how can beauty that is living be anything but true

ᴀᴜɢᴜꜱᴛ | ᴀᴅᴜʟᴛ • ʟᴇꜱʙɪᴀɴ • ᴛɪʀᴇᴅ

[aphroditeslesbian]

hello! I'm August, this is my pinned post of doom

I've changed URL on 17/02/26, from acloudofsparklingdust back to aphroditeslesbian

if we're mutuals, we're best friends in my head so you can definitely randomly dm me for a chat. also if you're my mutual and a lesbian or bi woman over 21, ask me about my discord server.

this post is mostly for my own ease of navigation, tagging with my most used tags.

[eroscestlavie]

I need to stop replying to “how do you make friends in your 30s?” threads because all my answers boil down to “you have to want to know people instead of have friends” and I don’t think people wanna hear that

[carolinawrenn]

Spring Light. Made by Stephanie Wilds.

[seeminglydark]

Last minute print for upcoming conventions, it’s a lifestyle.

They may see me as a weed, or a menace to society, but I’ll spread my hope far and wide and they'll never get rid of me✨forever growing out of the darkest of places. through the cracks and fissures.

[jareckiworld]

Igor Gusev — Dynasty Wind (oil on canvas, 2018)

[museiums]

artist: angela mckay

[homosexualbarbie]

patris

[bard-like]

[what-even-is-thiss]

This post is ancient and stupid but I still laugh whenever I see it

[syring3]

You will get over it because you fucking have to

[femmesandhoney]

last night had a nightmare that me and a group of women were like in the woods together and we kept seeing mysterious doubles of ourselves in the woods doing weird rituals or just quick blips of them around corners and trees but they were all like ghosts going thru the motions we couldn't really interact w our doubles if we saw ours or others until eventually they started Noticing us and one would suddenly stop their Memory ghost performance to stare at you frozen and bone chilling and eventually they started hunting us. also all them were the girls from yellowjackets which felt very fitting.

[inkskinned]

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[inkskinned]

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

[nostalgic-teddyy]

Imagine the level of whimsy I could reach if I just had $5M in my bank account rn

[gluten-free-pussy]

Swinging at the hornets nest here (the “sex work is work” crowd won’t like this one lol) but there was a post going around about like “if you work in hospitality and you think you see a sex worker, no you didn’t. Keep your mouth shut and let them make their money” is honestly sending me. As many of you know, one of my jobs is working front desk at a hotel and like no lads…we can’t “look the other way” at times. Yes, we know when the working girls check in (many are regulars who are open about it, plus after working their long enough you Know™️ when a woman is because you can clock the signs) and of course we can’t stop them but there are times when you literally have to say something. Here are a couple of instances that have happened on my shifts alone:

-I was checking in two girls and knew something was off and asked to see both their ID’s. Only one had a passport and her 18th birthday was literally a week ago. The other one handed me her high school student card. We had to call the police when their pimp came in and started making threats bc we refused to check them in.

-a sex worker checked in the night before and a housekeeper went into the room the next morning and found the woman in a bloody mess. There were chunks of human tissue scattered throughout the room (the housekeeper quit after that. Honestly, housekeepers are literally on the front lines of the bullshit but that’s another story)

-something about a “couple” was offfffffff at check in. The woman was standing with her hands behind her back, had her eyes glued to the floor, and wouldn’t answer questions despite her name being on the reservation. The man was answering for her. When I asked to see her ID, he hands it to me, and when I handed it to her, her arms were covered in bruises. We didn’t let them check in

-there are two properties and one of them has an agreement with a women’s shelter. I’ve checked in women into one property only to see them come in months later to the other property under the womens shelters’ reservation with bruises and broken limbs (many of whom are indigenous women).

So yeah bottom line: with the World Cup soon approaching, all of us -front desk, maintenance, housekeeping, the kitchen staff, sales, you name it all departments- have had to do extensive modules on clocking the signs of human trafficking. You can’t just look the other way because it can mean missing the underaged girl or preventing horrific violence. Yes we have our regulars and yes sometimes it is what it is but no you can’t just look the other way and let them “secure the bag” because I guarantee there’s a pimp in the lobby/parking lot who’s the one getting the bag at her expense.

[honeysuckleporridge]

Kitties 💖

[chick-it-out]

[ellievsbear]

Happy little tree

[probuccalfat]

people will describe their incredibly nebulous sexuality to you that they’ve never been able to define and the whole time you’re thinking that sounds like bisexuality brother