This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.
A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.
Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic? She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing. But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great. She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success. So – what gives?
His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear. Jeans, blazers, dresses – everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles. He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses. You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on. Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered. He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit. That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.
I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way. I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did.
It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this. But no one ever told me. I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes. No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.
I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed. I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to. No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to. I guess I just didn’t know. I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.
I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.
I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.
So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while. But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not. Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.
This post is one of those things that I will reblog every time it appears on my dash. This is so important, and no one ever tells you about it.
I almost didn’t read this but then I did and I’m really glad that I did.
Super important
I wish someone had told me this when I was a 4th grader crying in the dressing room because I had to wear “misses” aka adults clothing.
It is honestly amazing what a tailor can do for your clothes, and even more amazing what a custom garment can do for your shape.
There’s a clothing website called Eshakti that tailors everything for you for, like, an extra $9. I fit one of their standard sizes, so I just tell them my height and get perfectly fitting clothes that way. Every dress I’ve ever ordered from them is the best fitting thing I own (and all but the super-fancy strapless purple dress I bought for a wedding has pockets). They also make jeans, which I will some day take advantage of, because: tailoring.
Don’t confuse my hatred of the hyperwealthy for jealousy over what they have. I don’t want a six figure sports car, or a 40 room mansion, or a gold leaf truffle wagyu steak dinner. I want redistribution of wealth that allows for infrastructural support of all citizens’ basic survival needs.
A little while ago I commented that I would LOVE to find a tarot deck that had real diversity, and did not include a gender binary.
@estfortis pointed me towards the Numinous Tarot by Noel (pronounced “knoll”) Arthur Heimpel, a queer NB trans artist with INCREDIBLE talent.
Aside from being visually stunning (I’m a sucker for watercolor) it is a beautifully diverse and intersectional deck. And I totally ordered it. Because I really do believe in “putting my money where my mouth is”.
Watch for free readings of this deck probably sometime in Sept, and a review of it after I get a feel for its energy!!
We live in a society where being limited by a disability is seen as so wrong and so shameful that disabled people are constantly pushed past their limits with no regard for what consequences that has for their mental and physical health so here’s a much needed reminder to all the disabled people out there that it is perfectly okay to be limited by a disability and that you don’t have to ‘overcome’ your disability to be a valuable member of society.
European universities originally developed as guilds of scholars, comparable to similar guilds of artisans or merchants. The guild hierarchy of apprentice, journeyman, and master still has its remnants in the modern university structure of undergraduate student, doctoral student, and professor. Titles such as Master of Arts are also relics of guild structure (compare to a title like Master of Weavers). The guild origins of the university can also be seen in the exclusivity of academia and the institution of tenure. Anyone who has studied the economic consequences of a guild economy will be able to recognize the similarities, but basically, guilds exist partly in order to control how many people can enter an industry and how quickly, thereby protecting the status of the masters running the guild. That’s…basically how academia works a lot of the time.
I… have… SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THE ACCENTS OF VARIOUS HARRY POTTER CHARACTERS!!!!!!!!!!
and by ‘the accents of various Harry Potter characters’ I mean the LACK THEREOF and the Overwhelming amount of Posh Wankers in this series. I MEAN. it winds me up MASSIVELY, and it also opens a can of wooorrrmmmss re: the wizarding population around the British Isles. like… We Need To Talk About Wales. caveat: this is all coming from a Northerner, so as far as I’m concerned the Midlands are in the South, but I’m going to try to be geographical instead of Northern about this.
SO, for those who can’t tell the difference between various UK accents/didn’t realise there were accents in England other than The Benedict Cumberbatch (which, if you’re going from these movies, is understandable), let me break down the film accents for you: McGonagall, Cho Chang and Oliver Wood are Scottish, Seamus Finnegan, Mad-Eye Moody and Luna Lovegood are Irish (Evanna Lynch is from the border region so her accent sounds slightly Northern Irish), Neville Longbottom has a Yorkshire accent (Yorkshire is a county in the North of England), Hagrid is from the West Country (which, despite how it sounds, is The South), and literally every other character sounds like they grew up below the Watford Gap. discounting the ones I’ve just mentioned, everyone else is Generic Southern or straight up Good Old Boy RP (Received Pronunciation, which is like standard BBC English that you hear on the telly/out of the gob of pretty much every HP character).
