I Don't Fuck For Coachella Tickets

I spent the last weekend aggressively avoiding schoolwork by drinking in my apartment, drinking in my friend's apartment, and drinking at a bar. Sometimes when I go to bars men talk to me.

I like men. They smell good. Sometimes there's hair on their face and I like that. Sometimes they're wearing fancy shoes, and I like that as well. Sometimes when they talk they say interesting things. That's the best.

Sometimes they say stupid things though. I'm not a fan.

Anyway, I'm out with my friends and some dude starts talking to me. You know that guy. He's that kind of button-down wearing, pulling baggies of x out of the pockets of his pastel chubbies (or worse, his cargo shorts), douchebag. Maybe he spent $90 on his Ralph Lauren polo. Maybe he's wearing a G Shock, and that's all you need to know.

Of course I'm judging you. Everyone is constantly judging everyone; that's what people do. I don't take the time to understand your full life story. I don't fucking care. All I need to know is if you are a possible danger to me. If you fill any of the above criteria, you probably are.

As always, let's end with the motherfucking motto:

(These gifs of my face courtesy of this video.)

The Issues With Clothing

After the presentation of my blog post regarding burning magazines I realized some people might think I don't like clothes. This is fucking ridiculous. I love clothes. I have so many fucking clothes that I'm not going to talk about them because it'll make me sound more spoiled, but I'm going to talk about them a little bit because I just remembered I don't care what other people think of me.

I have dresses: cocktail dresses, summer dresses, peplum, vintage, renaissance, a-line, short, long, tea-length, linen, silk, cashmere, cotton, wool, collared, boat-necked, v-necked, strapless. I have shirts and blouses and cardigans and jeans and skirts. But mostly I have shoes. Oh, I have shoes. Flats, sandals, pumps, booties, short boots, tall boots, 3 inch heels, 5 inch heels, 7 inch heels, spikes, tassels, straps, zippers, leather, suede, fur, wood, black, brown, pink, blue, tan, red, whatever the fuck you name I have it.

Why do I own so many clothes? A large part of this is that, unlike men's wardrobes which are more uniform, women's wardrobes are varied and require different looks for different occasions. We can't wear the skirt we wore to the bar to work, and it would be ridiculous to wear the dress we wore to our cousin's wedding on a casual date.

(By the way, if you are a grown man and you were wearing cargo shorts you are not allowed to speak to me. No, me having standards is not the same as women being mocked and insulted and degraded based on how they look for hundreds of years. Go cry to someone else about it.)

Another reason as to why I own so many clothing is that I fucking loves clothes. Fashion gets a bad rap, in large part because it's a feminized field (even though men receive higher accolades in the fashion industry). I know! Let's create a society in which women are constantly judged by their appearance and mocked until they adhere to strict rules, and then call them shallow when they worry about their looks!

Whatever. Fuck you. I look good.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Clothing production is a huge fucking business, unique in that it pays very little globally but requires a level of human attention that can't be replaced by machines. The majority of this work is done by underpaid women and is dangerous. Clothing production is a huge industry in LDCs (less-developed countries), and it's fueled by mass amounts of Western consumption.

Going through clothing quickly (buying pieces that will go out of style soon or that are shoddily made) is bad for the clothing industry and bad for the environment. There's a mysticism surrounding clothing that leads consumers to believe that clothing is scare and that someone will always want hand-me-downs. With the poor quality and the abundance of clothes, this simply isn't true. There's not some starving child in Africa who wants your own high school graduation T-Shirt.

The best thing one can do as a western consumer is consume less. Check the quality of clothing before you buy it (double hemmed? Lined? Come on, we're not savages). Make sure the fabric is quality. If you lose a button or tear the article, fix it yourself instead of throwing it out. And for the love of god, don't shop at Forever 21. Be better than that.

Thanks for reading! Here's a picture of me and my cat (necklace: vintage silver; shirt: Anthropologie; cat: stray followed me home).

Sexual Assault Investigations

 Sexual Assault Investigations - Presented with Kanye West

The university from which I am about to graduate is one of the 55 under investigation from the U.S. Department of Education for violating Title IX. I know this because a dozen of my Facebook friends have shared articles about it, because I was interviewed by a member of the Dept. of Education and for a documentary on sexual assault, and because I have been paying attention to what goes on at my school.

