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Showing posts with the label feminism

On the "Fakeness" of Social Media

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Yesterday I came across a very insightful post on r/MakeupRehab, titled "A thought on the fakeness of Instagram..." It's a long post, so I won't quote it in full, but the writer argues that successful Instagrammers like her sister, women whose posts feature them "in trendy places in even trendier outfits," perpetuate an internalized misogyny that filters down to the social-media accounts of ordinary women: It's so absolutely drilled in our heads that we have to be PERFECT at all times. On social media, we never post when we get dumped. We never show ourselves when we splurge on makeup because we had a bad day. We never show when we fail that exam, or have a fight with our partners, or are so depressed we can't leave bed. We never show ourselves eating that third bag of cheetos on the couch. We never show when we fail. And we never show ourselves listening to our favorite songs or holding our loved ones or laughing with a friend and feeling something...

FOTDystopia

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Well, the impossible has happened. A racist, misogynist sociopath with nothing but contempt for the democratic process has been elevated by it to the most powerful office in the world. Hillary Clinton was not my ideal Democratic candidate, but I came to find her deeply inspiring over the course of this year's vicious, depressing campaign. And now millions of Americans have rejected her knowledge, experience, and tremendous ability for the whims of a con artist loyal only to himself. As a queer woman and someone who has endured sexual harassment from men in positions of power, I can't help but feel that Tuesday's election was a referendum on my humanity. And I'm not even one of the people threatened most by a Trump presidency; it's a sign of my privilege that I can still cling to optimism. I can only hope that this disaster will shake the Democratic Party out of its complacency and force it to listen to the progressive voices in its ranks. I can only hope tha...