Ayl | anka Ray

Which makes it such an amazing moment when she opens up with Colin. When she reveals what she desires, and when he responds with 'If you want this, I'll give it to you'. So in that scene, when she's heartbroken and sad, after she has written of her own humiliation in Lady Whistledown to circulate amongst the ton, adding her own name to her list of bullies, when she thinks she is well and firmly on the shelf, and Colin comes to check on her, and he won't allow her to think badly of herself, and he even goes so far as to bribe her maid to have a moment with her, she opens her heart up enough to ask him for what she wants.

And that is beautiful. It deserves props and recognition. To ask for what we want as women is radical, and I'm frankly sick and tired of people thinking she's 'pathetic' for it. Penelope is brave in this scene. She is brave and vulnerable and Colin is there to tell her that is okay. That it should be rewarded. That he will catch her and he is there and she is right to trust him. He is the safety net as she tumbles and steps into the unknown.

Penelope Featherington looked the man that she loves in the eye, and she asked him to kiss her. How many of us would have the iron spine necessary for that? Sure, maybe she thinks she's hit rock bottom, but she could have swallowed her truth as she so often did. She chose not to. Penelope Featherington, who only ever voiced her opinions on a page, anonymously, stood before him with nothing to protect her heart, bare-faced, and told Colin Bridgerton she wanted him to kiss her. That she wanted to be loved.

And he did. He did and it was lovely. It was a fantastic kiss, and in that moment, you can tell that she *was* loved. Is loved. He held her like she was starlight, precious, delicately grasping her chin, brushing her cheek; he pecked her once and then went in for more. That kiss had desire and longing and tenderness in it. It was gentle and wholehearted. It was them learning each other, the both of them flaying away another layer for the other to keep. Penelope asked him for what she wanted and she got it. And it was ultimately the catalyst for all her desires to come to fruition.

I feel like we as women are told we must be passive so often: don't be too loud, don't ask them out, don't look 'desperate'. But fuck that: Penelope is an active participant in her love story. She asks Colin for what she wants and he provides it for her eagerly. That kiss made him realize that what he felt for her was far more than just friendship, and it started with 'Would you kiss me, Colin?' and ended with him outrunning HORSES to catch up with Penelope so he could, on his knees, profess how much he wants her and how he can't stop dreaming of their kiss. She toppled that first domino. May we all be so courageous. May we all be so bold. May we all be so loved.

The intention:

The thing I think is maybe happening which I have no idea how to check or prevent:

It's the thousands of followers who react to your secretly taken videos of noble good deeds with encouragement. It's them feeling cheered up, day made, hearts filled with warmth by your brazen voyeurism.

It's scrolling past a Tumblr post of a reddit post of a Twitter screenshot of a father and daughter sharing an intimate, family moment, oblivious to the tweeter taking a photo of them.

It's minding your business at the grocery store, hearing a weird noise, and realizing some teens are filming a tiktok dance and either did not notice or did not care that you are in the shot.

It's walking home with a mask on because every single condo and floor apartment in your neighborhood has Ring and you don't know what that means for you yet.

It's thinking about talking to a PR person just in case your recurring nightmare of your mental breakdown in the parking lot suddenly going viral comes true, hoping against hope a professional knows the magic set of words that will mitigate the harassment, stop you from losing your job.

It's that reddit post of the Sikh woman who found her and her mustache on the frontpage, forced to turn public humiliation into a teaching moment. It's some jackass redditor posting a couples photo, ostensibly to mock that his fly was down yet 70% of the comments target his girlfriend's appearance. It's seeing a top reddit pic with a headline demonizing a person in it months after you saw this same pic taken down after mods discovered op was lying. It's a lot of reddit.

It's wondering how many times your face has been posted online and if it was in a positive context at least.

Living in a multi-generational household in theory ensures that there will always be someone else to hold the baby or watch the younger kids while Mum and Dad have a nap, or to cook dinner and help clean the house while Mum and Dad hold the baby. This has been a fundamental part of human parenting for long enough that scientists believe it could be the reason why human women so consistently outlive our fertility.

Like, for female chimps menopause typically signals the end of life— you’re no longer able to reproduce, so evolution is dropping you from the team— but human women can expect to live roughly third to fully half of their lives unable to reproduce, and could expect that even before modern medicine. And the best theory we have to explain this is that it was just that beneficial to have a bunch of elderly women hanging around who weren’t preoccupied with any children of their own, that their usefulness in looking after the young kids outweighed the cost of having to support them in old age. Caring for children was never intended to be a two person job.

Equally, it used to be way more accepted and common to just chuck your kids out of the house for a few hours whenever you needed a break from them. The invention and popularisation of Huge Metal Death Machines for whom 30 miles an hour is considered slow has greatly increased the risk of children playing in the street. Plus we’re also way more conscious of the existence of child predators and kidnappers nowadays, though that’s largely paranoia based around a few rare but high profile cases.

And children have become much more high maintenance, while at the same time an increased awareness of the impact of childhood on adult mental health has made everyone significantly more aware of all the ways they could be screwing them up. Parents are expected to be much more personally involved in their child’s education than they were in the past (which I’m not saying is an inherently bad thing, but does add to the stress) and the idea of a typical childhood education now involves a much wider range of topics than it did before. It’s not just a matter of keeping them alive— you also have to be prepared to help them learn nuclear physics if it comes down to it.

I mean, look at all the posts on Tumblr that were shaming parents for complaining about home education during the pandemic.

“If you didn’t want to spend time with your kids, why did you have them?”

“If you weren’t prepared to maintain a full-time job while simultaneously being a full-time teacher/classroom assistant, while also carrying out your usual duties as a parent, while also presumably finding time to eat and sleep when you have a minute, and do it all while living through a hideously traumatic experience with a smile on your face and no complaints ever, then why did you become a parent?”