This Jezebel article does a pretty solid job of pointing out some of what bugs me about many of the trend pieces about online dating:

Sounds shitty, indeed. But one clueless musician’s interaction with a social media manager hardly means that “Women in their 20s these days are lucky to get a last-minute text to tag along.” And why is it always up to men to set the dating tone? All of the anecdotes in these articles are from straight women, because straight women are apparently the only people who would be devastated about the demise of traditional courtship. But if you want to go to dinner and a movie, why not…suggest going to dinner and a movie?

Because hey, everyone: if you are interested in a specific kind of date, or a specific kind of relationship, you should communicate that to the people you are getting involved with.

Because hey, then you either

a) get the thing you want, hooray for you!

or b) learn that the person(s) in question want something different from what you want, and you can make decisions about whether you would like to modify your attitudes about dates/relationships or end your romantic/sexual involvement with that person(s) and move on.

It is actually that easy (sometimes).

Of course, often people don’t know what they want, want conflicting things, are unable to accept or access what they want due to societal or other pressures, have trouble clearly communicating what they want, etc. etc. etc. Relationships are messy business and always will be.

But real talk these things need to go:

- the idea that anyone should be tricking anyone else into a relationship (bonus points for the fucked up attitudes about gender that are usually involved)

- the expectation that you can always assume what kind of dates or relationship someone wants

- the expectation that someone else will know what kind of dates or relationship you want if you do not tell them.

I am, duh, guilty of having done all of these things at various points in my relationship/not-relationship history, so my apologies if all that comes off as didactic. This is all coming from the place of feeling like I’ve learned some things from that chaotic history, and having just had a surprisingly easy and communicative new relationship conversation that has me feeling optimistic about humans telling other humans about dem feeeeeelings.

“On the other hand, a lot of anti-makeup sentiment– particularly anything that starts talking about how “frivolous” and “shallow” makeup is– is also misogynistic and femmephobic. Makeup is a form of visual art. If making your face beautiful is shallow, so is making a canvas beautiful or a block of marble or a hunk of plastic. If you understand why someone would feel satisfied and happy when they make a gorgeous print, you understand why someone would feel satisfied and happy when their makeup looks perfect. I do not think it is accidental that the form of visual art almost entirely practiced by women is the one that gets accused of frivolity and where the talent exhibited by many of the artists is ignored or denigrated. - Ozy Frantz”

—

Other People’s Makeup Use: None Of Your Business – Ozy Frantz’s Blog (via brute-reason)

Draw on everything 2k13 has definitely extended to All Cat Eye All The Time.

(via bananafin)

sid’s brain fumes on this:

I also think that there’s something at play here about ephemerality, and how it relates to gendered attitudes about creative output.

A completely not-backed-up-by-anything claim that I have found to be true in my personal observations: The more physically imposing a medium, the more strenuous to work with, it is not only seen as more long-lasting, but often both a) of greater import and b) coming from a more masculine source. What up marble sculpture and steel skyscrapers? I see u there, with your gravitas and your hot, sweaty men wielding dangerous tools. If “women’s media” are textiles, paintings, drawings–things that do not last–pretty, delicate things that must be preserved by men with disposable income, then cosmetic art is an even more palpable example of this.

You paint your face and it lasts mere hours. It is assumed that you do not do this for yourself, to bring yourself pleasure through your personal aesthetics, but for male attention and/as material gain. It is considered shallow, pointless, not art but fashion–as if the distinction between those two things has ever been unproblematic. Just because it is not lasting, that does not mean it cannot be art. Look at theatre, some of which is inextricably caught up in the idea of the ephemeral performance, the moment that is unrepeatable. Only those lucky enough to be in the audience (/in your presence) at the right moment will catch this specific aesthetic experience.

Makeup, like literally every form of aesthetic choice-making, can be a tool. A tool for personal creative expression, for conformity, for rebellion, for political statement, for getting laid, for hiding something, for emphasizing something, for putting up barriers and for taking them down. (The choice of the absence of makeup is, of course, folded into all of this as well.) And sure, it can be shallow.That is totally also okay. But it doesn’t have to be, and categorically writing it off as a shallow and heteronormatively feminine (and it doesn’t have to be) form of aesthetic expression is symptomatic of some super wack nonsense about gender and ephemerality.

Apologies for the incoherence of that rambling, I haven’t finished my coffee yet and may change my mind about all of this by the end of the day.