Reader and a writer, lover and a fighter.

Porn bots don’t give a fuck about my content or who I am, but this terf actually scrolled through my blog and thought, “yes, this is a person whose opinions I’d like to see more of.” It makes me feel super fucking gross and that I’m probably not doing enough to support trans women.

So just for the record: trans women are women. The existence of trans women does not detract from my womanhood or the womanhood of anybody else. This is not a blog for people who believe otherwise. Take your transphobia elsewhere.

yes

however we recently got her a new ceramic fountain that better suits her aesthetic

and her own fainting couch

but she still prefers a good lap whenever possible

Gender reveal parties, and big planned reveals, literally were not a thing ten, fifteen years ago. Don’t let anyone pull that “it’s a tradition!” crap on you, youngsters. They’re LYING. People would either get the ultrasound or not to find out about the genitals, and tell people or not. That was that.

YOU GUYS!

WAY TO GO THIS IS TOTALLY ME

“It’s 2019. Can we all now please stop saying “climate change” and instead call it what it is: climate breakdown, climate crisis, climate emergency, ecological breakdown, ecological crisis and ecological emergency? #ClimateBreakdown #EcologicalBreakdown”

Huge swathes of the Arctic on fire, ‘unprecedented’ satellite images show

Wonder Woman greeting T’Challa with the Wakanda Forever salute, but forgetting what happens when she clashes her gauntlets like that

Accidentally blowing him through three walls, a car, and M’Baku

“Wakanda Forever…”

For reference:

3a:

4c:

Ravenclaw: smart, curious, analytical

Slytherin: enterprising, clever, creative

By Steven McIntosh (Entertainment reporter)

“Go to Google Images right now,” says photographer Mihaela Noroc, “and search ‘beautiful women’.”

I do as she tells me. Millions of results come back.

“What do you see?” she asks. “Very sexualised images, right?”

Yes. Many of the women in the top pictures are wearing high heels and revealing clothes, and most fit into the same physical mould - young, slim, blonde, perfect skin.

“So beauty all the time is like that,” Mihaela says. “Objectifying women, treating them in a very sexualised way, which is unfortunate.

“Women are not like that. We have our stories, our struggles, our power, but we just need to be represented, because young women, they see only images like this every day, so they need to have more confidence that they can look the way they look and be considered beautiful.

“But,” she adds, “Google is us, because we are all influencing these images.”

Mihaela has just released her first photography book, Atlas of Beauty, which features 500 of her own portraits of women.

The Romanian photographer’s definition of beauty, however, appears to be that there is no definition. The women are a variety of ages, professions and backgrounds.

“People are interested in my pictures because they portray people around us, everyday people around the street,” Mihaela explains.

“Usually when we talk about beauty and women, we have this very high, unachievable way of portraying them.

“So my pictures are very natural and simple. And this is, weirdly, a surprise. Because usually we are not seen like that.”

Each of the book’s 500 portraits has a caption with information about where it was taken, and, in many cases, the subject.

The locations are varied, to put it mildly. They include Nepal, Tibet, Ethiopia, Italy, North Korea, Germany, Mexico, India, Afghanistan, the UK, the US, and the Amazon rainforest.

Some locations, however, proved more problematic than others.

“I approach women I want to photograph on the street. I explain what my project is about. Sometimes I get yes as an answer, sometimes I get no, that really depends on the country I’m in,” she explains.

“When you go to a more conservative society, a woman is going to have a lot of pressure from society to be a certain way, and her day-to-day life is carefully watched by somebody else.

“So she’s not going to accept being photographed very easily, maybe she’s going to need permission from the male part of her family.

“In other parts of the world they are extremely careful because there might be issues concerning their safety, like in Colombia. Because they had Pablo Escobar and the mafia for so many years.

“So they say ‘OK, so you’re going to take my picture but I’m probably going to be kidnapped after that because you’re part of the mafia and you’re not who you’re saying you are’.”

She adds: “If somebody were to start this project just with men, it would be much easier, because they don’t have to ask permission from their wives, sisters or mothers.”

Mihaela says she occasionally puts pictures through Photoshop, but not for the reasons you might think.

“When you take a picture, it’s usually raw, and that means it’s very blank, like a painting, you don’t have the colours you had in the reality.

“So I try to make it as vibrant and colourful as it was in the original place. But I’m not making anyone skinnier or anything like that, never, because that’s very painful.

“Because I also suffered as a woman growing up from all kinds of difficulties, I wanted to be skinnier, look a certain way, and that was also related to the fake images I saw in day-to-day life.”

It’s safe to say Mihaela’s photography book is quite different tonally to, say, Kim Kardashian’s 2015 book of selfies.

“These days, the bloggers, the famous people of our planet have set this unachievable and fake beauty standard, and it’s very difficult for us as women to relate to that,” she says.

“Kim Kardashian has 100 million followers on her Instagram page and I have 200,000, so imagine the difference - it’s astonishing. But slowly, slowly, I think the message of natural and simple beauty will be spread around the world.”

So what’s the best piece of advice Mihaela could give to anyone keen to get into photography? Buy a good quality camera? Learn about lenses and angles?

Not exactly.

“Buy good shoes,” she laughs, “because you’re going to walk and explore a lot.”

Some examples:

Confirming plans by asking “are you still on for tomorrow?” which gives people a chance to say they don’t want to now for any reason

Letting people know when I’ve had even minor potentially contagious illness so they can decide whether they want to spend time with me, and if so, if they want to do things like share a glass of water or other things we’d usually do. And if I didn’t know I was contagious, giving them a heads up as soon as I do find out that they’ve been in contact with illness. 

If I want to send social media friend requests, contacting the person the way I would usually speak to them to say that it’s totally fine to reject my request if that social media isn’t one they want to communicate with me on.

Using the phrase “it’s fine if not” when I ask for a favour, or to hang out, or anything else. 

Not assuming that just because something was fine repeatedly before, like giving me a lift, or me dropping in on them unplanned, that I have blanket permission, and always checking that it’s okay this time too.