No one has ever said this to me, but I would GO. OFF.

Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

To illustrate why Jada is winning all the points with me:

"They question why I would LET Willow cut her hair. First the LET must be challenged. This is a world where women, girls, are constantly reminded that they do not belong to themselves; that their bodies are not their own, nor their power of self-determination. I made a promise to endow my little girl with the power to know that her body, spirit, and mind are HER domain. Willow cut her hair because her beauty, her value, her worth is not measured by the length of her hair. It's also a statement that says that even little girls have the RIGHT to own themselves and should not be a slave to even their mother's deepest insecurities, hopes, and desires. Even little girls should not be a slave to the preconceived ideas of what a culture believes a little girl should be."

--Jada Pinkett-Smith

(via Lavender Labia)

She's a bitch but also a BAMF...

"The concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it."

--Toni Morrison

(via sex is not the enemy)

Photo

Reblogged from tudo bom(b)

I need feminism because "'Guys like that don't date girls like me' has been said in my presence one too many times. Not agreeing on music or politics is one thing, accepting the close minded, bigoted socially constructed version of beauty from a boy you like, and feeling like less for it is entirely different.

-- Who Needs Feminism

Reblogged because "said in my presence," for me, means not only that I have friends who have said this/things to this effect, but that such things have also come out of my own mouth, and that has to stop. That kind of attitude reduces both the self and the object of affection to prescriptive stereotypical roles and just isn't doing anything productive/constructive for anyone involved. Subset of my new "Why not?" philosophy on life: What do you have to lose? 

I think one of the most radical things we can do, as oppressed peoples, is reclaim our bodies as our own and reject those normative standards of beauty. We need to see our bodies, our lives, as beautiful. We need to not only be ok with our bodies but also celebrate them for their difference, their gorgeousness. We need to look in the mirror and be able to masturbate to our own image. We need to see our wild, natural hair and our thick thighs and see them as the epitome of splendor. We need to be able to dance in the street and shout that we are fucking hot!
Is this easy? Hell no! We need to deprogram decades and decades of messages that tells us that we are ugly, worthless and unworthy of love. This is hard work! And it is only done with the gentleness of a community of people that love and affirm us. Because otherwise, the constant batter of hatred that we face in everyday life will convince us that we are ugly, worthless and unworthy of love. We need to have the place to come home to to heal and recover and remember who we are.

--witchymorgan (via freedom fighter)

“Fat people who love themselves scare the shit out of people who don’t love themselves. Even fat people who are TRYING to love themselves scare the shit out of people who can’t do the same. We force people to have to look at why they hate their bodies because we are “supposed” to hate ours and we don’t. And sometimes they have no idea what to do with that, so they act like assholes.”

- Tigress Osborn

Reblogged from freedom fighter as well

Style crush. Also, she's gorgeous.

Reblogged from Currently Obsessed with...

Lies my Commercials Told Me:

Check out this lovely short satirical piece on impossible standards of beauty and the rampant use of Photoshop in the media/advertising industry:


Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Gorgeous:

Reblogged from 18° 15' N, 77° 30' W

"Beauty is that glow that comes from within, which can only be ignited by being connected in the now. That is meeting all with openness to the potential of co-creating greatness. You can only shine it when you work on the most important relationship you’ll ever have: that with yourself." -- The Bandit Queen, of blackgirl on mars

Reblogged from On the Bright Side

What do I think it means to be beautiful?

Miss Jenkins of Rewriting Herstory has posed this question, and I think it sounds like a good thing to talk about, but before I share my thoughts, I want to share hers with you, because they're inspiring:

