the older i get the more disgusted by diet culture i become.
there’s a reason it targets young girls. there’s a reason it hinges on making grown women look tiny and helpless and weak. there’s a reason that it is normalized to the extent that what is ostensibly not a healthy act is seen as being a “good” choice and something to be proud of.
young people are just completely submerged in it. adults forget that kids pick up on fucking everything and they hear their parents and their teachers and everyone on this planet not eating red meat this week or on juice cleanses or denying denying denying themselves (”oh good for you! i’d never be able to be so well-behaved”). they learn really, really fast that “fat” is a funny, not-good, close-to-a-swear word – to the extent that my usually well-behaved five year olds will devolve into crazy giggles because i asked “pass me one of the fat markers please”. they don’t react like that to anything else, just “fat” which they know is bad/off-limits/terrible.
and we pretend we’re so confused by obesity and by the skyrocketing eating disorder rate – a rate of diagnosed eating disorders, mind you, since disordered eating is now essential to many american eating traditions – and we blame millenials or GMOs or whatever won’t make us look a multi-billion dollar industry in the eye and realize. they literally teach us from a young age what is essentially a restriction/denial cycle that is very close to a binge cycle. they teach us “good” and “bad” and “safe” foods but don’t supply the money for us to obtain those foods (and god forbid you live in a food desert) while also selling us Magical Cures For Magical Transformations.
and of course it works. you teach people to crash diet and lo and behold their metabolism becomes entirely dependent on your cycle of starvation/refeeding. the statistic that most people gain back the weight they lost isn’t because people are these terrible people have no self control (but they sell that idea to you, don’t they), it’s that their metabolism was trashed and the way they look at food cannot change in the span of a crash diet – if it takes someone with an eating disorder seven years to recover, we understand that, but if someone overweight gains back their lost weight it’s “a shame”. and the diet culture wins both sides, i want you to understand that. they make money of of you either way. they know that you’re gaining the weight back but fucking scrambling – they know you’ll try to buy their product because last time it worked to buy atkins or weight watchers, and they know that when you’re losing the weight, well, goddamn, you’re going to be an advertising board for them because we teach each other that this is coffee-break material, isn’t it.
and we sell each other on it. we say, “oh this worked for me, you’ve gotta try it.” none of the people we speak to are nutritionists, but everyone on the internet has a degree in medicine, so don’t worry, if you step outside in a bikini and are not unhealthy levels of skinny (oh but it’s healthy if it’s the right kind of skinny), you will be reminded to lose weight. we keep our women running on such low levels of carbs/calories/fats that they’re permanently exhausted, weak, emotionally drained – and then we crow women are just crazy. meanwhile men get the opposite treatment that is unhealthy in a different way – the obsession with masculinity through food, of all things, that salad is “rabbit food” and that a real “man’s meal” is red meat and beer.
and god forbid you say, “this shit is fucking predatory, it’s evil, it’s controlling people’s bodies” because you’ll get fifty-seven “okay, fatty” comments that miss the point completely, because the companies are really, really smart and they learned: if you call someone fat, you can ignore them completely. and anyone who isn’t “into dieting” is therefore fat and incapable of healthy eating. healthy eating, is of course, defined by the company – but hey! you can help that person realize they’re just a stupid/dumb/ignorant fatty. or if they’re somehow magically not fat, you can tell them, “well, one day you will be.”
and i just know. i know. this shit will continue. it always does.
The Archive of Our Own will be down from aproximately 13:00 to 15:00 UTC on Friday, September 7 (what time is that for me). This downtime will allow us to upgrade MySQL and move both it and Redis to our shiny new machines. o/
Listen, in no universe is Sirus Black a heterosexual, Joanna. Sneaking out of prison and proving your innocence to your childhood friend by luring the friend who betrayed you to the place of your youthful schinanigains and delivering one of the best monologues in fantasy literature in front of a trio of scared shitless teens just for the DRAMA of it all is the gayest gay power move in existence and could never have been orchestrated by someone who wasn’t and absolute salt queen.
I’ve always liked how closely the symbols of the Jedi Order and the Rebel Alliance resembled each other, and I have this headcanon that after the rebellion started to gain traction, some of the straggling Jedi left in the galaxy came out of hiding (Kanan, lookin’ at you) to make their final stand against the Empire. Maybe a few of them started embellishing the Rebels’ graffiti with their own taunts.
I have gotten a TON of messages from people who are interested in buying this design on a shirt, etc., but Redbubble took it down some time ago. Well, after dragging my feet about it, I’ve uploaded it to both Teepublic (Since I’m new to Teepublic, it’s 30% off!!) and Society6,so have at it! Thanks for everyone who has expressed interest in this design!
Please share around so everyone who might be interested gets the message!
My brother, yesterday; “Hey take a pic of the Mississippi and text it to me.”
Me; “…okay. Why?”
Bro; “Because the people down here (Albuquerque) keep going on about the dinky little streams they call the Rio Grande and won’t believe me that the Mississippi by us is a mile across.”
Me; “…I thought the Rio Grande was a big river?”
Bro; “Look it up.”
Me; (quick googles Rio Grande by Albuquerque)
It;
Me; “HA ok I’m on it.”
Me, dropping by the boat ramp today;
THATS a proper river, New Mexico.
The dim blue land waaaaaay on the other side past the little island is Illinois, by the way.
To be fair, the Mississippi is the Spiders Georg of rivers.
Fair. It eats six or seven tributaries the size of the Rio Grande just from our county and doesn’t even notice.
Not counting the Wapsi and the Maquoketa river, both of which are easily bigger than the Rio Grande, and barely noticeably swell the Mississippi when they join it.
The Mississippi is a mile across from shore to shore by my house and between fifteen to twenty feet deep on average, and up to thirty feet deep in certain spots. There are catfish in there bigger than I am.
Elk river, just below my house, is nearly the size of the Rio Grande and barely rates a mention on maps around here.
Sorry southwestern USA, but your river game is Weak.
I grew up on the banks of that river, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The River is nothing less than a living god. It’s a mile across and 10-20 feet deep *normally*. Every spring it swells up, overflows its banks, and eats several towns.
Yep.
Several people drown in there just in my area every year. Even people who know it well.
That river is old, and huge, and hungry, and if you disrespect it it will drag you in and kill you in a heartbeat.
Oh yeah I grew up on a waterway connected to the Mississippi (the Tom Bigbee, near Amory Mississippi) and I’ve seen the Mississippi. She’s a big girl.
Try being an earth witch and catching a sense of the spirit of that river.
Whooof.
The people who drown in it every year…and every year, just from our town, there’s three or four of them…well.
You turn your back on a water spirit that huge and ancient at your own risk. I’ll put it that way.
It’s not necessarily malevolent. It’s just…indifferent. It doesn’t give a single fuck about people, save for those who offer it its due respect. It’s fond of those.
But if you don’t, or even if you do but slip up just once…well, then they find your corpse twenty miles downriver six weeks later.
Oh, and I completely forgot to mention: It’s got sharks in it.
There have been reports of bull sharks as far north as St. Louis.
While I’m aware this is obviously a Big Deal among rivers, I genuinely thought most river spirits were that kind of old and cranky, and demanding of respect, no matter their size.
(I kinda feel like only an idiot disrespects their rivers.)
tora42's nonsensne 