#because of eurocentric beauty standard bullshit

[redhotarsenic]

It’s so fucked that the main source of unease I felt building up over the past several months was me feeling pressured to perform femininity to be seen as desirable to other people. It was never ever said said out loud in that space but I could FEEL it and I never knew until it was pointed out to me.

[snobgoblin]

Im a trans man and my voice is actually the only reason I DON’T pass,, everything else is fine I can make it work but yyyyyhhhhhh :')

I'm really glad to see people are passing without too much problem and at the same time I'm like ???? Why does it work for you when I'm not doing more or less than you????

Strangers are going to correct themselves and be like "oh, sorry ma'am" and I don’t have the time (or just can’t bc of the people around me) correct them and to be honest do you have any advice for that? :')

ohhh interesting. advice for passing or advice for dealing with NOT passing? because if it's the first one I'm sorry I'm the last person to ask this 😭 at my deepest i have The Twink Voice and at my highest i sound like a jolly garden gnome. I've heard voice training does wonders but it's never clicked with me- there's free stuff on youtube that may be worth looking into if that's what you want

if you're wanting advice on how to deal with not being able to pass? the way I deal with it is like... I dunno, it sounds easier than it is but just telling yourself "I don't need to pass and these rules are stupid". the rules of gender are stupid and make nobody happy (even cis people will always feel that they are not masc or femme enough, it's an unfair system built on a lot of bullshit and eurocentric beauty standards if I'm not mistaken) and anyway what I tell myself is "I do whatever i want and if they're wrong they're wrong, that looks bad on them and not me" if that helps you any. i dunno

[octisticsopinions]

We are told a woman's main purpose is to be a partner for a man, and so when men see a woman they don't find desirable, they deem her worthless.

Any form of femininity, of women's self expression, men think just exists to make women look beautiful for them. The moment a woman's clothes are too masculine, a woman is deemed useless for failing to appeal to men's desires. A woman is supposed to look beautiful for men, but god forbid her efforts be noticeable. The moment you can tell it's makeup, the moment a man can see her eyeliner and bright lipstick, can see how she's showing her body, the illusion is broken and she is deemed as useless as if she's broken the immersion on some dark ride. God forbid she treats makeup and fashion like art and self expression rather than "how do I make men horny".

I used to be utterly baffled by those tweets that were like "dear women, we don't like this bla bla bla" because I couldn't fathom why men would so openly advocate for women to cater their self expression around men's sexual desires, but I realised they already just think that's what women's self expression is for, they are that pathetic. The entire concept of womanhood is treated as if it has to revolve around men. "Women are supposed to look hot in video games, they can't just look like people, they have to look attractive because otherwise what's even the point of making her a woman?"

Obviously this ends up reinforcing other bullshit hate speech these selfish men decide to spew. It reinforces their white supremacy and bullshit Eurocentric beauty standards. If a woman's disability gets in the way of any aspect of the performance of femininity, it's proof of the inferiority of disabled people. Grown ass men get angry that transgender women transition to look like women and not their sexual fantasy of a woman, because to a lot of men womanhood only exists for men's benefit, and they can't fathom why a transgender woman would transition to just being themselves as a woman and not center there entire transition around the male gaze. Why be a woman at all if she's old, fat, ugly.

Women should have big boobs but no stretch marks, or sagging, or fat anywhere else. Trans women should be small and waifish and dainty and model level beautiful or else they aren't woman enough, but still accept your abuse politely and let you treat them horribly. Women should show more skin but not in a way that's obvious, or else they're whores. Women shouldn't sleep around, except for you, they should all sleep with you only on the first date. Women should never touch their vaginas but they must be perfectly waxed and look good for you.

No, it's not just your "preference". You force your "preference" onto all women, you degrade them for not living up to your impossible standards, you tell any Thomasine Diksha and Harriet how ugly they are, that's not a preference, that's misogyny.

Women don't exist for men. Womanhood doesn't exist for men. Femininity doesn't exist for men. Women are allowed to not attract you. Women are allowed to be intimidating. Women are allowed to be uninteresting. Women are allowed to be ugly.

