By Lauredhel on April 18, 2009
This orphaned Exmoor otter cub has a wee furry friend. [Via the Telegraph, more on the story here.]
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a great book? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Posted in arts & entertainment, fun & hobbies | Tagged fur & fluff, open thread, otters, photography |
Lauredhel is an Australian woman and mother with a disability. She blogs about disability and accessibility, social and reproductive justice, gender, freedom from violence, the uses and misuses of language, medical science, otters, gardening, and cooking.
This author has written 1549 posts for Hoyden About Town. Read more about Lauredhel »
Okay, this is kind of a minor thing… But I had a bit of a shit-fit the other morning while watching Sunrise. In relation to a ‘news’ piece about a beauty salon for young girls being opened in Florida, Melissa Doyle expressed disapproval. However, after being prompted by her co-anchor, she eventually admitted that she will occasionally, when painting her own nails, also paint her young daughter’s nails if she asks. She then said (and I’m paraphrasing); “But I always choose the colour. Pale pink is okay. If she asks for hot pink or bright colours then I say no.”
I don’t think a young girl wanting to be included in cosmetics play is ALWAYS about initiation into creepy Beauty Culture – it’s sometimes about wanting to share something of Mummy’s, for an ‘adult’ treat, and sometimes even a pleasant way to share physical intimacy with another. But jeez, if you’re going to do it at all, isn’t it kind of worse to express that pale pink is the ONLY appropriately feminine and non-threatening option? I’d be quite happy to see my young nieces (or nephews, for that matter) expressing a preference for fuschia, or candy-apple red, or electric blue, or royal purple, or sparkly silver…
Cheers Hoydens.
KM – that would have pinged me a bit, too. I freely admit to having painted my son’s toenails metallic purple as a preschooler, at his request, and have also painted them with rainbow glitter nail polish. Without your pinks example, I think there are a couple of things tied up in there – the brighter pinks/reds are considered not just “adult” but leaning into “slut”, while pale pink carries a little-girl-princess femininity air. I’m guessing (didn’t see the tape) that the woman is also quite entangled in notions of social class when it comes to fashion and body adornment.
More troubling again is the phenomenon of salon parties (or even routine ‘maintenance’) for little rich girls in the USA, where they sit around having their pedicures done. With the dynamic there, racism as well as classism rears its head – and while there are plenty of other instances of that, there was just something particularly disturbing about the images presented of rows of Hispanic adult women kneeling at the feet of little rich white kids. And then there’s bikini waxing for tweens. Brrrr.
While speaking of notions of feminine beauty, I am loving the Susan Boyle story (Britain’s Got Talent). She’s not a conventional beauty and solely based on her appearance the audience expects her to fail. How wrong they were. I heard a snippet of her singing on the news and then looked her up on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY
Its worth watching the seven minute clip to see Susan deal with the audience who have a laugh at her dream of being a successful singer. She knows she can sing and she knows that she is going to rock them.
I handed in my thesis today! And since then all I’ve done in watch Golden Girls on YouTube.
Anna: Eee! Congratulations!
Oh, Anna, congratulations! What a fabulous achievement!
Rock on, Anna!
Well done, Anna!
On another happy note, I noticed a ‘Breastfeeding mothers welcome’ sticker in the window of a local cafe. It pleased me.
I’m going back to uni tomorrow, and I’m trying to focus on the positive things, like seeing my friends and living with people who do their own washing up. And not the fact that I have done considerably less work than I should have done.
Kirstente’s last blog post..May 1st is Blog Against Disablism Day
@ Anna:
Hurrah for Anna! I loved the Golden Girls. So much sisterhood.
Rayedish: I heard the Susan Boyle clip no less than five times at work yesterday.
I am totally digging a comic called Digger.
The very practical, no-nonsense heroine is a wombat.
Thank you everyone for congratulations. :) :) I’m still a bit numb, I have to admit.
Wombats are awesome.
And not the fact that I have done considerably less work than I should have done.
At least I know I’m in good company.
For one of our classes we have to sculpt an avatar of ourselves. Most of my classmates are straight out of high-school, so the proposals mainly contained the phrases “and my avatar wears a mask, to symbolise how society forces us to hide our real selves”, “it’s got horns to represent the demonic part of me” and “this shows how I’m crying inside”. Teenagers. It was beautiful to watch.
Foxes! On a trampoline!
I was going to take a lovely photo of otters at Dubbo zoo, but the little buggers had just been fed and has seemingly disappeared to sleep it off.
Those foxes have made my day.
I have a friend whose small son absolutely loves makeup, the brighter and sparklier the better. She’s forever copping flak for “letting/encouraging him to look like a girl”.
Lauredhel, the racial dynamic there is just … ugh.
Interesting little piece of news. And by interesting I mean ‘vein-poppingly anger inducing’. Tina was listening to 6PR today at work and they were talking about a woman getting kicked out of the Hyatt for breastfeeding in public, despite the fact that she asked if there was a quiet room she could go to so she could be discreet and not bother anybody. Nice, huh? >:[
Yep, Mandy Crabtree. She didn’t even get kicked out for breastfeeding – she got kicked out for _asking_ if she could breastfeed. (In a quiet area, under a blanket). Premier Colin Barnett responded by saying that no clarification to anti-discrimination legislation would be supported by his government, and that if only women would be polite and discreet and use their common sense, all of this would not be a problem. (I had thought I blogged it here, but no, it was over at my LJ.)
Gahhh, according to he who knows everything (SamdeB) Susan Boyle is fascinating because she ‘doesn’t know her place’. He says this quite a few times, although his tone is somewhat admiring of her for having the sass to get up and sing like she did. I thought she had confidence because she knew she had a bloody beautiful voice. We know that her place is supposed to be invisible/old/fat in the patriarchal world, but she doesn’t care, and for that I admire her greatly.
Oh, Mindy, I know. I think Sam was struggling with the difficult concept that someone he doesn’t find sexually appealling actually has something to offer the world. And then he was trying to get guys to sign up for his “how to be a man in the modern world” retreat thing.
Yes, Beppie, the irony of that was not lost on me. I was thinking oh gods no, not more like him.