I am sure you have already seen Jaya and Matt’s illustrated guide to why you looked weird in high school BUT IF YOU DIDN’T.
a) please do not use the word “nazis” to describe anyone with any kind of breastfeeding stance
b) the people up your cancer-surviving ass about magically somehow breastfeeding despite having no breast tissue are fuckin’ dickssssss just call them that instead:
“I can’t. I had breast cancer,” I said, looking down at Lincoln and stating proudly: “But I’m just so happy to be alive and be a mother after cancer.”
Silence.
“Just try,” they advised. “Let’s hope you get some milk.”
“It may come out anyway, or through your armpits,” another advised later when I was doing the usual post-labor, slow-recovery walk through the hospital halls.
After that, when I saw those lactivists coming, I picked up my pace.
For Harriet on 14 web series by black women you could be watching right now!
Our own Emily L. Stephens is going to be doing a Toast live-tweet of two separate SCARY MOVIES next week in preparation for Halloween, and we will then be running discussions of them on the site on Oct. 30th! Here is the FB page for her live-tweet of The Haunting (1963) and the FB page for May (2002).
ugh this is so male this is the malest thing ever and gender is a construct but this is soooooooo dude and i was tricked into it but then there was bullfighting the most boring thing in the worllddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
This happened on Friday afternoon so I bet a bunch of you missed it, but I LOVED Maren’s raccoon post and I want her to do literally thousands of them for us.
Vela is making a push for donations so they can pay women more money, which we always like.
Colorado is rolling out nitrous oxide for labor pain relief, which I want and RESENT not having access to in the US.
GEOFFREY HOLDER’S SON WROTE THISSSS, I cried.
This is tricksy! Mallory and I continue, on a somewhat-related note, to actively seek a trans person who would like to review Ariel Schrag’s Adam for us, because that’s a perspective we would like to have. Tell yer trans friends.
My mom left yesterday, after a twelve-day visit. We have a tough time separating, so we always stage a fake fight on her last night here. This time we fought about male primogeniture, and I took the stance that the British Royal Family should have stuck with male primogeniture instead of abolishing it in 2013 and my mom took the opposite stance. Phrases such as “YOU CALL YOURSELF A FEMINIST” were used. I then told her that Kate Middleton was just plain better than the rest of us, and she performatively dry-heaved and we stormed out of the room and it made it a lot easier to say goodbye.
Top NSFW searches on google.ca: – Corner Gas fan-fiction – Sidney Crosby butt – casting chesterfield
— Stats Canada (@stats_canada) October 13, 2014
Zilpha Keatley Snyder has died. Her obituary is in the NYT.
Who grew up with her unsettling and insightful books? What I remember the most about them, besides that you were never sure whether the “reasonable explanation” was real or whether magic was, is how smart she was about how kids work each other up. I vote for The Changeling and The Witches of Worm in a tie for creepiest, and The Egypt Game for best cast of characters.
I did not read a lot of her books, but The Egypt Game was such a fantastic book.
I’m going to the library later to see how they hold up.
I wonder if Jaya read these and, if not, if we could get a Jaya Catches Up? *bats eyes*
I’ll put it on the list!
*does a little dance* Thanks, Jaya!
THE VELVET ROOM. I’d completely forgotten about that book. Wow.
I read that about 80 times growing up. LOVED IT.
I forgot about The Velvet Room! AUGH THE VELVET ROOM.
I was so sorry to hear of her passing. I have read The Headless Cupid probably seventy times, and that’s not an exaggeration. Her books were a huge part of my childhood.
Libby on Wednesday was my favorite, followed by The Velvet Room. The most disturbing was The Witches of Worm.
I loved The Egypt Game so much. I read a few others of her books–The Changeling, The Witches of Worm–but the books that stuck with me most were the Green Sky trilogy: Below the Root, And All Between, and Until the Celebration. Did anyone else read these? I came to them oddly–I was playing an Apple IIe game based on the books, and they were already out of print when I went to look for them in the early 90s, so I borrowed them all from the library. If you like The Giver and dys- or utopic fiction, you might like these. They are about a peaceful, vegetarian population of people who live in giant trees, but one of them finds out there is a whole other population of people who live beneath the tree roots, and from there finds out this whole dark history of how and why their peaceful settlement was established.
I had read a bunch of her stuff (more than I realized, apparently!), but the Green Sky ones were by far my favorites.
You better believe I read these. The 3rd one (which I actually read 1st b/c it was the only one my small-town library had) contains two scenes I will forget only when I no longer remember anything.
I only just now remembered how much I loved them. Thanks!
Well, Green Sky friends, if you’re willing to delve into the world of C64 emulators, you can download a ROM of the Below the Root game. It’s meant to be a sort of sequel to the books.
There’s a link at the bottom of the MobyGames page but I think I’ve come across more than one. It’s been years and several computers since I played an emulator version, so I can’t remember how it is, but I looooved the original game: shuba-ing around, pensing people, developing your spirit powers…
Noo! I loved her books starting when I was eight. My first one was The Changeling and it was always my favorite, but runners-up were The Egypt Game, The Velvet Room, A Fabulous Creature, and And All Between (the second of the Greensky trilogy).
NOOOOO. She died?
Oh nooo! The Egypt Game was such a huge part of my childhood. Gonna go home and do a reread tonight.
It’s such sad news. I loved the whole Stanley family series, especially The Headless Cupid. Also The Egypt Game because I went through a huge Egypt phase around age 11 or thereabouts, and I would totally have dressed up as an ancient Egyptian if I’d had any friends who shared my weird obsessions.
(The Witches of Worm was very, very creepy. I don’t remember a whole lot about it, but I remember it had one illustration that was pure nightmare fuel.)
The Egypt Game is top of the list of Books I Recall LOVING That I Now Remember Almost Nothing About.
I remember kids breaking in somewhere to pretend to be ancient Egyptians. I loved it so much that I demanded me (very disinterested) friends form our own Egypt Club. We drew the Eye of Horus on a lot of trees. Those friends (now distant acquaintances) deserve more credit than I give them for tolerating me in middle school.
Oh no! I read Season of Ponies so many times my hometown library’s copy fell apart.
I think of her as an author we love and read over and over, but looking at the list of book titles the ONLY ONE I recognise is The Egypt Game and I am pretty sure we never read it, I think because we always confused Mary Stolz’s _The Cat in the Mirror_ for it because Snyder, Stolz, it was a small school library.
