bitch

So a few months ago I saw this perfect slam poetry video:

I obviously I really want to ditch all this schoolwork right now and take a train to the Nuyorican. But I also can't stop thinking about the word "bitch" and about the ways in which women are compartmentalized by language. Of course here's the continually frustrating slut/prude dichotomy. But "bitch" really gets me. The word connotes a woman who is aggressive and ambitious and present, but the word is obviously used to degrade those wonderfully aggressive and ambitious and present women. If man is confident-seeming, he’s completing his God-given duty as a member of the “higher sex.” At the very least, he’s definitely not a bitch.

Guys are called bitches when they display weakness – a stereotypically feminine characteristic. So I guess this is how society uses the word “bitch” as both a tool to put assertive women in their proverbial places and shit on girls as weak. But, really, if strong women are bitches, then I can only aspire to be the baddest bitch on the face of this twisted Earth.

On a lighter, less-ranty note, I'm going to be in some lovely Spanish cities over spring break on a school trip! It's my first time in Europe, so my parents are losing their minds. Planning on bringing my camera and pretending to be more cultured than I really am.

blog loving

Just a quick post to let y'all know that I am now officially on Bloglovin' so yay!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin 

- Ana <3

tips for avoiding awkward encounters

Well shit. It looks like you are in a public place accompanied by no less than three members of your immediate family and you see that really cool sometimes hi buddy that you kind of know from your English class last year. I am here to rescue you, and tell you how to avoid this girl. Not how to speak to her, though. God knows that's too advanced for me.

1. Keep your phone in an easily accessible pocket at all times. (If you don't have a phone, a watch will work just as well.) When you see this girl (likely wearing a Modern Vampires of the City tour tee and accompanied by a large group of tittering city-chic friends, the likes of which you've only dreamed about), pause mid-stride and develop a slight, half-exasperated, half-revelatory expression and "instinctively" reach for your phone/watch. Gee, it looks like you've forgotten to head to your appointment with your neighborhood psychiatrist. Gotta run! 

Bonus: you'll look like you have somewhere totally, like, ultra-important to be.

2. If you find yourself without a phone or watch, Plan B calls for a more visceral response. Upon sighting said acquaintance, duck into the nearest doorway/side street/storefront. Pace yourself though. You were clearly planning on going that way the whole time.

3. This is a last resort. Let's say you and this girl lock eyes. Ugh, eye contact. And it's one of those "I acknowledge your presence but I'm too far away to say hi or else there will be this mutually uncomfortable silence between the greeting and the actual physical meeting of bodies" moments. You will be forced to interact. The trick: squint. When you get to her, say, "Oh, hi Jackie! Oh God I couldn't even see you from back there; I'm completely blind without my glasses. Well, bye!" I may have overstepped my boundaries in giving advice about actual vocalization, but it will have to do.

In all seriousness, you can totally say hi and bye without it being "weird." Your acquaintance won't think much of it, and they probably feel the same way you do, anyways. That way you'll be "that nice girl/boy" instead of "wait, does that person even go to our school?"

Lots of love,

Ana

overcast and overworked

Hi guys,
I was poking around the very, very deep depths of my laptop and I found this terrifying story I wrote when I was thirteen about several mermaids who spend their lives battling wealth inequality in their seaside town. But I also found these photos from last winter and they felt relevant so here they are. All were taken at my high school (which is basically monochrome all the time, vibe-wise) with my lovely Canon AE-1.

I hope Janus is treating everybody well. SNOW DAY TOMORROW WOOT WOOT. 

- Ana <3

Girls

So Girls came back and I am falling in love all over again. Had I been born twenty years earlier, I would have been a Miranda. Right now I like to think of myself as a Hannah whose indoorsy little heart wishes desperately to be as cool as Jessa, but most people peg me as a Shoshanna. I think people criticize Girls as a modern rip-off of SATC, but who says Generation Y can't use it's own culturally relevant set of twenty-somethings? Because Hannah Horvath is in every way my spirit animal. I totally understand her when she wants something exciting/tragic to happen to her because it will finally and truly make her an Artist with a capital A. And I am all too familiar with her unfortunate encounters with the cottony sticks of evil marketed as Q-Tips (Pro tip: don’t use them.) And as ditsy as Shosh’s dialogue sounds compared to the carefully constructed and in-your-face metaphorically resonant monologues of female television drama protagonists, THAT IS HOW PEOPLE SPEAK. In response to criticism of Lena Dunham’s so-called white-washed, privileged background, I guess my response is this: there are no irrelevant lives. Lena is a creative and smart and funny young woman who writes what she knows, which is what we all should be doing. To quote Georgia O’Keeffe, “Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest."

Anyhow, here is a Very Important Review of the best Hannah lines of Season 3, Episode 2.

"I'm like unrelentingly itchy, is that road trip thing?"

"I'm just realizing this road trip is just not a metaphor. It just isn't."

"This rocking chair is so pointy. it's not giving me any room to express myself."

"But you know what Adam? I don't want to do it. And it's really liberating to say no to shit you hate."

"It made me remember what it was like in college when you'd say, 'Oh, meet me at the Free Palestine party' and then I find out you're over at the Israel house."

TTYL,

Ana