The interview three weeks ago was with a women from the Dept of Education and a panel of twelve sorority women. We were assembled to discuss our experiences with and knowledge of the sexual assault culture on campus. The takeaway was that sorority women are, in many ways, the most protected and informed group. Not only do we receive semesterly workshops on the resources available to us, but we're aware of each others' activities because the basis of a sorority is a supportive community. Tactics to avoid sexual assault such as "the buddy system" are already in place. We're going out with our sisters, so of course we're going to look out for them. We also are more likely to know which guys and frats to avoid based on our sisters' previous experiences. For instance, everyone in my sorority knows to avoid Garrett in PhiSig, Rico in Sammy, and Michael in Delta Chi. Because they're creepy.

 

The way in which being in a sorority negatively effects women is when someone in a fraternity does sexually assault a sorority woman, and the women doesn't want to report it because she doesn't want to hurt the reputation of her sorority. If a man in a top tier house assault a woman in a middle tier house, the middle tier sorority is going to pressure the woman not to report it because they want to maintain good relations with the upper tier house. Yes, this is a real pressure that sorority women here face.

The groups that need the most education are unaffiliated persons and mainly fraternity men. Even though sorority women keep getting these meetings on how to avoid being sexually assaulted, fraternity men never! attend! a workshop! on how to NOT assault someone!

My sorority sisters and I relayed all of this the documentary filmmakers while they filmed us putting on makeup and drinking beer in my little's room. They also asked us why we go out in the first place. We told them that it's fun, and we do like boys most of the time. There's a difference between going out with your friends and knowing there's a cute guy you want to hook up with and using alcohol to facilitate that, and a guy separating you from your friends and pressuring you into doing sexual things you don't want to do. There's nothing wrong with casual sex. There's everything wrong with people and society pressuring others into awful situations.

So much of worth as women is tied into the attention we receive from men. Being in a sorority and adding in the politics of Greek life means there's another layer of social pressure to our interactions, but the basis is still the same: men are supposed to convince women to sleep with them and women are supposed to be flattered that a man is paying her any attention.

I'm old. I've had fun here, but I'm done with this place. The men here do not impress me, and I can barely pretend that I care about them any more. I've physically beaten off three different men in three different frat houses, and I encourage my younger sorority sisters to do the same if they're ever in a bad situation, regardless of the possible social fallout. It's not worth it, and the day when I give a shit what a group of nineteen year old boys thinks is a cold fucking day in hell.

Ramblings

I lift my head up and look at my body. The sun is so bright that the light green on my shorts looks almost white, and the white on my shirt is almost blinding. I lay my head back down and tilt it to the side so that I won't ash cigarette on myself. I inhale. I taste the smoke in my mouth, letting a little into my lungs. I exhale, and enjoy the feeling of my lungs being emptied.

Andrew used to say I didn't smoke the cigarettes right. He said I didn't inhale enough. Andrew can go fuck himself.

I think about all the men who tried to have sex with me this weekend. Four. I think about the audacity that must require; to believe that a minuscule amount of male attention will placate me into relations, to think that a text at 1:30AM will cause me to come running. They must see something in me. My friends complain that they don't receive this much attention. I don't know what I do.

I think about how offended each man was when I disdained him. His face turned ugly. In the minds of these men, I changed in that second. I was no longer a comrade. I became an enemy, a bitch, a cunt.

Reed will never attempt to have sex with me. He is Christian. He pulled me aside on Saturday and asked how my friend could call herself a feminist and still be throwing herself at his friend. I told him he has a fucked up view of how sex and relationships work. He didn't like that. He accused me of judging people and said that he could see my mind working and that Freudian psychology going off in my head.

I wanted to say that I do not practice Freudian psychology. My therapist is from the William White Institute.

I apologized. I don't think I could fully remove the smirk from my face. I don't think he likes me. If he lives such a sheltered life that this is the first time anyone has ever questioned his beliefs, that's his fucking problem.

My stomach cramps up. I haven't had a cigarette in over a month, and today I drank a full cup of coffee before class.

All through high school I was in advanced classes. Each class period was spent with my friends who, for the most part, shared similar academic backgrounds of myself. It was as though they spoke a different language than I did. I was compared to Hermione Granger. I felt that was a ludicrous claim.

If I am snobby, I am snobby. If I am a bitch, I am a bitch. I wonder when my excellence became disdained. God, I'm such an asshole.

