Abrupt Transition

Photograph by Annie Spratt

The snow dumped yesterday. Without warning. Or maybe there was a warning, we just didn’t take note of it as we spent the weekend cuddled and huddled, anticipating the change by preemptively hibernating.

People seemed put off by it. Slush, snow, cold, complaints aplenty. I spent a few hours outdoors. Some with walking sticks in hand, looking like a skiier wading through the banks and salt. Some moments armed with a shovel, and some with a leash in my gloved hand, my northern rescue coming to life in the powder.

The city has a blanket, if only for a few hours. Too soon, too cold, too much - I love it too. It’s beautiful and romantic and makes everything feel quiet and close. There’s no urgency to leave the house and an uncertain blurring effect. A haze of coats and hats, a pale white blue covering what was lush, insulating what was alive. Little tracks around the backyard and a sparkle when the streetlight hits the ground just so.

We accepted it all as a signal to start watching Christmas movies.

Miss Tits and Dismembered Misfits

Illustration by Lucy Bohr.

Anyone else find the creation of even more products depicting/isolating parts of women’s bodies an odd, tiresome aspect of capitalist feminism?

I’m all for greater representation and diverse body types being shown and celebrated but I haven’t seen mugs, T-shirt’s, posters, and the like covered in a variety of penis shapes and sizes. I feel no more at peace with my breasts or bottom or belly or bareness because my tote bag has tits of two dots and two lines printed on it.

No longer reserved for perfume bottles, shampoos and household cleaning products, some version of my form, an unidentifiable ‘her’ is now visible everywhere, anywhere. Dismembered and dissociated, primed and prepared for profit.

It’s like in the quest to capitalize on feminism and wokeness we are reduced even further to bodies and body parts, served up for consumption in whatever form you fancy. 

All boobs are acceptable - but it’s still the boobs that give you form, value, acceptance. 

Romanticize

Image via Behance: Exotic Destinations on Earth for IELTS

There’s a way we romanticize things, people, places, events, that is so interesting. One of many masks we elaborately assemble and collect, uphold and establish. The special ones, the ones we hold sacred and golden, often benefit from the shine of time.

An event I’m engaged with, a part of, living and breathing will never hold the same romance and sparkle as something that has been completed. Sealed by days gone by, infinite in its illusion. A story from five years ago, words you heard on the street last week, all preserved as a moment in time. Ripe and ready for you to embalm and encase with your own sense of self-importance and gravitas.