[little-klng]

look honestly the thing no one really thinks about with the content of the stupid wizard game (prof fig dies and rookwood cursed anne while framing the goblins btw) is that the game itself isnt transphobic beyond like... one single trans character having a dumb name. like, its not directly transphobic aside from the royalties going to jkr get put straight into trans eugenics legislation, but we already knew that and its not related to the games actual content or why it exists. it doesnt matter that the game sucks, that its buggy and barely functions, that it funds transphobia, it doesnt even necessarily matter that "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" (not what that means and it doesnt even apply here). primarily it serves one function, pushing radf*ms (censored to avoid tags) further down the radicalization into alt right, qanon, and neonazi pipeline

the game is marketed mainly to transphobes who will throw whatever amount of money at the first thing some shitty childrens book author who fell off 10 years ago and currently floats her career and reputation on ragebait says will "own the libs/troons". while it doesnt contain any actual transphobia (just promising to fund it), the main message, themes, and story are explicitly pro slavery and antisemitic, and are designed to put you, the player, in the position of a "master race" that has "the right to own slaves" and the slaves "love being enslaved" except when "the hook nosed bank controlling elite" try to "convince" the slaves "to rebel against their masters" in an effort to "destroy and take control over the whi-[COUGH]wizard race". its just blanket coverage over every white supremacist and neonazi conspiracy belief and then gamifying it for the enjoyment of transphobes. and because jkr juices up her fandom on the ragebait so hard that she gets them hungry for whatever political statements shes gonna feed them next, they're just gonna eat that shit up because "troons mad"

we all already know transphobes are just conservatives with a stupid feminism hat, we already know their basis for hating trans people is one singular step away (and most of the time not even that) from white supremacist eugenics and phrenology. you take one single look at "transvestigators" and realize just how bad it really is with them and demanding exclusively eurocentric "pretty and femme" white standards of beauty to even be considered a passing cis woman, its not even subtle. this game doesnt actually have any of that, its just the end piece of the pipeline getting installed for turning transphobes into qanon neonazis, turning their hatred of trans people and trans activists (or basically just anyone who doesnt pass their specific idea of eurocentric traditional gender/sex) into hatred of anyone who isnt "pure" white and christian, which just feeds straight into the "master race/slave race/elite controller" ideology that nazism comes from. transphobes playing this game dont talk about the slavery or the weird way the plot centers around putting down a civil rights movement or the way it belittles "lesser races" for wanting "their worthless artefacts [sic] back" (goblins and their "horn for rallying troops and annoying wizards" with a wedge of cheese shoved in it to mute it, anyone? thats a shofar, which is a jewish rams horn trumpet used during high holidays)

"pureblood"/"mudblood" is already an established part of wizarding world lore as "pureblooded wizards" vs "nasty mixed-blooded wizards", which is already white supremacist anti-interracial bullshit that jkr fully and unironically roots for. this is the same woman that named her only black character "Kingsley Shackebolt" and wrote a slave race to actually love being enslaved and not mind seeing their taxidermied friends heads on the walls getting decorated with santa hats over the holidays. its not surprising that shes a nazi at all, and i feel like all the people who are (rightfully, dont get me wrong) talking about it funding transphobia are not giving the antisemitism/nazism/pro slavery portions of the content enough credit in making this game evolve from "shitty childrens media IP game that barely functions and would be irrelevant by next week" to "$60 ticket on the radf*m to slave cop nazi pipline that is steam+ps5's most preordered game of all time".

its to radf*ms and transphobes what tucker carlson is to your parents, and what rush limbaugh was to your grandparents, and what turning point usa is to your college frat siblings, and what ben shapiro is to your highschool debate team cousins. shitty content designed to make you mad and slowly melts your brain until you're a paranoid wretch that cant stop seeing The Elite Agenda(tm) everywhere you look until you're willing to drop thousands on donations to anyone and anything that promises to protect your freedom to say slurs on the internet and make teenagers kill themselves for being weird. its just not often that it skips a lot of the dogwhistling and just straight up gives you an escapist fantasy where you're a part of the aryan master race and those stupid pesky slaves keep asking for "freedoms" and "equality" because all those evil jews keep trying to tell them what they're missing out on by not genociding white people instead, and you get to violently murder as many as you want to preserve the status quo

tl;dr transphobia is hand-in-hand with alt right conservatism and nazism and this game is just one more stepping stone added to an already decently clear path between the two points. if you paid $60 for a game that barely works because "troons mad", your dignity is pathetically affordable and its no ones fault but yours that you're officially the type of person who would pay money for the ability to own your own slaves and kill jewish people the first chance you get. did you know nazis during the 1930s and 40s offered financial rewards to people turning people in to the government? just thought that was an interesting fact

btw dont reply to this post with some bullshit "well im gonna pirate it so its fine" or "you're just making it more popular by talking about it" im a tumblr blog with less than 1000 followers and its the #1 most preordered game on steam and the ps5 store, and if you insist on still playing master race slave owner simulator through piracy then its whatever, i can just put you with the hundreds of transphobes on my blocklist so you can get along and play together in a nice farm upstate and away from me

