You were lookin' in the mirror and you wish you had some pot?

So apparently Amanda Palmer, who is awesome, had a falling out with her record label because she didn't want to cut out shots of her (incredibly hot) body out of her latest video, on the basis that she had a bit of a tummy and was thusly "not marketable" or some crap like that. This is fairly old news, so stay with me.

Palmer did what was right in flipping these jerkwads the bird, and they responded by refusing to promote her new album or single, I think. Details are hazy there. Palmer's fans and other people who can see the plain messed-up-ness of this nonsense have responded with The Rebellyon, which is comprised of many people sending in pictures of their own bellies with the knowledge that they all look amazing and are all beautiful and other hippie granola stuff that people will make fun of me for thinking.

I thought this Rebellyon was an awesome idea, and lamented its arrival being during the time when my real computer (with the webcam) is out of commission. Then, while perusing the subject further maybe about an hour ago, I realized: I HAD a picture of my belly, from a few months ago, when I was dying for snacks between shopping trips and thought it would be cute to take a silly little "SNAX PLOX" picture. So without further ado, I present my Belly.

And you know what? I'm quite proud of my little-kid-proturding tummy; moreso than I am of my bony hips because at least my tummy doesn't hurt immensely when I bang it on a doorframe. But I'd proudly take a picture of my bony hips (which are more like Shins Part 2, with how much covering they have) and post that on the internet if it meant something.

And I'd give you my toes, which I've always thought looked like men's toes on the basis that all the women in my life as a child (on my mother's side, mostly) had toes like my mother, and I had toes like my father, and all the pedicure ideas in magazines had toenails like me mother's to facilitate putting little mail polish pictures on them. I alas, have no room for such things.

And I'd give you my hands, which look, to me, at the same time like an old woman's and like a little girl's: worn from artistry and scarred from endless hangnails. (I was going to mention my warts too, but they seem to have mysteriously disappeared, which is strange because I have had the one wart for as long as I can remember, so I'm going to assume the wart fairy took them away.) My nails are never pretty; not since I stopped getting acrylics on them and went back to using my teeth for nail clippers and chewing off the polish whenever I do bother to polish them. They are, to my credit, almost always bizarrely clean, because I am so anal retentive about cleaning gunk out from my fingernails. (I used to come back from Painting and Ceramics classes with hands just as sparkling as they were when I walked in. There was probably paint or clay all over my clothes and in my hair, but MY HANDS WERE CLEAN. I put them in my mouth a lot.)

I'd describe similarly how I'd proudly display my bra-clad breasts, but my breasts are frankly my favorite part of my anatomy, so that would just be bragging. Suffice it to say my boobs are awesom and I heart them. (I do not heart the little lone black hairs that appear around my aurolae that bother me so much that I have to tweeze them away even if no one's going to be seeing them. WTF boobhairs; I am a blonde.)

I'd take pictures, if it had a larger purpose, of my unshaven legs in the fur coat I'm growing on them for winter. Other than the hair, very light on the top half and dark on the bottom half, they're pretty much ideal as far as Western Beauty Standards (tm) go. Other than bringing me only to 5'2", anyway. I'd proudly display my weird knees. Does anyone have attractive knees? Knees are pretty bizarre in general; like feet or genitals.

If I could get all high-res and artistic, even, I'd take close-up pictures of my shoulders so you could see the details I love about them most. They're freckled and shiny from years of sunburn after sunburn; the results of loving the beach but also being largely Irish.

If I could show the Internet at large the details in my face and hair that show up in a mirror but no on camera, I'd love to. The very specific pattern the tiny hairs in my nostrils make when I check for boogers. The thousands of freckles that run together to make freckle blotches that blend into my skin until summertime comes back. The pores on my nose. The blackheads on the edge of my upper lip that I can't get rid of because they are in such a difficult spot to get at without giving myself a fat lip. The individual hairs between my eyebrows that make me self-conscious about unibrow possibilities and so, must be shaved with that little As-Seen-On-TV electric thing for shaving tiny areas. The pattern made by the skin on my lips, which is a lot more pronounced when they're dry. The "beauty marks" on my cheeks. My crooked bottom teeth. All my split ends. The paint or glue or tea or clay or lip balm that is probably in my hair, no matter how long it's been since I've used any of those things. (Paint is an especially bad offender; I've seen blue ends a full week after using paint.)

