A thought on #effyourbeautystandards

A facebook friend of mine shared this illustration entitled Wrong Century by Tomas Kucerovsky recently:

And a reply on it from a person that I don't even know struck a chord with me. It absolutely summed up how I feel about the whole #effyourbeautystandards movement and Tess Munster.

Of Thoughts and Mud

Sometimes I just need to get away. Be alone. Have my own moment.

For two years I lived alone in London. Well... not quite alone alone. I did have flatmates, but they were people I didn't really know or have any sort of social responsibility towards. I kept my space clean, they keep their's clean, and otherwise we had very little to do with each other. It was lovely. I could retreat to my room and just be. Alone in a city of 8.6 million.

Southbank, London

And now I'm back in rural North Carolina. You'd think that it would be more peaceful here instead of less. But I'm living with my parents who haven't realized that I'm an adult yet. Don't get me wrong, I love my parents and I'm very grateful that they've let me live with them during my health crisis. But that is just how parents are, I think, mothers especially. I had to sit her down and explain to her that I need my space, and that a locked door wasn't meant offensively, but she didn't quite get it.

Nighttime on Waterloo Bridge, London

When I need peace, I have to get out of the house. My mother has an odd quirk: she hates silence, therefore she talks a lot to prevent it. To anyone and everyone; human, animal, and object alike. I've walked in on her in a room where she was alone by herself, still chattering away to no one. She can't sit in a room with someone quietly; she has to talk to them, although the conversation usually only goes one way.


Even sitting in my room with the door shut, I can hear her chattering away at the dog in the kitchen. Always noise, always talking. Never alone.

Barn couture

So I escape to the barn. My trainer was away this weekend, so I was taking care of her barn and escaped there. No one to talk at me, no one entitled to my attention. Just alone. It was muddy, so I couldn't ride. Instead I scrubbed buckets, cleaned stalls, and swept floors. Just so I could be so very alone for a time.

A post about Boob Sizes

"To avoid booby traps, stay away from bras" Jarod Kintz

    A young girl getting her first bra is commonly understood as a sort of Rite of Passage in America. Posh mommies may take their blossoming daughter to a department store for her first soft cup, cool and stylish mothers hit up Victoria's Secret for their smallest (and least sexy) push up, and the rest of us tend to find ourselves selecting something practical from Target or Walmart that we secretly hope to not get much wear out of before we have to size up.

   I would like to propose a second lingerie Rite of Passage: when a woman finally learns about bra fit and learns her real bra size.  Somewhere around 80% of women in America are wearing the wrong bra size. It really isn't a surprise when you consider how warped clothing sizes tend to be, but at least bra sizing is fairly well standardized within countries with a few brands having their own weird exceptions. Are we just a country of ladies who don't understand how to properly use a tape measure? Not at all, but we are a country of women being pandered to by a company focused on squishing us into a narrow range of bra sizes. No, Victoria's Secret isn't entirely to blame.  I could wax poetic for hours on here about how society messes with women's view of their own bodies, but if you wanted to read that you'd be reading a sociological journal and not a blog. So VS's warped business tactics are a great (and reasonably short) thing to talk about.