#black people were literally in the trenches and liberals said we were doing too much

[vivaciousoceans]

As someone who did protest in 2020 and 2022 it makes my blood boil when people say we need to protest like the French. We did!!! And the police tried to kill us and everyone else decided that we were thugs and terrorists.

[kweebtrash]

FMN (M)

Pairing(s): Kino, Hongseok, E’Dawn, Hui x Reader. This one is Hui focused

Genre: SMUT AF, College AU, little fluffy

Summary: Sexual Liberation Pt 10. First person POV, heavy characterization of reader. just a bunch of smutty goodness in college.

Warnings: there’s a lot of sex over the course of the series. In this chapter, Hui’s voice literally being the bane of my existence, deep feelings, anal (of course), creampies, being pinning down to the bed, teasing, silk ties gripping the sheets

Word Count: 6k+

A/N: I flipflop between stage names and real names. Sometimes the formatting can be weird between mobile and desktop:/ Italics mean memories/past events and thoughts. I missed Hui a lot but I have no idea why this chapter was so hard to write. honestly just tell me it sucks im so sorry

Sexual Liberation Masterlist

Ficspiration:

“FMN” Jr Castro Ft Timbaland

“Swim Good.” Hui ft. Somin

A lump appeared in my throat when I saw him. He was leaning against the door, arms crossed across his chest and brows furrowed into an angry scowl. He was dressed as the Crow, his hair returning to it’s darker blue black color, face painted in black and white. A long black trench coat dusted across his combat boots and tight leather pants encased his thighs. He was still gorgeous even though he looked like he could kill me in an instant. I knew that this situation was grave. I hadn’t expected to sleep with Hongseok and I definitely never expected anyone to find out about it-at least not this way. Now I was forced to face Kino and remember the amazing night we had just a week ago. My body tensed as he spoke first.

“You missed a spot.” He growled and pointed to my neck. My eyes widened and I quickly realized he meant that I hadn’t completely gotten rid of the evidence of Hongseok’s orgasm. I wiped it away quickly and fumbled with my fingers.

“Um...hey.” It was all I could think to say at the time. I didn’t meet his eyes and instead looked over at the dresser.

“You fucked Hongseok.” He stated, flatly.

I swallowed hard and shifted my gaze back down to my feet. He was making me feel ashamed. Like I somehow should’ve never gone near Hongseok. He sounded so mad...Were his feelings hurt?  I didn’t want to do that to him, especially after I realized that I felt something deeper for him. But also we weren’t tied down together just yet. He wasn’t my boyfriend and we still had an agreement that we could be with anyone. Why was he so angry about Hongseok? “I can fuck whoever I want. I mean I fuck Hui and Hyojong so what does it matter about Hongseok?”

“Because Hui-hyung and Hyojong- hyung are just fucks. Hongseok is different.”

“Different how exactly? We’ve only had sex once and that’s all.”

“You know exactly how. I can see it in your eyes.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about but I don’t like your attitude.” I grabbed my heels and rolled my eyes. “You haven’t even spoken to me since the day we all hung out in the rec room. Not one text or snap or video call. Nothing. Now you’re barging in here being pissed that I slept with Hongseok? Please.” I went towards the door trying to leave but Kino pushed me against it, his hands teasing pressure against my neck.

“Answer me this, do you want him?”

I couldn’t help the way my body reacted to his hands on me. I was still sensitive to everything that Hongseok had done to me just a bit ago. I felt my skin heat up instantly but I willed myself to concentrate, my anger overcoming the hurdle of my passionate emotions. “Is that really what you want to know? So you can win your jealousy ridden pissing contest?!”

“I’m not jealous!” He yelled. “Just tell me if you want to be with him or not!”

I grabbed his hair and yanked back hard, pushing him away from me. He bit his lip as an angry groan left him. “I don’t have to tell you shit! We have an agreement. No strings attached. And now you’re upset because I had sex with someone else? What kind of sense does that make?”

He scoffed and completely dodged my question. “Fine! You know what, if you want to fuck him, that’s fine. Go ahead and fuck him. It doesn’t matter to me. You can be with him for all I care too because i’m done with you.”

My eyes widened at his sudden exclamation. “D-done? You mean…” I looked away from him blinking back tears. I definitely didn’t want him to see me cry over this and i definitely didn’t want him to see through the facade I created about not caring about his feelings. I cared about him, way too much in fact, but he didn’t seem like he really wanted to be with me which is why this whole thing was so strange. Sure we had some intimate moments but we went on and continued as if nothing had happened. That was until he started slamming doors and acting jealous for no reason.

He shifted his weight and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Y-yeah...We’re done.” His voice seemed a little quieter now.

I swallowed back my feelings and filled myself with fake pride. “Fine! I have other people to be with. You’re nothing special to me.” The words felt like they burned my tongue as soon as I said them. The look on his face showed something akin to heartache before shifting into his usual scowl. Maybe he was trying to keep up a facade too but right now I couldn’t even stand to be around him. I pushed my hair back and grabbed the door handle, taking a deep breath before running out of the room and the apartment. I didn’t stop until I reached my car, pulling myself into it and slamming the door behind me. God I fucking hated him. What difference did it make that I hooked up with Hongseok? At least Hongseok cared about how I felt during and after sex. He was just being so aggressively stupid I wanted to scream. And on top of all that it hurt...it hurt so fucking bad that he didn’t want anything to do with me.

I pressed my forehead to my steering wheel and let the hot tears run down my face, streaking through my makeup. My body was shuddering from the intensity of my tears, my whole chest feeling constricted into a knot. Suddenly, I heard a knock on my window which made me jump up. I looked up and saw Hui standing outside my car. He beckoned for me to open the door and I did, not saying a word. He seemed to except my solemn silence and instead opened his arms for me. I got up quickly and threw myself into his chest heaving the entirety of my feelings onto him. My breath hiccuped and stalled every once in awhile and he rubbed my back slowly, patiently waiting for me to calm down. I was shivering against him since I was still in my makeshift “costume”. He pulled away from me gently and kissed my forehead. “Come on. Let me take you home.” I nodded quickly and let Hui guide me over to the passenger’s seat. I gave him my keys before getting into the seat and curling up immediately. Just being in my car now had my skin crawling as I remembered the night I spent with Kino. Hui closed my door and got into the driver’s seat. I hoped that he wouldn’t go the speed limit so I could get out of the car quicker. The ride was silent, almost painfully so but it went faster than I expected. He parked in my usual lot and we got to his dorm in no time flat. As soon as i was in his room i took off every piece of clothing I had on. I collapsed onto the bed, burying my face in the pillow and forcing myself not to cry anymore.

Hui joined me a few moments later, his clothes discarded by mine. His arm pulled me closer to him until we were laying on our sides face to face. My heart sunk even more. The sight of Hui taking caring me was one I knew all too well. It created a pit in the recesses of my stomach. A question surfaced on my tongue spilling out before I knew it. “Why do you always take care of me?”

He chuckled lightheartedly. “Why do I always take care of you? Is that even a question? Because I care about you.” He set his hand on top of mine and I held it.

“Yeah but...you’re so patient and loving. Why the hell do you even put up with me?”

“Well you’re definitely a pain in the ass but the pussy’s good so..”

“Hui!”

“I’m joking! I’m joking!” He laughed again. “Well partially. You know I love your ass more.”

I rolled my eyes and pulled the covers up over us. “I’m well aware, Hwitaek.”

“Ouch, don’t full name me. You only do that when I’m in trouble. I’m not in trouble, am I?”

I shook my head. “The opposite. I don’t know if it’s because i’m pretty vulnerable right now or because i’m a glutton for punishment, but you’re making my heart do some strange things.”

“You always make my heart do strange things.” He leaned in closer to me, pausing momentarily above my lips. He wasn’t trying to take advantage of what I had been through. Instead, he wanted me to let him know it was all okay. And I did. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him slowly, a mixture of sadness and comfort. His hands rubbed my hips gently, occasionally sliding up to the small of my back. My stomach was against his now and his kisses left my lips to trail across my shoulder and collarbone. He fell into a soft rhythm of tender kisses, decorating my body with heated trails. I sighed softly, sliding my fingers through his hair and petting him gently. He leaned into my touches like a kitten, wanting more. I smiled and brought his head to my chest giving his scalp light scratches. Hui sighed and laid comfortably against me, the room quieting to the stillness of our breathing. How could I have ignored him? How could I have been so wrapped up in everyone else that I had forgotten about him? Yet here he was with me, in my arms, with probably just as many thoughts that I was having but never questioning me. I wondered if he was okay with letting me sort out my feelings amidst everything that was going on. My hand trailed down his back, tracing his spine as he fell into the early stages of sleep. I laid awake for most of the night wondering what the hell I was going to do with myself.

_________________________

When i woke up Hui was gone. His keycard was left beside me and a text on my phone told me he had a shift at the cafe in the student center. He’d be gone for hours and wouldn’t be home until late. That was fine by me. I was already scheming up a plan to treat him. He deserved as much as I could give him and more. It took me about twenty minutes to will myself out of bed but I got there eventually. My hips were still sore, my heart still heavy, but i was determined to at least try and make today better than the last. I would put everything that happened with Kino out of my mind and focus on Hui. I went to his closet and stole another one of his hoodies (I’m sure he’d be looking for them soon. I had about 3 in my closet right now) and found some sweatpants he had in his hamper. Whatever. I just needed to walk to my dorm in normal clothes instead of the lingerie from my costume. I put the keycard in my pocket and gathered up my costume before peeking my head out. The tv was on in the living room and i mentally cursed. I didn’t really want to run into Hongseok or Kino right now. Quietly I tiptoed out of Hui’s room and crept towards the front door. I could see feet hanging off of the armrest of the sofa but no sign of who it was. My hand rested on the handle of the front door and i twisted it as slowly as possible, keeping my eye on the couch. Suddenly I heard my name from down the hall. Hongseok was staring right at me and Kino sat up quickly from the couch. I looked at Hongseok, then at Kino, then Hongseok, then at Kino who both stared back at me. I swung open the front door and fucking booked it. Shit, shit shit! Gotta go fast!

It wouldn’t be a day in my life if I didn’t run away from my problems. One day I would face those problems head on, but not today, Satan, not today. I managed to get to my dorm in record time. My roommate wasn’t there. It was still early enough for her to be at church singing the god’s good gospel while I went to the back of my closet and got out my box of sex toys. I dug through the stuff Hyojong brought me, pushing them aside until I found all my anal accoutrements. I sighed deeply. The things I did for Hui.