[powergayser]

growing up as a desi woman in the west is a layered experience. that is, it has layers of bullshit. layers of total, utter, unadulterated shit. shit that takes years to remember, process, unpack, unlearn, and move on from. 

one of those layers is learning that you are not attractive. you’re just not. you’re ugly. 

you’re not thin, white, small, smooth, or pretty. you’re chubby and you have broad shoulders and thighs the size of texas. you grow hair at a rate that could rival most cis men out there. you’ve probably got a mustache that you have to shave/wax/thread every few days. your nose is too big, your lips are too thick, eyebrows are too wild, your skin is oily, and your hair is too frizzy. 

you don’t fit western beauty standards. at all. and that’s… okay, actually. it’s okay. you’re not white, you’re not european, why should you have to fit a specific set of standards to be beautiful? after all, true beauty comes from withi– 

hang on. you’re forgetting something. 

you’re too thin, don’t you eat anything? wait, no, now that you’re eating you’re too fat. if you work out too much, you’ll become too muscular, like a man. your skin is soo dark, what do you keep going outside for? stay at home, you’re a girl. what’s wrong with your face, you have so many pimples! stop eating x food item and maybe your skin will clear up. do some house work, it’ll help you lose weight. why aren’t you wearing a bra? your nipples are showing, go cover up, it’s indecent.

how will you get married if you look like that? 

you won’t get a husband if you keep eating like that. no man wants to marry a pig. 

she’s too short, too fat, her face isn’t very nice… no, we don’t want her to marry our son. 

you just can’t catch a break, can you? 

sure, you’re not white, so you can’t expect to fit the bullshit eurocentric beauty standards. but now the aunties of your community, your own people, are doing this to you? wow that. that just sucks, man. 

and eventually, when you grow up, you realize the standards of beauty that your own community is pushing on you is a reflection of the bullshit eurocentric beauty standards. it all goes back to whiteness, misogyny, and patriarchy. that’s all it is. 

but now you’ve got to undo all of that damage, and continue to exist in a world where these issues persist, because there aren’t many good solutions to these problems that don’t involve revolution. furthermore, you as an individual can’t do much about it. fun, isn’t it? 

yeah. real fun. but here’s something more positive, i guess:

i’m a transmasc dyke now. i don’t shave, my stomach isn’t flat, i eat whatever i want because i know my body. i work out to put on muscle, and i let myself tan in the summers. i dress like a “slut” on saturday nights and go to the gay bar. i don’t always feel beautiful, but i know my self worth. i do not dress and take care of myself to impress men or appease the aunties. i’m happy like this. 

there’s more to life than getting a fucking husband and giving people eating disorders and body dysmorphia. shut the fuck up and find a new hobby. 

[maxellminidisc]

I genuinely think white women in particular are so hung up on "ugliness" being revolutionary instead of realizing ugliness is a construct because despite how some of them do have features that society will attack them as ugly for, they don't want to give thought to how the construct of ugliness effects people outside of them, particularly woc. It's like a lesser example of how they get hung up about misogyny ONLY without putting thought into how misogyny intersects with other forms of opression like racism (which gives us shit like misogynoir), transphobia (which gives us transmisogyn), etc and how they benefit from whiteness.

The goal shouldn't be to "embrace" ugliness, it should be to eradicate the idea that anything and anyone under the yoke of eurocentric beauty standards (these standards being: hairless/little body hair, thinnes, whiteness, etc) were NEVER ugly to begin with. But like its unsurprising to me as a woc that this flies over your heads. And it's such a shame because, given that by eradicating the made up bullshit that is ugliness, even you will benefit from its eradication.

[synthetic-ultramarine]

phalaenopsis orchids grow all over southern asia and like many (but not all) orchids they are epiphytes. in the wild they grow perched on the branches of trees, and their roots take nutrients and moisture from the air, not the soil. They're perennials with a yearly blooming season. A healthy phalaenopis has a big tangle of silver-green aerial roots reaching out in into the air, which look very weird by the HOA-poisoned standards of american commericalism. most usa grocery store shoppers don't know this about orchids, and probably don't even have the slightest notion that any organism exists that lives this way.

You certainly wouldn't infer it from the way they're potted, because the grocery store orchid is potted up in the same kind of pot as the grocery store chrysanthemum, its root system covered up by way too much substrate so nobody has to be confronted with the sight of a weird thing they don't understand. if you didn't know any of this you could look at a grocery store orchid and assume it's growing in dirt like a tulip. it is literally, no joke, being forced to conform to eurocentric standards of beauty for ornamental plants. the ones i just got had the root mass wrapped in fucking plastic, which is fairly standard for a grocery store orchid. any plant would drown like that, but especially an epiphyte. the grocery store phalaenopsis is like classical-tragedy doomed.