(I mean, in fairness, this wasn’t really a Movie decision. in the books the Midlands and the North are just places the Hogwarts Express has to pass through to get to Scotland. Harry is from Surrey, the Weasleys are from Devon, it never really says where Hermione’s from but judging by how her dialogue reads I’m guessing it’s The South, Sirius grew up walking distance from King’s Cross, Godric’s Hollow is in the West Country somewhere, Malfoy Manor is in Wiltshire, and even though the footy team you support doesn’t always indicate where you’re from we’ll ignore that in this case and say that Dean Thomas is from Stratford, East London. and those are just the characters I can remember off the top of my head. that’s a lot of southerners. like, Pureblood wizards seem to be mostly very old aristocracy (I remember reading that the Malfoys came over from France with William the Conquerer in 1066), so you could argue that, like, they all had wizard babies in/around the capital and they’re slowly but surely spreading outwards hence the CLUMP of southern wizards (not to mention they tend to stick together in communities like Ottery St Catchpole and Godric’s Hollow) but a) that is a stupid, reaching theory and I seriously doubt it, and b) even if it WAS true, MUGGLEBORNS EXIST! why aren’t there wizards popping up in, like, Liverpool or Salford or Birmingham? why is EVERYONE so goddamn WELL-SPOKEN???)
I do think about the accents thing a lot. and I get mad about the movies a lot. I mean, Hagrid’s accent reads as Yorkshire. he says ‘summat’! he’s the most Yorkshire thing ever!! and Dean has a Generic Nice Southern accent, not an East London accent! he should sound like Alfie bloody Moon!!! also, considering Godric’s Hollow is in the West Country, DUMBLEDORE SHOULD HAVE HAGRID’S ACCENT!!!!! I JUST DIE OVER THE TERRIBLE ACCENT CHOICES FOR THESE FILMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY WOULD YOU LET MICHAEL ‘I DON’T NEED TO READ THE BOOKS’ GAMBON DO A WEIRD DRUNKEN IRISH LILT WHEN HE COULD HAVE BEEN HAGRIDDING EVERYWHERE!!!!!! (also if Voldemort hadn’t ruined everything and Harry had been raised in Godric’s Hollow he would also have a Hagrid-ish accent. amazing.) AND, according to the HP wiki, Little Hangleton is in the North somewhere, which means Gaunt cottage is in the North somewhere, which means VOLDEMORT IS NORTHERN. LOL. take a moment for that one. let it sink in. Voldemort is my past, present and fookin’ future, innit.
BUT YEAH. ANYWAY.
so if we’re going by the books there’s literally one Scottish person and one Irish person that we know of at Hogwarts (AND one of them is a teacher, AND I don’t think either of them were ever SPECIFICALLY said to have a Scottish/Irish accent). which begs the question: where the fuck is everyone who isn’t middle class English going to school??? what the hell is going on here???? as far as we know there is one (1) Irish student and this school and no (0) Scottish students. which… is wild. especially because the entire Irish quidditch team must have passed through the hallowed halls of Hogwarts in the preceding 10 years, but suddenly: a dearth. AND THERE’S NO WELSH STUDENTS! WHERE ARE THE WELSH? obviously the Holyhead Harpies are a Welsh team, and the common Welsh Green is a Welsh dragon, and Dai Llewellyn who had a ward in St Mungo’s named after him sounds Welsh, and I’m pretty sure Helga Hufflepuff was from Wales*, SO WHERE ARE THEIR SPROGS AT?
*IIRC aren’t the four founders all from different countries? I’m sure it’s at least implied by the Sorting Hat at one point. like ‘Gryffindor from wild moor’** = Dartmoor, I assume, as Godric’s Hollow is in the West Country = England, Ravenclaw’s from ‘glen’ = Scotland, I’m sure there are glens in other places but SCOTLAND, Hufflepuff is something something valley? again, valleys are everywhere, but whenever someone says ‘valley’ my brain immediately puts on a Daffyd Thomas voice and goes ‘IN THE VALLEEEEYYYSS’ which it certainly doesn’t do for any other country, so = Wales, and SLYTHERIN = FEN = Ireland has a shitload of bogs and fens and stuff. plus Slytherin is green, Ireland is the Emerald Isle, I’m just REALLY GLAD SLYTHERIN’S IRISH HAHA ÉIRE GO BRÁCH LOSERS
**FOR THE RECORD the HP wiki told me Godric’s Hollow is in the West Country, and that seems very likely as the North of England doesn’t seem to exist in the HP canon, HOWEVER I PERSONALLY choose to believe that the ‘wild moor’ is in fact THE YORKSHIRE MOORS and that Godric Gryffindor, like Tom Marvolo Riddle, is a top lad innit mate.
