I suspect I am not the only woman to become involved with men who profess to value her for her ability to be emotionally present, curious and passionate only to reveal, down the road, an expectation that this sort of generosity of time and energy be restricted solely to interests and activities that include them. I hate the idea that there is a type of person whose impulse when witnessing a partner’s clearly rewarding, other-directed engagement is to react with contempt, not celebration; to expect the prioritizing of one’s own needs far above hers. In my experience, daring to honor my interior life — not to mention my professional commitments — has proved, in the context of coupling, to be a controversial, radical act.
Seriously, fuck macarons. Fiddly little bullshit cookies.
I will NOT be taken unawares by the chimps when they come for us. Not me. They’re evil and they’re biding their time.
Respectability politics: not new, not interesting.
You can talk about all the Marvel announcements RIGHT HERE.
psssssst wanna go to a thing?
Roxane on The Feminist Novel:
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A feminist novel, then, is one that not only deals explicitly with the stories and thereby the lives of women; it is also a novel that illuminates some aspect of the female condition and/or offers some kind of imperative for change and/or makes a bold or unapologetic political statement in the best interests of women.
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If there is a quintessential feminist novel, it might be Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy. At the beginning of part two of Walker’s novel, Tashi, the novel’s protagonist, screams, “Can you bear to know what I have lost?” Hers is a difficult question because by the end of the novel, when we do know as much as we can know of what Tashi has lost, the truth is nearly impossible to bear. We cannot bear to know what she has lost.
This pairs really well with Marissa’s piece from Monday:
Instead of losing myself in sleepless, nauseated despair this time, however, I returned to a small dose of sertraline, swam back to the surface, and resumed life as a mother of normal fears, capable of smiling and laughter.
My goal now, as a writer, editor and friend, is to acknowledge, in a practical, proactive way, the tectonic hormonal and emotional shift that comes with bringing a person into this world, and the importance of preparing for it.
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On “the Emily Dickinson of photography”:
Though born in the Bronx and raised mostly in France, Maier spent much of her adult life as a nanny in Chicago. Photography was never her profession, but rather a largely secret passion. At her first nannying job in Chicago, she developed her photographs in a bathroom. Over the years, Maier took to hoarding her negatives, amassing tens of thousands of undeveloped snapshots, which she kept in storage lockers.
Maier died in Chicago in 2009, essentially anonymous as an artist and photographer. But in recent years, her work has experienced a rapid renaissance—largely due to the efforts of a former real estate agent, John Maloof, who bought thousands of her unlabeled negatives at an auction in 2007. (Maloof also co-directed a recent documentary about her life.)
My first time watching Pretty Woman.
Oh, hey, lookit someone not being a total human disaster on social media about Jian Ghomeshi.