There is a whole industry devoted to bringing these living things into the world so that they can die in grocery store dumpsters by the hundreds of thousands. sometimes you'll see people say theyre being treated as disposable like this because people would only want them while they're flowering, but it's not that difficult to get one to bloom next year, and people like and keep christmas cacti, so that's clearly bullshit. it's not like there's anything objectionable about the foliage. imaginge going through the world thinking it's rational to only care about a plant when it's in flower. That's marketing executive brain. it's a great example of how huge swathes of the capitalist economy are devoted to delivering products directly into the trash.

[g0reoz]

anyways a lot of my favorite physical features were once huge points of insecurity for me. and it's not just a case of "wehhh these features weren't considered traditionaly feminine based on the rigid eurocentric beauty standards and convoluted ideas of gender i grew up surrounded by, so i Became Boy and now they're at least considered somewhere from Less Unattractive to straight up attractive." i mean. yes, the whole beauty standards thing was a part of it. but even after realizing i was a dude, i still sorta struggled because i was just so used to not liking my angular nose or messy eyebrows or double creased eyelids or birthmarks or slight cleft chin or cystic acne or eye bags or defined jawline. and yeah. like i said, a lot of that probably started because those weren't considered girly features or whatever. but it didn't stop when i stopped caring whether i looked like a girl.

it did take a lot of work to realize, but aside from just studying myself and seeing a human person or seeing good representation in characters with similar traits, there were two big realizations that pushed me to Stop Hating my Face.

first, do you know how many people have the same individual features i do, much less a similar combination of them? even within my own family, especially my dad's side, i saw so many people with so many of the same traits i had. these were lovely and handsome and beautiful individuals, and i would never call them ugly, especially for specific parts of their face. so why the hell would i think that about myself? it's the same as anything else, whether that's skills or physical traits or whatever. you gotta think about what message you send to other people in the same situation as you based on how you talk about yourself. if i chose to sit there and complain about how much i hate the 4 birthmarks on my face, how's the kid with 10 who's already mad insecure about em going to feel? because of that, i started being more positive about my appearance not only for me, but also for the people around me :)

the other thing is, i'm kinda stuck with the face i have. now, obviously there are things people choose to do to alter their appearance. hell, i'll probably look a lil different once i finally get on hrt (fingers crossed for stubble. dear lird.) but that being said, i am of the firm opinion that cosmetic, nonmedical plastic surgery is for pussies and losers. you wanna do it? whatever. but seeing how it usually caters to some lame-ass beauty standards, it's never been even CLOSE to an option for me. so yeah, nothing i can do about it, and even less i could do when i was strugglin as a kid. which means my only option was to start loving myself, and while it was a slow process, i'm really glad i put in the work.

i'm not conventionally attractive by any means. nor do i want to be! but i also wouldn't say i'm objectively unattractive. and subjectively? i'm hot as hell 🔥🔥🔥‼️ anyways. yeah. just thinkin back on things and how drastically my opinion's shifted, though it's kinda bullshit that it had to change that dramatically in the first place.

[thvanatos]

"this filter makes you want to go blonde!" "if you have brown eyes PLEASE try this blue-eyed filter" NO. shut up.

[emcads]

okay i know i joke about esmeralda being this icon of femininity that teaches the other characters how to do their makeup or how to achieve the current fashions but something that just. hits different. about esmeralda and her connection with beauty/femininity is that it’s completely manufactured and generated: makeup is painted and removed, clothes are woven and sewn into garments,  it isn’t a natural beauty or a beauty of purity but one that is created out of her own action  (although she shares a lot of these generative, traditionally feminine symbols with Amenirdis like clothing, contrast this with Amenirdis’ natural state being the one of beauty and her illusory state being one of ugliness) in fact Esmeralda is specifically referenced as unnatural and unholy during her fight with Bainbridge: 

“Impossible! No woman could captain a vessel. That would be unnatural, a violation of the laws of God and man. The…the Almighty would never permit it.”