but back to The Absent Welsh: I like to think that maybe they’ve set up their own school. it’s a weekly boarding. everyone speaks Cymraeg. all the Irish and Scottish students go there too because they fucking hate the English. it would certainly explain the lack of Scottish, Irish and Welsh students at Hogwarts. they’re all just getting on with it in Wales somewhere. probably Anglesey. or maybe there are actually wizarding schools that are just normal day schools and Hogwarts is just the famous one because it’s a big, old, prestigious boarding school. considering Harry apparently had his name down since birth… MAYBE HOGWARTS IS THE ETON COLLEGE OF MAGIC! THIS IS MAKING SO MUCH SENSE!!! all the middle class English lot are like ‘oh darling, you simply must go to the Eton College of magic!!’ meanwhile muggleborn Gary ‘Gazza’ Bloggs from the Wirral is like ‘nah mate I’ll just go t’ t’ local like.’
(SPEAKING OF ETON COLLEGE, Justin Finch-Fletchley had his name down for it, which is aaaaabsolutely hilarious. Eton is an independent all-boys boarding school which costs roughly £37,000 ($48,000) per academic year. if Justin hadn’t been a surprise wizard he probably would have gone to Eton, gone to Oxford, joined an elite drinking club, burned money in front of homeless people, rattled a dead pig and then become Prime Minister. but instead of doing all of that he has to go to a PUBLIC SCHOOL with negligible rules, very little uniform, girls, AND he can’t even tell any of his posh little mates about it when he goes home to MUMMY for the VAC. to top it all off he’s gone from being a Good Old Boy Top Shelf Jolly Hockey Sticks Young Chap on the path to upper class glory and the Houses of Parliament to being a MUGGLEBORN HUFFLEPUFF i.e. the bottom of the Wizarding world/Hogwarts food chain. but never mind, eh, he seems pleased enough. bet he has a CORKING accent, what!)
even though my Average Joe Wizard High School idea is definitely not true, I definitely 100% feel like Ireland should have its own wizarding school. the Republic of Ireland’s relationship with The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is so long and arduous that even I, who has an Irish mother, can’t keep it all straight in my head, but basically Ireland is not part of ~the UK~ or ~Great Britain~ even though it is part of the British Isles, so they really need their own school. (tbh I’m low key offending myself by talking about this like they Should have their own school rather than They Have Their Own School, Obviously, but… whatever.) THEY ALSO SHOULD HAVE THEIR OWN MINISTRY OF MAGIC! they might have! we just don’t know! why didn’t Harry make better friends with Seamus!!! UNLESS, of course, wizards don’t trifle themselves with Muggle Affairs and didn’t get involved with the Irish revolution and the Troubles etc. (although considering how the Order of the Phoenix being founded/the war really kicking into high gear coincided with the Winter of Discontent/widespread right wing sympathy across the UK… I doubt it), and so Irish wizards are still being governed from ~Westminster. but again, if that’s the case, WHY ARE NONE OF ‘EM GOIN’ HOGWARTS??????? WHY IS SEAMUS FINNEGAN THE LONE IRISH DIASPORA AT WIZARD SCHOOL????
I… literally cannot believe how Away from me this has Gotten.
accents. okay.
yes, Sirius Black accidentally being EXTREMELY POSH is something I am very passionate about also. he tries to mask it by being all rebellious and Landaaaannn about everything but fails miserably because every so often he’ll say ‘one’, and when he’s tired or excited he’s just like… the Queen on steds. arrived at Hogwarts fluent in French and passable in Latin. knows how to use so many forks. a prank goes right and he’s like ‘YESSSS TOP SHELF, BOYS! ABSOLUTELY BANG ON!’ James is also posh but posh in the rich, big old farmhouse, Barbour jackets and Hunter wellies way, so he gets away with it because he’s never been to a cotillion and doesn’t sometimes slip and say ‘spiffing’. meanwhile Remus is from the Midlands in my heart (maybe Shropshire)*** and is just very normal and not at all impressed by these posh knobs he has to share a bedroom with. Peter is probably from somewhere with an accent that grates on you after a while, like Birmingham. (no offence @Brummies.) according to the HP wiki (it’s teaching me SO MUCH but literally where tf are they getting this info) Snape is from the Midlands, which means that surely Lily is from the Midlands, because they met when they were playing out as kids!!! this Excites Me! also imagining Snape with a Wolverhampton accent is just… exquisite.
***I know a lot of people are All About Scottish Remus and while that is second in my heart to Midlands Remus it is certainly In My Heart.