_____________________

It was around 10 pm when I texted Hui to see if he had come home from work yet and if i could come over. He responded fairly quickly and I was off to meet him at the dorm, my overnight bag in tow. I still had his keycard from earlier and I prayed that I didn’t have the same problem of running into Hongseok and Kino again. I really hated that they all freakin’ lived together. As if me fucking them all wasn’t enough. I unlocked the door and looked around. The coast seemed to be clear and I could hear Hui recording in his room. I bit my lip as I heard the slow, sensual tempo coupled with his signature falsetto that always made me weak. I loved listening to him sing. His voice did so many things to my mind, body, and soul. Those high notes always had me weak in the knees. I stood by his door for a moment, ears pressed against the wood as his voice crashed over me like a wave, every note caressing my skin and filling it with a passionate heat.

I dont know…

Make you mine...

My heart was beating faster, my thighs losing all of their ability to keep me grounded. I raised my hand to rasp softly on the door but froze as I heard when I heard that line again.

I’ll just make you mine…

I bit my lip and swallowed hard, finally knocking on the door. The music stopped and Hui opened the door, smiling at me. “Hey,” He kissed my forehead. “Why'd you want to come over?”

“Oh, i need a reason to come over now? I cant just hang out with you?” I teased him as i slipped inside and sat my bag on the floor.

“You know that's not what i meant, babe.”

“Oohh i'm babe today.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him closer to me. He smiled down at me briefly until he saw what i had on.

“Did you steal another hoodie from me….”

I stood quiet for a moment. “Noooooo….”

“UGHHH you always take them! Give it back! I don't even have any left in my closet!”

“i just had to wear something to get to my dorm! But if you want it back so bad, fine.” I pulled his hoodie over my head and handed it over to him. His head cocked to the side and he stared at my bare chest, presumably entranced at the fact that i wasn’t wearing anything underneath the sweater. “Hui….” I snapped my fingers at him and his eyes trailed back to mine.

“Hmm?”

“Don't act like such a 12 year old boy. You've seen my tits before. They're there. Being boobs.”

“I still like them! And i still like seeing them! But youre not getting this back.” He went to his closet and set his hoodie on a hanger while i peaked over at his computer.

“I heard some of this outside the door. It sounded amazing.” I looked back at him. “Will you sing some for me?”

“Sure….Do you wanna stay like that?” He motioned at my naked torso.

“Do you want me to stay like this?”

“i'm just saying. It's cold so...you know...but i mean if you want you can just stay like that...being...there….being hot.”

“Why, Lee Hwitaek! If i didn't know better i'd say you were flirting with me!” I said in my best fake southern belle voice.

He laughed as he sat down in his desk chair. “You're an idiot.”

“Yes, but i'm your idiot. Now sing for me.”

“Okay, okay!” He hit play on his computer and got closer to the microphone. He closed his eyes and surrounded me with his sultry voice again. I stayed behind him watching his every move as he poured himself into the song like he always did. It was one of the most sexiest things he could do. My fingers drummed softly across his shoulders, rubbing them for a moment before sliding down his chest. He shifted in his seat, clearing his throat for a second before resuming his singing. I smirked just a bit from watching him get heated under my touch. I continued distracting him with caresses across his chest, trailing up to his neck. His head tilted back slowly and i slipped the silk tie i had nestled in my pocket over his eyes, tying it behind his head.

“So that's why you wanted to come over.” he smirked.

“You know i can leave right now, Hui.”

“Noooo,” He whined softly. “Stay. We haven't had any time to just ourselves in awhile.”

“I know baby.” i kissed him gently. “And i'm sorry about that. I felt so bad so I planned this all to treat you.”

His cheeks were burning pink. “R-really?

I moved to the front of the seat, dipping between his knees. Of course he couldn't see any of this but that was the point. I wanted to thrill him and make every single move a surprise, filling him with anticipation. I pushed his knees apart gently and he reached forward to pet my hair. I grabbed his wrist and forced his hand to the chair. “Hwitaek, behave for me.”

He licked those gorgeous full lips of his, teasing his bottom lip between his teeth. Sonuvabitch. Every single time any one of my boys did that i was instantly begging for them to fuck me. I hated it. But Hui wasnt doing it intentionally(this time). I could tell he was already easing into the feeling of me touching him, wondering what I was going to do to him next. My hands trailed up his thighs that were still trapped in his work pants. The faint scent of coffee and whipped cream still lingered on him making him smell so sweet. My fingers went to work on unbuttoning his pants, trailing the zipper down in an anguishing tease. Hui was already pushing his hips forward encouraging me to take him on. Of course i ignored him and instead focused my attention on kissing around his abs, my tongue following the path of his happy trail before veering to his hip bone. His hip bone was one of his favorite places that I left marks on. The feel of his clothes pressing against the sensitive area after i had marked my territory had him leaving class early and begging to come find me all last semester.

The first kiss i landed made his hips twitch and his fingers gripped the sides of the chair tighter. I could almost hear his heartbeat thundering in his ears. I kissed the spot again while my hand worked the center of his jeans, rubbing in time with each lick and kiss. He was hardening with each pass of my fingers, increasing the length they had to travel each time. I looked up and i could see his head tossed back and he was trying so hard not to moan out loud. His moans were always enough to make Kino or Hyojong bang against the wall when they were trying to get some sleep. There were also plenty of times where his moans got us in trouble and suddenly there were 4 people in a tiny twin size bed flowing with a rotation of fucking. My lips smirked at the memories, the times before where everything was easier and my heart didnt flutter every time one of them came near me.

“Pl-please…”

My ears instantly grabbed onto his plead, letting it flow through my body. My teeth sunk into his skin and i sucked deeply, pulling a loud groan from him. I slipped him out of the confines of his briefs, his thickness laying against his stomach, already begging for more attention. I swirled my finger around the perimeter of his head, my nail tenderly scratching the sensitive skin ever so slightly. “Is all this for me?” I whispered against his freshly bitten skin of his hip.

He nodded quickly being on his best behavior so I could treat him more. I kissed the marks on his hip before shifting my focus to his cock. I licked up the length of his shaft slowly, savoring the way he felt on my tongue. I flicked my tongue against his head before repeating my motions. He was already trying to press against my lips and encourage me to take more of him into my mouth. I gripped his base firmly, letting him know that I was in control, and steadied his hips before kissing his tip. His breath was already beginning to become ragged, morphing into the occasional moans that accompanied me slipping him into my warm mouth. I bobbed my head slowly, working his shift and swirling my tongue around his veins. Inch by inch I swallowed down more of him, almost filling my throat completely with his cock. I looked up at him, loving the way he looked so wrapped up in pleasure. I pulled away with a quick pop, licking my lips and swallowing back the taste of his pre cum. “That’s only just the beginning, Hui.”

“You’re killing me.” He panted. I smirked and kicked off my shoes before sliding down his sweatpants that I was still wearing. I had a much bigger surprise for him planned but for now I straddled his hips, hovering just above his cock and pressing myself against him. Slowly, i rocked my hips, dragging the slick center of my panties up the length of his shaft. Hui’s head dropped forwards onto my chest as he released a soft string of curses. I tilted his head to the side and took the opportunity to capture his neck in slow kisses, sucking on his adam's apple and adding small bites wherever i wanted. Each of his breaths were coming in faster now as his hips rolled to meet mine. The tip of his cock grazed against my clit with each pass making me shudder. The lace between us added the slightest bit of friction which only increased the pleasure of our slow grinding. Our moans and soft pants mixed together creating our own music. Hui's hands rose from the side of the chair and slid across the expanse of my thighs, rubbing small circles into my skin. “Fuck, youre so wet already…” He whispered.

I licked his lips slowly, pulling away every time he tried to deepen it into a kiss. “That’s what happens when you sing for me, baby.”

“I want more...please?”

I rose my hips a little bit and focused my attention on sliding just the very tip of his cock against my slick folds, sinking down ever so slightly when he met my entrance. His grip on my thighs mimicked what he had on the chair just a few moments ago, his nails digging into my skin as his knuckles edged into a bright white. “Hwitaek,” I reprimanded. ‘You weren’t supposed to let go of the chair. If you're going to be like this then ill stop.”

He shook his head quickly. “No...no please. I just…” He pulled me closer to him, pressing hot open mouth kisses along my torso, making stops to suck on my nipples and bite the swell of my breasts. “I need you.”

I finally allowed him the pleasure of a kiss before sliding off of him. “Ok, ok,” I smiled. “I guess i've teased you long enough.” I grabbed him by his hand and pulled him up from the chair. He followed me easily to the bed and i made quick work of removing all his clothes. I saved the silk tie for last, untying it and tossing it onto the bed. He blinked a few times, his eyes readjusting to the the dim light of his room before he caught sight of me crawling into the bed, my ass on full display. My lace heart cut out panties accented the shape of my ass and gave him perfect view of the pink gem plug i had nestled inside me. I looked back at him and smirked. “Do you like it?”

His jaw was hanging and it took him a long time to stop staring but when he did he practically jumped onto me, cupping my face in his hands and pulling me into a deep kiss. “God, I love you.” My entire world stopped, my mind warping into a permanent replay of what I just heard. My heart was skipping beats and I could barely keep up. Every time i tried to say anything my mouth was overwhelmed by the hot wave of his tongue against mine. My hands sought refuge on his shoulders pushing him away gently.

“H-hui…” I said, breathlessly.

He looked down at me and pushed my hair back gently. My face felt like it was on fire after hearing those words and especially seeing the look he was giving me. I couldn't help but cover my face and try and hide from him. He laughed, a laugh like warm honey, and pulled my hands away. “What are you hiding for?”

“You...you said…”

He just smiled at me and continued the parade of kisses against my lips. I eventually relaxed under his touches and let him take over. I laid back against the bed and watched as the panties were slowly eased off my body and tossed to the floor. My legs fell open welcoming Hui to lower himself between them. His warm lips decorated my thighs in sweet kisses while his fingers hooked around the base of the plug. Little by little he pulled it out slowly, my body encouraging it to release. I heard a deep hum of approval from Hui before his tongue found itself deep inside me. I raised my hips just a bit so he had easier access between my cheeks which were spread open by his thumbs. My eyes fluttered closed and i sighed softly focusing entirely on the way he was making my body. My heart was racing, his name staining my lips over and over. His heated hands rubbed across my cheeks, sweeping up towards my hips which he clutched tight. My fingers tangled themselves in his soft hair edging him closer and deeper within me while my free hand rested on his, our fingers sliding together instantly. I felt him pull away which earned him an annoyed whine, especially since I was begging for him to tongue me deeper. “Huiiii…”

He shifted back onto his knees and secured his arms around my back, easily lifting me to sit on his lap. I gasped and smiled down at him from my new found angle, tilting his head up so I could melt into his lips. I felt his hand ease itself between us, guiding himself to my eager entrance. I sunk down easily, biting down on his lip and tugging as i felt his entire length fill me. I pressed my hand on his chest, steadying myself as I began to roll my hips, a slow rhythm of pulling out and sinking back down onto him. He kept a firm grip on my lower back, guiding me to where we both felt the most pleasure. His other hand pushed my hair out of my face, a chunk wrapped in his fist as he pulled my head to the side. I expected him to kiss my neck but instead he whispered against my jugular. My skin held the whispers he uttered about anything and everything he wanted to do to me and all i could do was become a mewling mess under his kiss, his touch, his words. He landed a kiss that was wrapped in a smirk against my neck, the pleasure of hearing me moan his name increasing the friction between us. His lips trailed lower to wrap around my breast, sucking deeply and hungrily as his hips pressed into mine. He felt so good deep inside me. It was like he was making an electrifying heat pool in the pit of my stomach.