I am mystified and must go read her books. 🙂
This is so sad, but thank you for posting in the round-up. I was obsessed with ZKS in middle school and I think I’ve probably read all of her books that were published before 1999 or so due to a well-stocked school library. I still remember most of them shockingly well somehow, and I never could understand why so many of them had gone out of print. Especially ones like The Changeling and the Green Sky trilogy. Those books were amazing. I completely agree with your point about her books wonderfully capturing the way kids can live in a cult-like world cut off from grown-ups where they can work each other up to the point that they begin to have trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy–and how the fantasy can come to seem more important than the reality in these situations. I definitely convinced my BFF of that era to play an imitation of the Egypt game with me, so may have some experience in this area….
In conclusion: Thank you, Ms. Snyder. It’s a sad day
I loved her books!
Oh oh oh I am so excited about this upcoming live-tweet/discussion of May. It’s so bizarre and kooky and it’s one of my favorite movies ever. I made my mom watch it a few years ago and she in turn made one of my brothers watch it, and they still say “TOUCH MY FACE” to creep each other out.
Me toooo! May is one of my absolute favorite horror movies, I love to foist it on unsuspecting patrons at the library. <3
I hope you’ll join in! I’ll be live-tweeting from @emilyorelse. If you’re on Twitter, I hope you can live-tweet it, too. I’d love to see what you have to say about the film!
The live-tweet for The Haunting is timed to coincide with TCM’s* broadcast on Sat., Oct. 25th, but I know some people will want to stream it instead (and May isn’t being shown widely anytime soon), so I’ve listed streaming options at both links.
Again, here’s the info for The Haunting and here’s the info for May. You don’t need to sign in to Facebook to see the details, and of course you don’t need to join the Facebook events to follow and join in the live-tweets! It was just a convenient place to post the dates and times and post some links to streaming options.
*I have no affiliation with TCM; it’s a nice surprise that they’re showing The Haunting in time for my article to run on The Toast.
Jaya and Matt, wow, whoa, WOW, my heart, that is still my life and I’m 33 damn years old.
Somewhere festering around my childhood bedroom, I have all of my old diaries, most of which I can’t bring myself to burn. I remember describing what I wore to school the first day of my freshman year, and I’m 99% positive it was the blink-182 t-shirt I had persuaded my mother to buy from Hot Topic by virtue of it being a WHITE shirt instead of a BLACK shirt, because she was terrified that her daughters would grow up 2spooky. I’ll have to dig it up and see what I actually wore because it was so, so painfully important to little ‘ol outcast me.
Hot Topic! They’ve apparently got a bunch of Wonder Woman and Doctor Who merch right now so I probably have to go check it out again. 😉
I vividly, vividly remember the first day of seventh grade. I had on a kilt, white knee socks, a white peasant blouse (it was 1993 okay), black loafers–the whole outfit carefully selected from a mannequin in the mall so I didn’t screw up anything. Lost between classes, I heard two eighth-grade girls whispering behind me “Oh, she got that outfit at [silly mall fashion early-90s boutique]” and I spun around and, assuming they were making fun of me–as you do, as I did, and still do–took them to task over it. One of them responded by saying, “Yeah, we actually like your outfit. We weren’t trying to be rude.”
Shit sticks with you. I really, really, really wanted to start middle school as one of the cool girls. Failed fucking miserably.
Hot Topic has completely, completely morphed into a nerd store. There’s still some pseudo goth/punk stuff at the back, but it’s like 95% Adventure Time leggings and My Little Pony Merchandise. I have no idea when this happened.
(I have a longstanding Hot Topic fascination stemming from a childhood as a city kid. I still think malls are exotic.)
The first time I met Matt I was wearing a blink-182 shirt. Beautiful things can happen with those.
:’) There is hope for me yet!
Oh god, I know. Yesterday I used my day off to go shopping for winter clothes and I had a straight-up panic attack in the mall because none of these clothes make me look the way I wanted and all of them cost too much and it’s all so HARD. I’m a pretty self-confident person and it’s been a long time since I had that middle-school feeling where you’re suddenly so ashamed of how you look that it feels like your stupid shirt is burning your skin. But I still feel like a little bit of a failure when I think too hard about what’s in my closet.
I’ve had panic attacks shopping for “work clothes” before, so I feel you.
The last time I went jeans shopping ended with PartnerChouffe stroking my hair while I was curled up in a sobbing, quivering mass in a changing room. NOTHING WORKS. WHYYYYY.
Jeans shopping is objectively the worst. The result is that I keep buying jeans that I KNOW fall apart too quickly from a store that I KNOW has terrible labor practices because the thing is they RELIABLY FIT AND IT’S SUCH A RELIEF. But they seem to be discontinuing the style I like anyway, so this era may be coming to an end. I am both relieved and terrified.
Oh! Last time I went to the store for work pants I wound up sobbing the fitting room because none of them fit me.
So glad to hear it’s not just me. I hate shopping so much.
Clothes shopping has led to me crying in the changing room far too many times. I’m so glad I’m a student this year so I can put off buying Proper Adult clothes for a bit.
When I was moving into my dorm freshman year, everyone else had moved in early (honors kids FTW) so there was nothing to distract any of my dormmates from simply ogling me as I hauled underbed boxes and collapsible laundry baskets to my new room. I had packed all my clothes without giving thought to what I might wear so I was wearing ancient olive green Union Bay cargo shorts and a boxy, unflattering sleeveless tee.
The folks I met that day/lived with that year became my best friends, and have on more than one occasion mentioned that I did not live up to the butch first impression that I gave.
I distinctly remember freshman year of college in say 2005 when jean shorts were no longer remotely cool. They had never been cool before, but I would never be made fun of for them. I identify with Matt Chester so much, down to the fact I’m the exact same age as him.
I tried a variety of looks in high school, but shopping almost exclusively at a church thrift store made most of them fail. I wanted to wear hippie peasant skirts, but wound up with a lot of pleated florals instead.
“It may come out anyway, or through your armpits”
Because there’s no better way to bond with your new baby than by wedging it into your armpit.
the mental image of this is scarring me
Aren’t these people supposed to understand how breast tissue works? Because I am pretty sure even if the woman had functional breast tissue left, milk would not just ooze out her armpits.
In re: people being fucking dickholes about breastfeeding:
1. my triplets were born at 29 weeks, 5 days – before they had developed the necessary suck/swallow/breathe reflex to be able to breastfeed.
2. I couldn’t make enough milk just with my own body to feed all 3 – even before I went back to work and was doing basically nothing but pump every 3-4 hours.
