some nights are R E A L L Y hard so if you just gotta breathe and wrap yourself in a thousand blankets to stay safe, please please do that. keep breathing through this, you’ll be ok.
The stories of women in my family who were forced into lives they didn’t want and didn’t utilize their passions breaks my heart. My grandma wanted to be a journalist and write about the injustices she saw inflicted on disabled ppl while she was volunteering at a state run institution as a teen. Her father decided that she was “too fat and stupid” for college and forced her to get married at 17 or else he’d make her homeless. As a kid she told me that she wished people believed that she had meaningful opinions on events around her. One of my great grandmothers wanted to be an artist but was pressured into marrying a man who beat her. She stayed up late each night when her children were in bed writing poetry and pasting it over elaborate collages she mad herself. We still have stacks of these notebooks she created but was never allowed to do anything with. My mother wanted to be an operatic singer and was considered a musical prodigy in her town because she taught herself three seperate instruments by 13. When she was 18 she met my then 30 year old father who emotionally manipulated her into giving up her dreams to start a family with him. As a kid I would hear her up at night playing the violin or doing vocal exercises until she became too depressed to practice anymore. Like idk y’all there’s a quiet type of violence in the way women’s talents are devalued and brushed aside in favor of bullying them into “traditional” roles that ultimately don’t fulfill what they wanted for their lives. We’ve lost so much art, music, writing, science, and happiness to misogyny.
Teach girls it’s okay to not want kids. Or even like them. That they can be functional people without being a mother. That deciding into their 30s they want kids isnt bad and they’re not “too old.” Teach girls that they don’t have to sell their youth to kids. Because motherhood isn’t for everyone. And we need to stop acting like it is.
you don’t have to be busy all the time. being productive is important, but so is resting, taking breaks, and practicing self care. you aren’t a machine. you can’t operate 24/7. you’ll be okay if you aren’t always working on something; take time to yourself.
I’ve just discovered my new favorite painter, Vittorio Reggianini - those smarter than myself probably already know of him as an Italian painter from the 1800s who made satin look even satiny-er than satin. I just cannot get over how much he loved painting women who were NOT. HAVING. A. MAN’S. SHIT.
But there was one hottie that everyone seemed to like, and I can’t blame them…
Vittorio knows what the ladies like.
I’m pretty sure that the women in the background of the third picture are looking at a “lewd” painting. They were sometimes kept by upper class homes in the 1800s. They were kept hidden behind a curtain and only viewed for *ahem* “recreational purposes”. So basically, those ladies are looking at porn while their friend blithely humours Bouffant McShinypants.
This dude was an art god at 2 things:
1. Satin
1. Ladies leaning on a chair making a “can you believe this shit?” face
and I’m here to admire both
This looks like the same group of ladies who are constantly chilling laughing at men I love it
