LITERACY & NUMERACY

Be selective in your battles. Sometimes peace is better than being right.

the texture, the texture, the texture !

Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.

In relationships, it’s easy to sit around telling each other how great we are, but it can escalate things. Especially in romantic relationships, it creates these expectations around commitment and priorities and how we plan to treat the other person. There’s this period at the beginning, when it’s first emotionally and physically intimate, where you have to take care, because there’s a dopamine hit every time you receive validation from the other person. You might mistake the physiological response for love, but it’s an addiction like so many others. Being in love changes your brain, and it’s an immense undertaking. 

I’m really into this photo. Obviously, this woman has the proverbial balls to proclaim her love for a part of her body that too many women deride and criticize. I would be seriously challenged to put that word on my upper thigh for life. This tattoo is a reference to Beyoncé’s 2013 song ***Flawless, where she confronts beauty standards and the overwhelming pressure, abetted by social media, to look good every moment of the day. The phrase, ‘I woke up like dis,’ has been spoofed one million times since she produced the song, becoming a cultural touchstone for women of my generation. It’s important that our pop stars talk about this (although it can be hard to take from Beyoncé, who curates an impeccably beautiful image for her face, body, and personal style). I have the impression that this tattoo adorns the body of a woman who already subverts mainstream conventions for beauty or style. The confidence and irreverence in the design and placement of this tattoo is unbearably sexy. I love it.