fuckyeahbodypositivity:

wangclub:

*white eurocentric beauty standards i guess? There’s quite a few Black, South Asian, East Asian, Arab and all mixes of people round these hoods who would call themselves European..

And there are plenty of white people in the US so if they meant white why doesn’t it say fuck white beauty standards?

is it a reference to kind of the Swedish archetype of tall, blonde, blue eyes?

Edit: hmmm the source seems to be a white New Yorker - maybe she didn’t create it, but if i white American did create this then it says something a bit worrying. If it was a white person then it seems ‘european’ is being used as a euphamism so that racism doesn’t need to be faced up to. And if your American please think a little bit about what Europe is actually like.

Hey, so yes, I did create this image. No I’m not European. Yes, I’m white and I totally respect/expect there will and should be skepticism around me writing about racism. But I wanna stand by the wording of this image, particularly because I didn’t make up the term “Eurocentric” nor am I the first to use it in this sentence (I just made it into an image, people of color have been saying this for a lot longer than me). I completely intended to call out racism in this image. I completely mean white Eurocentric beauty standards. I am more than willing to face up to racism and the privilege I experience as a white woman, including in dominant beauty culture. I didn’t include the word “white” because of what Eurocentric means, particularly in academia (and I’m drawing specifically from Black academics here, who have written and continue to write elegantly on the damaging impact of Eurocentrism) which isn’t simply European (because obviously there are tons of people of color in Europe, and there are tons of white people in the U.S, Canada, etc.. [but it could also be acknowledged white people over here pretty much came from Europe]). The word Eurocentric very specifically relates to a process of western, white colonization of people of color’s nations/cultures and the way in which white colonizing involved white folks violently forcing their views on others, and that these white standards are the ones people continue to be held to, greatly harming those who don’t match up to those standards. The word is pretty much never ever separate from whiteness in its use, because again it doesn’t mean European, it means a centralizing of white European ideals via oppression, violence, and colonization (and discussions of deconstructing Eurocentrism typically come from an anti-colonialist viewpoint). So when I wrote “Eurocentric,” that was me writing “white.”  Because that’s how “Eurocentric beauty standards” has been used, again, by people of color before me. That phrase is used to mean “expecting people to look white” and it is used frequently in discussions of the racism and colorism that exists in dominant beauty culture. I genuinely had no desire to be euphemistic or to give white folks (including myself a pass). We are the ones who uphold and enforce Eurocentric (read: racist) beauty standards. We are the ones who benefit.

I hope you don’t mind the long explanation.

Fair enough. I still feel a bit ambivalent towards the phrasing, but i guess if its obvious to people what you meant then that helps massively.

(Source: fuck-shaving)

*trigger warning*: suggestion of self harm

This is a poem about scars.

I doubt any of those who know me know that I have cut myself with a razorblade.

I know you are looking for the scars now.

You look at my wrists first. 

Look, they’re clean.

My arms

clean.

The scars you’re looking for are light; in fact, most of them are now gone.

But the reason you can’t see them is that you are looking in the wrong place.

Look at my legs.

My calves, mostly, and my knees, and maybe a few on the ankles.

But I did not cut myself on purpose.

I got my scars doing something that nearly every girl and woman has done over and over and over again.

I know you all have the same scars I do.

I got my scars trying to become a woman.

I got my scars trying to be beautiful.

I got my scars over the course of 11 years of my life.

Eventually I was getting my scars to PROVE I WAS a woman.

To PROVE I WAS BEAUTIFUL.

I spent money, probably hundreds of dollars over the course of the last 11 years, buying the tools to give me these scars.

Have you figured it out yet?

That’s right, I’m talking about SHAVING MY LEGS. How fucking ridiculous is that? That I can talk about shaving my legs as self harm and have it be completely accurate????

To pre-empt the contradictory responses:

Yes, I know, men shave their faces and get scars.

IT’S DIFFERENT. IT’S DIFFERENT. IT’S DIFFERENT. IT’S DIFFERENT. IT’S DIFFERENT. IT’S DIFFERENT. IT’S DIFFERENT. IT’S DIFFERENT. IT’S DIFFERENT. IT’S DIFFERENT. IT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE OF PATRIARCHY.

Uh oh.

Buzz word.

YOU are still viewed as a man if you choose not to shave your face.

For YOU it’s a style thing.

It’s an image thing.

It’s an option.

Your beard is an accessory.

A fashion statement

or no statement at all.

My leg hair

is

scratchy

manly

ugly

unkempt, off-putting

“European”

disgusting, gross, gorilla, yeti

wrong

feminazi fetish free-spirit turn-off turn-on hippie homeless homo hot harpy cave-woman crunchy queer dykey dirty IS THAT HARD TO JUST SHAVE YOUR FUCKING LEGS?