3. they were so tiny & premature they were given extra bulk-up protein formula, fattier than breastmilk, to help them grow fast, in order for them to survive.
4. My milk supply dried up at 6 weeks, just about the same time the babies were developed enough to try to really breastfeed instead of drinking pumped milk, and only 1 out of the 3 ever even really fed successfully. (O course it was Dimples, for those of you playing at home)
5. Only one person ever tried to make me feel bad about “giving up” on breastfeeding, and that person is now single. SO.
TL;DR my babies would be dead without formula
My introduction to La Leche League was someone telling me about a “raid” in which La Leche stormed a supermarket with pantyhose on their heads and trashed all the formula. I laughed really hard, because I thought that was kind of a brilliant joke. I was wrong.
Whaaaaaaaaaat
oh my GOD I hope they got arrested
You would hope, right? I just emailed her. I think it was in Pennsylvania? Anyway, this is someone who’s nursed all her kids until pretty late, and she was like “noooooo those people are crazy, STAY AWAY.”
In general it seems like any discussion of parenting techniques brings out the inner Torquemada in lots of folks. Childless me just kind of backs away slowly when that happens.
No offense to people they’ve helped but LLL can suck a fart. I’ve BF both kids but I’ve also used formula when needed and their extremist stances make me tear my hair out in rage. I refuse to ever get BF help from them.
They would probably criticize the fart provided for sucking. “Not enough fenugreek,” they’d say. Then they’d judge you.
my mother in law is a big, LL person. If I ever have the misfortune to get pregnant and carry a parasite to term, I will not be talking to her about my baby feeding choices.
what
Preach it. Seriously, asshats? That’s why there’s SCIENCE. Ugh.
Dude, if your triplets had been born at 41 weeks and were sucking monsters and you had ALL THE MILK IN THE UNIVERSE, I would still assume you used formula, because: BF one kid is time-consuming enough. How the hell anyone could BF three is beyond me. (Well, and also sleep, move, eat, shower, diaper or comfort the other babies, etc.)
My SIL sometimes BF her 3yo at bedtime when her newborn came along and I had a newborn at the same time (born at 41 week and a sucking monster and I had all the milk) and even that seemed like too much of an effort to me.
I mean, I didn’t have to add ‘wash bottles’ or ‘shop for more formula before we run out’ to my to-do list, and that time we were traveling and the 10-hour trip took 25 hours instead but at least the kid wasn’t going to starve was a nice thing, but generally, as someone who nursed both her kids for over 2 years each (but not 3!), I have to say: formula is a fantastic thing for so many, and also, it’s no one but the parents’ decision anyway.
I can’t believe anyone even tried to make you feel bad about it. Premature triplets! The fact you were able to give them any breastmilk at all is worthy of applause (and they sound awesome having been mostly fed on formula milk, so I can’t see that they’ve missed out on anything).
(My mother was able to breasfeed the three of us a bit – each feeding, one baby would get the left breast, one the right and one a bottle, then swap over at the next one – but I suspect not for that long. She has said how hungry and thirsty it made her to be feeding all the time. Anyone who tries to tell any mother, especially ones with multiple babies, what they should be doing in terms of breastfeeding needs to shut their mouth.)
Dude, you made THREE PEOPLE SIMULTANEOUSLY. I really don’t feel that very many people* are qualified to judge you for how you feed those people.
*Unless those people are doctors telling you your babies are, like, horrendously anemic and you need to give them these supplements, or something like that.
My early attempts at goth were an old black tshirt of my mums and a pair of black school trousers and makeup done with an eye pencil that was about 10 years old and dry as a desert and I wondered why no-one in the goth clique was accepting me.
I totally did the same thing only with grunge. I wore baggy jeans and thrift-store T-shirts and flannel shirts swiped/inherited from my grandpa, and I thought, “I totally look cool! Why am I not cool?!” …um, because I was a dorky little newspaper kid (COPY EDITOR, for gosh sakes) who took honors classes and was obsessed with Bach instead of Kurt Cobain?
I’m crying at my desk over the Geoffrey Holder piece. I can’t even. Beautiful.
Jaya and Matt’s piece is digging up some great/wincing memories. For me, in middle school, it was Vans (I didn’t skate), band t-shirts, and too-small jeans doodled over with sharpie. And of course the tartan skirt/fishnets trap– I lived in a very Catholic enclave of my state and so Goodwill was always replete with uniform skirts. I still have one. AND borrowing clothing from mom.
By senior year of high school I chopped off about 10 inches of hair and took to wearing 5-inch heels every Friday. There’s a Mountain Goats song for that, (because of course there is) called You Were Cool. It’s unreleased but you can find a dozen live versions.
I tried to look super punk rock and alternative all through arts high school and had hair dyed a lot of colors and basically I just look weird in my old pictures and totally not as cool as I thought
I tried so hard to be arty and creative in high school– I had just escaped eight years of Catholic school uniforms and I was going to EXPRESS MYSELF, god damnit. But eight years of Catholic school uniforms did not teach me how to dress myself, so I just wore a lot of novelty t-shirts paired with flowing hippie skirts and stripey socks. So yeah, I just looked weird.
I wore that same uniform! I had a “never drink and derive” shirt (math geek joke) and a crazy purple hippie skirt WITH BELLS ON IT and I wore them with knee high socks and a chuck taylors in a variety of colors. There was also a chunk of time that I owned a Beatles t-shirt for every day of the week, and I literally wore them non-stop. All I remember is that the Abbey Road one was for Fridays, because I thought it was the coolest.
Ahh! I love that song. I was also big on the combo of vans + jeans that I doodled all over with ballpoint pen.
I didn’t even know band tshirt + vans + jeans you doodled on was a thing, but it was basically my uniform in high school.
Neither did I! But I am glad to know we are all sistren in DIY jean enhancement.
Edited: supposed to be @kjschapira
Seconded on Jaya Catches Up!
I may still have the Egypt Game at my parents house… may have lent it away though. Maybe to one of the girls I babysat, because what is the point of a babysitter if not to introduce you to slightly disturbing, formative lit?
I was remarking recently that I feel like I may be the only person in the entire world who looks back on my goth phase and goes “yeah, that looks pretty cool, I wish I could still dress like that but now I have a stupid office job so I can’t, woe.” Maybe I need to grow up? I don’t know? Is this a symptom of hating my job?
I’m less goth than I used to be but I stillwear my New Rocks to the office when it’s cold and I need big boots on.
