That girl with the Red Lips...

through the glass

Hollow Book Jewelry Boxes

Maybe you'll never meet a very specific special someone.

But that's okay.

In five or ten or fifteen years you may not wake up next to a spouse or lover but you'll live somewhere you love in a home you've made your own. You'll like your job and have interests and hobbies you pursue. You'll have friendships filled with love and loyalty. A family you've made from different, chosen relationships that matter for all sorts of reasons.

Romance is not the only thing of worth in life. Its not inherently better than family or friends. Romance is sort of glorified in society and media but its just another type of relationship with no more inherent worth than family or friendships. The important relationships are those you choose to value as important.

So, yes, maybe in the future you won't be in love.

But. by this logic we’d also need to stop reblogging TS Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Shakespeare quotes. Virginia Woolf wrote anti-semetic things in her private journals, too. If you only want to read classic poets who liked Jews and black people, that’s fine, but like. good luck? Sylvia Plath isn’t an exception.

idk. Tumblr’s attitude of “consume nothing problematic” just doesn’t work if you’re part of a group that most culture-creators over the last few centuries have hated by default. For people actually in those groups, it’s not like the only two choices are 1) worship authors who hate you or 2) completely cut the majority of literature out of your life. You learn to read critically and acknowledge flaws where you find them.

anyway, as a Jewish woman, I would much rather see a version of this post that said “please read Sylvia Plath poetry critically because she’s anti black and antisemetic” than just “stop reblogging Sylvia Plath poetry.”

We should be telling people instead, “Be critical as you read this person’s work. They held bigoted views. Understand how that is reflected in their work, and be mindful of it. Be critical, be thoughtful”