Thedearladydisdain - Thedearladydisdain

ive gotten so much mileage out of this tweet. every time i see something on the internet that makes me mad i just think to myself "people in real life: hey man how's it going" and i keep it pushing

"we need to bring back x" it starts with YOU

This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.

So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while.  But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not.  Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.

What really gets to me though is that they’re using ‘men/man’ as the default. It puts men on a pedestal and makes anyone else (WOMEN) out to be lesser ie ‘non-men’.

If this happened in any other context people would rightly be furious.

If we started describing people of colour as ‘non-whites’ there would be an outcry and rightly so, because it 1) frames whiteness as the default and therefore superior, and 2) it would be a huge step back in terms of social progress.

People of colour fought long and hard to be recognised as equal citizens, and so to call them ‘non-whites’ and make them othered would be an insult to the progress made.

Equally women have fought long and hard to be recognised as equal citizens, white women have only had the right to vote for about a century, women of colour have had that right for even less time. So to now start referring to women as ‘non-men’ (ie not the default. and therefore lesser) is a frankly massive insult to the generations of women who fought long and hard for women to be seen as equal entities.

So let’s not mince words; Lesbians are WOMEN who love WOMEN, end of discussion.

If you can't find what's wrong with this definition your are homophobic and sexist. This loser used the word male/men 4 times and female/women 0 to describe BEING A LESBIAN.

It’s fascinating to me that gendies often accuse radical feminists/TERFs of being in a cult, when in fact control of information is actually one of the key indicators of a cult as identified by the BITE model.

They think we’re the cult but they’re the ones trying to control information?

Freedom of Mind Resource Center

BITE Model of Authoritarian Control

Discover the foundational principles of psychological freedom with our BITE Model PDF. Dr. Steven Hassan's pioneering framework offers insig

Someone was asking about gender-critical ideology and seemed genuine, so I went to their blog and saw this ask. And like..."just doing research" is cult recruitment now? Is science in general now propaganda for the TERF lobby??

jk rowling: congratulations idiots, you set the bar so low for women's rights that donald "grab em by the pussy" trump had no problem clearing it

everybody: wow i can't believe she's celebrating his achievements, she's a literal white nationalist

people on here are like "i shave my entire body twice a week because of sensory issues... anyway the new 100% polyester fishnets i bought from shein are sooo cute! i think this outfit will be better when i bleach my scalp and put on some liquid foundation though" and everyone is like yeah makes sense i'll do that too

Your rights and freedom end where another person's rights and freedom begins. This is why sex can never be a human right. Sex is an activity shared between people. You cannot give one person the legal right to demand sex without taking away another person's agency to say no.

Honestly similar experience here… I stopped shaving my legs maybe 2 months ago and it was weird and a bit unpleasant at first because the hair was kinda prickly when it was growing in, but it’s pretty much fully grown in now and it feels so soft!! I did used to like the feeling of freshly shaved legs against my bedsheets but I’ve kinda found a new obsession with being able to stroke my hands over my legs and feel the hair under my fingers, it makes me smile so big 😄 stopping shaving wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be!

okay, a preface here that i know the point of not shaving is NOT because it's sexy. i hate those articles about how "not shaving is sooo sexy actually 🥺🥺🥺". i hate when people try to make a NATURAL BODY FEATURE that women choose not to get rid of sexual, even though it's just...natural. normal. it's not sexual, it's our normal bodies.

with that said...yall! i officially stopped shaving, and while my leg hair is growing back reallllly slowly, my armpit hair is like full bush right now. and it...is so cool. like im not being one of those people making armpit hair a sexual thing, but genuinely, i feel...the word "pretty" isn't correct, but i feel right. like i feel natural, and im not thinking about it, but then i catch my armpit in the mirror and i can't help but smile! i dont know, something about it feels so cool and right. it's like, "hell yeah, im a mammal and this is how i look, and i look awesome!" like, something about my body looking the way it naturally looks has me feeling more confident + pretty + hot, honestly.

point here is NOT that being natural is 😩like tooootally hot 🥺. the point is: having a natural body actually does make you feel better! not altering or changing your natural body feels really good! it's like something in my brain clicked and remembered that this is how i'm meant to look, and when i let myself look natural i look really really good.

the point is, you won't feel disgusting if you stop shaving. i kinda thought my choice to stop shaving would make me feel gross or uglier. but it's done the opposite! if you choose to stop shaving, you won't feel gross or weird or ugly. you'll feel like a natural normal woman, and-just like me-you might even feel prettier and more confident with your body hair!