Truly, I still do my eye makeup basically the same and you can take my relentless raisin colorstay lip color from my cold, dead hands.
Gothic Miss Manners (I forget what the website is called now, after she got a cease and desist from Regular Miss Manners) does a lot about being goth in the office/as a grownup. Although she just wears petticoats and top hats and etc. to her job and doesn’t give a fuck, for what that’s worth.
Gothic Charm School!
I was much cooler in high school than I am now (I was not very cool in high school). I would really really like to go back to dyeing green and purple stripes down my hair and wearing lots of loud mis-matched clothing, but alas, I cannot.
My hair was atomic pink for two years in grad school and I miss it every day of my life. I keep trying to wear down the dress code here slowly but surely but that’s the one thing I don’t think I can push. 🙁
I really, really miss having green hair. It felt so much more “me” than my usual shade ever did.
If I ever need to make a caricature of myself, it always has pink hair. To this day. I have never been more confident than when my hair was pink, and though I still think quite highly of myself…it’s not pank. 🙁
I spent a while working at a place (a big place) that struggled a bit with the “good ol’ boys” culture in a lot of the leadership structure. But after a few months, I found myself in a room with one of those teleconferences where thirty different departments had to give a three sentence briefing each. And it was older white guy after older white guy, until we got to the woman with a bright pink fauxhawk.
My team immediately declared that we all wanted to go work for whatever department that was.
Also check out This is CorpGoth. http://corpgoth.blogspot.com/ She mixes Goth fashion in with regular fashion, and she is currently working at a fairly conservative office, so many of her ideas will work in most offices.
I stopped dying my hair to get a job, and although I’m now in a place where I could go back to what I did when I was in college/in my goth phase I find that I don’t want to. It’s really weird to me. I think “hey I didn’t change I’m the same person from college!” but so much of my look is different now, I must have changed a lot without knowing it.
Starting grad school has really brought out the inner punk/grunge/dirtbag teen that has been slumbering within me since junior year of high school (when I “grew out of” that phase, haha whoops). EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING IS SO SQUARE, I find myself defaulting to torn up hoodies that I would NEVER have worn out of the house six months ago.
Maybe the quotes are just unfortunate, but Jenji Kohan kinda seems like she’s being deliberately dickish!
Clearly you need to hire the best writers, but if the contention is that minority writers aren’t getting the same level of advantages or access, yeah, train people if it’ll work. Try fucking something. Obviously having no representation or perspective in the writer’s room hasn’t worked out very well for minority groups; we’ve given it a good gajillion years or so. Jesus.
Also, way to take that nice story about the lady who came out while working on the show and make it 1) about you and 2) gross.
SERIOUSLY. Let’s mock the transformative power of being in a permissive place AND treat everyone involved with contempt! GOOD PLAN.
SIDNEY CROSBY BUTT! Delightful! Also, probably 65% of people in Pittsburgh at any given moment are googling that at work.
And Pittsburgh expats, although to be perfectly honest, I am much more interested in “Troy Polamalu shirtless” as a search term….
As a fellow Pittsburgh expat, I cosign.
I want to know what results they’re getting that make it NSFW. For… you know, science reasons.
All I found was this hockey tumblr
A+, would read again. CROSBY’S ASS, not even sorry.
In Canada, “butt” is NSFW. “Bum” is SFW.
Gee, I’d say that, in Canada, “butt” is what Americans say, and we think it’s totally unsexy. “Bum” is what we say, and it certainly would be NSFW at my workplace.
I maintain that abolishing male primogeniture in the British monarchy is like sticking a steering wheel on a horse. It doesn’t make it anymore appropriate for driving up a motorway.
I got nitrous oxide when I gave birth in Toronto, when the epidural wasn’t working properly during a c-section. It was pretty awesome.
I used nitrous oxide with my daughter (born just about a year ago) and it was awesome! I wish it were available to anyone who wanted to use it when giving birth,
I read those NSFW search terms and conflated two of them. Now I’m here to confirm that there is, in fact, a LOT of RPF (real person fiction) about professional hockey players on AO3. I’ve never read RPF, but I’m sure those stories are both harrowing AND steamy.
Am fairly sure that some of the people are indeed looking for inspiration for their Sid/Geno epics . . . (she says, carefully logging out of her real-name account).
Hockey went through this massive fic boom recently, which is super fascinating to me. Other sports tend to boom around major events (Olympics for figure skating, World Cups for soccer), but I have no idea what made hockey happen. Just suddenly it was everywhere.
I think it was a couple of well-known writers picking it up (thefourthvine, thehoyden, twentysomething); that’s certainly how I started reading. Thefourthvine has some delightful primers/recs/fandom posts at dreamwidth (no links because I’m not sure if they’ll go through when not logged in).
I discovered this accidentally earlier this year as well. Part of me is horrified (the little bit I saw looked very, um… intimate?) and part of me is like “Sidney Crosby/PK Subban slash fic exists because OF COURSE it does, I do not even need to read it, the very fact of its existence fills a previously unknown hole in my soul.”
For those contemplating reading, unfortunately some of the Sid/PK on AO3 is gross (the “additional tags” field will tell you what you need to know). There’s at least one recent one that’s delightful, though, and a PK/Carey Price/Sid post-gold-medal one too.
I started that Jezebel post thinking “yes, this IS tricksy, there are valid points on both sides here” and then Jenji Kohan was a MAJOR asshole. ugh.
Re: breastfeeding — I breastfed kid #1 for seven and a half months before she just quit, cold turkey, no getting her back (even though the lactivists hollered at me, and prescribed galactagogues when I couldn’t produce well for the pump despite oversupply before). Kid #2 nursed for two years. I don’t know why people can’t leave other people the fuck alone with their lives and their choices.
Seriously. I breastfed MiniWren for about 7-8 weeks, and it was TERRIBLE. She wasn’t getting enough food, it was incredibly painful, and even with a pump I was hardly getting anything out. I once pumped for about 30 minutes, got less than an ounce, and made myself bleed. I subsequently found out, through my mom, that apparently a very low milk supply runs in her side of the family, so I felt mildly better (apparently that only occurs in about 5% of the population. Who knew?). STILL, even after that revelation, someone actually told me that I just hadn’t hydrated myself enough, so I should drink more water and try again. People can be such dicks.
I really wish people would prioritize “is the child getting enough food?” over “is the child being fed in the way I think is most appropriate?”. I mean, sure, if you see someone putting Dr. Pepper in the bottle for a 6-week-old, then maybe say something, but at the end of the day, formula v. breastmilk is not as important as many other parenting decisions, and insisting on breastmilk when it is not meeting the child’s needs is not a good parenting decision.
