Thedearladydisdain - Thedearladydisdain

I think this discussion came about from a man advocating for a return to handwashing clothes for climate conservation purposes. This is where I get problematic because messages about how small I need to live my life and how much energy I should save the planet by exerting my own and doing things manually will forever fall flat for me.

Respectfully, I will be utilizing every convenience and purchasing every energy-saving machine, gadget and gizmo. I think I would need to live 3 lifetimes to approach the energy consumption of even a moderately rich North American. Therefore, I will be CONSUMING. I WANT TO EAT THE WORLD. And I love how I need to give up hot showers and handwash clothes but nobody can be arsed to stop wars where energy is being used to make trillions of weapons to be dropped on infants. And yes people with say "B-but you have a personal responsibility"- sorry idgaf. I will pick up litter and recycle and not buy stupid plastic shit on Amazon, use one water bottle at a time and buy well made designer clothes that last decades instead of fast fashion- that's me doing my part.

I’ve been celibate now for just over 2 years, at first unintentionally whilst I was getting over a break up, and then intentionally because I had no interest in casual sex and haven’t been in a relationship since my ex, haven’t met anyone I even want to go on a date with, and with the state of dating/het relationships as it is I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever have sex again…. If I’ll ever be able to trust another man well enough to want intimacy like that with him.

No, I don't have a "praise kink." No, I don't like "gentle doms." I want you to treat me like a thinking, feeling, breathing person instead of a punching bag with a bonus fleshlight. The male desire to treat women as subhuman, especially in bed, is mortifying. I hate that we've had to "pornify" our language to be understood by an entire class with porn addiction.

How did it become normal to choke, hit, and degrade our partners?

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.

This new policy aligns with the patriarchal view that seeks to control and reduce women’s lives and identities to a simplistic Sex-binary structure.

"oh i wasn't socialized male, i was a closet trans girl" then i wasn't socialized female bc i saw myself as a whole human with complex thoughts and emotions 🙄 fuckin socialized brainless is what you were

Chances are, you’re not fridgid or asexual- patriarchy probably killed your natural, healthy sexuality.

Things that ruin the sexuality of women:

1. Habitually forcing yourself to have sex you don’t want to have out of duty + obligation.

2. Habitually having sex with someone who is selfish and only cares about their pleasure.

3. Being treated like an object or treating yourself like an object (getting all your pleasure out of being desired, never thinking about what you desire/find physically attractive or what feels good to you)

4. Sexual abuse, rape, exploitation and being exposed to violent kinks.

5. Habitually having sex totally disconnected from emotional intimacy and care.

6. Having sex with someone who disrespects you, disregards your needs, emotionally neglects you or full blown abuses you on a daily basis.

7. Participating in sex work. Biggest kept secret is that women who have sex for work are prone to becoming sex repulsed.

REAL sex positivity for women would come from addressing these issues. But we don’t hear about it. 👂🏽🚫

full research:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/08/trans-identification-skew-crime-statistics/

here's some more unsolicited adult advice as someone in her 30s who knows there are a lot of twenty somethings and teens that follow her: if you're trying to build a new habit you really want, and are struggling, you have to break it down to the smallest building block possible. If you're failing, you haven't thought small enough. I know it's possible to hear stories of people who just snapped into new life mode one day by "just deciding", but truly what's happening there is a confluence of events and experiences that force the brain into some sort of epiphany. You cannot will an epiphany. It'll never work. For most times of your life, you will need to build habits intentionally, and that means not working against yourself and to set micro goals. like laughably tiny goals. because once that easy tiny goal is met, you can build off it, tiny goal after tiny goal until you reach your big goal.

so for example, if you want to be a morning person that gets up at ass crack dawn so that you can work out, eat brekkie, shower, and get to work at a leisurely pace, and you're not that person because you will hit your snooze button 800 times, you have to get the big picture goal out of your head. think smaller. "I want to get up 15 minutes earlier than I normally do." If you can't do that, make it 5 minutes. "I want to cook breakfast every day" hell no too big. "I want to eat something, anything, before I leave the house" hell yeah, fantastic. When you go to the grocery store to make sure there are things in the house for breakfast, if you keep buying bagels and microwave sandwiches that you ignore, you gotta think smaller. SMALLER. What's something so easy to eat that you'll never say no to. Is it a yogurt? Is it a handful of grapes? Is it a hostess ho ho? is it hot cheetos? FORGET the big picture of the fantasy put-together woman preparing a full nutritious meal that you'd be proud to admit to. Think only of the smallest goal you can achieve. If you know you can't say no to an ice cream sandwich, put a ton of ice cream sandwiches in your freezer and have one for breakfast every day until it's so instilled in you that you gotta get up to eat something you can start diversifying.

It sounds like, from the lack of habit place, that must take forever. But really it doesn't take too long to form the habit once the discipline kicks in. the trick is that you have to give your brain something easy to become disciplined to. If it's too hard, think easier and smaller. No one has to know. Literally no one in the gd world has to know that for 4 weeks when you were 22 you had an ice cream sandwich for breakfast every day. who cares. If it gets you eating oatmeal with fresh fruit in a few months who cares. you did it, yay. smaller, easier. if you can't do it, think smaller and easier. smaller!! EASIER!!! You are not thinking smaller and easier enough. break your brain thinking how small and easy you can go. SMALLER. EVEN SMALLER, SIS.