he/it | 20 | this place is for yelling into the void. sometimes I post art though
my banner is my ocs! :D: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/sillyboysinc (art blog)
another thing is that when you criticize crossdressers / drag performers wholesale by emphasizing particular styles of dress or makeup associated with them as a "mockery" of womanhood, when your criticism hinges entirely on the framing of beautification practices associated with these labels as excessive, exaggerated, unnatural for an "actual woman", the standard of womanhood being invoked, consciously or not, is, *explicitly*, a white one—because womanhood is defined from the standpoint of whiteness and eurocentrism.
the bar for "passing" as a woman as a brown or black person is much higher, black and brown people are consistently expected to modify their bodies in "unnatural" ways to a much greater degree to emphasize their femininity, whether it's straightening their hair, silicone pads, wearing more makeup, more revealing clothing, undergoing cosmetic surgeries to shift fat around their body, etc
similarly, most of the practices and procedures decried as "mocking" and "misogynistic", as "defiling" womanhood, in so many posts by white transfeminists on this website are the same fucking practices used by women, cis and trans, who are not white, trying to make their womanhood more legible in societies that associate femininity with whiteness
when you decry the prevalence of "obviously fake tits and thighs and garish makeup" in drag, often paired with the assertion that the intent is simply to ridicule womanhood and no one could genuinely derive gendered actualization from it, it echoes much of the criticism levied at travestis and the prevalence of silicone injections among predominantly black transfeminine people in Brazil, who wished to emphasize a particular standard of beauty that may not be considered "natural" to white cis women in America.
this, the travesti's beautification practices being contrasted negatively with the emerging field of transsexuality, the push by medical institutions to make existing embodiments of what we now call transfemininity conform to the transsexual patient's more "natural" and "dignified" womanhood, which more closely resembles the eurocentric beauty standards set by American sexologists and captured by the Brazilian clinic, is intrinsically tied to the travesti's greater marginalization from cis society
think about what cultural expectations you're upholding by framing femininity and effeminacy and its associated practices as needing to defer to the sanctity of "actual" womanhood, whose womanhood is that, what groups of people this statement protects—does this logic actually become meaningfully progressive when you append "trans" to it?
so a while ago, I saw this photo going around on tumblr:
at first, I thought this was photoshopped. I mean, "welcome new man in your life"? that feels like a translation error, or someone being silly on purpose.
but guess what! turns out, Frosty Slaw Man is real!
and soon...he will be mine. let's get cooking
(full disclosure: I crafted this snowman and took notes about it over a year ago. and then, like with many things in my life, I forgot about him, and let him drift into the ADHD void of Things I'm Not Currently Staring At, where object permanence is tentative and largely unrealized.
but here we are! and here he is: the slaw man. it's time to share him with you, so that you can suffer as I have suffered, and/or rejoice in my gelatin creation!)
so this recipe photo originally came from Mid-Century Menu (archive link), a blog that seems like one after my own heart, and which once tried to make the Slaw Man (with not much success; but we'll get back to that)! but it's not just that blog that has copies of this ad. I also found it on reddit, and in a few different places on ebay!
lookit that guy! he's a real guy!
both the reddit post and some of the ebay listings say that this is from 1963 (though I haven't been able to figure out which magazines it was printed in, to confirm this for myself). but in looking this up, I discovered something else fun! there's another version of this ad!
Best Foods is what Hellmann's stuff is called on the west coast, and the "this is no place for second best" thing makes a lot more sense when you consider that the ad was probably made for Best Foods first, and then just reused and rebranded for the east coast
the more you know!
anyway the benefit of finding this alternate ad is that the scan on this image is a lot clearer, and so the recipe is more readable! and in looking at it, I've realized something important:
when Mid-Century Menu tried this recipe, they got an ingredient amount wrong.
when they made their beloved Slaw Man, they had the water amount written down as 1/4 cup, but looking at this scan up close, it is actually 3/4 cup of water! something that might make a significant difference, considering we're working with gelatin!