granted he’s fairly drunk but there’s a line he crosses when he learns the captain is a female: it’s no longer an earthly issue of legal property rights or the physical altercation or even sailor superstition, instead his attacks are moral/spiritual and invoking God.  he’s right in that Esmeralda is not a natural woman, existing in a “pure” state of womanhood or trying to portray that state falsely: she crossdresses, she wears makeup, she is indulgent and violent and lascivious. she is beautiful but she is the furthest thing from the eighteenth century ideal of the white, docile, English beauty;  Jack thinks of her only as a lady but we know whatever class Esmeralda has is not due to her by birthright from Spain, with an indigenous mother she does not have the “pure” bloodlines of European class and the benefits that go with that. ( if she had them, it was at Don Rafael’s efforts, and her parents’ murders/the burning of his estate demonstrate colonial society’s resistance to that deviation )  her nobility as perceived by Jack is thus something contrived and manufactured outside of right of blood, law, or society.  ( but more than an equal to theirs, thus exposing their own standards as contrived, but I digress ). she’s placed into a convent but instead of devoting life to god / abstinence / purity, she chooses masculinity: crossdressing, having sex with men, wielding a sword (read: the phallic symbol) and taking life rather than creating it. and yet she maintains sex appeal for men and unquestionable femininity: 

“Jack began kissing her hands, short-nailed and strong from work, but they were well-tended and feminine. He could never have mistaken them for a man’s hands.”

in her hands –– which are the agents of creation and generation –– there’s masculine behavior (wielding a sword, tending ropes at sea) matched with feminine shape and behavior (managing her appearance, softness in care to self ). without going too much into it I think what I’m starting to get at is the Eve/Lilith dichotomy, and while Esmeralda absolutely does top Jack and see herself as more than equal to men I’m more interested in Lilith’s pursuit: 

“The angels left God and pursued Lilith, whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God's word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, 'We shall drown you in the sea.’“

the sea is something feminine that gives life, to sailors it gives death. to Jack the sea means freedom and rebirth;  to Esmeralda the sea has only ever meant blood, conquest, revenge, and death. 

[pretty-little-martyr]

hot take of the day which will probably get me lambasted now and in 10 years will be an opinion considered "correct" or whatever: calling everyone who's polyamorous ugly, or implying that wanting to be polyamorous makes people ugly, is actually really really shitty. and we should stop doing that. I will never understand the kinds of people who will reblog 20 posts about smashing beauty standards and then reblog other posts about how ugly polyamorous people look and Yes while I love their work I am absolutely side-eyeing Chris Fleming's video on polyamorous people where they literally compare polyam folks to donkeys lmao it's just something that always strikes me as mean, and cruel, and not useful at all.

are there polyam people who fetishize bi people (usually referred to as "unicorn hunters")? yeah absolutely and you should call them out for fetishization .... not call them ugly beasts ..... are there polyam people who are shitty with boundaries and try to pressure friends into being their thirds/fourths? yeah and you should call them out for coercion... not call them ugly beasts!

idk man it just strikes me as SO weird how commonplace it is to equate being polyamorous with being ugly. especially while in the same social justice spaces that recognize how bullshit and eurocentric beauty standards are. and dont give me that "we mean ugly on the INSIDE" bullshit because 1) No You Do Not lmao and 2) do tell me why it's ok to generalize this whole Concept of people under "ugliness on the inside." give me a good reason that isnt either some weird moralizing about how it's cheating (it's Not, by the way, those are two separate things, and cheating Is shitty yes) or something equivalent i.e. "it's unnatural". ESPECIALLY do not hit my transgay ass with how "unnatural" it is, you will not be heard ! thanks.

[deaddee-anime-brownfanlady]

Seriously, this whole controversy and asinine hateful movement and attack on Imane Khelif just reeks of both transphobia and deep seeded misogyny.

If a woman ( Cis or Trans) isn't super feminine enough or doesn't conform to a traditional feminine gender role or any traditional standards of womanhood or beauty standards, like say a woman who has and gets a good amount of bodily hair or has a muscular body type or anything that goes outside traditional gender norms of what these brain-dead transphobies and misogynists that thinks women natural bodies have to " look " a certain kind of way in order to be view as " True Women. "

Then it's just full-on sexism and complete misogynistic bullshit.

I swear I've seen this type of horseshit attacks and policing on women bodies within the Olympics before, especially anything dealing with Black women athletes who are always attacked in some way or another simply because our bodies or features doesn't follow White Eurocentric Womanhood beauty standards and so forth.

Seriously, this constant policing and demanding women bodies looking a certain way in order to be deemed " Womanly " enough isn't helping anybody and is only causing more damage towards women, cis and trans and everyone else in between.