My hand crept up to cup the back of his head, keeping him tight against my chest, loving the way his tongue teased my nipple. His hips were bucking faster than my slow rolls making my walls clench tight around his girth. His hand left my hair and instead slipped between my cheeks. He didn’t waste time plunging two fingers into my already gaped rim. My mind floated back to the first time we were got together in the piano room. “Hmm, this seems familiar.” I panted and chuckled softly.

He nodded against my chest, thrusting his fingers at the same speed of his hips. “I loved watching you. I still do. All you need is that cute school girl skirt. Fuck…” I could tell he was holding back by the way he was throbbing inside me. He was saving the best for last but he always worked me up first before even thinking of plowing into my ass. I wanted him to have exactly what he wanted. “Fuck me now, Hui. The way you want to.” He pulled away from my chest and slowed his hips, easing me off him. His cock glistened with a mixture of our cum making him perfectly slick. I turned onto my hands and knees and I dipped my back low, my stomach pressing into the mattress with my ass raised high. He was on me instantly practically mounting me. I reached back and spread my cheeks wide allowing him a perfect view of my hole. Hui kept a his hand firm against my lower back as his cock slid against my gape, spreading our cum over me before easing his head into it. My eyes fluttered closed and I bit down on my lip, keeping my moan trapped. He was already stretching me further than the plug did. It was driving me insane. Little by little every bit of him sunk into me and he rested there for a moment, allowing my prestretched walls to adjust. He bent over my body trailing wet kisses down my spine, the room filling with the soft sounds of us panting. I spread my knees a little wider welcoming him to start moving. The first thrust was small and tentative. Even though we had done this plenty of times before he always took pride in making sure i felt nothing but pleasure. I could feel the pressure deep within my stomach. My body reacted instantly and i was pushing back against him in no time.

Hui moved his hand to grip the back of my neck, pinning me to the bed. I couldn’t move under him but it made everything that much more intense. His thrusts were slow and rough, the sound of his skin slapping against mine echoed in my ears almost blocking out the way my heart was thundering. My teeth forwent my bottom lip and instead found their new home buried deep in Hui's pillow. All my sounds were muffled but he could still hear every moan and scream i made. I could feel his eyes on me, watching the way he slid in and out of my ass which wrapped around him so perfectly. My walls were clenching around him, welcoming his swollen member and his impending orgasm. Just thinking about him cumming inside me had my thighs quaking and threatening to collapse under me. His free hand wrapped around my waist, pressing against my stomach, feeling the head of his cock pressing into my walls. My hand clutched desperately at the sheets clenching them in my fist. My other hand slid between my legs and i pushed several fingers inside myself, greedily wanting to feel even more pleasure.

My hair clung to my sweat drenched face, my teeth practically ripping at the pillowcase. I could feel myself on the brink of an orgasm. I was rocking faster. Harder. Screaming for my release. Hui's grip on the back of my neck tightened as my name spilled from him, mixed in with curses and pet names. I looked back at him through the strands of hair that were sticking to me. His eyes were closed, mouth torn between moans and screams of passion. I pressed my ass flush against his hips making sure he could fill me completely. I slid my fingers out from within me, trailing them up my folds and concentrating rough circles on my clit. Hui swelled inside me and my entire being shuddered as I was filled with an intense heat. A wave of ecstasy hit me hard and i screamed into the pillow. My body tried to contain all of Hui’s cum but i could feel it already spilling out of me. “Fuck Hui…” I groaned into the pillow. My legs gave out of me and i collapsed onto the bed with Hui’s thrusts slowing to a languid roll. He braced himself on his arms so he wouldn’t crush me. His cum trickled down between my folds and I couldn’t help but lick my lips, a devilish smile crossing my lips. I gathered some of his cum on my fingers and swirled it around my clit before diving into my entrance again. Hui pulled my hand away and lowered himself to whisper against my ear.

“Youre being bad.”

I turned my head quickly and captured him in a deep kiss, sucking on his lips and tongue greedily. “I love the way you feel inside me.”

“Mhmm…” He moaned against my lips. “You are seriously the best.”

“I'm glad you liked your surprise.” I eased myself onto my side, allowing Hui to spoon me instantly. He kept himself buried deep inside my ass and I welcomed it, feeling comforted by having him there. He bought my cum slicked fingers to his lips and trailed his tongue across them, swallowing down our taste.

“We taste so good together.” He moaned before morphing our hands together. He buried his face between my neck and shoulder, planting warm kisses against my neck. I pulled the covers up over us and settled into our familiar position of comfort. “Did you mean it?” i asked softly.

He nuzzled my neck, muffling his response. “Mean what?”

“What you said...earlier. Or were you just caught up in the moment?” Saying the latter out loud made my heart feel heavy.

“That I love you?” My heart skipped a beat again. The way he said it so casually still blew my mind.

“Yeah...that. That's um...i've never had anyone say that to me before.”

He sighed and leaned away from me a bit. “It's complicated.”

“Boy, youre fucking telling me. Christ on a cross.” I sighed, comforted by the fact that we were both in the same position emotionally.

“I didn't really mean to say it but i also don't like...not mean it? I really do care about you. And i definitely have feelings for you. But i know that you may not want to be with me.”

“What? Hui, thats not true at all. I want to be with you. In fact i want to be with a lot of people and that's why i've basically fucked everything up. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Not at all.”

“You're not the only one. We contributed to it too. So we're all dumbasses here. Just take your time with it. I'm patient. I want you to be sure of your feelings above everything else.”

I groaned and pulled him close to me. “I hate when you say those things to me. You're so perfect.”

He chucked and squeezed me tight to him. “Barely. But if it gets me some boyfriend points then by all means keep saying it.” He kissed my cheek and laid his head back on the pillow. “By the way you're not borrowing my hoodie tomorrow.”

“I'll have you know i brought my own clothes this time. I came prepared. Im still gonna steal your hoodie though.”

“I'm going to get a safe and lock them up. You're like a dragon with a hoard.” he yawned then fell into a softer sigh. I could tell he was trying to stay up just to banter with me and protect the dignity of his hoodie. But he was definitely not going to win this one. I placed a gentle kiss on his forehead and smiled.

“Go to sleep, Hui. I'm not going anywhere.” I closed my eyes and stayed wrapped up in his warmth not even paying attention to my phone vibrating at the bottom of my bag.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

The Problem with MSM

So I honestly don't have many followers. I'm also prone to going on tangents. And most of my posts are rooted in politics. Not by choice mind you. I was not the one that decided literally everything in existence is political. I'm also not the one that created the view points that want everything to be political. TL;DR At the bottom.

To start off however, I need you to understand the process of radicalization.

Find someone who feels discontent with how a situation is, or how their life is

Tell this person that what's happening to them is not their fault

Place the blame for this person's problems on a certain group (political group, racial group, religious group, etc.)

Talk to the person like you know how they feel, "drop your guard" and tell them "problems you've had that were not your fault" blaming that same group

Show them that they are either a victim or oppressed in some way, shape, or form.

Slowly start swaying their views further to the extreme, by showing them other instances of "others who are being attacked or are victims" of said group.

Promptly but softly oppose any "differing views" with warped information or flat out lies

Get them to start going to events and taking to others that have already been radicalized

Have you and another radicalized individual, keep track of this person and say you support them and their issues

Sit back and watch

Now this is a rough lost but more or less the bare bones basics of radicalizing other people. Though in some cases it takes more steps and in some others it takes less. So what does this have to do with MSM (Mainstream Media)? Quite a few things in modern day actually.

The job of MSM is to get you information, as fast as humanly possible. This however was not the first goal priority in the past. In the past, the first priority was to cover a story as factually as the could, and look for more information keeping people constantly updated. Here we get to our first real problem for Media today. Technology. The Advent of modern technology has been both a blessing and a curse in this regard. And of course I'm talking about the internet in its current form. The internet being the very center of information distribution in 2019. And it has been for almost 12 years now.

So what did this change? Basically everything we know today. "Old wives tales" are now a Google search away. Feeling sick? WebMD says you have Cancer. Looking for the next hour story? Check CNN's Twitter account. The Internet brought us a great, many things. But it has taken away just as many. MSM has had to slowly move operations into social media in order to try and stay relevant. This because many people have unplugged, and have gone full digital. The only real exceptions being places of business. And with the world at your finger tips at the clock of a button, being factual has lost its relevance. Not to mention that as far back as 2013-2014 activists started working for MSM companies. Most notably progressive activists. This causes many problems we currently see today. Below is an example of what a headline used to look like, and what most headlines look like now:

Normal headline: Shooting in Birmingham leaves 3 dead and several injured during city wide festival.

Headline now: White, Trump supporter, Nazi, KKK, skin head, punches 2 people in hate crime.

See the difference? The first headline shows the basic facts and dives into known details during the article. Often they'd avoid opinions all together. The second one one the other hand, blatantly discloses anything that could generate clicks. Why? Because true or not, outrage sells. So over the past several years, MSM has been slowly radicalizing us. But they do this on a bipartisan level.

Are you black? The cops will kill you, and the white man is evil. Can't find a job? Racism. Are you a woman? Then you're unhappy because "rape culture". Do you regret having sex with that guy? Well guess what? He actually raped you without you realizing. Are you white? You're evil. Are you strait? You're a monster and should give all your money to gay people. Are you a man? You are responsible for every rape ever committed. You're also a pedophile and violent. Are you a strait white man? Oh boy you won the jackpot because you're basically Hitler.