My favorite quote from that article:
“I’m not saying breast-feeding is not beneficial,” Colen told the media at the time of the study’s release. “But if we really want to improve maternal and child health in this country, let’s also focus on things that can really do that in the long term — like subsidized day care, better maternity-leave policies and more employment opportunities for low-income mothers that pay a living wage, for example.”
UHHHHH HUHHHHHH.
My grandmother couldn’t breastfeed at all due to duct issues, and 65 years later she’s STILL mad about it. I don’t know who made her feel bad about that, but I wish they had just shut up.
My mom’s system for breastfeeding was to do so until we (she had three children) started to bite her, at which point the biter was cut off. The internet informs me that that babies start getting teeth at about 6 months, so I guess somewhere around there is about how long I was breastfed.
Oh my god that breastfeeding article.
One male friend even noticed that my husband was giving Lincoln a bottle in a Facebook posting and commented, “So you’re not breast feeding? It’s better you know?”
1. You can put breast milk in bottles
2. When you have breasts, dude, is when you can criticize the choice not to breastfeed
3. Actually, no. Not even then can you do it. Shut the fuck up.
Those breastfeeding terrorists harassed me at the hospital, but they reminded me so much of the dewy Earth Mother Hippie types who “didn’t believe” in antiperspirant that I had encountered at Berkeley that I abolished them from my room, even in my weakened state from 30 hours of labor and the emergency C-section. I did not have enough milk for either baby so I happily fed them formula otherwise they would have starved. Can’t we keep these roving, interfering Puritans away from new mothers? Should we set up New Mother escorts to shield them? Not only are they annoying but they give incorrect medical advice.
This was one of the (many) benefits of popping out Bittysweet at an inner-city hospital in Boston. Everyone – the doctors, the nurses, the lactation consultants – had seen it all, and nobody judged anyone’s choices about feeding, sleeping, etc. It was great.
Jaya and Matt’s piece made me wish even harder that I had money for a stylist + wardrobe overhaul. I am 24 years old and have no clue how to dress myself. I have a “uniform” of dark denim + cardigan + scarf, but when required to go outside of that it’s a struggle. Doesn’t help that I’m on the cusp of plus size, so no matter which stores I go into (whether it’s straight size or plus size) there’s no guarantee that anything at all will fit me. :/
INBETWEENIE HIGH FIVES
(and by high fives I clearly mean muted sobs because I feel your pain)
INBETWEENIE WHO IS ALSO VERY TALL WILL BRING SOME EXTRA ICE TO THIS PARTY
THIS INBETWEENIE IS VERY SHORT, SO WHILE OUR PROBLEMS ARE OPPOSITE I FEEL WE CAN COMMISERATE
Inbetweenie who is also inbetweenie tall, here! I’ll bring party snacks.
(clothes shopping is the wooooorst 🙁 )
IS THERE ROOM AT THIS PARTY FOR ANOTHER TALL INBETWEENIE? I’ll bring guac.
GOD yes.
I’ll bake cookies! I’m a not-tall and not-short inbetweenie who has a freakishly huge rack and a _very_ hourglassed (i.e. much smaller waisted) shape, and I have to buy tall shirts/tank tops otherwise they end up being ridiculously short on me because of their journey over my boobs. Tell me this is a thing for other people, too, please?
If you figure out how to dress yourself at this size, give me a shout. The changeover to fall and lack of most of my clothes fitting is causing me major anxiety!
I am 32 and have no idea how to dress myself, and at this point I think I’ve accepted that it’s because I don’t want to learn.* Fashion for women seems more like a complicated language that I have little hope of understanding, like tone languages to someone who is tone deaf. (Come to think of it, I’m not great with auditory processing either.)
I would be soooo happy if I could just get away with a uniform, like a cartoon character.
*possibly because it stresses me out like whoa?
I think a “uniform” can actually be really fashionable! The first season of Project Runway had a designer who just wore black dresses and tights every day, all day.
I don’t want to make this sound like “everyone can be fashionable!” but there’s some examples of people who have tried to really simplify their wardrobe out of a “fuck this shit, life is complicated as it is” and others have gone “whoaaaa amazing.”
I’ve sort of done that unintentionally, if you count old tshirts / tank tops, jeans, sneakers and a leather jacket as a uniform? But yeah I am pretty much at the “fuck this I have other stuff to sort out” stage.
Sometimes I throw in a hoodie!
Leather jacket, aren’t you fancy
I really enjoy wearing to fancy restaurants and just being like “what?”
I know it’s counter intuitive, but Forever 21! They have an INCREDIBLE plus size section and some surprisingly nice stuff, if you get past all the studs and lace (unless you like studs and lace, in which case you do you).
That sounds like a great outfit/uniform to me!
If you want to change it up, ditch denim for interesting pants/skirts. Though right now it is sort of a challenge to fit pants to buy that are not leggings or “skinny” — which is not what I would want to wear to work, even if I felt like it worked for my body! Who are these people with their leisure lives buying all those tight pants? But it’s just fashion, so the trend should be over soon enough and then there will be more selection.
It works pretty well most of the time, but for those moments when I’m going to something fancy, or it’s a million degrees outside and a scarf is a terrible idea? I’m out of luck.
I see we are still having massive comment problems here, so I will apologize if this posts twice. I posted it once, and it appeared twice, and then I tried to delete the duplicate one, and then both disappeared, so I don’t even know.
ANYway, I have similar angst, hellebore_ — every time I google “curvy fashion blogs” or “fat fashion blogs” or whatever, I get a whole slew of people dressed like Penelope Garcia. I have nothing *against* the look, but it sure isn’t “me,” and it sure would never fly where I work.
I have recently gotten a couple of pairs of skinny pants and they work pretty well for me at work, though — at least around here they are so ubiquitous that nobody seems to think anything of it. I am a big fan of blazers, too — they automatically “formalize” anything. But for non-skinny work pants, I recommend Eddie Bauer’s stretch twill, especially the curvy ones. Stretchy and comfy, real pockets, and belt loops! They are expensive so keep an eye on sales and outlets, and they run super long. Sizes go up to 20 in regular and their plus goes to 24W.
You can open up your options if you’re willing to shop online. My recommendations for non-frumpy plus-size wear include: ASOS Curve, Violetta by Mango, Carmakoma, Eloquii, H&M+, and sometimes Evans US.