I'd show you these things (for a real purpose, not for someone's gratification) because I know I am beautiful. And you know what? You're beautiful too. No, shut up, I mean it. You're reading my blog, which means I probably know you personally and can attest to it, but either way, I think everyone's got something beautiful to reveal. And once you own that? Everything else follows suit. People can see it.

Also, cookies for anyone who gets the title for this entry and why it is applicable..

YES YES YES YES

WE WON!

(Image from /b/, where good things are occasionally born.)

Rape Humor: You're Doing it Wrong

I have, as usual, been wasting my weeknights watching Comedy Central shows. In an odd enough twist of fate, not one but two shows dealt with rape as a central premise for jokes in the fresh new season. Loath as I am to say this usually, South Park got it wrong. And if you can believe this, The Sarah Silverman Program got it right. Let me explain these things one at a time.

South Park: DOING IT WRONG
The season premiere of South Park opened on Cartman having nightmares about the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, and raving to his friends the next morning, that the Chinese were going to take over. Kyle started and then said he couldn't do this today, Stan reminded Kyle that he was supposed to call Cartman "racist or something," and Kyle went home. For a glorious moment, I thought they were going to break the Fourth Wall. But alas, no.

The reason Kyle couldn't deal with Cartman today is because he had not been able to get over (apparently) witnessing the rape of his friend. For about five minutes we suffer, wondering who got raped. (Was it Butters? C'mon, it's always Butters.) Kyle has a horrible flashback which depicts to boys in a movie theater and we finally see who it was who was "raped": Indiana Jones. The boys run screaming out of the theater, one of them vomiting on the pavement outside and wailing things such as, "Aliens don't belong in an Indiana Jones movie!" And, alright, whatever, it's cool and "edgy" these days to use the word "rape" in that context, and the buildup was alright. There were a few throwaway gags that were actually, you know, funny, such as the good ol' Lifetime Rape Movie of the Week cliche of staring out into the sunset on a lake while talking about it in the most overwrought way possible. And this was, alright, not Trey and Matt's best work, but not too bad.

Until Stan started to "come to terms" with the "rape." Viewers were "treated," I guess, to an imaginary scenario in which Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas physically rape Indiana Jones. Two other characters had little visions like this, each one different, each one pretty graphic as far as basic cable goes, and each one just uncomfortably long. I don't mean uncomfortably long in the, "This was funny at first, now it's too long, now it's so long it's funny again" way; I mean uncomfortably long in that, "Wow, this was just umcomfortable, and now it's gone on for like an eternity and I hope there's a really good payoff." There wasn't a really good payoff. There wasn't ANY payoff. It was pretty much just three rape scenes which, I can imagine, would be pretty triggering for any survivors of rape who happen to actually like South Park. (I'm surprised it hasn't been on Feministe yet, really.)

The joke was not about how rape was bad or how rapists were terrible people, but how, even if Spielberg and Lucas are represented as evil demons, watching Indiana Jones get raped is FUNNY. But honestly, I watched it, three times, and it really really wasn't.

(To this episode's credit, the subplot about Cartman and Butters storming P. F. Chang's was fantastic and classic, "Cartman's not only a horrible racist but a total idiot" humor. That should have been the main plot, with the rape sequences being replaced with more Lifetime Movie clihes, I think.)

The Sarah Silverman Program: DOING IT RIGHT
The start of Sarah's domino effect of ridiculousness in this episode is her sister Laura's mention that she has vaguely Asian features because their Russian ancestors, ages and ages ago, were raped and pillaged by Mongolian invaders. This is not too unusual; lots of people were pillaged by Mongolians back in the day, but the silliness arises from the exaggerations in the show, as always. Sarah flashes back to her father singing a lullaby to her as a child. The last line is, in contrast to the rest of the happy song, a deathly whisper of "Your ancestors were raped by Mongolians." The ridiculousness builds up through the show, resulting in Sarah at one point screaming "rape" when her Mongolian landlords increase her rent. Jay rightfully chews her out for ever, EVER yelling rape when she wasn't in danger. Sarah, always kind of a horrible person, dismisses his arguments about "semantics" and goes on a rampage of ill-advised cartoonish crap, culminating in her purchase of a billboard with her sister's smiling face on it, declaring "Descended from a Mongolian RAPIST." The Mongolian Board of Tourism is, naturall, not pleased, and take Sarah to court. Sarah countersues for the rape of her ancestors.