See my point here? MSM spends most of it's time trying to rage bait you into clicking their articles. And in doing so we've gotten so lazy as a country that half the time, we don't even read past the headlines. And MSM knows this. They don't care if you read what they write. They are just radicalizing you so they can keep feeding you outrage. Because the more often they do it, the more often you will click it, skim all of 3 lines and then hop on Twitter and talk about how outraged you are. Sure, we are just as to blame for letting it happen to us, but most of us used to have at least some trust in the media. But after SEVERAL severely awfully false hit pieces that were headline news for almost months, many of us have started staying away from MSM.

What incidents might I be talking about?

Covington Catholic controversy (Almost every media outlet took a 7 second clip and ran with it. Turns out, there was a full 2hr video out there, and the Native American man, whom CNN interviewed, lied his ass off. Most media also chose to ignore the VERY beginning of the video which showcased a group called The Black Hebrew Israelites. These individuals, called Trump a homosexual, called the Native Americans there "Uncle Tomahawk", and said Gay people should not have rights. THESE CATHOLIC STUDENTS, were appalled by this statement. But what did we see in the media? "Racist Maga hat kid threatens and blocks the path of a Poor innocent Native American man."

Duke Lacrosse. Years after these kids were crucified by the Media and many others, the girl actually came out saying it never happened. You know who reported on this? Next to no one.

Ferguson. Now as controversial as this one is, the media took and RAN with it. What followed after the skewed coverage was a cult like gathering that led to phrases like, "hands up don't shoot" and "oink oink, bang bang". But Obama had the issue federally investigated. Both witnesses and the coroner report said basically the same thing. That he was aggressively wrestling with the cop trying to take his gun. But, it's too late. Now all cops are evil, and Democrat politicians are quoting it like it happened yesterday, and claiming the cop guilty. Why? Because MSM already got what they needed. They radicalized the individuals they wanted, people who will come back to them for, "facts".

And what does all of this boil down to? A video that made me write this out.

2 things need to be said here. 1. The "manifesto" as it were, was actually debunked to have been uploaded by the shooter, by the site admin himself. As well as several other sources. 2. If, by some chance the manifesto was real, and he had someone upload it for him, he mentions several liberal talking points, like universal basic income, saving the environment, among other left policies.

But this brings me back to both the beginning and to this story. Assuming for a moment, the manifesto was his. How did this happen? Most of you might just jump and say, "RACIST NAZIS", or something slightly more colorful. But here is the thing. MSM is partly responsible for all of this. Assuming the conspiracy that the CIA or FBI is responsible is false, I agree with the YouTuber in the picture. I believe that if you belittle and berate someone enough over time, you can cause them to do extreme things. I mean look at this site. Look at Twitter. Look at MSM. "White people bad", "white people are evil" "K*LL all whites" "white privilege", "fuck men", "male tears", "man spreading", "mansplaining", "Yes all men". All of this. This is popular. This is a trend. And it's unacceptable. Because frankly, it's basically bullying someone into a corner. Personally? I've been told by a few companies that are scared of social justice warriors and the online hate mob, that their company is actively not hiring white individuals. And I wish, REALLY WISH, I was making that up.

Is it any wonder, that people who go to the internet as an escape end up in a low point in their lives and then decide to do something awful? And it's the same with school shootings too. The news puts out, the name, ethnicity, how tall they are, and their entire life story, for weeks at a time. And now for much longer, because they support the desire to ban guns. So they need these things to happen more often. So the glorify the shooter, and keep talking about him/them for months. But here is where the story gets fun.

Columbine's shooting, was actually supposed to be a bombing. The kids who did it? Not the "school losers" the media talked about. The trench coat club? They were not even apart of it. More info on that here. As well as other places on Google.

More or less This video covers what the media got wrong in their rush to cover everything. What they did not intend on, was making these two boys heros to those bullied in school. Mostly boys, who are torn down and told they aren't enough, that they don't matter, they are isolated, bullied, harassed. So they look for someone who stood up to their bullies. What they were given, was a sociopath who manipulated a suicidal boy into helping him commit mass murder. Almost all of MSM were quick to say they were bullied into it. What's worse however, is Parkland. The Parkland 5, (the students whom MSM propped up for months) one of them came out admitting, that she bullied the guy who shot up the school. Said he was weird and that she needed to do it. This is one of the teens the media has PROPPED UP, saying we should listen to their infinite wisdom. A girl who is probably half responsible for the shooting.

Start paying attention. Start doing research. And for the love of all that is holy, STOP BULLYING PEOPLE! I don't care what your narrative is, or what it means. IE:

White people are human

Black people are human

Hispanic people are human

Gay people are human

Strait people are human

Women are human

Men are human

Stop normalizing anything to the contrary. Because when you do, you become part of the problem.

TL;DR The media only cares about themselves and clicks. They don't care who they radicalize, so long as you keep giving them traffic. Which for them is money. Do your research, look into things, and don't bully people. I'm looking at you progressives.

[deniscollins]

From Cosmetics to NASCAR, Calls for Racial Justice Are Spreading

Estée Lauder announced donating $1 million to support racial and social justice organizations in response to the George Floyd tragedy. But employees pinpointed Mr. Lauder’s political donations to President rump as being in conflict with the company’s stance on race, particularly since the president has tweeted conspiracy theories about injured protesters, and described demonstrators as “THUGS.” If you were Mr. Lauder would you increase your donation to social justice groups to match your donations to President Trump: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

The reckonings have been swift and dizzying.

On Monday, it was the dictionary, with Merriam-Webster saying it was revising its entry on racism to illustrate the ways in which it “can be systemic.”

On Tuesday, the University of Washington removed the coach of its dance team after the only two black members of the group were cut. The two women were invited to return.

On Wednesday, after a black racecar driver called on NASCAR to ban the Confederate battle flag from its events, the organization did just that.

On Thursday, Nike joined a wave of American companies that have made Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of slavery in America, an official paid holiday, “to better commemorate and celebrate Black history and culture.”

And on Friday, ABC Entertainment named the franchise’s first black man to star in “The Bachelor” in the show’s 18-year history, acceding to longstanding demands from fans.

In just under three weeks since the killing of George Floyd set off widespread protests, what started as a renewed demand for police reform has now roiled seemingly every sphere of American life, prompting institutions and individuals around the country to confront enduring forms of racial discrimination.

Many black Americans have been inundated with testaments and queries from white friends about fighting racism. And anti-racist activists have watched with some amazement as powerful white leaders and corporations acknowledge concepts like “structural racism’’ and pledge to make sweeping changes in personal and institutional behavior.

But those who have been in the trenches for decades fighting racism in America wonder how lasting the soul searching will be.

The flood of corporate statements denouncing racism “feels like a series of mea culpas written by the press folks and run by the top black folks” inside each organization, said Dream Hampton, a writer and filmmaker. “Show us a picture of your C-suite, who is on your board. Then we can have a conversation about diversity, equity and inclusion.”

“Stop sending positive vibes,’’ begged Chad Sanders, a writer, in a recent New York Times Op-Ed, directing his white friends to instead help protect black protesters, donate to black politicians and funds fighting racial injustice, and urge others to do the same.

The protests have so far yielded some tangible changes in policing itself. On Friday, New York banned the use of chokeholds by law enforcement and repealed a law that kept police disciplinary records secret.

But their power is also cultural. A run on books about racism has reordered best-seller lists, driving titles like “How to Be an Antiracist’’ and “White Fragility’’ to the top. And language about American racial dynamics that was once the purview of academia and activism appears to have gone mainstream.

In a video released June 5 apologizing for the N.F.L.’s previous failure to support players who protested police violence, Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the league, condemned the “systematic oppression” of black people, a term used to convey that racism is embedded in the policies of public and private institutions. The Denver Board of Education, in voting to end its contract with the city police department for school resource officers, cited a desire to avoid the “perpetuation of the school-to-prison pipeline,” a reference to how school policies can lay the groundwork for the incarceration of young black Americans.

“One of the exhilarating things about this moment is that black people are articulating to the world that this isn’t just an issue of the state literally killing us, it’s also about psychic death,’’ said Jeremy O. Harris, a playwright whose “Slave Play” addresses the failure of white liberals to admit their complicity in America’s ongoing racial inequities.

He added, “It’s exhilarating because for the first time, in a macro sense, people are saying names and showing up and showing receipts.’’

Sensing a rare, and perhaps fleeting, opportunity to be heard, many black Americans are sharing painful stories on social media about racism and mistreatment in the workplace, accounts that some said they were too scared to disclose before. They are using hashtags like #BlackInTheIvory or #WeSeeYouWAT, referring to bias in academia and “White American Theater.”

The feeling of a dam breaking has drawn analogies to the fall and winter of 2017, when sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein triggered a deluge of disturbing accounts from women and provoked frank conversations in which friends, colleagues and neighbors confessed to one another: I’ve suffered in that manner as well. Or: I now realize I have wronged someone, and I’d like to do better.

Though racism is hardly a secret, “a huge awakening is just the awareness of people who don’t face the headwinds,” said Drew Dixon, a music producer, activist and subject of the documentary “On the Record,” about her decision to come forward with rape allegations against the music producer Russell Simmons, which he has denied. “Many people had no idea what women deal with every single day, and I think many non-black people had no idea what black people deal with every day.”

A shift in the making

While the outpouring may seem sudden, there have been signs that perceptions on race were already in flux.

Opinion polls over the last decade have shown a self-reported turn by Democrats toward a more sympathetic view of black Americans, with more attributing disparities in areas like income and education to discrimination rather than personal failure. By 2018, white liberals said they felt more positively about blacks, Latinos and Asians than they did about whites.

The reason for the shift is unclear — and those attitudes have so far not translated into desegregated schools or neighborhoods — but may help explain the cascade of responses to Mr. Floyd’s killing.

The outpouring is also related to the horrific nature of Mr. Floyd’s death — a white police officer kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes — captured in a stark video at a moment of rising national frustration with the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown.

The protests still surging through the streets of America’s cities, said the civil rights movement scholar Aldon Morris, are “unprecedented in terms of the high levels of white participation in a movement targeting black oppression and grievances.”

Younger Americans are also much more racially diverse than earlier generations. They tend to have different views on race. And their imprint on society is only growing.

Brands trying to appeal to younger consumers have in recent years increasingly proclaimed their belief in equality and justice. Two years ago, Nike featured in a major ad campaign the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who knelt during the national anthem to protest racism. The tagline for MAC, the cosmetics company, is “All Ages, All Races, All Genders.”

In the wake of the Floyd protests, everyone from Wall Street C.E.O.s and the sportswear giant Adidas to the fruit snack Gushers and a company that sells stun guns put out statements of support of diversity, flooding Instagram with vague messages.

These prompted cries of hypocrisy from those who said the companies don’t practice the values they’re espousing.

