#signaling queerness through hairstyles????

[skyguyed]

Re tags of my previous post, and im possibly about to put my foot in my mouth, I'm like really hoping they don't make Sabine romantically pine after Ezra. Reeeeeeallly hoping they'll canonically say Sabine is queer and let her b with, like, not a man

[gealach-in-a-misty-world]

Beneath the waters by the islands of Gelle-Geu, a star sleeps restlessly. The celebrated new starkeeper Ranra Kekeri, who is preoccupied by the increasing tremors, confronts the problems left behind by her predecessor. Meanwhile, the poet Erígra Lilún, who merely wants to be left alone, is repeatedly asked by their ancestor Semberí to take over the starkeeping helm. Semberí insists upon telling Lilún mysterious tales of the deliverance of the stars by the goddess Bird. When Ranra and Lilún meet, sparks begin to fly. An unforeseen configuration of their magical deepnames illuminates the trouble under the tides. For Ranra and Lilún, their story is just beginning; for the people of Gelle-Geu, it may well be too late to save their home.

"To heal, you must first become trusted".

R.B. Lemberg's The Unbalancing is a quiet story of salvation, an Atlantis-like story set in a world governed by a Bird goddess, where stars are kept by starkeepers and people do magic with their names. The main characters, a nonbinary demisexual poet and a loud starkeeper with much hurt in her past, come together to save their island from destruction, and they find love with each other.

The poet is a quiet character, unwilling to take on the role that others are sure should be hers; the contrast with the starkeeper, who took what she could to emancipate herself, makes for an interesting dynamic. The starkeeper is an extrovert, taking on many lovers, but behind the exuberant veneer is someone who is deeply hurt. The poet is still questioning, attempting to find their place and the precise iteration of their nonbinary identity, for this is a world where nonbinary people can be of five different types, and they signal it through hair tokens and complex hairstyles. This is a story of acceptance, too, and finding one's worth, and overcoming one's past.

The worldbuilding is immaculate, painting with deft strokes a world that is complex and different and deeply accepting, where consent matters to acts of magic and the stars come from afar. It is a slow unraveling, when the mystery of the stars' origin is revealed, and it is deeply touching. The ending feels just right in its inexorability, with pages of exquisite prose.

The Unbalancing is a quiet treasure of a novel.

✨ 4 stars

.

📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

* Keeper of the Dawn, by Dianna Gunn

for: community, consent

[You can find more of my reviews about queer speculative fiction on my blog MISTY WORLD]

[imagesbetty]

Conservative Camp, 1980 - 2016

Conservative Camp is a way of dressing— indeed, way of being— that spawned during the Reagan-Thatcher heydays int he 80s but which, in and of itself, has roots in the Vreeland-era Bazaar aesthetics of in-office Jackie Kennedy, née Bouvier, morte Onassis.

And an aside— for some reason, I am under the impression that I am not the first to use this term but I will be using it nonetheless.

Nancy Reagan epitomizes Conservative Camp for me because of the way her dead, beady eyes stare our of that skeletal, piqued face of hers from beneath those lip-pencil eye brows. She looks exactly like someone who would delight in the AIDS epidemic’s effects on the queer community, exactly like someone who would be married to the man who sold arms to the Contra.

This is because her physical appearance (on top of her social x-ray figure— which I shall come to another time) cues me into her politics. She looks like a philanthropist who owns blood diamonds.

On the order of the symbolic, clothing is first and foremost a method of communicating. Clothing gives and withholds information. Clothing cues us into the recognizable. Clothing functions as a disguise.

To properly understand this, consider anything from enclothed cognition to your own closet... to the global history of fashion!

To this day, many women in Washington wear the ghost of this appearance— the large hair (an 80s parody fo the Gibson girl?), colorful, monochrome suits, pearls, large, clip-on earrings, and so on and so fourth. You know? The look. Laura Bush had it. Hillary Clinton sported a masculinized iteration of the Conservative Coif at one point, which she grew out but maintained the overall vibe of by the time the 2016 election came around. Even Condoleesa Rice had it— and there’s that iconic image of her standing near GWB wherein she looks like a parody of an 80s finance yuppie!

We’ll start with he hair. If one takes a scroll (or a walk) through the National Portrait Gallery one will notice that Jackie’O marks the development of what I will be calling the “Conservative Coiffe.” Knowing that JFK was a Democrat, I think that what this hairstyle symbolizes supersedes what it is or where it came from. Jackie Kennedy was the blueprint it, but Margaret Thatcher was IT. You know?

As the Tea-Party iteration of American conservatism loses out to the fiscally fascist, corporatist, and above all woke Neoliberal vision (equal oppression, under “god/economy”) we suffer under today, the ‘look’ has become passé. It’s certainly a look that ages you!

