forget to brush your teeth sometimes and get food all over the place when you eat and i’m telling you: you’re not unusual. you’re just human, and these moments aren’t somehow shameful. they’re not untouchable and unspeakable because they’re not pretty. because instead they’re human.

asking a feminist to quickly summarize everything they’ve ever said on the topic of feminism because you’re “thinking of becoming a feminist” is belittling and entitled.

it undermines the fact that I deliberately publish my thoughts on social media to provide informed insight into my perspectives on feminism on a platform that encourages informed, intelligent discussion.

not to mention it’s as offensively reductionist as the ‘meninists’ who comment ‘NAME ONE SINGLE RIGHT MEN HAVE THAT WOMEN DONT!!!1’ ignoring the fact that ten seconds of research would demonstrate that the need for feminism is way beyond government enforced laws and regulations and extends to a much broader concept of cultural treatment and perception based on a history of trivializing and marginalizing the strength and capabilities of women and girls.

you have to put in the leg work of curiosity-based learning and come back to me with informed, research based inquiries.

this question is especially insulting if you retort with a defensive comment that could basically translate to ‘your unwillingness to reduce 25 years of experience to a few sentences shows that you’re not a true feminist, and I will therefore be joining the anti-feminist club because you were sort of rude to me when I ask a broad strokes question that I was too lazy to realize you have answered 200+ times before.’

I DO want to help educate people on the need for feminism in our current culture. That’s literally why I publish my thoughts on Instagram, Twitter, and tumblr on a DAILY BASIS.

I DO want to have important and intelligent conversations about new perspectives in feminism and the evolution of the movement in the 21st century.

I DO want feminism to feel like a club that everyone is invited to, provided we check our privileges at the door and understand whose voices are most relevant in which discussions.

What I DON’T want is to be insulted, belittled, or otherwise harassed for not dropping whatever I’m doing to regurgitate opinions I’ve expressed hundreds of times to someone who feels entitled to a synopsis of my life’s passion without having done a shred of personal investigation.

Like for fucks sake you are asking me these questions on AN INTERNET MACHINE! Literally a world of knowledge at your actual fingertips.

would you ask JK Rowling ‘I’m thinking of becoming a Harry Potter fan, what are the books about?’

would you ask a mechanic 'I’m thinking of building a car from scratch, how do you do it?’

would you ask MLK 'I heard you had a dream, what was it?’

(and if you would- I guess you have bigger entitlement issues than I give you credit for)

I’m not saying this to sound rude, I’m saying this because you have an incredible opportunity to become involved in a community of love, support, equality, and empowerment, and I don’t want to take that away from you by reducing the meaning of this community to a paragraph or two in the comments section on a blog post somewhere.

I keep hearing about how influencial this Ghostbusters remake is, and I keep not wanting to see it becase it’s a remake. I hate remakes, they do nothing but play off of the original movie, and as a movie goer I’m insulted they remade Ghostbusters to begin with. C'mon, the sequel was literally the first movie a second time, and as far as I can tell from the trailers, the new Ghostbusters is choke full of 80’s style jokes and humour that I don’t care for because that shit isn’t funny or interesting to me.