[fairycosmos]

I saw a girl on here posting about the plight of blonde women and it sent me into a rage. She was like “I have to dye my hair brown every week to be taken seriously by men 😫” GIRL do you know how many POC absolutely ravage themselves to try and fit into white beauty ideals? I thought I was so ugly and undesirable for my entire life because I never got any romantic interest from anyone, meanwhile the blonde, blue-eyed white girls around me got SO much attention. Even now, as an Asian woman, I find it hard to believe that anyone would genuinely choose me, or any other WOC, over a white woman. Doesn’t matter how smart or funny or nice I was, I was always second-best at MOST. And then there’s the whole issue of worrying whether ur romantic interests actually like u, or are just fetishising you. Must be so hard for you being the beauty standard of the western world :’( nobody understands how hard it is for blonde white girls!

Sorry for the rant it made me SO MAD. I hope you’re okay Chloe. You’re an angel, you deserve peace and all good things.

lol the plight of blonde women........what world was that girl living in like genuinely what reality is she perceiving because it cannot be the one we're all in.......dyeing her hair brown every week to be taken seriously lmfao ?? help that just sounds like something someone would make up online for no reason. who is actually doing that. who is bullying anyone for being blonde in any real capacity god get a grip. im really sorry you've had these experiences because of the eurocentric beauty standards pushed onto women especially woc, it's such SUCH bullshit. and then to hear someone say something so tone deaf after having to deal with all of that day in day out growing up - i can't magine the frustration. people will do or say anything to make themselves a victim i think, it's so dumb. don't worry ab ranting btw, sometimes you just have to scream about it all. thank u btw you have my entire heart im hugging you really tightly as we speak <3 hope you're doing ok too and that you're able to feel better soon. you deserve the world, and ppl around you who know you're beautiful and cool since these weird racist ideals have nothing to do with actually being beautiful and cool. sending love x

[cant-think-of-anything]

I think part of the reason that there’s such a dissonance between what kind of character Matthew is ~supposed~ to have and what kind of poor traits shine through, especially in his treatment of Alastair, is not just because of CC’s poor handling of alcoholism (and, in my opinion, mental health issues and depression) but also because: Our first introduction to these characters happened a long ways before some major changes to TLH.

Namely… Alastair and Cordelia were basically white in CC’s original planning. There’s just no way around that. Their flower cards, where they’re not just whitewashed but purely white, prove that (and they STILL haven’t been updated, by the way.)

Also, Alastair’s hair: in CoG it was dyed blond, and CC wrote it off implicitly as a racism thing when she decided he was Persian (which I guess happened after the short story where we met Alastair and before TLH) , which would have been fine it if it was an arc written better. Except, I don’t think she realized that it would make Matthew’s comments about Alastair inherently and obviously racist, being a white author. And I doubt that it will be dealt with and named or even acknowledged outright in the final TLH installment.

Kind of the same thing with Cordelia. I’m not saying POC can’t have like red hair because obviously POC don’t come in a prepackaged set of five or six traits that are all configured randomly, but something has always rubbed me the wrong way about the way that CC writes the majority of her POC and especially WOC as exotic. I mean, Kamala as a character is to me a special favorite (even though CC did her dirty and didn’t do a good job portraying her character or intersectional identity) but I rolled my eyes so hard when she had lighter brown or “amber” eyes in canon or officially commissioned art. With Cordelia, I know CC once said she uses henna to redden her hair which is great for her, and I guess I have less of a bone to pick with that because it’s semi(?) realistic, but still. Also the fact that so much of her description as a beautiful person comes from her hair. Again that’s cool, and women of color should be loved wholly including being loved for the parts of them that they freely change (such as Cordelia’s hair) but… the proportion of the fixation on her hair as what makes her lovely rubs me the wrong way sometimes. I feel like it’s sometimes an out from CC making the ~scandalous~ decision that a woman of color can be beautiful because of the traits she is born with. Idk it’s just for me I had this long standing repulsion towards my colorings and my facial structure and white girls would tell me I was whiny about it and then I finally began to piece together things like “Eurocentric beauty standards.”

Going on a tangent slightly, but something else that bothered me was when Anna insulted Cordelia after buying her those dresses and everyone kinda treating it as a compliment? And just cause Cordelia, a fictional teenager, didn’t get mad about it doesn’t mean readers of color can’t see the underlying racism behind “Cordelia looks MUCH better in these dresses which are SUITED for her skin tone.”

I think that narrative could have been handled much better: if it was Cordelia picking out her own clothes as an act of maturity and self-realization and ownership, if Cordelia herself said (in a different way lol) “Damn right I can wear lavender ruffles if I want to and crimp my hair but I’m not going to let white fashion prevent me from outshining everyone because dark skinned women INVENTED jewel tones.” And I think some people will argue that Cordelia’s context makes this too self aware of a development but I would say that it would have been a powerful part of her development outside of her relationships, especially considering that she’s supposed to be a main protagonist. Full arcs for the win baby!

