“The reason I started making music was to express my inner struggles through music and to become someone who can represent the concerns of people like us. Instead of becoming an idol or an object of admiration, I hope to be an artist who lives in the same era as those people, someone who can capture the stories of many people in my music and create a sense of empathy together. I want to become a singer who is a proud to someone and a friend-like figure to others.” [trans]

— I've got to be honest: I thought because he was a prince that, uh, he'd be a little more of a candy ass.
— Yeah. He's tougher than he looks.

Nicholas Galitzine as HENRY & Taylor Zakhar Perez as ALEX
RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE (2023), dir. Matthew Lopez 

red, white and royal blue in a nutshell? +bonus

Google: How to become a spoon 🔍

Audrey Hepburn in Paris, 1955

i see a post talking doom and gloom about how we'll never escape toxic masculinity. i think about back in 2017 when american girl released their first boy doll, and a review for him went viral in the collecting community. the review was written by a mom, who said they went into the store to get their daughter a doll, only to see their son's eyes light up like fire when he saw a doll that looked like him, and now every night he puts his doll in pajamas and rocks him to sleep. i think about the toddler in my daycare room a few years back who was obsessed with baby dolls, carrying them everywhere, and his mom proudly told us he uses his sisters' old baby dolls and wants to be just like them. that toddler saw another toddler crying one day and gave her the doll he had to cheer her up. i think about the eight-year-old boy i saw a few years back, excitedly waving around raya's sword in a target checkout line like all his dreams were coming true. there was a video on my instagram the other day of a little boy at disneyworld crying with joy upon meeting his hero, mulan. i think about the voice actor for bow in the she-ra reboot saying his nephews only wanted adora action figures. celebrity men are wearing dresses on tv now. last halloween i saw a little boy dressed as elsa. i went to go see spiderverse over the summer, and in the line ahead of me was a boy who couldn't be older than twelve or thirteen, bouncing and beaming, giddy with excitement over getting to see the female-led romance movie elemental. i think about the five-year-old boy at my library who breathlessly asked me where the pinkalicious books were, eyes widening when i had more on my cart, his mom explaining that he is all about pinkalicious and fancy nancy. i saw so many pictures online of boys and men dressed in pink to see barbie. teenage boys are gonna open their phones and see the man who wrote fucking game of thrones dressed in pink to see barbie. when i was a kid, a boy dressing in pink was practically a social death sentence. there are boys running around in pink on my street right now.

Analysis of data from dozens of foraging societies around the world shows that women hunt in at least 79% of these societies, opposing the widespread belief that men exclusively hunt and women exclusively gather. Abigail Anderson of Seattle Pacific University, US, and colleagues presented these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on June 28, 2023.

A common belief holds that, among foraging populations, men have typically hunted animals while women gathered plant products for food. However, mounting archaeological evidence from across human history and prehistory is challenging this paradigm; for instance, women in many societies have been found buried alongside big-game hunting tools.

Some researchers have suggested that women's role as hunters was confined to the past, with more recent foraging societies following the paradigm of men as hunters and women as gatherers. To investigate that possibility, Anderson and colleagues analyzed data from the past 100 years on 63 foraging societies around the world, including societies in North and South America, Africa, Australia, Asia, and the Oceanic region.

They found that women hunt in 79% of the analyzed societies, regardless of their status as mothers. More than 70% of female hunting appears to be intentional—as opposed to opportunistic killing of animals encountered while performing other activities, and intentional hunting by women appears to target game of all sizes, most often large game.

The analysis also revealed that women are actively involved in teaching hunting practices and that they often employ a greater variety of weapon choice and hunting strategies than men.
These findings suggest that, in many foraging societies, women are skilled hunters and play an instrumental role in the practice, adding to the evidence opposing long-held perceptions about gender roles in foraging societies. The authors note that these stereotypes have influenced previous archaeological studies, with, for instance, some researchers reluctant to interpret objects buried with women as hunting tools. They call for reevaluation of such evidence and caution against misapplying the idea of men as hunters and women as gatherers in future research.

The authors add, "Evidence from around the world shows that women participate in subsistence hunting in the majority of cultures."

SPILLED.

Charlie Squire, “Mattel, Malibu Stacy, and the Dialectics of the Barbie Polemic,” evil female (Substack), 2023.

im aware of how this is going to sound but i knowww the barbie movie is about to push us deeper into the "anything a woman does is her free-thinking choice, so if she wants to wear tons of makeup and shave and be consumable and uphold patriarchal gender norms, that's her decision so it's feminism!" and like don't get me wrong i actually want to see the barbie movie but i can't go through another internet "bimbo feminist" phase. sorry !

there may have been a miscommunication here. The OP is specifically talking about choice feminism, which is the idea that any choice a woman makes is an inherently feminist one just because she is a woman. In reality, while women's freedom to make choices is an important feminist issue, women can make antifeminist choices - for instance, support a political campaign for taking away women's rights.

This is relevant to Barbie because of the idea of womanhood she represents. Pink, glittery, wearing makeup and putting on high heels to shop at the mall. This is a kind of womanhood that young girls are encouraged to identify with through Barbie, and it is one that is beneficial to capitalism. Fashion, makeup, skincare routines, razors - have you ever seen a Barbie with body hair?

The Barbie movie is a commercial for Barbie toys, but Barbie as a cultural figure is also a commercial for this version of womanhood. One that is supported by society as a whole. Women are pushed to wear makeup, to dress feminine, to be invested in fashion and obsess over their appearance and remove all perceived flaws even when they're just completely harmless, natural features (see again, body hair).

None of that is to say that women shouldn't do those things, but it is important to be aware of that social pressure and the way it affects our decisions. By wholly embracing Barbie as a feminist icon, we risk losing sight of that, and recreating that same societal pressure within feminism.

Full story here