Well.

No, it’s not.

It’s not hard.

So. Usually I do it.

Even though it costs money. Even though it takes too long. Even though it wastes water. Even though it can clog the drain. Even though

I don’t like it.

Even though I don’t want to.

Even though

sometimes

my hand slips

and I give myself one more scar.

But no, it’s not that hard.

So I keep knicking these little scars on myself

these little reminders

of what it means to be beautiful

of what it means to be a woman

of what it means to be HUMAN

because a woman who doesn’t shave her legs

is

a creature of a different species.

But

I’m starting to think that these little scars are not my fault, really.

I go back to that

scary

buzz-word

PATRIARCHY.

Because it’s OBVIOUS, isn’t it?

I do this because of patriarchy.

WE do this because of patriarchy.

So I didn’t do this to myself. PATRIARCHY gave me these scars!

But how?

A concept cannot wield a razor. 

We know what patriarchy is.

It’s a system.

It’s sexism.

It’s more than sexism.

It’s inequality.

It’s anger.

It’s violence.

It’s subtle.

It’s sometimes well meaning.

It’s history.

It’s psyche.

It’s teachers and cops and sales associates and bus drivers and bankers and parents and bad guys and good guys.

It’s men.

It’s women.

It’s me.

It’s still me who made those scars.

Brides with bristles

In Ghana women love to flaunt their body hair and are even jealous of each other’s hirsute arms – but don’t for a moment think it’s in the cause of feminism…

headsfullofbeez:

fupa-dupa:

wangclub:

amoracomplex:

If your only means of body-positivity are sexualizing any and all body types, and claiming you find them sexually appealing and thus are right by you. You’re erasing the fact that the human body exists beyond the purpose of sex, or physical…

this whole conversation applies to pregnancy tag too! post a pregnant pic, get some fetish followers. ugh stahpp.

(Source: embracefreespo, via rawwomen)

fupa-dupa:

wangclub:

amoracomplex:

If your only means of body-positivity are sexualizing any and all body types, and claiming you find them sexually appealing and thus are right by you. You’re erasing the fact that the human body exists beyond the purpose of sex, or physical forms of gratification.

If you’re telling me, I should be proud of how I look, because you would sleep with me, than you are directly saying my worth, be it to myself or others, is immediately correlated with my sexual appeal, and thus invalidating my right to not only deny sex, but not wish to affiliate the human form with anything aside from it.

If you are incapable of being more than that, then by all means, go fuck yourself

Please note all the fetish blogs that follow WANG - to put it very mildly, we don’t appreciate you sexualising our body hair.

This blog is about being against partriarchal norms of seeing women as just objects of desire, while you are strengthening these norms by taking our body hair as objects to visually consume and sexualise.

I used to submit pictures to many body positivity blogs and now I have like 50 fetish blogs following me, uninterested in anything I have to say, just waiting to see a fat roll or a hairy armpit. It kind of feels like, if I participated in a protest against sexual harassment, and some bros just stood and watched and said, “Hey are any of you going to take off your shirts?” Fuck right off.

Thats pretty shitty.

Yeah, i find it creepy that there are all these blogs following WANG which must just ignore the majority of posts about objectification, ‘smash the patriarchy’, etc. I guess that’s the nature of tumblr - you can just scrollllllllllllllllllll and skim anything you’re not interested in. Especially if you’re in the mood to zone out of pictures rather than reading text. But it’s pretty frustrating that people are using feminist, body acceptance blogs as their porn. It’s like - jesus - can women *never* set boundaries on the uses of their bodies?

(Source: hairydrawings)

(Source: hairychallenge)

amoracomplex:

If your only means of body-positivity are sexualizing any and all body types, and claiming you find them sexually appealing and thus are right by you. You’re erasing the fact that the human body exists beyond the purpose of sex, or physical forms of gratification.

If you’re telling me, I should be proud of how I look, because you would sleep with me, than you are directly saying my worth, be it to myself or others, is immediately correlated with my sexual appeal, and thus invalidating my right to not only deny sex, but not wish to affiliate the human form with anything aside from it.

If you are incapable of being more than that, then by all means, go fuck yourself

(Source: ilovemy4c-hair)

hairypitsclub:

aliens pt 2 <3

(.V.)

gradientlair:

1) Stop calling our natural hair ugly.

2) Stop approaching our natural hair with a hierarchy that reinforces colourism.

3) Stop using placement in the natural hair community to bully Black women who may still have relaxed hair or weaves.

4) Stop saying “she’s…

(via naturalblkgirlsrock)

islawmix:

Maybe we can finally get rid of that BBC stock image of ‘veils of Muslim world’.

(via imnothayley)