The trial is where I realized the stark difference between the rape jokes in these episodes. The...prosecution? I don't know, who's the lawyer who's not working for the woman countersuing an entire country for rape? Well, whatever, the lawyer for the Mongolians produces a picture of a Russian peasant woman from, you know, way back when. She's got a long skirt and a babushka and the general frumpy look associated with "Russian peasant." The lawer presenting this picture notes that the woman's ankles are exposed, and that thusly, she is wearing the equivalent of one of Britney Spears' outifts, and so obviously, "She was asking for it."

After that, it gets a little weird and kind of loses the whole "rape" thread, so I'll wrap up. In contrast to the South Park episode, the joke here was about the attitudes toward rape, rather than the act itself. Sarah looks absurd for screaming rape about a rent increase, and buying a billboard of her sister's face with the word "RAPIST" underneath it in bold letters. The idea that a Russian peasant woman was "asking for it" by the way she dressed is patently ridiculous--as is the idea that any woman is "asking for it," ever. The idea of someone being raped isn't funny; it's how people act toward the idea of someone being raped that's funny.

I have to update my list of People Who Have Made Jokes About Rape That Have Not Made Me Incredibly Angry. It now consists of TWO people.
-George Carlin
-Sarah Silverman (or at least the writers for her show)

NEWSFLASH.

Women poop.


Not only that, dudes, but we fart and pee too. And one time, I let out such a ferocious burp in a Burger King that the entire place fell silent except for one guy laughing hysterically. And my farts? Sometimes, they can be pretty nasty.

I'm not even gonna get into my period, either, but I'm sure the ladies out there know that some gnarly stuff happens down there occasionally.

And no, we don't crap rainbows. Only Xlormp does that.

(Sarah Haskins marry me please)

Shameless Plugging Time!

Okay, so I don't know how many people who read this haven't already gotten my crossposting at my nerdy DA journal, and if there are any, how many of them are visually impaired, but just in case: Check this out.

Incredibly cheap (for glasses) and not even horrible and fugly like cheaper glasses tend to be. Not only that, but their reproduction Lennon frames come in waaaaay more color options than the actual official Lennon sunglasses.

At these prices, I might be able to have sunglasses again!

And I'm Sittin' Here on Capitol Hill

Sometimes, things happen that are awesome. This is one of them.

I saw a commercial for it about five minutes ago, and it was marketed as "just in time for the election," and is apparently being sold with an election-tracking map so kids can keep up with which candidate is winning which state.

In case you're unclear on why this is awesome, let me tell you a little story about my childhood.

In whatever grade it was that we started to learn about government, I became enraptured with the idea. We could pick who we wanted to be in charge. It was up to us. And on that glorious day that I hit the age of eighteen, I could join the ranks of people who helped to choose who ran our country. I would play pretend, and my games would involve my imaginary character's eighteenth birthday, on which she was given a voting license by her mother or something, and this was the best possible present. (Clearly, I did not understand the rules of registering, but I think that knowing you need a license to vote at seven is fairly impressive, right?) Other kids wanted to be eighteen because they wanted to be grown-up, to drive cars, to stay up as late as they wanted, and, after puberty, because they could buy cigarettes and porn or whatever. I wanted to be eighteen because it meant that I would finally, FINALLY be able to vote.

Perhaps if kids watch this Schoolhouse Rock thing, they'll get excited about voting like I was. Perhaps they, too, will look forward to the day that they can decide who they want to be president or governor or mayor or senator or head of the PTA or whatever. Higher voter turnout by excited young people could only be a good thing.


Also tangentially related to the Bill on Capitol Hill is some crappy stuff. Here I'll quote from the fabulous Cara of Feministe and The Curvature who has said it much better than I could: "I have previously written about the dangerous proposed Department of Health and Human Services rule that would endanger women’s access to reproductive health care. The rule, if instated, would allow health care workers to prevent women from knowing all of their health care options, including those regarding birth control — and would call government-funded providers “discriminatory” for refusing to hire such people, thus removing their funding.

The comment period for the proposed rule closes on September 25th."