"Eventually, I realized that my outward appearance was a reflection of how I felt about myself.
Beauty is a combination of attitude and appearance.
Sure, physical beauty is a noticeable attribute based on appearance alone. But when I think about the people I consider “beautiful,” he or she usually carries him or herself in a way that makes you feel good when you are around them. Even if their outward appearance isn’t billboard worthy, so to speak, people usually enjoy their presence because of something that you can’t usually put into words. They look good partly because they exude a positive attitude and confidence.
It’s about how you feel about yourself.
I used to be kinda miserable. Complaining wasn’t hard for me to do. I could find a reason to criticize even positive experiences. I still have my moments, but I’m working on it. When I look at back it, I was mostly reflecting how I felt about myself. I would constantly criticize myself. I didn’t enjoy simple things, like going shopping with my friends because I hated to try on clothes (and because I was usually broke). I didn’t like shopping because I didn’t think anything could make me look good. I didn’t think anything could make me look good because I wasn’t as pretty as they were. I wasn’t as pretty as they were because something was wrong with me.
I’m learning to do away with those self-damaging thoughts about myself. I’m not weighed down by as many of them anymore. And people have noticed. I have gotten compliments about how much better I look. But it’s not because my wardrobe has significantly changed. I haven’t gained or lost a significant amount of weight. I haven’t had any physical work done. I’ve only done work on and for myself. I’m starting to appreciate what makes me beautiful on the inside and I’m learning to let it show." --Miss Jenkins

*a round of applause for her accepting her own fly-ness* 

I know that this struggle to see your own reflection as beautiful or to accept other people's suggestion that you are beautiful runs rampant amongst women who don't fit the media's image of beauty MOST WOMEN. Maybe you're a woman of color. Maybe your size isn't a single digit (double zeros, you are not included in this sympathy group). Maybe you don't have long silky wavy hair. Maybe your skin tone isn't even or you're prone to breakouts or you're just "plain". Maybe you are a human walking around in the real world rather than an airbrushed/Photoshopped image in a magazine. And whatever one or combination of these you are, you subsequently grew up thinking there was something "wrong" with you. You started brushing it off or being embarrassed when someone called you "beautiful," because they had to be just taking pity on you or trying to make you feel better. I think the thing most women (most people, I'm sure, but "beauty" is generally female territory) are raised to have in common is insecurities that could eat us alive. 

And the cold hard truth is that insecurity is not beautiful. When your insecurities are ruling you, you don't walk in beauty. You hide your smile behind your hands. You try to dress how you think you're supposed to dress, rather than adhering to your own personal style. You use make-up to hide rather than to accentuate. Generally, you are afraid to own the things that make you unique. A guy once told me that confidence makes a woman sexy, and I think something similar can be said about what makes women beautiful. I think it's hard, if not impossible, for a woman who does not love herself to feel beautiful. Maybe she can feel hot, or sexy, or desirable, or cute, but so much of beauty dwells in self-acceptance.

That's not to say there's no room for self-improvement in the quest to find your own beauty. Quite the opposite, in fact--I think people who love themselves must always want to better themselves; when you love someone, don't you want to encourage them to be the person they can be?  If you're overweight, wanting to lose weight doesn't mean you hate yourself, or that you think your current body is anything but beautiful. It just means you recognize that healthy is beautiful too. Even more of a sidenote: I can't stand people who criticize women who "go natural" but still wear makeup or perfume or eat things that aren't organic--I didn't say I was purifying my entire existence.

Society tries to say beauty is a physical thing, but I say beauty manifests itself in physical ways. Anyone can look put together. People are randomly born with perfectly symmetrical faces. Lots of people work really hard to have tiny waists, and some don't have to work hard at all. But I think the people who focus on biological/physical/external beauty like that are focused on something that is ephemeral and will inevitably fade as you get older (even if by the time we're 80, anti-aging everythings have made 80 the new 30). Beauty like that is...vapid. It's 2-D. It's...pretty. I think beauty is the antithesis of pretty. "Pretty" is a qualifier. If your teacher says the class average on an exam was "pretty good," you are less relieved than if he said the average was "good." "You did __insert thing here__ pretty well, but..." is a common phrase. "Pretty" might as well be regarded as a euphemism for "not quite good enough," "close, but no cigar", or "can be settled for but isn't the best it could be." "Pretty" is an insult.

