TGIF: Links and a Meme!

[holdouttrout]

Today's XKCD is a brilliant commentary on modern literature. :-) I've actually wondered about *both* these things before, although I generally think the movie is awesome. It just goes to show you how we give male characters a pass on certain behaviors and condemn women for perfectly logical decisions.

Leverage in my town OMG! I sense stalking welcoming favored entertainers to Oregon in my future.

Yesterday I read a comment on a fat accemptance blog post about "feeling beautiful" that struck a chord with me. The comment said something along the lines of not being beautiful, and being okay with that. The thing is--I'm *not* pretty. I think I'm okay-looking, but as far as our society goes, I'm just...not beautiful. Sometimes I feel pretty, or sexy, or confident, or like I could climb a mountain, and sometimes people comment on how awesome I look, which is nice, but it doesn't mean I'm the kind of beautiful people mean when they say Person X is beautiful. *shrugs*

This isn't a pity post, so please don't comment on my physical appearance. *g* Anyway, the point of that is to link this article from one of my favorite blogs (Dress a Day, despite the fact I don't wear dresses that often): You Don't Have to be Pretty. Which is pretty much my opinion on the matter.

Finally, here's some good information for my readers to know:

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
porn (11x) crack (1x)

Comments

[ultranos-fic.livejournal.com]

...I think that quiz's algorithm is broken. It says my journal is G. And I have the Sam/Cam cookie!porn on the first page. Not to say anything of my tendency to swear like a sailor engineer.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

We're thinking it doesn't look under cuts, which is unfortunate. :-)

[ultranos-fic.livejournal.com]

I don't think it looks past the first page either. I counted a bunch of swears on page 2 outside of cuts. :)

Oh, coders, you are so funny.

[ziparumpazoo]

I randomly seeded the word 'porn' all over my journal to test that theory and still couldn't get above a 'G' rating (and I so wanted to put a big red 'R' banner on the page!). Methinks it's flawed.

*off to remove all random instances of porn before I forget where they were*

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Ha ha ha! That's awesome. Thank you for testing this for us. :-)

[ziparumpazoo]

eh, it's Friday and I'm procrastinating. I'm also a big dork and like taking things apart. ;D

[beanpot.livejournal.com]

Yep mine was rated g as well. Considering I swear like a sailor with a stubbed toe...

[pulsar4529.livejournal.com]

Let's stalk welcome together!

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Woot!

[pepper-field.livejournal.com]

HAHA! It counts "crack"? *is amused* I do not think you mean what they think it means.

And yeah, I have vaguely thought that about Wesley - I mean, not enough to not love the story, but enough to think that, in real life, I would be very unimpressed by his reasoning. So many of the things that press my buttons are informed by stories like this - and I don't want to dislike them, but I also don't want to ignore the pervasiveness of it.

I've come more and more to believe in the idea that beauty is internal. I think it's about having life and intelligence and humour and curiosity, and all that stuff. There are people who're not conventionally beautiful, but whom I find fascinating and compelling and just want to be around - and conversely, people who are pretty and who I avoid like the plague. It's a big cliche, I know, but I think it's true.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Apparentlly, I'm a porn and crack-addict...which may be true, but not in the way they seem to think.

I definitely think beauty is largely internal. The people I love most I can no longer judge on their outer beauty, and I still remember the cute guy in junior high that turned quite ugly when I realized what a horrid person he was inside.

The problem I have is that external beauty is an impossible standard, and that there's the expectation that I'm supposed to try to meet it at all times. Who has time for that? I have FIC to write, damn it!

[vickyocean.livejournal.com]

"What is beautiful" is something I've been thinking a lot about lately for various reasons. And I've come to the conclusion that I don't think what is now considered the standard of beauty is very beautiful. I hate how plastic women seem to have to look now. All spray-tanned, blonde, cut up, implanted, and injected within in an inch of their lives. It doesn't make people look young, it makes them look like creepy androids. Even if someone is relatively normal looking in real life, they airbrush the crap out of them in photos. I hate that and I hate women that buy into that.

Cleaning out my grandmothers attic I found a stash of my dad's nudie mags from the fifties and sixties (hidden in a paint by numbers set no less). OMG, there is so much difference in the way those women looked and the women you see in Maxim or Playboy. While their make-up may have verged on the artificial (what with all the blue eyeshadow and liquid eye-liner) their bodies were not like little boys with basketballs glued to their chests. They were way more sexy to me than what I see today where women in those magazines look like Barbies in comprising positions.

I'm not quite sure where I was going with this I seem to have rambled myself into a knot. I guess to say, despite the way I've recently been busting out of all my clothes like She-Hulk, I hope I never want to be one of those plastic women and it scares me that so many do and young girls at that.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Changing standards of beauty are only one of the problems I have--even if, say, my particular body type was in vogue, it wouldn't mean a thing to society at large unless we didn't judge women on whether or not they met that standard.

I totally agree with you on the artificial Barbie look. Sometimes I wonder if the damage caused by Barbie isn't because she's an unrealistic doll but because people started thinking she *wasn't* that unrealistic. She doesn't look anything at all like anyone I know personally, and that's including several people I think are actually, legitimately, culturally beautiful.

Honestly, I think we somehow feel that all women ought to be gorgeous, when really, isn't gorgeous sort of unattainable except if you somehow have the perfect mix of features/height/whatever for the time? And there's this whole pressure to meet that standard, and, failing that, to do as much as you can to meet it. Which gets downright tiring.

You're more than welcome for the blog--I think the author sounds like a fabulous person, and it makes me wish I liked wearing dresses more than I do.

[vickyocean.livejournal.com]

Oh and thanks for the link to the Dress A Day blog. It looks right up my alley. : )

[a-loquita.livejournal.com]

Leverage in my town OMG!
Oohhhh! Lucky you!

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

*grins*

That article sort of made my whole morning.

[nandamai]

Mine got PG-13, with the entry for my latest story second from the top. This amuses me.

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! If the site had actually *read* that story, it would have exploded. :-)

[shutthef-up.livejournal.com]

Yay for Leverage moving to filming in and around Portland. How cool!

I should join you in stalking welcoming!

[holdouttrout.livejournal.com]

Definitely! You come, we'll stalk!