Seriously, go say something about it. (They even give you a form letter for us lazy folk who can't think of anything more eloquent to say than "L. E. SMASH" on this matter!)

Please Do Not Pump Them Up. Please.

Alright, so coming up on two Saturdays ago, I went to go see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. (Alas, I was a virgin and everything.) Now, I’m pretty sure everyone with a functioning sex drive will agree with me that Frank N. Furter, for all his psychotic Meatloaf-eating and straight-kid-seducing ways, is pretty much made of sex. And if you don’t, I guess my only response is to stare slack-jawed and break my brain trying to fathom why. (Possible reasons: You have not seen the movie; maybe Tim Curry is eternally Nigel Thornberry for you; etc. These are okay reasons, I guess.)

And then, something strange happened. Instead of wondering how someone could not want to have this Sweet Transvestite break into their cheaply-filtered guest room, I wondered why I did. I mean, honestly, I’ve got no attraction for Tim Curry outside the stockings, pearls, and heavy makeup. It was then that I started to think about The Seventies.

I recently learned that, during the “lost weekend” in these aforementioned The Seventies, already-rather-pretty-boy John Lennon stole May Pang’s flower-decorated jeans because they fit him. Being a nerd for John Lennon, I thought this was maybe one of the greatest things ever. (Also, now that I think about it, it means that the dream I had long ago where George Harrison followed me home from Wal-Mart and permanently borrowed my pants because his were ruined in the rain makes a lot more sense.)

I have conjectured that everyone, deep down inside, somewhere in their heart of hearts, would totally do David Bowie. I stand by this conjecture, and will write off any evidence anyone can provide to the contrary as mere outliers and flukes that don’t usually occur in nature. No, I don’t care. Really. La la la la la, I can’t hear you.

I watch anime and have a fondness for Japanese pop culture. That...that’s really all I need to say about my love of feminine men, isn’t it?

I wonder if it’s a coincidence that I came across all these wonderful things (especially Japan) during puberty. I know that, as a child, I really bought into that “gender roles” crap, once I came to terms with the fact that they wouldn’t let me be a Boy Scout because I was Not a Boy. (I still want to go swimming in a lake with fish in it. No fair.) But, somewhere along the line my ideal guy changed from my pre-pubescent fantasy of some short-blonde-haired, blue-eyed, business-suited Soap Opera Hunk to my current, post-pubescent fantasy of a delicate-featured, long-and-silky-haired, glitter-covered Asian in tight leather pants and go-go boots.

Imagine if I hadn’t been exposed to glam rock and hippies and J-pop at such a formative age? I might have been dating some square like Brad Majors these days.

P.S. No, I hate Twilight, don’t even ask.

Let's Talk About Abortions! Yay!

So I was poking around Feministe about ten minutes ago and found this. I had about two thoughts. The simple one was, "Samantha Bee is made of win." The one I'm going to talk about went something like this: "AAAAARGGGHH L. E. SMASH!" (Told you I was violent on the inside.)

What is it about anti-choice buttwaffles that makes me angry enough to punch babies and kick puppies? Honestly, I'm not sure what about them pushes me quite so far into Capslock Harry territory, but I do know why I get angry in the first place.

My paternal family is pretty solidly Irish Catholic, and throughout my childhood took a much bigger role than my maternal family in raising me. (This might have something to do with the fact that my maternal family largely migrated from Jersey to Florida while I was not yet a hatchling.) I've lived with my older sister through two of her pregnancies and developed love and emotions for one-month-old fetuses in her belly. I don't think I need to go on much farther here; the point is that I don't want to get an abortion ever. I wouldn't want my future daughter to get an abortion ever. I wish there honestly was never any need for any woman ever to get an abortion. (This fantasy could perhaps maybe happen someday if we could get some affordable birth control and comprehensive sex-ed already for the love of all that ever was or could be holy.) Technically, yes, I'm pro-life. Incidentally, this also means I'm anti-war, anti-death penalty, and basically anti-anything that involves a human life being taken away.

But you know what? I'm open-minded enough to know that my experience is not everyone's experience. My personality is not everyone's personality. My circumstances are not everyone's circumstances. This is why I'm pro-choice. I'm not pro-murdering-infants. I'm not pro-punching-pregnant-women-in-the-stomach. I'm not pro-mandatory-abrotions-for-everyone. I'm pro-choice.

