FN&KYS

Customer: FOREVER NOW AND KEEP YOURSELF SAFE

DMV: FUCK NASTY AND KILL YOURSELF

happy pride to them

Your body is your own. Body hair and facial hair do not become "unhygienic" or harm anyone, just because they belong to a woman instead of a man.

Every woman who doesn't do the hair removal demanded of her is participating in staking the feminist claim that women's bodies exist for ourselves, not to fulfill the aesthetic preferences of people with power over us.

I'm grateful to every woman I ever knew who showed me that it's possible to just stop removing body hair and (for many women in many situations) it's literally fine. No one in my life even comments on my pit hair or leg hair, except for a kid once in awhile, which gives me the chance to say things like "Most grownups grow hair there! Some grownups remove it, but I don't want to."

I'm also grateful to the transfeminists who taught me to see the gender role enforcement in the demand that women have no facial hair.

Even when the removal of certain hair feels necessary for safety from harassment or abuse, understanding that the stigma against female facial & body hair is misogynistic (and frequently specifically transmisogynistic and racist) can make it easier to identify the structural problem, instead of buying into the propaganda that there's something fundamentally wrong with your body if you grow this hair at all.

You have every right to decide what purely cosmetic work you will spend time, money, and planning on, and what isn't worth doing. Regardless of what you decide, you should have the right to live free of harassment, discrimination, and other forms of body policing. So should everyone else.

original image from the magazine:

And the bit where they’re HER roses? Almost a relief, but also sadder, as she will arrive at whatever event without them, or with them destroyed.

Do you think when the righteous anger and anxiety and annoyance fade, when she arrives at her destination- will her loved ones applaud her? Will she be proud? Will her hands shake? Will she walk home with company from then out, and for how long?

In this moment, she is provoked into anger. Anger is good- it appears strong. But look at his face. Would you put it past him to linger there after dark, in case she returns alone?

What story will HE tell, of ‘I was perfectly polite, but she didn’t even give me a chance- women like that, they’d swoon for a jerk in a heartbeat, but kind and flattering men like me?…”

my friend's 5 year old recently got a toy veterinary medicine set - it's super cool, like one of those mini play kitchens a lot of kids have, but it's set up to pretend to be a vet (it's this thing) - it has stuffed animals and things to weigh them, give them medicine, take x-rays, write on their charts, etc.

so this kid, who is five and to my knowledge has no experience in the administrative bureaucracy of modern healthcare, puts a stuffed pig named Piggy on the exam table. she pretends to draw blood from Piggy using a fake syringe, and the blood goes into a toy test tube vial that she calls "the resulter"

i'm playing with her, right, so i'm like, awesome, what are the results of Piggy's blood test? and she says "we have to send it to the scientists." so we send the vial to the scientists (put it in her bedroom) and when we get back to the vet playset i'm like awesome what did the scientists say? and she says they have not gotten back to us yet

so she rolls her eyes, exasperated, and says we have to call the scientists. she pretends to call them. apparently, they tell her that Piggy's blood test is "at the bottom of the list" and "we have to WAIT." she frowns. we wait a bit longer and call them back. they tell us it will be a while! she says we should go ask the scientists in person so we go back to her bedroom and she inquires at this imaginary lab, at which point the scientists yell at her and tell her now they will make us wait even longer!

keep in mind she is 100% directing this play. she is making all this up. she is fully in control of this game, and she has decided that what we are going to pretend is that we are dealing with this exhausting nonsense, not actually treating Piggy.

finally the blood tests come back. they are inconclusive. the scientists do not know what is wrong with Piggy. the little girl walks back to the stuffed pig on the exam table, sighs deeply, and says in a very serious voice "we can never help you."

i'm obsessed with this kid. when given complete control over a make believe scenario, instead of becoming the heroic rescuer administering effective cures, she is instead a beleaguered vet making multiple calls to an overworked lab only to be left unable to help her patient.