Woah, you must have a much…..different….budget than me!
My people!
I hadn’t seen the article by Matt and Jaya and it was delightful.
I feel like I’m dressing backwards, in the sense that when I was 16, I wore very office-appropriate skirts, blouses, heels, and wouldn’t be caught dead in sneakers. I still wouldn’t but now that I’m 24, I feel more comfortable with wearing jeans and sometimes flats. I just somehow have become less “mature” and more “young person” in my clothing. I expect to be wearing tutus and glitter in five years or so.
I love shiny clothes now; my daughter forbids me to wear them. She is my fashion dictator.
I’m 30, and I now have a purple streak in my hair, and a vast array of goth-y makeup.
OKAY BUT WHAT ABOUT neo-Nazis who happen to be pro-breastfeeding?
You shouldn’t speak of them at all, it only encourages them.
That one time I thought I was breastfeeding and I was actually just feeding my baby armpit sweat.
Seriously though. Milk coming out of your fucking armpits is just the latest terrifying thing about motherhood.
Jaya and Matt’s article was definitely describing my entire childhood, but as soon as Matt described that rayon not-Hawaiian shirt with the dragon on the back it was like they were peering into my past. Did EVERY 12 year old boy in 2000 have that shirt?
One of my high school boyfriends wore EXCLUSIVELY that shirt. Horrifying.
One of my COLLEGE boyfriends wore exclusively that shirt. What was I thinking.
what in the possible fuck does bullfighting have to do with Penelope Cruz?
ESPANA
I like how the article makes it seem like even she is confused about why he’s talking about bullfights.
Espain, querida. Both things, they are espanish.
After the bullfight, I drank some sherry and thought of Penelope Cruz, in a field of sunflowers, surrounded by the Inquisition. Also tacos or something, I don’t know.
The center of this venn diagram reads: Things Hemingway would be into if he were alive today.
Along with sriracha bloody marys and the UFC.
I’m all for women doing whatever they want wrt breastfeeding but I just might draw a line at lactating out of your armpits and feeding the baby that.
She was 87, it comes to us all, etc. But it is always weird when someone’s mind shaped your mind, and then that person’s mind isn’t in the world anymore.
Also, and I mean, let me first say that I think that Esquire’s “Sexiest Woman Alive” contest is a kind of a gross atavism of the worst kind of nominally-harmless but actually deeply damaging patriarchy.
That is one, but two is that I have a hard time even crediting it as any kind of evaluative process. Like, how can the sexiest woman alive be a different woman every year? “Sexiest” is a superlative characteristic, by definition there can only be one person who is the peak of sexy. Last year it was Scarlett Johansen, so what happened? Did Scarlett Johansen die? Did something happen to make her less sexy, or to make Penelope Cruz sexier? Penelope Cruz was alive last year, if she’s so sexy how come she didn’t win it then?
This process doesn’t make any sense! This entire exercise is intellectually bankrupt!
I think this a lot whenever I see rankings! I’m a sucker for those lists of “greenest cities” and “best neighborhoods” or whatever. I know that they have to write a different article every year to sell magazines but I prefer to think that Santa Fe got measurably less family-friendly in the past 12 months.
Every year, Santa Fe installs a few more scary clowns and packs of wild dogs.
“We know we’re falling down the Family-Friendly list, but it’s a sacrifice we’re all willing to make if it means we can climb the Top 10 Terrifyig Hell-Pits.”
People in Minneapolis and Portland pretty eagerly compete for spots on “best bike city” lists, and this year New York beat us both which is BULLSHIT, so I feel like we need to step it up? So that makes more sense to me than ranking ladies who are just living their lives.
“We got tired of imaginary fucking her for a second.” <– what happened to ScarJo
I thought it was because Cruz defeated Johansson in hand-to-hand combat? That’s how this works, right?
Of course! Former champions can compete again but as in The Hunger Games most never do as they are irreparably damaged from whatever violent acts won them the crown.
If it’s not, it bloody well ought to be.
And that shit ought to be televised.
I was just thinking that someone should replace the Miss America pageant with a new pageant whose categories were evening wear, quizzo, and kung fu.
This is a delightful thread, and immediately brought up fond memories of this, from last year.
In middle school, I became aware of the grunge look. Flannel shirt, jeans= Angela Chase. A no-brainer. Except I disliked jeans, and didn’t own any. I did, however, own a scoop-necked short-sleeved denim blouse, and a pair of plaid joe-boxer long-johns that a slightly older, cooler fictive cousin had given me for Christmas. Denim + flannel= effortless cool, right? Never mind that the long-johns nipped in at the ankle and the cousin in question had given them to me as sleepwear, I decided it was An Outfit.
The first day I wore it to school, my classmate T. (once a social outcast, but now extremely popular because the boys admired her taste in music) looked at me and said “Reina, are you wearing LONG JOHNS as PANTS?”
I nodded. She leaned over and high-fived me, saying “Reina, don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re not cool.”
I took T.’s benediction as fact and continued wearing the Outfit whenever I wanted to come off as particularly cool, and relaxed and with-it, like when I visited fancy high schools as a prospective student. Because my self confidence was limitless, and my clothes were genuinely insane, it’s possible that I was projecting the exact image I desired. The world will never know.
Honestly, I am imagining a really cool version of that outfit in my head, and it’s definitely something I would wear today. You sound like an awesome kid.
That breastfeeding article was insane. But I do want to do a shoutout for #NotAllLactationConsultants, because seriously, some of them are awesome, and super important. For many women who DO want to breastfeed but are facing myriad problems, having a good lactaction consultant (not a lactavist!) help troubleshoot and offer support can make that happen.
Agreed. I was very lucky with the breastfeeding help I got. I even found a great evening La Leche League group that was full of working mums (the daytime group I went to briefly was super weird about the fact that I was planning on going back to work after parental leave) who were very reasonable and supportive about things like supplementing with formula, queer parenting, single parenting, and the trans guy who wanted to be a leader for his LLL group.
I don’t have kids – my boobs are currently purely ornamental.
However, it seems so straightforward. It’s a really good thing to have people help you do things you have chosen to do, that might require support. You may benefit from, for instance, a personal trainer to help you with your fitness goals. You may benefit from a lactation consultant to help you breast feed. But imagine if personal trainers were just busting into hospital rooms demanding that you lift weights. Even if you don’t have arms! Just try! Blech.
