i hate u female rage i hate u divine feminine i hate u female gaze i hate u feminine energy i hate u gender essentialism poorly repackaged as progressive or revolutionary or in any way subversive….
Is it cringe to be into trans men but not cis men? I’m a transfem and I don’t know if this is fetishistic but I’m just always feeling unsafe around cis men in a way trans men never made me feel. I feel guilty about it and don’t know how to explain it outside of that.
nah i think it’s valid. there are gonna be some ppl who will be weird abt it bc they’re obsessed with insisting that trans men are indistinguishable from cis men but that’s just simply not true. we’re different from cis men, so dating us will be a different experience, and that’s okay. it’s okay to want that different experience, especially as a fellow trans person. as long as you just treat them like a human being and don’t make weird comments about their genitals, which i’m sure won’t be a problem, then you’re all good. live ur t4t dreams.
and like. i kinda have weird feelings abt fetishization bc like ok.
i hooked up with a queer person who used all the right language and did all the right things, but then they told me they only date ppl who were afab, regardless of gender. they’ll fuck ppl who were amab but they won’t date them, only afab ppl. the further we got into the convo, it became clear that the reason they only wanted to date ppl who were afab is bc we are more likely to have been socialized to take on the brunt of the domestic and emotional labor in relationships. that hookup ended up lasting over an hour bc they kept interrupting sex to complain about their ex wife. by the end i was practically shoving them out the door because i was so uncomfortable.
the guy i’m hooking up with right now is very cis and found me through the ftm tag on grindr, so he was specifically looking for trans guys. he told me he’s into trans guys because he likes sleeping with masculine people, mostly men, but he also likes the way vaginas feel. could that be seen as fetishistic? sure. does it feel that way to me when we have sex? nope. he uses gender affirming language without even being asked, he tells me he’s super into my body and gets excited when he notices that i’ve grown more hair or had a t dick growth spurt. he likes my body because it’s trans, and i’m perfectly okay with that.
i felt so much more fetishized by the queer person who was actively seeking out afab ppl to take advantage of essentially patriarchal trauma than i ever have by the guy who just likes trans pussy. so i feel like we just really need to have a conversation about what it actually means to fetishize someone because it very much feels like it’s just become “thinks trans ppl are hot” and i hate that literally other trans ppl are scared of finding other trans ppl hot for fear of fetishizing. trans ppl are fucking hot! our trans bodies are hot! it’s okay to be sexually attracted to trans bodies!
1950s fashion existed under that shadow of World War II. Women of the war era were hardy, hard-working, and practical. Fashion was also extremely practical, using as little rationed material as possible. The silhouette was boxy, masculine and almost military, with big broad shoulders and knee-length skirts. Rationing and austerity continued in the years immediately following the war, but then in 1947, something miraculous happened:
(The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Christian Dior created “The New Look.” Now okay, fashion in general had been leaning into this new silhouette and Dior was far from the only designer to be working with it, but his was the most copied and most iconic.
“The New Look” was a call back to the sumptuous femininity of the mid-Victorian era, bringing back tiny waists held in place by impossibly tight corsets and big, full skirts with crinolines and hoops.
The silhouette was a return to classic femininity, but the materials garments themselves were pure modernity: a practical ensemble for a wealthy woman-on-the-go who was lunching with her friends in Paris.
Looking back at Barbie’s 1959 looks, Christian Dior’s fingerprints are all over them, but I see plenty of other designers in the mix, as well. It’s actually very easy to find near-matches of almost all of Barbie’s 1959 looks with a cover of Vogue from the 1950s. Barbie from the get-go was an idealized woman who existed in a world
that was separate from the middle-class American suburbs that the little
girls who played with her lived in.
Looking at classic first-run Barbie, there’s honestly not a whole lot to say about the bathing suit look. I mean, yeah, that’s what fashionable women wore to the beach in the 1950s. Her buxom curvy body fit the idealized standards epitomized by Marilyn Monroe.
Her face has the heavy makeup that was worn by French fashion models of the time.
Arched, heavily-styled brows, eyeshadow, slightly winged eyeliner, mascara, and of course perfect red lips with matching mani and pedi. One of my pet peeves about vintage style is when people wear winged eyeliner as “50s housewife glam.” NO. Your average middle class American Mrs. Homemaker was not wearing that kind of makeup. Winged eyeliner in the 50s only had a small wing that accentuated the eyelashes, and was generally only worn by the high-fashion crowd. Maybe on a special extra glamorous date with Mr. Husband, but not to a church potluck. Anyway, end of rant, but you see that’s what Barbie is trying to emulate.
Her hair, however is different: the poodle hairstyle was one favored by teenage girls. Seen here on the squeaky-clean America’s sweetheart, Debbie Reynolds:
The playful, youthful hair pulls her back and keeps her from being *too* grown-up. It’s the first step in the balancing act that Barbie has always pulled off with aplomb: to represent adulthood without being too far out of reach of children’s imaginations.
This comment should not have been hidden in the tags:
The majority of the rich teach their offspring to perpetuate a system that keeps the wealthy firmly in power, while the rest of us struggle. People with less are always more generous to others.