At several companies, what employees saw as an inadequate response to Mr. Floyd’s death seemed to serve as a catalyst for a long-simmering contention over questions of racial equity. At Adidas, dozens of employees stopped working to attend daily protests outside the company’s North American headquarters in Portland, Ore.

The tumult has been especially fraught at Estée Lauder, the beauty giant, stemming from the political donations of Ronald S. Lauder, a 76-year-old board member and a son of the company’s founders. He has also been a prominent supporter of President Trump.

On May 29, employees at Estée Lauder, like those in much of the rest of corporate America, began receiving emails from the company’s leadership addressing racial discrimination.

There was “considerable pain” in black communities, one missive noted. According to copies of the internal communications obtained by The New York Times, the company, whose vast portfolio includes Clinique, MAC, Bobbi Brown, La Mer and Aveda, encouraged employees to pause working on June 2 in honor of “Blackout Tuesday.”

At a video meeting on June 4 among an internal group called NOBLE, or Network of Black Leaders and Executives, company leaders said Estée Lauder was donating $1 million to support racial and social justice organizations. But employees pinpointed Mr. Lauder’s political donations to Mr. Trump as being in conflict with the company’s stance on race. The president has tweeted conspiracy theories about injured protesters, described demonstrators as “THUGS,” and praised most law enforcement officers as “great people.”

Employees left dissatisfied. Later that night, a petition appeared on Change.org.

The company’s donation did “not match, or exceed Ronald Lauder’s personal donations in support of state-sanctioned violence,” organizers of the petition, which has amassed more than 6,000 signatures, wrote. “Ronald Lauder’s involvement with the Estée Lauder Companies is damaging to our corporate values, our relationship with the Black community, our relationship with this company’s Black employees, and this company’s legacy.”

In his first public comment on the situation, Mr. Lauder told The Times in a statement Friday that he had spent decades “fighting anti-Semitism, hate and bigotry in all its forms in New York and around the world as president of the World Jewish Congress.”

“As a country, we must recommit ourselves to the fight against anti-Semitism and racism,” he said. “In this urgent moment of change, I am expanding the scope of my anti-Semitism campaign to include causes for racial justice, especially in the Black community, as well as other forms of dangerous ethnic and religious intolerance around the world.”

On Monday, Estée Lauder said it would donate $5 million in coming weeks to “support racial and social justice and to continue to support greater access to education,” and donate an additional $5 million over the following two years.

Other companies have also pledged money. On Thursday alone, PayPal, Apple and YouTube collectively pledged $730 million to racial justice and equity efforts.

Jobs on the line

As companies face restive employees, pressure has also grown to remove those who have made offensive statements. Others have had to apologize publicly. Adam Rapoport resigned as editor in chief of the magazine Bon Appétit on Monday after a 2004 photo showing him in an offensive costume resurfaced on social media.

And Greg Glassman, the founder and chief executive of CrossFit, stepped down on Tuesday following comments about race and racism on a Zoom call to gym owners.

“We’re not mourning for George Floyd, I don’t think me or any of my staff are,” said Mr. Glassman on the Zoom call, according to a recording of the call provided to The Times.

“Can you tell me why I should mourn for him?” he said. “Other than it’s the ‘white’ thing to do. I get that pressure, but give me another reason.”

NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast that includes the NBC broadcast network and cable channels like Bravo, has encountered fires on multiple fronts as the reckoning has swept the country.

For NBC, the problems started the morning after Mr. Floyd’s death, when Jimmy Fallon found himself under attack on Twitter for performing in blackface on “Saturday Night Live” in 2000. A video of the sketch had resurfaced online. Mr. Fallon, who has been an NBC star for 22 years, first at “SNL” and more recently leading the “Tonight” show, issued a written apology that afternoon. He apologized at length on camera the following day.

On June 2, a writer was fired from an upcoming NBC series, “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” after posting photos of himself on Facebook holding a weapon and threatening to “light up” looters.

Then came an explosion from NBCUniversal’s cable division. The hit reality series “Vanderpump Rules,” an anchor tenant on Bravo since 2013, fired four cast members for past racist behavior. Some of the incidents were already known. Others were disclosed on Instagram after Mr. Floyd’s death.

On June 8, Brian Roberts, Comcast’s chief executive, said in a memo to employees that the company would give $75 million to social justice organizations, along with $25 million worth of advertising inventory, including on Sky, its pay-television unit in Britain.

“We know that Comcast alone can’t remedy this complex issue,” Mr. Roberts wrote. “But you have my commitment that our company will try to play an integral role in driving lasting reform.”

LONG ARTICLE CONTINUES ...

[biofunmy]

‘Too Much Fashion, Too Much Clothes, Too Much Everything’

MILAN — Not that long before Milan Fashion Week and his presentation, Brunello Cucinelli, the Umbria-based fashion mogul famous for his ability to combine extreme casualness, high luxury and the musings of Pericles, was visited by Luigi Di Maio, the political leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. Mr. Di Maio was wondering if Mr. Cucinelli might want to run for office.

“You’re always talking about big ideas,” Mr. Cucinelli said Mr. Di Maio had told him. “Why not put them into action?”

Mr. Cucinelli said he responded thank you but no thank you, and sent Mr. Di Maio home with a book combining the speeches of Barack Obama and Marcus Aurelius that Mr. Cucinelli had made for his employees.

Sometimes, he said, standing amid a collection of slouchy beige linen trousers and hand-knit cabled sweaters that dipped off one shoulder, and could take one person as long as 40 hours to make, you have to stick with first principles. Avoid “the fads and distractions of the moment,” as his show notes read.

There’s been a lot of talk about sustainability over the past two weeks of collections, and about fashion’s role in the climate crisis. The Swedish student-activist Greta Thunberg has made waves and not just because of her sea journey to the United States. Most of the time the conversation has been focused on manufacturing and carbon emissions; the corrosive effects of a small army of people flying to and from four cities in four weeks to pass judgment on a host of skirts.

But the idea of creating clothes that last — that people want to buy and actually keep, and keep wearing; never throw out or recycle or resell — is as important a part of that subject as organic cotton and ending the use of hexavalent chromium in tanning. And Mr. Cucinelli isn’t the only designer thinking in that direction. Suddenly, timelessness is being touted as a core value, even in Milan, the fashion-month city most closely associated with the notion of setting off retail trends.

Not by everyone to be sure. Not by Alberta Ferretti, whose attempts to shake up an association with the delicate chiffon party dresses once synonymous with her name led her down an unfortunate hippie-dippie Woodstock rabbit hole complete with washed-silk butterfly caftans, tie-dyed denim, psychedelic suede patchwork and shorts suits.

And not by Max Mara, whose dream of outfitting a female James Bond mired the brand in very-last-century men’s wear tropes, all military tone-on-tone three-piece suiting complete with epaulets, waistcoats, giant utility pockets and ties.

Ties? Men have been trying for years to liberate themselves from the accessory. Why a woman who was breaking one tired gender stereotype would suddenly embrace another is unclear. This brand can make a genuinely forever trench. If there was a moment for that kind of restraint (the kind that creates breathing room), it is now.

It was there at Luke and Lucie Meier’s Jil Sander, in a sleeveless gown pieced together in a complicated chessboard of ivory and cream; a collarless, lapel-less overcoat, a single button offset at the waist; the exclamation point of a silver bird in flight on the knee of a black bias-cut gown. In a long white shirtdress in crisp cotton worn back to front, the better to expose its architecture. In raffia knots and fringe to add a touch of the hand to the austerity; dresses over pants and under jackets; and in the use of a marbled print to add a dash of earth tones to the palette of neutrals.

And it was there most surprisingly at Prada, where Miuccia Prada stood, dwarfed by a scrum of celebrities and editors after her show, preaching the gospel of non-disposability, reduction, purity. “The person should be more important than the clothes,” she said. Today, “we need to do less. There is too much fashion, too much clothes, too much of everything.”

Too true.

Still, it was something of a statement coming from Mrs. Prada, a woman who made her name on her tendency to about-face from season to season, to put her nose to the wind, follow her sense of smell and explore what direction identity was going at the moment (muchness! minimalism! 1970s waitresses! Japanese manga!) even if it led her in a totally different direction than her most recent collection — even if the net result was that her customer had to practically buy a whole new wardrobe each time.

Asked if she felt in part culpable for the glut, she said, “Of course.” She’s trying — not to backpedal, but to recalibrate. With her pearls of wisdom came mother-of-pearl.

Literally: in big, iridescent shell necklaces tied and layered over single-breasted princess coats in black velvet, falling cleanly below the knee. Also simple little chemises of cream or black or shell-pink gauze, sometimes with flapper tiers, sometimes embroidered with a single, stylized silver-sequined feather or two. Also skirt suits, the jackets marked by oversize belt loops left empty to just suggest the idea of waist; rough-edge leather tops tied on at the shoulders and sides in lilac and emerald green; geometric Midcentury Modern knits; sleeveless devoré velvet columns in a chevron pattern, knotted at the neck.

The line was narrow, just skating over the body; the mood was elegant efficiency. These were clothes that did not demand too much. Almost everything was shown with a cloche rain hat. Because you never know when the sky will fall. Here’s what you can wear in the meantime. Pretty much any time.

Sahred From Source link Fashion and Style

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2M0vzb3 via IFTTT

[firstjustgoin]

Going Down

3. Start with the shit going down. An event you’ve never witnessed. A moment in history that you wish you could have. A mystery that was never solved.

Her father’s health had been steadily declining for months now –– in and out of hospitals and doctor’s offices where he had been met with the thin-lipped mouths of professionals who saw people like him every day, wide-eyed and vacillating between disbelief and despair –– and so when Candace called her, her voice low and mournful, to get on the next plane and fly home, Tessa did so without needing to ask why.

She usually flew at the holidays when the halls of JFK or Laguardia or Newark, whichever airport had the cheapest flights, roiled with agitated parents dressed in faux cheer, willing even to push their own children out of the way in order to make their 6:00pm to Orlando. She hated airports for this reason and as chubby people in red and green sweaters squeezed by her on the moving walkway, she always imagined their planes falling swiftly from the sky as penance.

But it was early November and she breathed a deep sigh of relief when she arrived at Laguardia and saw that there was room to move without elbowing people like you’re digging yourself out of a trench. She bought a pack of unsalted peanuts and a Diet Coke and settled into a corner chair by her gate trying to block out the frantic sounds from the TV. She had a theory that CNN only really existed within the universe of the airport and it was all just a huge collective hallucination everywhere else, but here it was almost maddening.  