Melania Trump, the best dressed First Lady in history, put the nail in the coffin of Conservative Camp as Michele Obama could never have done by virtue of the intense, racist, and unyielding scrutiny the Obamas came under. Jill Biden is in a fashion limbo. I can't imagine and of the younger, and woker, generation of women in Washington dressing like Thatcher or Reagan either— AOC and Ilhan Omar’s iconic looks involve no colorful, monochrome suits, no big stupid Jackie’O hair, and no ugly clip-on earrings.

I will close with this: it is incredibly unfortunate that women in politics have to think so much about how they dress when men get away with wearing ill-fitting suits and shaving daily. When men get away with looking like Mitch McConnel.

Still, it is worthy of noting what clothes are doing because clothing is and always had been a tool of communication, of social signaling, of social inclusion and exclusion, and what a person in a position of power is wearing is never up to accident.

Men in American politics may always wear the same damn suit, but haven't you heard of the "Mao Suit?"

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

If I’m new to the LGBTQ+ community,How do I find cute bi/gay girl to flirt with?

I'd say that depends on your location and age.

And normally I'd say you can check out if there are any meetings or events for queer women or specifically for bi people in your area but I can image the possibilities might be even scarcer than usual bc of Covid.

And if you're a minor then queer evening events are obviously not an option anyway but maybe you have a queer youth club in your area or at school.

Online dating is also a possibility which you could try if you're an adult. Again, nothing I'd recommend to a minor.

And lastly, if you are out of the closet and it's safe for you to do so then you can just send more obvious signals through clothing, hairstyle etc. so that other queer women can see you and know you're one of their people.

Maddie

[simonjadis]

I’ll say that I don’t entirely agree with your first assessment -- sometimes, well-meaning content that has lots of positive representation gets viewed under a hypercritical lens

(the motives for that can be varied, from people getting sick of seeing it on their timelines to people hoping that it will be their absolute ideal and then not being able to handle it falling slightly short, even if it’s still better than 99% of everything out there)

but yes, there are reactionaries out there who reflexively reject anything that they think has “political” or “SJW” content -- which sometimes just means women, POC, or queer folks in prominent roles. this does not happen organically

it is so important to recognize that these people have been deliberately radicalized. from youtube’s algorithms recommending toxic red pill/incel/nazi videos that get more and more extreme with every recommendation to certain cesspits in reddit to what 4chan has been for the bulk of the past decade to things like fucking Prager U

this segment may be helpful in seeing how official, well-funded groups target white boys

there is also that famous article talking about how they are radicalized organically

Step 1: 12 year old boy hears a joke. maybe it’s racist and he doesn’t even realize it. maybe it’s a funny voice from a cartoon. to him, it doesn’t seem malicious, it’s just funny

Step 2: this 12 year old white boy repeats the racist (or misogynistic or transphobic, etc) joke, in real life or online, and gets immediate backlash. not only does the joke that brought him joy fall flat, but now people think that he’s bad AND a bigot. he’s neither of these things!

Step 3: the 12-year-old boy is at a crossroads, but considerably less likely to take the “I’ll change my ways” approach after facing such a hostile response, so instead he finds an online space where his jokes are appreciated

Step 4: whether he has an Evil Online Mentor or just youtube’s algorithm sending him more and more of what he clicks on and likes, he becomes exposed to a bizarroworld where marginalized people being represented in positive ways is a conspiracy to ruin HIS life and where “PC culture” is ruining the humor that he appreciates

(this can also happen through Outrage Headlines on topics like video games, which is why I do NOT click on those “CompanyName RUINED GameSeries” or “THIS is where GameSeries Died/Went Wrong” videos on youtube; I’m not susceptible to their duderage I’ll just never reward them with a click)

either way, they pick up on things that they decide are “political” or “SJW,” including any of the following:

-pronouns in your bio

-using language like “marginalized community”

-trans people existing

-sometimes the word “gender” on its own

-requests for any kind of content warning

-people of color with more than token representation

-women whose clothing, hairstyles, or personalities do not fit into a few very specific categories of male-catered hotness

those of us who are good people have our own version of this

when people unironically say “pc culture” or “SJW” or “get woke go broke” or post that hateful “it’s ma’am” gif or say “cultural marxism” or “no safe spaces” etc, they are what I call malice signaling -- letting you know that they’re awful people. the “cultural marxism” line in particular is used almost exclusively by nazis

in any case, when these, well, awful people see what registers in their mind as “SJW political agenda” being “inserted” into media, they turn on a dime and attack it