YingleBells

like, look at every single barbie and you'll find a lot of extremely feminine women. yes, they win nobel prizes for literature and they're scientists and they have a whole range of skills. but they're all also conventionally attractive and feminine, for the most part -- excluding that one line about "you're a physicist, do you want some pants?" (very odd, bc it's not as if scientifically inclined women cannot also be effeminate, but that's a whole other point i'm not going to get into right now).

the only one who is not stunning, who is not put together, is weird barbie. and despite her status as part of the socially established higher class via being a barbie instead of a ken, she is still ostracized, because her version of being a barbie is not what is expected of the group. she does not comply with the guidelines and rules and structure of femininity. sure, she has a dream house, but it's away from everyone else. sure, she's a barbie, but everyone calls her weird and stays away from her, and she's a sort of old wives' tale about what could go wrong.

while she may receive some benefits of being a barbie, i.e. a woman, in this hierarchical structure, she does not receive all or even most of them -- because she performs it incorrectly. (aside: i wish they hadn't cleaned her up and made her into an attempt at hot alt pink fashion toward the end. when she's more put together, she loses a lot of what makes her special, i think.)

allan fills a similar niche, in that he is neither allowed a place within the power structure when the barbies are in control nor when the kens are. he is a man, as far as we know, but he is not a ken. and because he is not performing his identity in the ken-approved way, he does not reap the benefits when they take over. he continues to exist as lesser, and aligns himself with the barbies.

Also, my mother pledged that she would be a better parent than her mother, and she was. And she taught me that, and I've been a better parent than her, and I expect that if my children decide to procreate, they'll probably fuck up less than I did, too.

I think it vastly amusing that the generation that dedicates so much energy to social norms and appearances is so fucking rude though. Like seriously. But my idea of rude and my parents' idea of rude are just different on fundamental levels and rudeness is VERY subjective.

[image ID: a screenshot of the notes on this post, featuring several people indicating they want to know more. End ID.]

OKAY SO. You know how we talk about how one way fast fashion has made itself “necessary” is that the clothing looks like shit and feels horrible after just a few washes?

Let. Me. Tell. You. Something.

Laundry stripping is a process where you load your laundry into a tub or bin (I’ve been using my bathtub) with warm water, half a cup of borax, half a cup of washing soda, and half a cup of laundry soap (not detergent, SOAP, there’s a chemical difference). Leave it there for at least eight hours. I’ve been going for 12-24.

What you will come back to is a tub full of nearly-opaque black-gray-brown water that absolutely REEKS. This is normal. You are looking at (and smelling) hard water buildup, body sweat and oils that were embedded in the fabric, dead skin, and just regular grime.

Wring out your clothes. Throw them in the washer. (I like to do a spin-only cycle before going any further, because I have one of those washers that determines by weight how much water any given load needs.) Wash as usual.

You will notice I didn’t suggest any further pretreatment, and that’s because 1) you don’t want to layer too many chemicals on top of each other but also 2) you may not even need it.

When your clothes come out, check each one as it goes into the dryer, and if anything else s still stained, set it aside to run again with a regular pretreatment. One of the sweaters I did this with apparently did need a second treatment…to deal with what appears to have possibly been a hot chocolate stain that was previously invisible due to “well, it’s old” dinginess. I was planning to throw this sweater out. It looks almost new now. I need to wash it one more time for the probably-a-hot-chocolate stain, and then it needs to have the hem weighted to block it and bring it back to evenness, but dude. I wear my clothes to rags and I thought this thing was unfixable. “I need to reshape it” is nothing.

Remove clothes from dryer when done. Fucking MARVEL at the colors and how good the fabric feels. Give them a smell. Get righteously and royally angry that you can rejuvenate this stuff so easily, with a process that does take awhile but is 90% hands-off, but we’ve been trained to believe it’s all got to be binned once a year because discoloration and gross fabric is “normal wear and tear” and can’t be fixed.

It’s utterly unreal! I just pulled a seven-year-old work undershirt out of the dryer and this thing looks NEW!! It FEELS almost new!!! One of the shirts I hung up from the last load is older than some of the people on this site and it went from “I keep this to wear on laundry day, for sentimental reasons” to “I could actually wear this out of the house, it looks old but respectable”! The pajama bottoms I’m wearing were from Goodwill and they have BRIGHT YELLOW in them! I thought it was goldenrod!!

I do not know how often you’re supposed to do this (doing it every time can strip the dye out of your clothes, not to mention it’s way too much work to do every time), but once or twice per season seems respectable. I don’t wear white, so I can’t test the “it will make whites look almost-new as well” claim, but I’ve seen a lot of people on the cleaning subreddit attest that it works.

Just remember: WASHING soda. Not baking soda. I tried baking soda and a little bit happened, but not a lot.

it was Evelyn Carnahan (later, O’Connell) from the hit films The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001)

Your picture appears on the big screen

Wendy says "Look at this person. Do you think they look nice?"

Scattered applause, yours is the loudest

After 30 seconds of awkward silence, Wendy says "This afternoon they were trampled to death in a studio audience."