The president-elect stood at a podium wearing a red hat that screamed Make America Great Again. She still could not believe it; millions of people had voted for this moron, this misogynist, this bigot. Just two days ago she had met up with some friends at a bar in Brooklyn to watch the election results roll in. They drank whiskey sodas and progressively ate more and more fries as it dawned on them, this always possibility never probability, was real.

“Tell me something that will make me feel better,” Tessa whispered to her friend, clutching at the edge of the table until her knuckles popped white.

“I can’t,” her friend said back, and she knew in that moment that it was over. The unfiltered joy she had felt voting for the first female president just 12 hours earlier, how powerful and in control she exuded as she walked into her office that morning. Gone. The whiskey went straight to her head, now throbbing, and her whole body shivered at the shock.

Tessa trudged around the city the next day, mourning alongside millions of others doing the same. She loved the camaraderie in sadness that existed in New York City in those hours and days afterwards, knowing that everyone was spinning in circles too, their flags at half-mast.

But now she had to go home to Wisconsin. A state she abhorred, filled with overweight, undereducated people who clung to their conservative ideals with as much loyalty as their God. Just imagining the church service she would have to attend this Sunday made her stomach turn in disgust. Thank you oh Lord for blessing us with this man, for helping so many see the light of truth and righteousness. As if God, if he did exist, would go within several hundred miles of the White House once the president-elect moved in.

Tessa thought about calling Candace from the terminal a dozen times to wriggle her way out of coming home, but then she remembered her last visit around Christmas the year prior and how it ended. Her father had just been diagnosed and saw imminent death as a clarion call for an onslaught of his favorite brand of straight talk.

“You know, now that I’m going to die,” He said with a chuckle as he carved the turkey and Candace quietly sobbed and snotted into her napkin, “I think it’s time to finally buy that rifle I’ve been eyeing over at Jack’s. There’s no use in saving up that money for time that’s never going to come.”

Tessa rolled her eyes, always immune to her father’s self pity that had lived like a fourth family member in their house almost her whole life. Candace cornered her in the kitchen later that night as she was washing the dishes. “We’ve got to do something about Dad,” she whispered through gritted teeth. “This is literally the worst thing that’s ever happened and you’re not doing anything.”

“Literally, it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened, Candy.” Tessa knew that her sister hated when she called her Candy almost as much as when Tessa projected her New York City sensibility on her. “The shit that’s been happening in San Bernardino a few weeks ago, now that’s the worst thing. Fourteen people dead. We’ve got a gun crisis on our hands and we’re all just sitting around pretending that owning assault rifles is some kind of American birthright.”

“Fuck, Tessa, can’t you just stop spewing this New York Times shit at me for one minute and focus on your own fucking family?” This made Tessa pause. Candace never swore. She had talked like a kindergarten teacher for as long as Tessa could remember. Just shy of three years older than Tessa, she always carried herself like the de facto mother neither of them could remember.

“Fine, fine. I’ll try to do something.” But both Candace and Tessa knew that she wouldn’t. She had moved all the way out to New York because she knew it was a place that neither of them would ever visit her. Candace had sent her a letter a few months into living in Brooklyn that just read, Looked your apartment up on Google Maps. God, Tessa, I don’t know how you do it. Don’t get hurt. Love, C. She lived in Fort Greene, for Christ’s sake. But there were some battles that just weren’t worth fighting; it seemed like she was battling on all sides these days.

Tessa had tried calling and checking in on her Dad, she really had. But as the humid spring gave way to a viscous summer and convention season began, she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t listen to him laugh alongside Trump as he mocked a family of a fallen soldier or echo the stump speeches and one-liners he soaked up from hours of watching Fox News. Even as his words began to slur and memory faded, after Candace would call her in thick, obnoxious tears pleading for her to come home, Tessa found ways to avoid making that flight. “It just isn’t the right time. Things are crazy right now,” she would tell her sister before hanging up the phone and heading out to smoke weed and shoot picklebacks at a rooftop bar.

So she did not call to cancel now, much as she wanted to. Instead, she read Ta-Nehisi Coates on the flight and blasted Lemonade and stuffed dry peanuts in her mouth to prepare herself for the world she was landing into, a world where she knew that most of the people she had grown up with wouldn’t bat an eyelash if suddenly all of the water fountains and bathrooms and schools in town were Whites Only.

***

Early November in northern Wisconsin is a cruel time of year. When she landed in Milwaukee and drove her rental car forty-five minutes up to West Bend, the clouds hung low and gray in the sky like they were holding their breath for winter too. A steely wind slapped against the car as she drove and she found herself having to actively stop herself from turning the car around and flying back to the safety of her bodegas and beer gardens and discerning podcast listeners.

When new friends asked her where she was from she would give away information begrudgingly in small morsels: the midwest, near Chicago, Milwaukee-area, and, if she was unlucky enough to talk to a fellow Wisconsinite, finally West Bend. Sometimes she lied and said Madison so she could joke about it being an island amidst a sea of crazy but she had visited just once and could only wax poetic about the farmer’s market for so long before she was discovered.

On select occasions a look of recognition crept slowly on the listener’s face. “Wait, wait, I’ve heard of West Bend. Why does it sound so familiar.” Tessa would sit there, knowing full well what their brain was searching for, but unwilling to say it aloud. “Oh wait, yeah, I remember! Y’all were the people who sued your own library for having books with gay characters, yeah? With that church that wanted money for it being so ‘disturbing’, right?”

She would nod slightly, averting their eye contact, and pretending she could hear someone call her name from across the bar. “Uh, yeah,” she would say and then run away. She hated being associated even in passing reference to such ardent stupidity and she got a B.A. in Political Science from an expensive private liberal arts school in the Northeast as a defiant push against it.

When she arrived in West Bend, she saw with dismay that the red and blue TRUMP/PENCE signs littering almost every lawn had survived the recent sleet storms. Some were as large as the front doors behind them, waving arrogant and proud in the icy wind. It made her sick to think how many joyous celebrations were still taking place inside these lower middle class split levels; men drinking beers and watching the Packers while the women giggled from the kitchen, living comfortably in their gender roles.

Candace hated when she made these sweeping generalizations. “What good was that pricey college degree if it just taught you to hate everyone you grew up with? Everyone who loves you?” She had asked once when Tessa was home from her first semester. Like Candace contributed a cent to that college fund, she practically strong armed their father into not paying for any of it either. 

“It’s not us that hate everyone,” Tessa spat back. “We just don’t tolerate people who perpetuate white supremacy and systemic oppression.”

Candace sighed. “You learn all these big words that teach you to hate your own people. But when you’re in trouble, who’s going to take you in? Your black friends in the Bronx or wherever or your own family?”

That conversation rattled within Tessa for years afterwards, following her like a specter of a past and identity she could not shake. She couldn’t quite pinpoint why she had been able to escape those narrow mindsets her sister and father and classmates had all embraced so easily. But now that she knew everything that she knew, it was impossible to go back –– both intellectually but also physically, to enter the home that she had grown up safe and happy and healthy with anything but a thick layer of disdain.

***

She pulled into the driveway just as the last of the dull light faded in the sky. She could see the yellow lights from the kitchen window and a shadow of her sister, heavy-set and scrambling, and the flickering whites and blues of the television from the other room, likely with her father reclined and mumbling. She turned off the engine and closed her eyes, bracing herself before her entrance, not knowing whether she would be more saddened by the hundreds of pill bottles cluttering every counter and tabletop or the Make America Great Again poster hanging in the dining room. For a second, a flash of shame filled her like an electric shock; could she ever feel real pain for her dying father if she couldn’t let go of her pulsing contempt? At this moment, sitting alone in the driveway where he had taught her to ride a bike and lifted her up off the concrete every time she fell, she did not know.

Her father’s cancer had been slow but ruthless, crawling through and licking every surface it touched like an encroaching wildfire. When Candace first called her over a year ago, Tessa had been in bed with a boy she had met at a bar down the street. Frank, perhaps, or maybe Francisco, she couldn’t remember. He had spent twenty minutes going down on her and she didn’t stop him although his tongue flitted in and out of her aggressively like it was blindly trying to find the exit. She finally had coaxed him out of her vagina when the phone rang and her sister’s straight-toothed smile flashed on her screen. Moment over. She pulled up her panties and answered while Frank/Francisco heaved to the side of her bed.

“Yeah, Candace can I call you back?”

“T-Tess––” Then a cascade of sniffles. “Tessa. You’ve got to come home. Dad, he’s––” Another cascade, this time punctured by heavy sobs.

“God dammit, Candace. What? What’s up with dad?”

“He’s got,” Candace’s voice dropped to a whisper, “he’s got cancer, Tessa. In his bones. He’s got what the doctor’s are calling Osteosarcoma and he’s not going to get better.”

A ring had begun in Tessa’s left ear, a baritone hum that grew and echoed. Soon, it reverberated through the right ear too until Tessa let her head drop to her pillow and eyes pull shut.

“Uh, are you okay?” The boy whose tongue had been inside her just seconds ago pressed his finger to her arm tentatively. “Should I, um, go now?”

Tessa could not remember what she said to him, could not remember how or when he left, but the next time she opened her eyes, she was alone in her room, her mouth dry and eyelids crusted at the edges. She saw six missed calls from Candace and one from her father. She called him.

“Daddy?”

“Hey baby.” Tessa had spent the better part of her late teens and twenties distancing herself emotionally and physically from her father. She dyed her inherited blonde hair a dark umber and ran ten miles a day to outpace her father’s genetically poor metabolism; she policed her Wisconsin accent with its long a’s and o’s and dontcha knows, sliding into the neutral tones of transplants all over New York. But it took just those two words to catapult her back into her childhood home, sitting on the couch squeezed between her father and sister watching old Law & Order reruns.

“Daddy, I’m so –– I don’t know what to say. How are you feeling?”

“Well, I been better, sweetheart. But you know Candace, she’s got me set up with everything I’d need, like we’re going down into a bunker or something. I told her, ‘the doc said I gotta year to live, no need to treat me like infirm already.” He laughed quietly and fell silent. Tessa didn’t know what to say. She stared at the wall across from her bed, Gloria Steinem holding a sign that read “We Shall Overcome” stared back.

“Are you getting chemo? What are you going to do?” She felt like a puppy dog clawing at the toes of their owner, desperate for a resolution to their anguish they did not understand.

“I’m not sure, honey. I spent this whole day at the hospital squirming with Obamacare welfare junkies and whatnot. Not sure there’s much else those doctors can do for me. They got me on a whole cocktail of drugs, don’t worry, I’m going to be as loopy as the kids you hang out with in Brooklyn every day.”

“Okay, dad. I’m going to come home soon okay? I’ll see when I can get some time off of work and then I’ll fly out and we’ll figure it all out. I’ll be there before you know it.”