I'm pro-choice because I can't pretend to know what everyone who considers an abortion is going through. I'm pro-choice because there's no real definition of when a fetus stops being a clump of parasitic cells and starts being a person. If they find that line, then I'll absolutely agree to no abortions past it, but until then I'm not about to call someone a murderer for doing something that could be equivalent to swatting a fly or using antibacterial soap. I'm pro-choice because I don't think, when a teenage girl gets pregnant because the condom broke, that the only option should be to shrug and say, "Well, there goes your youth." I'm pro-choice because having sex does not warrant a punishment, and a human child shouldn't be seen as one. Ever, by anyone.

As a white girl with enough money to buy condoms and birth control, and a decent enough education to know how to use them so they work, I choose to avoid having an abortion unless there is some kind of horrible emergency. That, right-wing wankers who make me froth about the mouth, is what pro-choice means.

(Fun fact: I wanted my next post to be about how David Bowie et al turned me pseudo-gay, but this came out instead. Don't worry, I'll get around to that too. Probably. Maybe.)

Admitting is the First Step

With this post, I will take a break from yelling about crap I don't enjoy, and instead make a confession to my readers (All six of them.):

I am a comment addict.

On my own stuff, for instance. If I put up a piece of Deviant Art and someone doesn't comment if they favorite it, I twitch a little. If I put up a piece I actually like and nobody comments, I die a little inside. The fact that the maybe six of my friends who say they read this blog have yet to comment on anything here makes my heart hurt. I am very much not well.

Of course, this is to say nothing of comments on things that have a following. It's one thing when my mediocre animoo gets commented on and I dance inside my mind. It is quite another to just HAVE to read all the comments on, say, a blog post that has a devoted following. I must have wasted hours reading comments on a post at Sadly, No! or some hacked object at ModTheSims2. I could likely spend half my time on the internet doing something more constructive if I didn't NEED to know what the masses thought of some post over at BoingBoing.

The thing is, I almost never comment on anything. Something has to particularly strike me for me to give feedback on it. It's more like people-watching than anything else.

I'm not likely to spend much time thinking of a response, but I will stay up until daylight, telling myself, "I will go to bed after reading these comments." Then, of course, I will forget I told myself this, open up a new tab full of comments to read, and begin the sick, depraved process over again.

So it would be really cool if I got some comments on this post? [insert emoticon here]

In Search of The Elusive Lulz

Here is what I am getting sick of hearing: "Feminists have no sense of humor." This is usually said by a male (most often white) in response to a woman, particularly one who has declared herself feminist, not dying of laughter after a rape joke or a domestic violence joke or some kind of "women-as-props-in-men's-lives" joke.

Look. I will say right here I still laugh at the George Carlin bit about how anything can be funny, including rape: Imagine Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd. Thing is, you pretty much have to be at George Carlin skill-level to pull that shiz off. Porky raping Elmer takes refuge in audacity. Especially when you take into consideration that these are Looney Tunes, and there will likely be cartoonishly deformed facial expressions and ridiculous props pulled from hammerspace and fun with speech impediments. Your so-called "joke" about you, a human being, say, raping another human being to death...well, that isn't funny at all, really. That's more "disturbing and horrible." Unless you're two feet tall and your eyes have been known to jump off your face when someone throws TNT at you, only to be hilariously soot-covered and slightly tattered after the explosion, I don't want to hear about you raping someone. Unless you can find a way to contextualize a rape that rivals George Carlin's one specific joke about it in cleverness. I, personally, won't hole my breath.

I still do get a chuckle out of the old creepy mofo standard, "My favorite pick up line is, 'Does this rag smell like choloroform to you?'." This is mainly because I, a tiny unassuming girl, have worked hard to perpetuate the myth that I am SUPERCRAZY and will KILL you. See, it's funny because it isn't true. (This, incidentally, might help explain why people are more likely to suffer my insanity gladly than that of my friend, who actually might hurt you.) I'm 5'2", about 100 lbs, and mousy. Pretending to be a psycho stalker works for me because it's patently ridiculous. What would I do with a normal-sized human being if I caught one? My noodle arms certainly can't move them anywhere. I'm far too bashful to do anything to anyone I knock out. Where would I even get chloroform? I'm broke all the time! People who know me personally (and thus, the only one I tell jokes about drugging people and having my way with them to) will get the joke.