Yeah, I went to a breastfeeding support group run by a damn hippie organization and you’d have expected the lactation consultant to be The Worst just judging by stereotypes. She wasn’t, she was a dream. Women would come in exhausted and practically in tears and be like “I’m pumping 700 times a day and I have to go back to work and can I just replace one feeding with formula,” like they were expecting to be executed on the spot. And she’d say, “Of course. Formula is food. It isn’t rat poison.” God bless her.
I just remembered that I once saw an email exhorting me to vote for Jon Bon Jovi as the ‘Most Sexist Man Alive’ which I giggled about for days. How about The Toast create a new award called that?
I mean, I wouldn’t disagree.
See, what I’m particularly enjoying is the prospect of all these awful sexist men getting an email telling them they’ve been nominated for Most Sexist Man Alive and being all happy like ‘Yaaaay all these wimmin I dismiss and undermine on a daily basis think I’m sooo damn sexy!!! …Oh…oh..wait…oh.’
ha ha ha whoops looks like those guys would not be the only ones that misread that (sorry Mr. Bon Jovi I have done a disservice to the fine state of New Jersey just now)
Don’t worry – I assumed that you meant you agreed with my idea for a new award because I am THAT EGOTISTICAL! As far as I know Jon Bon Jovi isn’t particularly sexist.
Um, I’m a trans guy and I read Adam and I had a LOT of thoughts about it? I guess I could review it?
seriously, pitch it to Nicole and Mallory. I for one would love to read that review, though I haven’t read Adam.
Every time I read an article about lactivists I want to go out and bedazzle myself a t-shirt saying “I was formula fed and I turned out damn awesome”.
My Children were Formula Fed and were recruited by the Ivy League
My Children were Formula Fed and Got Perfect SAT Scores
I’m sure we can think of more T shirts
I would wear a T-shirt that said, “I was breastfed, but I’m allergic to everything and my neurochemistry is jacked up!”
This made me snort gleefully.
Seriously. Allergies, asthma, weak-ish joints, and depression.
Check, check, check, and check. THANKS, MOM.
(and Dad, I mean, your genes helped get me here, too)
Old Navy had a “Formula Powered” onesie with a logo of a flying bottle. It was out just before I had my son (who was FF, as was my daughter and as this next one will be). A friend bought it for me. I wish I knew where the damn thing was.
I have not read Adam yet, but I have read A LOT of discussion about it, and have talked to a few people who have read it. It’s really interesting/telling to hear different reactions to it. Because many trans men and queer women (especially those from NYC) are like “lolz, yeah we’re kinda like that,” while a lot of reactions from trans women are much more negative and critical. Again, this is only what I’ve seen, so obvs not totally representational, but I’m definitely much less willing to read it now than when it first came out.
There was also a really great Instagram video/Vine/whatever of someone putting copies of Imogen Binnie’s Nevada on top of Adam At Bluestockings in NYC and that made me really happy.
Jaya and Matt’s article is giving me flashbacks to some of the mind bendingly awful things I wore during my transition from heavy metal obsessed “who gives a fuck about looking pretty” redneck into what I considered to be “stylishly” goth (but pretty and aloof!!) like Siouxsie in the ’90’s.
Pewter earrings shaped like stuff factored in quite a bit, I believe. There was an abortive attempt to “goth up” a black and blue floral pair of CULOTTES. BLACK SATIN T SHIRTS.
I know, right? I’m, um, extended breastfeeding my son, but I am SOOOO hesitant to say anything about it to anyone, ever. In part because, yeah, cultural pushback (everyone should breastfeed, but not too long that’s just weird!) and in part because I don’t want to be mistaken for a lactivist. Because, seriously, as long as you are feeding your baby, I do not care at all how or whether it’s breastmilk or formula. Honestly. Benefits are minimal in first world countries! Your time is valuable and spending hours pumping is not for everyone! There is no reason to attach guilt or shame to that! Etc.! #NotAllBreastfeeders.
30 months for each of my kids.
I accept that it was an unusual-in-our-time/place long time. It worked for us. Back off, anyone with opinions.
“we always stage a fake fight on her last night here. This time we fought about male primogeniture”
ok we get it nicole, your family is better than ours
(adopt me please)
This (regarding the breast feeding article):
“…Willey added, “I think that women who have made the difficult decision to have bilateral mastectomies have already grieved the loss of not being able to breast feed. No group should make a woman feel guilty about the decisions she made . . . or make her feel inadequate about not being able to lactate.”
Also, I refuse to read anything that celebrates fucking bull/dog/cock/Siamese fish/ANY ANIMAL fighting, Christ Almighty.
I’m really shocked you don’t have gas and air in the US! It’s so normal in the uk it’s like the thing that most people who don’t have any other pain relief have. Why is it not used in the US? It’s not like it has many side-effects or anything?
Without reading the comment below, this comment was SUPER confusing. Like, excuse you, people in the US drive cars and breathe EVERY DAY, and the only side effects are global climate change and also we’re all going to die one day.
I was very confused reading this comment! And then I realised what you meant. Yeah, that’s what it’s normally called here (UK) – sorry, it didn’t occur to me how confusing that would be!
And they use it for kids having dental work, at least my kids’ dentist does, so yeah, baffling.
It sounds so bizarre. Surely it’s a fairly straightforward pain relief option?
Does it actually help much though? Because I had it in the emergency room once before they redislocated my ankle* and they kept telling me that I would be so happy I’d have no interest in what they were doing down there. They lied. My boyfriend was sitting just outside the room and he said that the sound I made was so horrific that he almost passed out from that alone**.
So now I am deeply suspicious of anyone who talks about it as a childbirth pain relief option.
* The reason for this is pretty gross: did you know it was possible to dislocate your ankle (no break!) with enough force that the bone busts through the skin? I didn’t! But I (and my poor soccer friends and my long suffering boyfriend who was standing about two metres behind me at the time) sure do know now!
**He is very bad with blood but had held it together to that point, even when the ER doctor took the ambulance dressing off and pointed at the exposed bone and asked my boyfriend if he wanted to take a picture.
I am utterly flabberghasted to learn that nitrous oxide (gas-and-air, all the midwives here in the UK call it) is not available in the US. Here they pipe it into all the delivery rooms, there are literally masks hanging off the walls. Marvellous stuff. I am sad for all the Americans now.
They’ll bring it round to your house for home births too!
Possibly the biggest disappointment of my life is that it was never anything like The Egypt Game. Man, I wanted that *so much.* To this day, if I had to live inside a novel, it would be that one.
