this article needs to stop

so i'm really sick of seeing this link shared on facebook.

yes. i read through it. and i know i could probably spend another hour picking it apart and making a really good argument, but i don't feel like it right now. all i really want to say is it only took one skim for it to creep under my skin.

i will tell you though, my immediate reaction is like 'sorry you hate your mom... now let's get back to feminism.'

i'll think about elaborating later... or maybe i will a little right now.

let's just get back to the basics of feminism real quick. it's about equality for men and women. i'm a feminist. i don't want to be a man. I WANT TO BE A WOMAN. I WANT TO BE A MOTHER.

i want to see women and men have equal salaries, across the world.

i want to see women and men have equal opportunities for education, across the world.

i want to see women and men have equal rights to health care, across the world.

i want to see women and men have an equal voice in politics, across the world.

i want to see women and men have equal respect, across the world. it's that simple.

^^^ feminism. ^^^

i also want to have a family of my own, with my adorable fiance, dallas.

equality is something i choose to stand up for, whether or not each of these issues directly involves me or not (but a lot of them do). it's a principle thing.

i can still stand up for all of these things and be a good mother. sorry, rebecca walker, that your mom neglected you. but it's not about feminism. it's about your mom.

i'm sorry your mom gave you the impression that it's all feminism's fault. sounds to me like your mom had a personal problem with mothering.

also, to everyone who reads rebecca walker's article, and my post: don't let anyone tell you what it means to be a 'good' mom. at least, the media is not necessarily where you should turn to figure that out.

a question that i am constantly asking myself

who would i rather spend a day with: emma stone or taylor swift? (you know... in case the make a wish foundation ever asks me. disclaimer: i'm not dying.)

i haven't been able to answer this questions since someone asked it to me last year. disclaimer: i asked it to myself. 

i just love them so much.

p.s. taylor's middle name is alison. yes, we are on first name basis. and yes, she told me her middle name.

here's to looking at you, mom

all mothers are amazing.

mine has probably been the most influential person in my life.

i've always been a mommy's girl.

her eternal selflessness and constant hard work are apparent every day.

i've often called her a hover mother. but in truth, she was just being the best mother hen to her baby chicks. :)

we've gone on lots of adventures together, and i look forward to all of the future ones we'll have. :)

L.O.V.E.

okay i'm sort of actually really bored with this whole blog every day thing. or maybe i'm just too lazy to do it anymore. or maybe i don't like being told what to do. but i want to blog whatever i want and whenever i want.

and i want to blog about love.

it's past valentines day. i can't even remember if i finished posting my love story... but i've been thinking about this post for a long time. because i feel like i've learned a lot about love. i'm 21, i've been to college four years, and i've dated lots. still though, i'm a baby. who am i to blog about love? my parents have been married for like 100 years (jk, mom!). i'm not as experienced as them! they've been falling in love for decades! and i've only just started. but still, looking back at the last few years, i've learned so much about love. i know i still have a lot to learn--i haven't even gotten married yet! but, i feel like i've learned some valuable lessons worth sharing. if anything else, i can look back on this post whenever i want and be reminded of what today feels like.


>> love is humbling. it's not like in the movies. i remember my grandmother telling me this and i thought, "yeah, whatever grandma." silly, right? i always thought my parents' relationship was perfect, so of course it was possible for everyone to have a perfect relationship. i have never heard my parents yell at each other or speak harsh words to each other. sure, they argue over little things, but i never see them fight with each other. so when i started dating dallas seriously, and problems would pop up, and we would get angry with each other, i was totally lost. every feeling i've ever felt is heightened when it has anything to deal with dallas. happiness, sadness, anger--i feel it X10 when it has to do with dallas. i literally believed that any two people could be in a relationship with 0 conflict. but i soon realized that that is not how it works. i have learned that while anger can be controlled, and there is no such thing as "losing your temper," nobody is perfect. and everyone makes mistakes. i don't know why i forgot that. so i've learned that love takes the ability say sorry. often. and love takes the ability to forgive. often. love takes work. hard work. love takes constant sacrifice. and love takes lots of patience. love is the most important learning experience i've ever had.

but there is another thing i've learned about love:

>> love is be better than anything i'd ever imagined. even before i fell in love, when i was completely oblivious to it's struggles, and i thought love was just like it is in the movies, i still could not comprehend just how absolutely, unreservedly, unconditionally, positively, utterly wonderful it would be. i've never been happier in my life. and that happiness grows every day. this whole new compartment of my heart that i never even knew existed has opened up and soared as tall as the highest mountain and it just keeps growing. it sounds so ridiculous and unbelievable. but if i could have let my before-true-love-self feel even a seedling of what i feel now.. i would have been so much more incredibly excited for the day i would fall in love with dallas william hadley. <3

and so, to quote from one of my favorite movies, stardust:

"you know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn't true. I know a lot about love. I've seen it, centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate... It made me want to turn away and never look down again. But when I see the way that mankind loves... You could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and... What I'm trying to say, Tristan is... I think I love you. Is this love, Tristan? I never imagined I'd know it for myself. My heart... It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it's trying to escape because it doesn't belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange - no gifts. No goods. No demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine."

ketchup

day 2, thursday: educate us on something you know a lot about or are good at. 

um.. hm hm hmm... there are two things that i am most passionate about (other than my man and my religion): art history and women's studies. so, i'll tell you about a painting that i wrote 10 pages on last semester, and it deals a lot with feminism.

may i present to you, The Tub (1886) by Degas.

>>"Edgar Degas, born in Paris in 1834, would become one of the most noted impressionist artists of his time. Throughout his eighty-three years of life, he made dozens of paintings of middle-class Parisian women. Today, he is most remembered for his paintings of elegant ballet dancers. With thick, quick brush-strokes and heavy impasto, his ballerina paintings are famous for being full of graceful figures and fluid movement. However, there is another large series of Degas’ art that is less popular, but just as vast (and more controversial), and that is of female nudes in private places. He painted several paintings with the same subject matter, over and over, of which were typically nude women doing trivial things that are generally meant for private spaces, such as women bathing, drying off, or combing their hair."

>>"This painting depicts a young girl bathing in a shallow basin with very little water. One can presume that she is of middle or lower class, judging from the condition of the room and the bath, along with the modest belongings she has on the table next to her. She crouches in the tub and uses a sponge to help rinse the back of her neck, perhaps trying to conserve the small amount of water she has available. Painted from the perspective of one standing in the room, next to the tub, the viewer gets the feeling of standing over her, in the same room, watching her as she performs this intimate task. One cannot see her face, as she does not face the viewer. But one can see her backside, the side of her breast, and her bare legs. She is exposed, and she is vulnerable."

>>"The main question is this: Should Edgar Degas’ depictions of nude women in private spaces be considered exploitive toward the female body? Why or why not? One must ask at which point the subject matter of Degas’ female nudes becomes less about a serious study of the female form and more about capitalizing on sexual elements."

>>"I would argue that the peculiar paintings of women bathing, specifically The Tub (1886) by Degas is, indeed, exploitive, objectifying, and disempowering. Though there are more than one painting by Degas in 1886, titled The Tub, which are all very similar, I will be focusing on the one described above because it happens to be one of the better known pieces in what could be called Degas’ “women bathing series.”"

>>"The Tub has been considered a controversy from the start. In the year the painting was exhibited, Degas was accused of misogyny for the first time.[10] In her book, Looking into Degas: Uneasy images of women and modern life (1986), Eunice Lipton claims that “Degas’ images embody this confusion, his most blatant treatment of the subject is in his milliner and bather images”.[11] It is recorded that Gustave Geffroy, a writer and critic who died in 1926, commented of The Tub:

It is indeed Woman depicted in these six poses, but woman without facial expression, without eyes, stripped of the illusionistic decoration of her toilette, woman reduced to the gestures of her limbs, to the appearance of her body, woman considered female, expressed in her animality alone, as if this were a zoological treatise requiring superior illustration.[12]

The terms “animality” and “zoological,” connote an extreme objectification and dehumanization of women. Geffroy’s was not the only appalled critic of Degas’ 1886 exhibit.[13] Still today, the same points are argued today—was Degas’ The Tub an avante-guarde and brilliant exploration of female anatomy, or was it a disturbing and degrading intrusion upon the private space of women? Either way, I would argue that the treatment of women in Degas’ The Tub, whether professional or not, is an experiment with the portrayal of women, and in that way it is an exploiting factor."