But when a seemingly average guy (let's say guy, for the sake of arguement) who could concievably drug and rape someone makes a joke about drugging and raping someone, that takes the silliness out of it that, for me, makes it okay to laugh at when I say it. And I'm not going to make that joke to a bunch of people who know nothing about me, or at least not that I'm tiny and crazy and kind of shy.

Clear as mud? Awesome.

My point is that the thing about making jokes that can be totally offensive is that there are a number of factors in play here. You need to think about your audience, yourself, and your skill level. As someone who has been treated as a "less than" because of her chromosomes, a joke treating women as "less than" is, oddly enough, not exactly going to resonate well with me.

Anyway, I leave you with a link to Shakesville on this topic that might make a little more sense.

Semi-Original Content

Crossposted from my aforementioned Deviant Art journal, in which I like to complain about misogyny in commercials.

Okay, so those Twix commercials. Those "Need a moment" ones. I liked them until something occurred to me: Every one of them, without fail (unless I'm forgetting any, in which case tell me and I'll eat my humble pie), has been about men somehow deceiving women so that the women will like them better.

-First one: Wife in hot pink spandex asks if the ridiculous pants makes her butt look big. Husband shoves candy into mouth and mumbles, so wife cannot hear that he totally wants to call her fat. Wife is happy!
-Second one, maybe?: Beavis and Butthead are all grown up and in a bookstore, chuckling over some skeezy book about how to pick up women. Girl one of them knows walks over and says hello. Man eats candy in a freeze frame, and is inspired to pretend to be offended by the book. Girl likes guy!
-Most recent one I've seen: Girl and guy are talking at a party. Girl is discussing politics intelligently. Guy does not listen to a word she says, and goes, "Uhhhhhh, wanna come back to my place?" Girl is rightfully outraged that guy is such an a-hole. Guy eats candy in freeze frame and comes up with some BS story about wanting to blog with her. Girl loves blogging and presumably would LOVE to come back to guy's place!

Puke.


Also, I HATE Girls Gone Wild. Everything about the whole thing. The exploiting possibly-underage, probably-drunk girls, the complaining by many that now that the girls are starting to enjoy it it's "not as good" anymore, the fact that Joe Francis is a skeezy rapist if about a zillion separate accounts are to be believed, the sell-your-dignity-for-a-t-shirt mentality, all of it.

Which is why it hurts me so much that the steel drum music in the background of their disgusting commercials is so catchy that I frequently find myself dancing to it and humming along with it when I'm doing the dishes and watching the Daily Show. *die*

I Caved.

I have accepted that my Deviant Art Journal won't get my feelings out to the internet like I want my feelings out there. So allow me to introduce myself. I am your lovely hostess, L. E. Hairstylist, also known as the Rurouni Idoru. No, neither of these are my actual name. The first is a pun on my actual name, the second is an identity based on an elaborate inside joke from at least four years ago. I'll get to actually using my real name on a real blog when people start caring about it.

I'm a feminist hippie who likes shaving her armpits and fancy soaps. I love bacon, sugary stuff, and tea. I don't like a whole lot of vegetables or fancy foods. I love the Beatles and most of the wives they've had. (Not Heather Mills. Very much Yoko Ono.) I like memes, I hate /b/. (Which I suppose means I do liek Mudkips.) I'm a pacifist who gets violently angry. I'm anti-racist, anti-ableist, anti-fatphobia, anti-homophobia, anti-ageist, and just generally anti-stupid-bigotry. I do try and recognize when my privilege is showing. I'm white, middle class, and despite my best efforts, somehow conform to western beauty standards (apart from being tall and disdaining glasses).

I love cheap fashion, especially great thrift store finds. I love love LOVE art. I want to be Salvador Dali when I grow up, upward-pointing mustache and all. If I had enough money I'd start a wig collection. I don't drive. I like anime but can't really be bothered to look at anything new or really keep up with any of it. I prefer to get my news from the internet and the Daily Show than actual TV news. My heart shattered when George Carlin died. I'm deeply in love with the English language. (This means I like to correct people's grammar. Be warned.)

There's a lot more about me, too. I can only hope my silly blogging will reveal most of it.