Can Confirm: Vela Mag is AWESOME and everyone should read and donate to their kickstarter pronto.
Oh, gracious. The breastfeeding article. I feel like she should make less shitty friends, mostly. I am also so interested in the lactation consultants (plural?! Roaming in pairs, like nuns?) were they employees? Volunteers? How would the milk get out of the armpits?
I don’t think the author made that up, because it is too weird, but what? Things must be rather different in Georgetown.
The hospital where I gave birth had one LC, who was on staff and a nurse, and was very nice, but didn’t have time to wait for my excessively sleepy newborn to wake up. I don’t doubt for a minute that one is subjected to shitty comments if one is at a certain level of education and economic status and doesn’t breastfeed, because life is a vale of shitty comments, but it’s weird to me whenever a parenting piece takes the conceit that a well-off, educated parent’s experience is somehow universal.
I’m so late to The Toast today, busy morning, but whatever: My midwifery center is one of the two places in CO where you can get nitrous, woooo.
I wonder if I can get it to go. Forget labor, I need it to face the fact that I’ve got to somehow take care of a newborn and a 20-month old at the same time.
I would NEVER read Corner Gas erotic fanfiction, only Red Green Show erotic fanficion.
Ranger Gord/Everyone
1) Ooh, I love “The Haunting” and though I’m not quite sure I could stomach “May” I look forward to reading what folks have to say about it. 2) I’ve tried repeatedly to recruit trans folks I know through Twitter to review “Adam” and haven’t had any luck, though one (a publisher whose authors’ list is mostly trans) gave a very thoughtful answer about not wanting to expend energy on “Adam” when there are so many better books by actual trans people that he could be promoting. 3) Nicole, I realize I’ve never met her, but I think I love your Mom.
I think they should go back to the old Welsh tradition of voting for the ablest person in the extended royal family. In practice, that was always men, but there’s no reason to limit by gender these days. What would be really interesting would be if they retained the requirement that the ruler have no physical defects–which in the Middle Ages led to ambitious wannabes blinding or castrating all the male relatives they could get their hands on so they’d be the only one eligible.
I remember all of junior high being a traumatizing fashion experiment. One time I tried wearing tights with shorts but I’m pretty sure they weren’t like, cool colored tights, just regular pantyhose. I got laughed at mercilessly and took them off before homeroom. I also tried out vests but only had old lady vests from the thrift store. It was the 90’s!
We can generally have it for dental procedures, but rarely for anything else.
(replying to those expressing dismay at the lack of American nitrous)
Jaya and Matt’s piece gave me stress dreams last night. I once wore a pair of those novelty boxers given out at a bat mitzvah I attended under low-slung, shapeless “boyfriend jeans.” I was going for Aliyah in the “Are You That Somebody” video. I was more like “did she poop her pants? I think maybe she pooped her pants.”
I can’t be the only person here who watches Call The Midwife. They’ve been giving nitrous to women in labor SINCE JAZZ TIMES. What gives?
Because America was founded by Calvinists who believed that childbirth was a woman’s personal punishment for original sin, so by god (and they meant that literally) she’d better SUFFER?
@ kirpunz — It can, actually! Lots of women have some milk ducts just sort of scattered around. It’s not at all unusual for milk to come out somewhere on the areola, all the way to in the armpit. It’s why you’re not supposed to wear an underwire nursing bra (can prevent the flow of milk from your far-flung milk ducts, thus clogging them, and giving you Troubles). (Once on House the patient was lactating from behind her knee, which does strike me as a bit of a stretch.)
WHICH IS NOT TO SAY anyone should be told to rely on such ducts!
Horrifying things I have learned today!
This is absolutely horrifying to me.
Last night I fought for and won the armrest at the movie theatre while watching Gone Girl next to a male stranger (husband willingly gave me his armrest as he should).
I endured 3 hard jabs and did not budge and he eventually gave up.
I thought you guys might be proud.
That breastfeeding article reminded me that I have to add “no lactation consultant, please” on my birth plan. Breast surgery 13 years ago, tried it twice, it’s not going to happen. I defy anyone to come and try to pump something out of my breasts.
I just started teaching high school in France, where teachers don’t have to dress up to teach but do, more often than not, and I’ve discovered that the great thing about teaching high school is I get a second chance to wear all the fun outfits I never wore when I actually was in high school. In high school I never had a style, even an aspirational one: I wasn’t trying to be goth, or punk, or grunge, or anything but neutral. Sometimes I got sick of neutral and wore funky hippie outfits, but they never looked good on me, and I always regretted them about halfway through the day. Really I wanted to look like a combination of Ruth Hussey in The Philadelphia Story and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, but I had no idea how to go about that, and I was never confident enough in my taste to have fun with clothes. The other day I went off to teach in a short skirt, belted at the waist, tights, ankle boots, the whole nine yards, and it was the weirdest feeling to be standing in a high school, all dressed up, feeling great about what I was wearing and not giving a shit what the popular girls thought.
I then told her that Kate Middleton was just plain better than the rest of us, and she performatively dry-heaved
Your mother is excellent.
But what Corner Gas pairings are people looking for?????
Gas and air! Call the Midwife has taught me that it’s the most amazing thing in the world.
Huh? You mean nitrous oxide isn’t generally used in the US? That’s crazy! It’s standard practice in the UK, every delivery room has it, midwives attending home births bring it, it’s such good stuff! It got me through 2 hours of an oxytocin drip induction (at which point, I went for the epidural, but was glad I could be mobile before that and bounce on a birthing ball) and it got me through the epidural not quite working and still having some pain. You poor things! I hope more places decide to use it.
“My mom left yesterday, after a twelve-day visit. We have a tough time separating, so we always stage a fake fight on her last night here. This time we fought about male primogeniture, and I took the stance that the British Royal Family should have stuck with male primogeniture instead of abolishing it in 2013 and my mom took the opposite stance. Phrases such as “YOU CALL YOURSELF A FEMINIST” were used. I then told her that Kate Middleton was just plain better than the rest of us, and she performatively dry-heaved and we stormed out of the room and it made it a lot easier to say goodbye.”
THIS IS SO BRILLIANT. Nicole, you are brilliant and your mother is brilliant and you have just made my day immeasurably better with a single paragraph. Thank you, from the bottom of my crabby, stressed-out, misanthropic heart.
(can we talk about sidney crosby’s butt though
or the butts of other professional hockey players
the butts, they do not lie)
(can we talk about sidney crosby's butt though
or the butts of other professional hockey players
the butts, they do not lie)