 Coming back to what I'm supposed to be talking about here, I think beauty is walking with your head held high. It's letting your hips sway however they sway, not trying to put more into it or tone it down. Beauty is smiling wide enough to show the gap in your teeth, or not being embarrassed about having a loud laugh. Beauty is having style, with regards to your clothing, your mannerisms, your words, the whole package. Beauty is individuality rather than conformity. Beauty is being true to yourself, because truth is beautiful. Beauty is showing the world that you love and care about your whole self, rather than just your appearance. That once-over you give yourself in the mirror before leaving the house in the morning to make sure everything is in place is such a minor aspect of beauty, especially because you won't ever think everything is alright on the outside unless you have all those inner issues worked out.  I think beauty is a state of mind that your physical appearance adapts to represent, not the other way around.

Forreal tho

Reblogged from On the Bright Side

Sometimes men I will never meet make me happy:

"How do you feel about women rockin natural hair?
L: There’s nothing like a woman who can look good being exactly who she is." --Reblogged from UrbanBushBabes

Integration. It's the future, women.

Ran across an interesting article this morning from the Atlanta Post via Black Girl with Long Hair about how Black-owned and Black-specific beauty companies are being phased out. I learned that Black people didn't own almost any of the companies that make the products we use most regularly from Chris Rock's comedy/documentary Good Hair, and I can't say I was really surprised even then. (You can't tell me relaxing your hair isn't conforming to White standards if ONLY WHITE PEOPLE sell relaxers. #I'mjustsayin) And I don't think I was really even aware that such things as Black-specific makeup brands even EXISTED until I lived in Chicago, which evidently has a large enough black population that CVS sells things like Black Radiance. It excited me to see a whole company devoted just to selling beauty products for Black women, but truth be told, I had just as many issues finding products I wanted from that line, because there was less variety than is provided by the larger cosmetics companies. And no matter who I buy from, I've never found a powder that matches my skin tone perfectly--concealer is a joke. So I think this move towards companies targeting brown-skinned people in general, regardless of race/ethnicity (or curly-haired people in general, regardless of race/ethnicity) is good because it will provide more variety. It allows for increases in specificity, because sure I'm a Black woman, but there are probably women in South America, Latin America, and maybe even the Middle East or India who have skin tones very similar to mine. I have a close friend who is Korean--the last time he went to get a haircut, his stylist recommended that he deep condition with olive oil...hair texture transcends racial categories too. [The jew-fro is another example.] As much as I support Black nationalism, I think my ideal fight is minority nationalism...all peoples of color need their needs to be addressed. If it's hard for us, imagine how hard it is for people of even more diverse shades of beautiful.    

Sigh.

*goes to Forever 21's website because she thinks they sell really cute stuff*


*clicks on Tops* 


*filters by size X-Large* 


*sees ONE MEASLY FUCKING TANK TOP* 


*remembers why Forever 21 mass-marketed standards of beauty piss her the fuck off*

Reblogged from Treasured Tresses

Nail update

Typing feels so weird now that my nails are long enough to hit the keys before my fingertips. I love my neon nail polish though!

A conversation with my boss

My [female heterosexual] boss: You should be a model.
Me: *blushes (you know, without any actual reddening of the skin)* *smiles widely* *covers smile with hand*
Boss: I'm serious! I always look at you and I don't want you to think I'm just staring, but you have a beautiful face. You should be in magazines.
Me: *hasn't taken hand away from face yet* Thank you! 
Boss: Why do you seem so surprised?
Me: ...That's just not something I hear often.
Boss: *looks like she's confused* You've never thought about it?
Me: NEVER.
Boss: Well you should! Now get out of here, you're too cute! 


I'm keeping my job throughout the school year, at more hours than I originally figured were possible, and my boss thinks I'm hot but isn't hitting on me, so I kind of believe her. And that lady I talked about before compared me to Billie Holiday again today. 


I don't know what's going on, but Life, if you can hear me, feel free to send some more of it my way. 

"Every girl learns to hate her body by watching other women hate theirs or hate on each other’s." -- Lisa Bloom

 Ladies, look in the mirror and repeat after me, "Girl, you are gorgeous."

New goal in life:

To be as undeniably fly as this woman when I am older and grey:

Reblogged from As far as I'm concerned
Can I PLEASE go grey JUST LIKE THAT?!

Chillin with no makeup on

Something about my skin before I went to bed last night...I felt pretty. :)