I love and support Neville Longbottom having a Yorkshire accent because I, too, have a Yorkshire accent, and his in the films means SO MUCH TO ME!! he’s OUR BOY!!! GO ON, LADDDD!!!!!! etc. I really want Lee Jordan to have a Limmy-esque Glaswegian accent, because IMAGINE him doing the quidditch commentary and just getting more and more incomprehensibly Scottish, and McGonagall keeps yelling at him because she can actually understand what he’s saying whereas everyone else can just manage to catch ‘Slytherin’ and ‘cheating’ and ‘10 points’ so they’re just like ‘???!!!!! ! !! ? !!’ also I’m a big fan of Bristolian Lavender Brown, for no other reason than I just thought of her greeting Ron by saying ALRIGHT MY LUVVER and nearly died.
in conclusion, you could say that I do indeed have feelings about the accents of various Harry Potter characters and I hope you weren’t lying when you said you’d love to hear about it.
you think oscar wilde’s gucci floral suit wearing angel ass spent his last gay breath making a witty remark about the wallpaper so that we could all live like a bunch of repressed 16th century puritans? are those glisteningly fresh rose petals going to throw themselves all over your scarlet chaise lounge and fake fur duvet? is that first edition of albert camus you bought at a thrift shop in paris going to lovingly read itself? y’all are really out there saying god gave us the ability to order cinnamon cappuccinos and buy herringbone tweed blazers and recite ovid to our friends only so we could not do those things? as it is with all paths in life, so long as you’re self-aware and not bothering or hurting anyone, you go ahead and be as pretentious as you want! it’s so much fun!!
I get up, I shower, I moisturize, I’m feeling good for a Friday where I’ve got to go into work early, and I log on to tumblr dot com.
My inbox has fresh messages! Wowee, this is great. (I know I have a pile of deep(er)-dive asks I have yet to get to, but I will! I promise!)
So I clickitty-click that shit just to make sure it’s nothing time-sensitive like some moneybags Hollywood producer loves my blog and is willing to offer me fifty million dollars, personally, to adapt and cast and direct their feature-length Persuasion adaptation but the offer’s only good for the next 48 hours. (CALL ME, LET’S DO LUNCH!)
No such luck, but I live in hope.
And lo, among the reading recommendations and thoughtful questions and interesting ideas from the 99.99% of you who are adorable beings of opalescent delight, is a festering little turd of vile bigotry I will not even post in order to directly respond to.
We have our first hate mail.
Anon, maybe you didn’t think of it as hate mail–maybe you genuinely thought I would have my eyes opened by your word-salad argument that “gay and ‘sick’“ people should not watch the 1995 P&P because they “all wrong interpret.”
And then my first joke-response apart from my quivering queer-lady indignant rage (I mean, did you even know who you were messaging? I have not been subtle about my own orientation at any point. If nothing else, learn to read the fucking room, you dumbass.) was to rules-lawyer the letter of your proposed law there and claim EVERY OTHER RENDITION, INCLUDING THE ORIGINAL TEXT, FOR THE QUEERS.
But then, you know what? No.
Queer people have been and still are denied too fucking much in this world of ours, not the least of which is equal human rights and something you, anon, have clearly never have heard of, which is a little thing called mutual respect. You certainly offered none, which frees me up to treat you precisely with the unmitigated disdain you deserve.
The only sicko in this situation happens to be you with that caustic layer of caked-on shit encapsulating your heart and brain.
While we and our queer and gender-non-conforming buddies are still out there suffering and outright dying every fucking day because of people like you and the hateful bullshit you dedicate your time and energy to upholding, we’re not going to give up even one iota of what gives us joy. We’re going to cling to it all the more fiercely, now, in fact, just because we know it’ll make you mad–and that’ll give us joy, too!
(Younger!Meryl casting, it counts, shut up.)
So you heard it first here, folks: I hereby claim the 1995 BBC miniseries adaptation of Jane Austen’s seminal classic Pride and Prejudice, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, for The Gays. We are going to rub our gay hands all over our TV and computer screens while it’s playing and watch it with our gay eyes and with our gay hearts and loins variously afire as we see fit.
And I’m not even touching the interpretation jab because anyone who’s taken any literature class or joined a book club ever is rolling their eyes at you so hard it actually hurts a little. It’s amazing what education and talking to friends can do, anon, so I’d recommend you try it sometime. Death of the Author is valid and in any case there’s more proof out there that Jane Austen herself was queer than any proof that she wasn’t, if we’re being honest.
Sorry there aren’t more Meryl Streep gifs to go ‘round in this one, but obviously it’s a much deeper cut than me simply having a go at someone trying to shill their books on this blog, but I did want to address the issue.
So go forth and be joyously gay, my loves. It’s what Austen would have wanted.
Spitfire Alice A Gra 
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