But even aside from all that what bothered me about Anna’s dresses was the fact that it was a white woman showing the “truth” or the “right way” or “saving” a woman of color, a trope which I don’t think CC intended but committed nonetheless. I think from a white author POV the thinking was “Anna is such a free bohemian who lives true to herself and she’s going to help Cordelia become that way too,” which irks me because I feel like that just worked against CC in terms of POC rep and also because that same ideology is used in an attempt to make Anna’s treatment of Kamala justified even though Anna as an out person, with racial and economic privilege and the support of an extensive and powerful family network, pressured and tormented Kamala into coming out.

I have a lot of thoughts on that relationship, mainly: it shouldn’t have been dragged out this long because from the beginning, Every Exquisite Thing, it was clear they were looking for different things. And if CC had left it at that and let them go on their separate ways after a week of knowing each other that would have been fine: Kamala can’t do an out and proud relationship and Anna doesn’t want secrecy, so they’ll develop on their own. And then later Kamala���s pursuit of Anna in the actual TLH books was I think meant to be a thing about “the lengths you’ll go for true love” but it felt forced. Honestly… It just feels icky. like this woman of color is just so hung up on this white woman who abuses her repeatedly and can’t handle her own misogyny and internalizations. And I hate that because both had such awesome potential! To me it’s less that I dislike Anna ( I’d need a whole other post to explain that) and more that I dislike CC for wanting so bad to claim sapphic rep but not wanting to put in the effort to portray it effectively- and pretty much all that entails is writing the relationship without acting like it exists in a pseudo-vacuum where the history and realities of interracial relationships and queerphobia don’t exist in the way we obviously recognize and experience.

And characters like Cordelia and Alastair are amazing and have so much potential; I think the true origin of the problems with their portrayal is that they weren’t really intended as POC or even queer representation in the first place. I don’t know if Cassie would have taken a different approach to her characterization had she known Alastair would be a brown gay man when she first introduced him, but I hope it would have at least made her more conscientious of the inherent application of colonialism and racism in her storytelling from that point onward.

I want to finally add that I’m not saying any portrayal of racism is bad. I’m saying that the racism in the story is not part of a conscious framework that critiques racism appropriately. I think CC wrote the beginnings of the narrative, decided she was going to develop the diversity point content, and then either didn’t look back at the older content to analyze it and the other (white characters) through a new lens of race and outsiderness and queer personhood, or she looked at it and didn’t know what to do with it, or looked at it and didn’t care.

Sorry this got so long! Thanks for listening.

- A.

I feel like CC handled everything poorly in regards to characters who had a lot of potential.

The fact that Cordelia and Alastair are both originally white and it's so obvious in the way every bit of racism is handled by the characters. Matthew's comments in CLS are very important and they should've been handled with the same severity that Alastair's words were. CC changing the characters to POC was a big decision and when she did so she should've went back and actually read her own material. I can assure you that it will not be handled in CHOT, my expectations for CC recognizing the importance and gravity in the words she writes regarding racism or any of her "implied racism" bullshit have gone to the ground.

Because while golden eyes are obviously so easy to write when discussing discrimination obviously racism is out of the question /j

THAT'S EXACTLY IT, women of color in these books are so pathetically rare that on the rare occurrence that she does write them they should all be given these features that aren't as common in POC and written as more beautiful because of those features. I read CHOG after I became more appreciative of my ethnic features but if I had read this a year or so ago? Or even if I had read it after just feeling insecure in general? It would've been awful. The implication is that the lighter features in POC are the most beautiful, with Cordelia's red hair being put on a higher pedestal than her dark eyes and Kamala's eyes being focused on more than her hair (because I literally went back and counted the numbers to prove it and it's exactly what happens.)

I'm sure Cordelia's hair is stunning, but it's the way that when she's described (or more accurately being sexualized) it is just her hair and body that is shown, not the color of her skin or the color of her eyes.

God the pastel thing pisses me off so much. It's not even that Anna tells Cordelia that she would look better in darker colors it's that she says it suits her skin tone. Implying that anyone with brown skin should be barred from wearing pastels. And Kamala? In the few times she is described, she's wearing dark colors or champagne gold, never light blue or purple or pink WHICH HONESTLY SUITS HER PERSONALITY. It's also the way that the dresses Anna sent her are described to be more revealing- it's weird. Anna barely knew her when she started dictating everything that Cordelia could put on her body.

“Damn right I can wear lavender ruffles if I want to and crimp my hair but I’m not going to let white fashion prevent me from outshining everyone because dark skinned women INVENTED jewel tones.”