>>"The angle at which the scene is portrayed further adds to the exploitive nature of the painting. The angle at which we view the woman would suggest we are in the room with her, standing over her and watching her. However, the woman shows no sign of acknowledging the viewer, which suggests that she is unaware of her observer. It is as if she is under the impression that she baths in private. We enter her space uninvited and unannounced. Instead of Degas’ previous paintings of women in brothels, where the women are facing the viewer and with no shame, the figure in The Tub is turned away; her face blocked from view. The figure does not welcome an audience—we intrude upon her, spying on her. Therefore, our presence in the painting is inappropriate. We are put in the position of a “Peeping Tom.” In fact, in the book Degas by Degas (1990) (part of a series titled Artists by Themselves), edited by Rachel Barnes, it is reported that Degas said in reference to one of his paintings of a nude women drying her feet, “It is as if you looked through the keyhole.”[15] This act of “peeping” attracts individuals with deviant behaviors. That Degas would specifically use this phrase to describe his painting implies an intent to appeal to a type of perverse behavior.""

>>"Furthermore, by hiding the face of the woman, she is denied an identity, and therefore Degas is objectifying her. In the book Degas, Images of Women (1989), it is asserted, “By repeatedly depicting the models from the back, the artist not only drew attention away from their personalities but also from their sexuality.”[19] However, without her confronting us, she is denied any control of how we perceive her. We, as viewers, are not allowed to see her face and meet her character. We are only meant to look at her body. With no apparent personality, her body is solely an object. With no available sign of her individual presence, we are only left with her sexual presence."

hope you weren't too bored by reading that.

day 3, friday: things that make you uncomfortable.

honestly, not much makes me uncomfortable.. but i'll try to think of things.

>>fake laughs
>>meeting people for the first time
>>raw meat
>>heights
>>math or science
>>patriarchy
>>diving

day 4: saturday: favorite quote.

iiii can't think of anything. i have soooo many favorite quotes, i don't want to limit myself. but here's my favorite scripture! (not that i don't have very many favorite scriptures, haha. but this one has stuck with me for years.)

>>10 Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

day 5, sunday: publicly profess your love and devotion for one of your blogger friends. what makes them great? why do you love them?

oh this is easy. BECCAMARIEDESIGNS.BLOGSPOT.COM. becky is my older sister, and is my mentor. she is so easy to look up to. she was always the angel of the family - i don't think she's ever said a spiteful word in her life! she is such a talented artist, with the most lovely, creative ideas. she is a mother of two, a part time student, and a business woman. she cooks delicious food, is a natural photographer, and is a really fun blogger. she also is very service oriented. since i started college she has been one of my best friends and been there to listen to me and advise me every day for the last four years. i aspire to be more like her.

>> there! i'm all caught up! oh, and p.s.:

may day

so. you probably noticed the cool new little button i put on my blog. just kidding, you probably didn't notice, and just kidding, i didn't put it there. i made my sister do it.

i decided to do this thing 4 days ago and... i'm really ambitious, so it's working out really well...

day 1: the story of your life in 250 words or less 

born a proud utahn in 1991. moved to south africa for a year. moved to ecuador for three years. moved to argentina for three years. travelled to 19 countries (my favorite country belgium--hello, belgium chocolate). loved elementary school. hated junior high. hated most of high school. loved senior year. made some amazing, life-long friends. had my first boyfriend. was dumped by my first boyfriend. had all sorts of part-time jobs in between there. realized i was a feminist. got accepted to byu. changed my major three times. discovered my love for art history, women's studies, and humanities. went on a life-changing study abroad to europe. dated lots. broke a few hearts and had my heart broken. found my true love. or rather, he found me. spend my days wedding planning, interning at a museum of art, working the best job in the world in the byu women's studies office, and talking with my love about our future.

answer me this:

when did school become a heck marathon instead of an opportunity to enrich your mind?

i get it. you say you just want to teach us the most we can learn. or something. but then you give us an unmanageable load and do not allow us a second to let it soak in!

i feel a little bit like dennis on jurassic park.

YOU DON'T APPRECIATE ME! I'M THE ONE WHO PAYS YOU! YOU DON'T PAY ME!

i don't get it. also i have a feeling i might have a flawed theory. whatevs.

i'm tired.