#the color red

[burntsodas]

Shout out Orlokian vampires. Gotta be one of my favorite genders.

[aleisters]

"Bray's deriving some sort of pleasure from this, as screwed up as that may sound..."

[the-star-rigel]

fine I’ll say it. Jason and Billy would be good friends

[escapingpurgatory]

crazy bitch moodboard

[haggishlyhagging]

Lipstick, then, may be considered the first cosmetic: "Among the Dieri and other Australian tribes, menstruating women were marked with red paint round the mouth, while among the tribes of Victoria a menstruating woman is painted red from the waist up. Among Tapuga tribes of Brazil and on the Gold Coast of Africa, she is also painted red." Among the Cheyenne, at her first menstruation a girl was painted red all over her body and secluded for four days in a special little lodge. In China, formerly, a woman customarily put a red mark in the middle of her forehead to signal that she was menstruating, and also as a cosmetic.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing were also special states designated with red paint. The Kaffir and many other tribal women painted their bodies with red ocher when they were pregnant. Pregnancy and childbirth are numinous phases of life, but it was because of the creative/decreative powers specifically accruing to women's blood that the use of red signaling during pregnancy and lactation gave women enormous powers of restraint over men and the spacing of childbearing. In some tribes, by using paint women might signal "no sex" for six or seven years at a time, while they continued nursing. More usual was the period of three years used by Nigerian women of the eighteenth century, who kept their bodies smeared with red earth throughout the entire period as a public announcement that they were bearing, nursing, or weaning a child.

One meaning of the blood signals was surely reassurance: "It's safe to look at me now," or "I'm old enough to bleed, but I'm not doing it right now," or "Now I'm available for sex or marriage." Among other peoples the red marks meant danger, keep away, not sexually available at this time: "Don't look at me." Mouth marking and paint was a display not only of the female power to bleed, but of a range of complex signals meaning "come here" or "stay away".

All the earliest cosmetics—menstrual blood, slashed blood, and tattoos of blue or red lines suggestive of blood on the face—must have enabled women to free themselves from some of the severest world-forming taboos. Most of the complex taboos would have remained intact in the initial major rite of menarche, but more minor ones would mark all the menstrual periods after the first. Western reporters noticed that the strict seclusions of the menstruant were being replaced in the nineteenth century by milder menstrual signals, such as a brightly colored scarf, face paint, a special apron or ring, or even a smoking pipe clenched in her teeth.

Whole peoples in older times studied the color red through body use. Some completely painted their bodies red (the "Red Clay People" of the eastern United States). They tattooed themselves from head to foot (Scotland, Canada, Borneo). They plastered their hair with ocher and grease, with thick red clay (South America, Africa), or stained their teeth red (Southeast Asia, South Pacific, South America), or painted and dyed their hair, hands, and feet with henna (India, Middle East, North Africa, Europe). Even now, when menstrual rite has largely vanished, women continue to paint their cheeks and lips red to impart vitality, health, sexual desirability, and self respect.

-Judy Grahn, Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World

[nocturnalandneurotic]

[nobeerreviews]

I write to create red in a world that often appears black and white.

-- Terry Tempest Williams

(Bucharest, Romania)

[medusa-full-of-wrath]

[jewishregulus]

tagged by @foursaints and @drmthieves ❤️ both of my fellow threads of woven silk …

go to pinterest and make yourself a mood board, whatever that means to you.

no pressure tags to @effiepotterisamilf @onthemerits @sequinhaze and anybody else who sees and wants to…❤️❤️

this isn’t the best ivy meta post but it’s good enough

[sspacegodd]

Red has been an important symbol for a very long time.

We fought the British redcoats in our war for American independence.

In America, red often means Communism, which has something to do with Marxism. America has fought whole wars against Communism.

We fought Communists in the Soviet Union; we fought the JRA from Japan; we fought the Red Army and RAF in East Germany; we fought the Communists in Viet Nam; we fought in the Red Zone in Iraq; we fight reds in the Middle East; we're getting ready to fight the reds in China; and now, right here at home, war is brewing between Blue and Red.

Red seems to be the problem. Choose a better color.

[hiscyberdesire]

How he makes my insides feel. ★

[herfavoritecolorisgreen]

[aleisters]

[CROWD CHANTING 'YOWIE WOWIE']

[whiskykitteeeeee]

Red <3

[markonpark]

Etsy, MARKonPARK: Family photo. 1960s Esgar family photo (Chuck, Lavelle, Chris, Marla, and Ann).

[babyb3lls]

𝚂𝚊𝚌𝚛𝚒𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚎, 𝚍𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚎𝚛, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚊𝚐𝚎 ♥️