I literally would have loved that. It recognizes that she doesn't need to follow these "rules" on what to wear but still shows her choosing what she wants to wear without making all the darker skinned readers feel like they can't wear a certain color.

I think what some people fail to realize is that these books are also aimed at upper elementary and middle school and a middle schooler with dark skin reading something like that? In a book with characters they love? It's going to be so harmful

Someone else mentioned that CC said Kamanna's relationship was complicated because Kamala didn't defend Anna: Defend her FROM WHAT? Literally what is there to threaten Anna?

These books are filled with tokenism and then praised for it. The idea of Kamala X Anna has so much potential but they're portrayed in such a toxic way. Throughout the last through books Kamala puts herself through so much guilt and regret and turmoil just for Anna to literally use her, blame her, and cast her aside. And it's so fucking annoying because it pushes this idea that this woman of color who was terrified and in an extremely vulnerable position is in the wrong for choosing her safety and presents them as guilty and shameful for doing such a thing.

I would disagree, the portrayal of racism is bad, because it is used at random points in the story and never brought up again, if you interduce racism take it seriously it's not the kind of thing you're meant to half-ass in a book thousands of people will read

I agree on everything else though, so much of these books are incredibly harmful and they are presented to a young audience so it's overall just a gross situation

Thank you for the ask though! I loved answering this, if you ever have anything else you're more than welcome to come back <3

[strawbeb]

conventional attractiveness is rooted in eurocentric beauty standards and no one even tries to hide it. yes, some of us poc meet those standards (whether it’s partially or completely) but it’s still fucked up. because when you define such an abstract concept as attractiveness, sooner or later people will start comparing themselves to that definition. and when poc, especially young people, are exposed to the beauty standards, it fucks up their self esteem.

our differences don’t make us ugly or weird. i think they make us beautiful. we are all humans and we are all unique in some way. poc already face so much discrimination. we can’t change who we are, we can’t change the colour of our skin. please let us exist without you dumping your bullshit beauty standards on us. i like how i look. i like my south asian features. going out of your way to shit on poc for being confident in their appearance makes you seem bitter and insecure. we don’t need your validation lmao why do you think we care about your opinions

[moa-broke-me]

#And it's true#because Piper sees the beauty in everyone#She really doesn't understand how Leo could be so insecure#<- I've thought about this an... unhealthy amount#like she literally doesn't understand anything he went through#besides the absent parent thing#and the racism#super rich/dirt poor besties by beloved

You! You get it!

Like she knew she was beautiful a long time ago, she's known kind of from the beginning that the beauty standard is bullshit and eurocentric. Yeah she got made fun of for her indigenous features, but she understood that was their problem, and not hers. They were just jealous. I mean, look at her dad? He's got the same nose, same skin, same hair as her, and he's a movie star! He's got hundreds of thousands of fans salivating over his shirtless image onscreen. Is that kind of gross to think about? Sure. But it's something to point to, when some snotty white girl named Becky says she's ugly.

Leo didn't grow up with that kind of reassurance. Everywhere he went, fosters, orphanages, boarding schools, people bullied him. The only person to ever tell him he was handsome was his mom. Even Rosa and Raphael told him he was ugly, freakish, even. His own family. How could he NOT internalize that?

Besides, Piper's got the whole 'daughter of aphrodite' thing going on, and I think part of the effects are like. Rose-colored glasses. Literally. Like, her brain latches onto the beautiful and attractive parts of people, instinctually. And so, at least looks-wise, everyone is beautiful to her. That's just how she operates. So when she sees Leo, genuinely believing that he's ugly... She just doesn't get how that's possible.

When Leo looks at himself in the mirror he immediately feels like crying. So he avoids them as much as he can. He only knows the descriptions of what he looks like. He knows if he does look, he'd stand in front of it for days just examining how terrible he knew he looked. The voices in his head picking out all the flaws on his skin. The acne, how small he was, his ribs that barely showed now, his messy hair, his eyes, his nose, his ears... just plain ugly.

But despite all that the thing he hated the most was the scars. And his scars were everywhere. His chest with the long, thin one from his shoulder to the other side of his waist. The many self-inflicted ones on his stomach and down his thighs, so no one would find them. The word 'FREAK' written out on his arm. The 2 gunshots in his shoulder, his back littered with belt marks, his arms with many white lines from a gang.

Anyone would look at him in disgust if they saw him that way. Open, vulnerable. They'd say 'ew' or 'wrist check complete' or ask how he could do that to himself. How gross it was to look at and that no one would ever give him the time of day looking at him that way.

He just didn't bother with mirrors anymore.