That was September, just as New York’s air had begun to deflate into a cool, short Fall. She didn’t go home until the end of December and by then, there wasn’t anything much left to figure out. Her father was dying and there wasn’t anything to be done.

Almost a year had passed since that last visit and now she sat in the driveway of her childhood home and practiced breathing exercises she had learned at Vinyasa Yoga classes.

Breathe in with the whole body and out. The tips of her fingers trembled in the cold. She walked up to her door and considered knocking for a second before twisting the handle. The house was cleaner than she had been expecting, teeming with the smell of lysol and simmering garlic tomatoes. She knew that smell well: a staple of her youth. Before it had been uncool, her friends loved coming over to her house for dinner: her father’s thick, creamy pasta sauces –– garlicky and herbaceous. He loved to cook for a crowd, sent her to school with plastic tupperware packed with last night’s feast enough to share with her whole lunch table. She was embarrassed by the assertiveness of the aromas –– how they overtook the room of Lunchables and peanut butter sandwiches –– but she slurped up each noodle anyways, loving how it warmed every inch of her mouth, throat, and stomach as she swallowed.

She turned the corner into the kitchen and saw Candace at the stove, slowly stirring the sauce as it splattered across the counter and up her forearms. She flinched and then saw Tessa.

“You’re here. Thank god. I was beginning to worry the food might get cold waiting on you.” Candace threw a roll of paper towels at her. “Now wash off all that plane grime and we’ll sit down to eat in a sec. Dad’s in the living room.” She jerked her head towards the other room as if Tessa might have forgotten where that was in only the year since she had been home.

“‘Kay. Nice to see you again,” Tessa said, waiting for her sister’s begrudging nod and smile before continuing to the living room.

“Daddy?” Tessa peered through the door into the dark room, the only light throbbing from the television screen. House Hunters played on mute. “Daddy, I’m going to turn on the lights okay?” She flipped on the lights and almost screamed at the sight of the room now illuminated. In the year since she had been home the living room had transformed from a clichéd, frilly, TV den with embroidered bible quotes on throw pillows and clean glass surfaces to a makeshift hospice. She could barely see her father embraced by a deep recliner and swallowed by wires attached to monitors and tubes attached to hanging bags. The floor was littered with old pill bottles, just as she had expected, but also with napkins stained with dried up blood and gray clumps of hair.

When she finally got a full view of her father, she had to do a double take. All of her life, her father had been an intimidating man –– scaring off prom dates and trick-or-treaters with his wide shoulders and thick gut. She had known that it would be bad; Candace had warned her –– “It’s metastatic, that means the cancer’s eaten out his bones and now has started eating other things too. His lungs, his throat…” She had trailed off then, or maybe Tessa had stopped listening. Either way, nothing could have prepared her for seeing her father look like the carved out inside of a man –– wearing the remains of his bones and veins and decaying muscles on the outside of his body.

She kneeled next to him and grabbed his hand. She hadn’t realized before that he was sleeping. “It’s me, Tessa. I’m here.”

He opened his eyes and parted his cracked lips into a half-smile. “Hi honey. You here for Thanksgiving already?”

“No, Daddy, it’s not quite Thanksgiving yet. I’m here just to visit you.”

Her father let out a gruff laugh, somewhere between a wheeze and a chuckle. “Oh dammit, don’t tell me I’m dying already. I was just dreaming I was golfing in Mexico again and I really thought I was going to do it this time.” Tessa rolled her eyes. How could a man that looked like an alternate reality version of her father still be so unmistakably him?

“You hungry? Candace made your special pasta.”

His mouth turned downward as he scrunched up his nose. “Not that filth again.” He lowered his voice to somewhere even below a whisper, “Don’t tell your sister this, honey, but she’s a terrible cook. I haven’t eaten in weeks.”

“Dad!” Tessa tapped his hand lightly. “You’ve gotta eat. No wonder you’re looking like the first guy on the food chain.”

He smiled. “That’s my girl. Good to have you home. Now bring out some noodles, no sauce and I’ll see if I can work some magic.”

She returned to the kitchen. Candace was scrubbing the pans in the sink vigorously, muttering a string of curse words under her breath.

“So, do you usually eat in the living room with him?” Tessa asked.

“Some days. Honestly, Tess, it’s been next level depressing to stay in there all the time with him. He won’t eat and I hate cooking, you know that. Sometimes I’ll just get so tired I’ll just take a plate up to my room and watch TV instead. You haven’t been here so you don’t ––” Tessa sensed Candace winding up for one of her soliloquies, so she walked over to her sister and rubbed her shoulder.

“You’re right. I haven’t been here. But I’m here now. Whatever I can do to help, I will.”

***

It didn’t take more than two days at home for Tessa to begin falling into a deep pit of equal parts fury and despair. It was bad enough that Candace had convinced herself that she must be her father’s nursemaid, attending to his every need with an exacting level of care that drove both Tessa and her father up a wall.

They would be sitting in the living room watching another rerun of Law and Order: True Crime, nearly bordering on a nice moment, when Candace would jump out of her chair with the inertia of an electric shock and run to the kitchen to find whatever pill their father had to take, all the while mumbling, “I can’t believe I almost forgot. I can’t believe it. If I had forgotten, who knows what could have happened. How could I forget?”

The stress Candace placed upon herself rippled out to poison them all. Every time an alarm went off on Candace’s phone, Tessa watched her father twitch and scrunch up his eyes in a kind of pain she had never before witnessed from him. He was a man transformed from the one she had known growing up. He had been a heavy, sharp presence in her life. The kind of man to yell at his children in restaurants for spilling their juice, to push them into playing team sports even if all they wanted to do was chase butterflies through the soccer field, to demand longform birth certificates from their boyfriends.

Tessa had spent enough time unpacking her father’s mind games during overpriced armchair therapy sessions in wide-windowed offices on the Upper West Side to know how this had affected her upbringing. Ladies with round glasses and high-waisted khakis would say cookie-cutter phrases like, “It sounds like you still harbor a lot of resentment about your father,” and Tessa would laugh all the way to the bar.

When she told Candace that she was seeing a therapist, her sister’s voice had dropped to whisper. “Don’t tell dad,” she said, “You know he thinks therapy is a liberal conspiracy.”

She did and she loved telling her therapists about her father’s conspiracy theories, as if the only reason she paid $200 a session was to give them a well-rounded character arc. Sometimes, although she would never give her sister or father the satisfaction of knowing this, she wondered if therapy was indeed some kind of machination on the part of a government that wanted to fill its people with an unending supply of self-doubt. She bought it in bulk from Whole Foods alongside the kale smoothies that would also likely give her father a conniption.

Now that her father’s sharpness had melted along with his beer belly and thick jowl, revealing a softer, calmer man, Tessa thought that maybe she wouldn’t have to have the conversation with him that she dreaded the most. She had been home for nearly three days, with just passing mentions and references made to the recent political shift in the country, before they stumbled upon it head-on and must as she attempted to pivot away, it was too late.

They had just finished up lunch –– tuna fish for her, mashed potatoes for him –– when he looked up at her with his shrunken face and asked, “So how is your snowflake island dealing with the latest reality check?” For a man with nearly no muscle on his body, he sure didn’t pull his punches. This was the father she had slyly avoided for the last nine years; the man who demanded a recount at her elementary school class president elections when the girl who campaigned on building a compost heap won, the man who created a facebook page just to share articles he found on Conservative Daily.

She thought about saying nothing, biting the insides of her cheeks until they burned like she had so many times in her childhood. Unlike when he would say things like this over the phone, she could not just roll her eyes and make up a quick excuse to hang up. She had to say something.  

“Well, we’re not doing so great, dad,” she said, her eyes bouncing across every surface in the living room to avoid her father’s eye contact. “I’ve never seen so many people cry in public than on November 9th. On the bus, in the streets, waiting in line at the pharmacy. People think their lives are in danger.”

He sighed and shook his head. If he had been the man he once was, he might have raised his voice, but he couldn’t anymore. He could only mumble. “Danger from what? The only people who are in danger are those who don’t deserve to be here anyways. I honestly don’t understand why you can’t get that. It’s like you’re pretending that the first eighteen years of your life never happened. Like nothing I said mattered at all.”

Tessa knew she shouldn’t be shocked anymore by the things her father said. Nothing should shock her, and yet. “No, I don’t even want to have this conversation with you. How is it up to you to decide who deserves to be here or not? Why do we deserve to be here just because we’re white?”

“White! This fucking liberal arts education I shelled out for really did a number on you, Tessa. Paid $200,000 for you to hate yourself and your own family. This has nothing to do with being white and you know that.”

There was no arguing with a brick wall –– this was the logic she had used to squirm and sidestep her way out of confrontation with her dear, dying father for the last year. He was a brick wall, now cemented even further in righteousness due to the victory of his belief systems personified.“I can’t, anymore,” she said and held her hands up and walked away.

***

Her father didn’t die, at least not right away, like Candace thought he would. He lived from day to day, breath to breath. In the early mornings when frost crept like spidery fingers across the window panes, Tessa would wake up and touch his shoulder lightly, half-expecting him not to open his eyes. But he kept living –– angrier and more hollow every day.

A month into being back at home, Tessa spent most of the interminable hours of the afternoon when Candace was at work and her dad slept scrolling through flights and trains and rental cars she never booked. The longer she stayed, the more her feet sunk in the quicksand of her childhood home. She knew she’d suffocate soon, but she couldn’t get herself to move.

Headlines pierced the vortex of everyday life: CIA concludes with 'high confidence' Russia tried 'to help Trump get elected'; Trump chooses fossil fuel industry ally to head EPA; Trump attends 'heroes and villains' costume party as himself. Outside of the vortex, the world churned.

After he could not keep down his lunch, she wiped the vomit off her dad’s chin. When he fell off his chair trying to get the TV remote, she picked his bones back up, horrified at how easy they were to lift. As she walked by the living room one day, she pretended that she could not hear his brittle, aching sobs. It didn’t take four weeks for her to come to wish that she wanted him to die. And she soothed her own aching sobs by assuring herself that he likely wanted to die too.

Candace, meanwhile, was quickly unraveling in her own way. She had stopped doing the dishes and keeping the rest of the house clean, so soon the maelstrom of the living room infected every other room too. Although she only worked four hour shifts these days at Kohl’s on Main St., she wouldn’t come home until well after dinner –– usually plain noodles, rice, or cereal these days –– and arrive with her hair matted and eyes darting, making up lazy excuses about a broken exhaust pipe or customer service emergency. Tessa thought that perhaps this was Candace’s way of exacting revenge for not being there all those months of spoonfeeding and doctor’s visits and chemotherapy.