I put the cigarette in the crevice between the two blocks of pavement in my driveway. There's a screw on that crack in the driveway; a long, silver, big fucking screw with no point. I pick it up and contemplate bringing it inside. No one would do anything with it inside. I place it back in the crack.

A car is coming up the driveway. I jump up and walk the dirt path to my door. I enter my house, and close the door behind me.

I Think About Beyoncé A Lot

I think about Beyoncé a lot. I also think about feminism a lot. Sometimes people say Beyoncé, a self-proclaimed feminist, is not a feminist. Let's talk about it.

First there's the issue of twerking. If you think Miley Cyrus invented twerking I need you to stab yourself in the eye with a Styrofoam finger and think about your life choices. Twerking has been around for centuries. It is rooted in traditional West African dances, specifically the Cote D'Ivoire dance mapouka. If you're the kind of idiot who says that twerking is "ghetto," you're a racist. Don't talk to me. If you say that Beyoncé's dance moves or clothing choices negate her feminism, you're a massive asshole and you can hang out in the loser corner with Bill O'Reilly.

The second argument (the one which is actually legitimate) is the criticism of Jay's lyrics in Drunk in Love:

Catch a charge I might, beat the box like Mike,
I'm Ike, Turner, turn up, baby no don't play.
Now eat the cake, Annie Mae, I said "Eat the cake, Annie Mae," I'm nice.

Yep, that line is a reference to Ike Turner beating his wife, Tina Turner. And Jay is supposed to be saying it in a sexy way, meaning that violence is a part of their kink, and that's cool, but maybe next time don't mention  a famous domestic violence act when you're creating a #1 hit, thanks. The only thing I have to say about the "Annie Mae" line is that Beyonce is getting a disproportionate amount of hate about the line when it is Jay who says it. Yes, it's her song, but he's the one who spit it in that studio and no one is criticizing him. That's what misogyny looks like.`

Because I hang out on internet spaces primarily used by young women, some a few years younger than myself (it's Tumblr, okay? I fucking love Tumblr) I see how young women react to feminism, and I can honestly say this: Beyoncé is making feminism cool. Not in the obviously-false way that Sarah Palin tried to use the word feminist, or in the shitty racist way that Lily Allen calls herself feminist, but in an actual feminist manner.

Shailene Woodley, star of the film "The Fault in Our Stars," which is based on the John Green teenage romance novel about cancer kids and Anne Frank house sex, recently said this to Time Magazine when asked if considers herself a feminist:

"No, because I love men, and I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance. With myself, I’m very in touch with my masculine side. And I’m 50 percent feminine and 50 percent masculine, same as I think a lot of us are. Also I think that if men went down and women rose to power, that wouldn’t work either. We have to have a fine balance. My biggest thing is really sisterhood more than feminism. I don’t know how we as women expect men to respect us because we don’t even seem to respect each other. There’s so much jealousy, so much comparison and envy. And 'This girl did this to me and that girl did that to me.' And it’s just so silly and heartbreaking in a way."

Great internalized misogyny there, Shailene. This is why we didn't invite you to beach and boba day.

Now, do I sound like someone who gives a shit what Shailene Woodley thinks? Kinda. Not really, since I believe the opinions of B list actors* are about as worthwhile to society as my cat's opinions about what she's having for dinner (bitch this is from Trader Joe's, don't look at me like that). What I do care about is the thoughts of young women, and I am pleased to report that they have been dragging Shailene all morning. For those of you who don't know, dragging is when you mock and insult someone. Shailene is being dragged.

This really is why I love the internet. Say stupid shit and you get called out on it.

Beyoncé is a role model for young women because she's a fantastic performer and she sings about young women achieving success.

But here's the thing I have to say: she is a performer. She is not Hillary Clinton. She is not Malala Yousafzai. She is not Wangari Maathai. She does not hold any political office. She is not an activist. She sings and she dances and she's fucking amazing at it. And yes, she has been in many PSAs, but that is not her main goal. Her main goal is to sell ticket seats and please her fans.

The criticisms of Beyoncé that say she shouldn't be recognized as a feminist because she's not a lawyer or a politician or an activist strike me as downright silly. Why can't we have both kinds of role models? Why can't young women look up to all kinds of young women? When you tell girls they can't have Beyoncé as a role model because she hasn't ended human trafficking you're not being very feminist, and you're not being very smart. Support the women who support young women, not the ones afraid of saying they are a feminist.

Bye!

*Seriously, don't date actors. Just don't do it to yourself.