Just wanted to say I’ve lived in Belgium for six years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Belgian eat a marshmallow.

Sorry you had to go through that. Mine’s just a sociopath who tried to poison me. On the bright side I feel no guilt about severing ties.

Can confirm.

Umm.. some? The only reason that boat was there was for slavery and exploitation.

Eh, I think both me and the OP are being a bit facetious about the Belgium/NL thing, like the notion of reparations/historical national rights kind of invites never-ending argument and victim-hunting. I don’t think karma applies to nations though. I mean the Netherlands made a fuckton of money on the slave trade, and…

But Antwerp’s in Belgium, not the Netherlands, and also both regions were actively revolting against Spain at the time. So the Spanish fury was kinda legal.

Well it’s been a while since I read this stuff, but I think the original theorist (Laura Mulvey) would say it’s possible to create a work around the straight female viewer, but as soon as it’s out in the world that viewpoint gets subsumed by the male gaze. The wikipedia page actually does a good job of covering later…

No worries! I really do get where you’re coming from. I just think that it’s good to have a grasp on the terminology we’re using so that we can all be on the same page. And for the record, I do think there’s a case to be made against the male gaze in media studies today - it was coined in the ‘70s and we’ve come a…

I see where you’re coming from, esp. in comparison with, like, that horrible Robin Thicke video. But the term “male gaze” is very specific, it comes from film theory, and it’s the idea that visual media is constructed around an assumed (hetero) male viewer, and that women on screen are inherently sexualized by that…

“...the conspicuous absence of the male gaze.”

A few years ago I read this great book on the history of corsets called Bound to Please (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bound-Please-H…), which would have me think that this is not healthy practice. Uterine prolapse, y’all. It was a thing.

*PAPIERE.

Can you not call a cab? That’s how it works where I live..

ugh. i’m glad you’re able to mostly separate yourself though! my mom wasn’t so overtly nasty, but was a total manipulative sociopath. long story but basically destroyed my self-esteem and, for a while, my relationships with family members who actually cared about me. cut her out about a decade ago and if i hadn’t done…

ummm... i hope you’ve cut her out of your life, or are considering it, because that is some seriously abusive shit right there. hugs.

I agree with you completely. The mainstream gossip blogs have been insanely transphobic about this; of course, transwomen are women. I do think that Charlie Sheen’s history sort of invites this kind of sensationalism/awfulness... it’s not like that’s ok, at all, it isn’t. I just think that if a celebrity who wasn’t…

Yes, the tabloid media response/framing has been HORRIBLE (‘transsexuals’ ? seriously!??) But I do think that if this were a different celebrity coming out, one without a history of misogynistic violence, profound substance abuse problems, and obvious untreated mental illness (I’m assuming, perhaps wrongly, that he’s…

I wonder where Emilio is these days. My preteen self had a bit of a crush.

I mean, I think she does-? I had basically her body as a teenager when I was a hardcore swimmer, and a lot of my teammates had what I’d consider a variation thereof (then we went to college, added beer/pot to swimming, and all gained like 15 pounds)..

I actually don’t believe she smokes that much pot, or does a bunch of molly either - I’ve never known anyone to have the kind of athletic figure she does without consistent, hard exercise and a good diet, and I’ve never seen anyone with a drug habit been able to maintain either. I mean she could just be incredibly…