One thing was certain: each of them were completely alone. Her father –– empty, dying, boorish eyes in the body of a house of cards, falling but not fast enough to the end. Her sister –– one knot atop another, bloody fingertips, a mind meandering off the ledge. And Tessa –– the one who finally came home and stayed, but still every morning awoke with a jolt to notice that she was back in her childhood bedroom. The world spun on while they spun out.“You know I love you, right?” Her father said one day as they sat, for hours in silence, watching the wind thump against the branches of the bare willow tree in the front yard.

She pondered that for a moment. Maybe she hadn’t known. “Yes, of course, daddy,” she said instead, reaching out to pat his hand, pulsing with thick, purple veins. “And I love you too.”

He smiled and put his hand over hers and they sat there in silence once more for another two hours.

A week later her father was dead.

[stopkingobama]

Feminist destroys liberal "Wonder Woman" whiners

Photo credit: Pixabay, ErilaWittlieb, CC0 Public Domain, https://pixabay.com/en/wonder-woman-superhero-lasso-female-1694801/

I’ll be honest: I went to see Wonder Woman with zero expectations. I was aware that some extreme feminists were already angry about it because she doesn’t have hairy armpits or something, but all I wanted was a couple hours of entertainment. I hadn’t done much research on the movie or even seen many trailers. Actually, leading up to the movie, most of my attention was on the pre-movie dinner.

I did, however, hope that this first modern woman-centric superhero movie wasn’t going to mess it up. I’m not boycotting Marvel for all their man-centric movies, but I do wish they’d make one about Black Widow. Besides finally being about a woman, that movie would be awesome. You know it would.

I don’t get mad when a more qualified man beats a woman to some position or role or what have you. Roles should be filled with the best possible candidate, regardless of sex. I do wish more qualified woman would be recognized, though. And Wonder Woman is definitely qualified for a movie. I was also excited to see the movie was directed and written by women, at a time when women only make up about 17 percent of the Hollywood workforce in elite roles like these.

But that was as far as my feminism took it. I wasn’t at the movie to critique her look, I was there to critique her character.

So I don’t care that Wonder Woman/Diana’s hair was always perfectly curled, even though she should’ve had hat hair. And there’s no way those trenches weren’t humid. But she’s literally a god – maybe they have god-like hair at all times. Steve Trevor’s hair wasn’t very trench-like either.

I don’t care that Diana had eyeliner. Maybe gods are born with eyeliner.

I don’t care that her facial skin was too perfect to be makeup free. Again, she’s literally a god. Gods don’t get acne.

I don’t care that her thighs were probably photoshopped to look thinner – if we wanted the film to be physically accurate, she wouldn’t be able to flip tanks even if she did have thicker thighs. Plus there’s that whole god thing.

I don’t care that she wore heels the entire time. They looked very supportive, and are probably better weapons for spin kicks than sneakers. And maybe she just likes wearing heels. Maybe they make her feel powerful. They have that effect on me.

Beyond Her Looks

I do care about how Diana managed to walk that thin, thin line between literally being a weapon, and having empathy.

I care that she saw an unknown life and saved it, because she could, and because she cared.

I care that she was moved to tears when she heard about the suffering of millions of people she’d never even met, and then took that sorrow and turned it into motivation to save the rest.

I care that she was willing to sacrifice her own future life of peace among her family to save strangers.

I care that she threw savage shade at the old men trying to tell her how to live her life while they stayed behind desks, deciding the fates of others, and greasing their mustaches. They probably spent more time on their hair than she did.

I care that she had a clear, devoted sense of duty but wasn’t blind to things outside that duty, and that she knew that being on a mission meant helping those along the way as well.

I care that she could literally be walking to fight on the front lines of the worst war the world had ever seen, in a world she’d never been in, yet stop to see a baby.

There’s an idea in our culture that you have to sacrifice strength for empathy, but the opposite is true. Empathy makes you stronger.

So yes, you can be a strong, powerful woman while wearing heels and an evening gown.

Yes, you can be moved to tears by the suffering of others without giving up any strength.

And yes, you can stop to smile at an adorable baby on the street even while you are heading out on your mission to save the people you love. Even if you’re just going to the office and not a literal war.

Free to Save the World As You

I left the movie feeling pretty pumped up. Turns out that was a good thing, because a sketchy thing happened as I got home. Thanks to my movie-inspired energy, I was more alert than usual, and saw it developing before I was in any danger.

The world isn’t a terribly great place. Steve Trevor was right when he said there’s good and bad in everyone, that we can’t just find one person to blame for all the bad things. Even though that would be very, very convenient and very, very flattering to the rest of us. Sketchy things – and outright evil things – will continue to happen until the end of time. But that doesn’t mean it has to stay as bad as it is.

When we’re free to do what we truly think is good, right, and just, and are held back neither by groups nor individuals, with or without curling mustaches, then we can make the world a better place than it is.

When we feel free to pursue the good, right, and just as we are – whether that’s a mustache-curling old man behind a desk, a young man in the thick of the issue, an older woman overseeing operations from behind a desk, a young woman in heels with a mission, or whatever you are – then we can uniquely improve the world.

We all have our own way of making the world better, and our own ways shape the ends, and we can’t do it with restrictions on our freedom or on who we are.

So the next time I stop to gush over a puppy, while wearing heels, while on my way to work as one of the few women in the economic nonprofit world, do not accuse me of faking femininity, giving into patriarchal society, or giving up my liberated woman strength. I will call Wonder Woman down upon your head, eyeliner and all. This is who I am, and I am trying to use it all for the good. Just like you.

Eileen L. Wittig

Eileen Wittig is an Associate Editor and author of the Lazy Millennial column at FEE. You can follow the Lazy Millennial Twitter here.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

[americanlibertypac]

Feminist destroys liberal "Wonder Woman" whiners

Photo credit: Pixabay, ErilaWittlieb, CC0 Public Domain, https://pixabay.com/en/wonder-woman-superhero-lasso-female-1694801/

I’ll be honest: I went to see Wonder Woman with zero expectations. I was aware that some extreme feminists were already angry about it because she doesn’t have hairy armpits or something, but all I wanted was a couple hours of entertainment. I hadn’t done much research on the movie or even seen many trailers. Actually, leading up to the movie, most of my attention was on the pre-movie dinner.

I did, however, hope that this first modern woman-centric superhero movie wasn’t going to mess it up. I’m not boycotting Marvel for all their man-centric movies, but I do wish they’d make one about Black Widow. Besides finally being about a woman, that movie would be awesome. You know it would.

I don’t get mad when a more qualified man beats a woman to some position or role or what have you. Roles should be filled with the best possible candidate, regardless of sex. I do wish more qualified woman would be recognized, though. And Wonder Woman is definitely qualified for a movie. I was also excited to see the movie was directed and written by women, at a time when women only make up about 17 percent of the Hollywood workforce in elite roles like these.

But that was as far as my feminism took it. I wasn’t at the movie to critique her look, I was there to critique her character.

So I don’t care that Wonder Woman/Diana’s hair was always perfectly curled, even though she should’ve had hat hair. And there’s no way those trenches weren’t humid. But she’s literally a god – maybe they have god-like hair at all times. Steve Trevor’s hair wasn’t very trench-like either.

I don’t care that Diana had eyeliner. Maybe gods are born with eyeliner.

I don’t care that her facial skin was too perfect to be makeup free. Again, she’s literally a god. Gods don’t get acne.

I don’t care that her thighs were probably photoshopped to look thinner – if we wanted the film to be physically accurate, she wouldn’t be able to flip tanks even if she did have thicker thighs. Plus there’s that whole god thing.

I don’t care that she wore heels the entire time. They looked very supportive, and are probably better weapons for spin kicks than sneakers. And maybe she just likes wearing heels. Maybe they make her feel powerful. They have that effect on me.

Beyond Her Looks

I do care about how Diana managed to walk that thin, thin line between literally being a weapon, and having empathy.

I care that she saw an unknown life and saved it, because she could, and because she cared.

I care that she was moved to tears when she heard about the suffering of millions of people she’d never even met, and then took that sorrow and turned it into motivation to save the rest.

I care that she was willing to sacrifice her own future life of peace among her family to save strangers.

I care that she threw savage shade at the old men trying to tell her how to live her life while they stayed behind desks, deciding the fates of others, and greasing their mustaches. They probably spent more time on their hair than she did.

I care that she had a clear, devoted sense of duty but wasn’t blind to things outside that duty, and that she knew that being on a mission meant helping those along the way as well.

I care that she could literally be walking to fight on the front lines of the worst war the world had ever seen, in a world she’d never been in, yet stop to see a baby.

There’s an idea in our culture that you have to sacrifice strength for empathy, but the opposite is true. Empathy makes you stronger.

So yes, you can be a strong, powerful woman while wearing heels and an evening gown.

Yes, you can be moved to tears by the suffering of others without giving up any strength.

And yes, you can stop to smile at an adorable baby on the street even while you are heading out on your mission to save the people you love. Even if you’re just going to the office and not a literal war.

Free to Save the World As You

I left the movie feeling pretty pumped up. Turns out that was a good thing, because a sketchy thing happened as I got home. Thanks to my movie-inspired energy, I was more alert than usual, and saw it developing before I was in any danger.

The world isn’t a terribly great place. Steve Trevor was right when he said there’s good and bad in everyone, that we can’t just find one person to blame for all the bad things. Even though that would be very, very convenient and very, very flattering to the rest of us. Sketchy things – and outright evil things – will continue to happen until the end of time. But that doesn’t mean it has to stay as bad as it is.

When we’re free to do what we truly think is good, right, and just, and are held back neither by groups nor individuals, with or without curling mustaches, then we can make the world a better place than it is.

When we feel free to pursue the good, right, and just as we are – whether that’s a mustache-curling old man behind a desk, a young man in the thick of the issue, an older woman overseeing operations from behind a desk, a young woman in heels with a mission, or whatever you are – then we can uniquely improve the world.

We all have our own way of making the world better, and our own ways shape the ends, and we can’t do it with restrictions on our freedom or on who we are.

So the next time I stop to gush over a puppy, while wearing heels, while on my way to work as one of the few women in the economic nonprofit world, do not accuse me of faking femininity, giving into patriarchal society, or giving up my liberated woman strength. I will call Wonder Woman down upon your head, eyeliner and all. This is who I am, and I am trying to use it all for the good. Just like you.

Eileen L. Wittig

Eileen Wittig is an Associate Editor and author of the Lazy Millennial column at FEE. You can follow the Lazy Millennial Twitter here.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.