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“Sleep tries to seduce me by promising a more reasonable tomorrow.”

— Elizabeth Smart, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

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“Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.”

— Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

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@lauresepaintz 

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“You have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you, too far and they abandon you.”

— Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy

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“Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.”

— Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

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Backstage at Rodarte Spring / Summer 2019

Photography by J’Dee Allin

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“I always marvel at the humans’ ability to keep going. They always manage to stagger on even with tears streaming down their faces.”

— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

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“I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest.”

— Walt Whitman, Selected Poems

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Forever a Queen 👑

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@phyll-ofthefuture: Do you have any advice for people struggling with body image? 

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🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

“I don’t hate you. I just dislike you. I dislike you thoroughly and I’m through with you.”

— Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

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10 Ways You Can Support Black Women

1. Stop slandering our natural features. Stop with the dark skin jokes. Stop with the natural hair jokes. Stop dehumanizing black women for our features. Black women��especially young black girls–internalize these “jokes” and grow to sincerely hate their blackness. Cut it out.

2. Respect our choices. All of them. You don’t have to like it but you need to respect it. If we choose to wear our natural hair, respect it. If we choose to wear weave, respect it. Stop chastising us for the choices we make for ourselves. Stop policing how we choose to live our lives. Let us be great. Gahdamn.

3. Stop with the respectability politics. You can’t say you love black women and then pick and choose which black women you’ll respect based on your standards. You still give a black woman respect regardless of how she chooses to live her life. You respect all black women because we are human just like you, not just the ones who wear natural hair, listen to erykah badu and shit.

4. No means no. If you approach a black woman and she says she’s not interested, oh my fucking god, my nigga, just leave her alone. Move on. Let it go. Please do not persist. Take the rejection gracefully. Don’t call her out name, don’t follow her, don’t assault her. Let her be. She doesn’t owe you an explanation. Her “no” is enough and you will deal my friend. 

5. LISTEN. Bruh, when black women are telling you something you’re doing is harming them, can you put your ego aside and just L I S T E N. Why is that your first reaction is to get defensive? If you love black women like you say you do, wouldn’t you want to know when you’re doing something harmful to them? Stop getting defensive every time a black woman calls out your misogynoir. Stop brushing that off as “bashing black men.” Stop calling black women “shea butter bitches” for calling out how you harm black women. Black women are just asking for empathy at the end of the day. That’s the least you can do.

6. Stop slut-shaming. Stop shaming black women for their sexuality. Stop calling black women “thots” and all kinds of hoes because her sex life is something YOU disagree with or because she presents herself in a way that conflicts with YOUR standards. Someone’s sexuality has nothing to do with you and you don’t have the right to police what a woman does with her body. Stop reducing a black woman’s worth because you don’t like what she does with HER body.

7. Understand that our identity intersects. Stop telling black women they have to “pick a side.” Black women aren’t black men or white women’s “side kicks.” We are our own people with our own unique struggle that, yes, may have similarities to BM’s and WW’s struggles, but is not identical to theirs. We are black and we are women. You can’t be an ally to black women and not be intersectional when our existence is the epitome of intersectionality. Black women don’t just experience racial violence, we experience gender violence as well. Stop insisting that we have to divide our identity down the middle to suit you.

8. Say something when you see black women being attacked. When you see black women being harassed online and offline, do something. Ya’ll gotta start holding each other accountable. Stop @-ing me telling me how terrible it is that I’m being attacked. @ ole dude who’s attacking me. Tell them to stop. Have my back. Intervene in the best possible way you can. Stop allowing the violence against black women to persist right in front of your eyes.

9. Please kill the “strong black woman” narrative. Placing this title on us constantly, denies us humanity. Black women aren’t allowed to be vulnerable like everyone else. We’re constantly told be strong or we’re written off as only angry and bitter. We’re told how we’re suppose to feel and how to respond to violence against us. Black women are humans. We laugh, we cry, we smile. We can’t be your idea of “strong” all the time.

10. Show up for black women. Black women consistently show up for everyone else but when it comes time for us, hardly anyone is there to be found. Police brutality doesn’t just happen to black men. Recognize it. Know the names of the many black female victims of state violence. Know their stories. Share their stories. Fight for them like you fight for Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Sean Bell. Fight for black women like black women fight for you. Organize and show up for black women. Stop leaving us hanging. Stop expecting our support and giving us little to none in return.

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CATWOMAN with TWEETY AND SYLVESTER by battle810

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✨ Reminiscing from caribana in Toronto last year, I care across this black girl magic and wanted to share some body positive and big black beauty ✨

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Today, on the 60th anniversary of Emmett Till’s death, I did an impromptu & unorganized black history lesson. I didn’t intend to do this but like the last tweet says, sometimes I get jacked about history & just go off. I might expand this & make it longer in the coming days.