(there's also another change I want to make compared to what they did, when I do this recipe. but we'll get into that in a sec.)
for now: we begin
so. there's no way I'm making a Slaw Man this large. I am just one person, and considering the ingredients of this, I don't think I'm going to be able to consume that much Slaw.
two entire heads of cabbage? three pounds of cottage cheese, a thing that I don't even like to eat? no. that's a bad idea.
so I'm starting small here and making this 1/3 the size of the original:
2 packets of unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
1 cup mayo
1 tsp salt
1lb cottage cheese
4 cups shredded cabbage
surely this will result in a reasonable amount of Man
...okay, I started chopping the cabbage thinking it would be easier, but I've given up and pulled out a grater. this is much better! and somehow more violent (affectionate)
the recipe says to soften the gelatin in cold water, and then stir over hot water until it's dissolved. I'm going to assume "stir over hot water" means a double boiler, so let's do that
hmmm, the gelatin is very foamy? it’s melted, but the bottom of the pot feels really....sticky
okay. after a couple minutes more and no change, I’m calling this good enough.
so one thing that others who have attempted this recipe have not taken into consideration is the cottage cheese. you see, the others used normal cottage cheese, but the recipe says to use "cottage cheese, cream style"
I’ll be real, I’m not 100% what that means, since we don’t have that here. but I can take an educated guess! so let’s blend the cottage cheese!
(with an immersion blender. I am not willing to wash an actual blender because of this)
mmm, yes. very smooth
...actually. why isn't all cottage cheese like this? the thing I hate about cottage cheese is the texture, so why isn't it all smooth and creamy like this?? I could eat this!!
a new discovery is made every day in this house.
okay, time to start mixing things together.
ah, frosty. I opened a whole new thing of mayo for you! do you feel special?
(I'd make a "pre-dinner snack?" joke, but sometimes I think I'm the only one that remembers Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time)
okay, the mayo, cottage cheese, and salt have been added to the gelatin. but as this cools, the texture is getting...hmm. less than appealing.
lastly: the cabbage
oh. oh this is not very nice
next it says to pack the "salad" into a one pound container, and two six-cup bowls, but since I made this recipe so much smaller, I'm going to uhhhh. uh. find some bowls that seem like they'd be correct...snowman? proportions?
ah. this bowl is too big.
hey, these'll work!
now I just have to let them chill for a while, and continue another day.
(edit from current!me: ahhh oh my god I forgot this was pretty soon after we adopted Jackie! look at these cat pics that I took while I was food crime-ing!
look at them having their little interactions! Knuckles was trying so hard to be friends with her! I love them)
hello! two days later and we are ready to assemble the slawman. and my sibling has started referring to him as "frosty: attorney at slaw", so that's fun.
I've done a thing where, as these set, I flipped them around in the bowl so that hopefully they'd be more round. we'll see if they actually stay like this.
I have also made some decorations for him out of peppers, olives, and carrots!
let's build our boy
oh he's so heavy. and wobbly
no no no he almost fell over!!
okay. he's fine. but more skewers were needed.
and...okay. he is complete.
behold!
gaze upon my beautiful man!
(he is not structurally sound! he wobbles unsteadily as I rotate him! there are already cracks forming in the gelatin around where his arms are! don't worry about it!)
now it's time to stab him
and...to devour him
this tastes like...a bland coleslaw? and not even that. it's just sort of a salty, cottage cheese-y cabbage. the ingredients don't combine to become something greater, they simply...sit there. like this.
and the texture is...mmm. it's not a jello kind of texture, but it is a bit squashy in a way that's mildly strange.
it's very creamy once it softens in your mouth.
...I don't like this!
and look! taking just that one chunk from him was enough to destabilize him entirely :(
RIP frosty. now I just have to see if I can eat all of you before you go bad.
(note from current!me: I could not.
I ate maybe half of him over the course of many days, often adding other stuff to him to try to add some flavor: bacon, frozen peas, cheese, etc. but even with that, I just couldn't stomach him.
after a while I stuck what was left of him in the freezer, hoping that maybe I'd find the will to consume the rest of him some other day.
do you know what a frozen-and-then-thawed mixture of cabbage, cottage cheese, mayo, and gelatin looks and tastes like?
i need to age regress to 18 and do a bachelors degree correctly this time and get a million dollar job the moment i graduate and make 2000 friends who all love and worship me and find the artifact and defeat the evil mastermind and slay the ape
i wish someone would pet and love me unconditionally like a dog (remembers people follow me and see my posts) ive actually never cared about or wanted anything
yoy all just hate me because I'm cold and distant and don't put effort into any relationships and off putting and frustrating to try to help or make plans with and I don't text and I don't call and I don't like doing much and I constantly make excuses for it all
VICE at-home interview of “the trans dr frankenstein” americas most notorious distributor of illegal hrt/backalley gender reassignment surgeries actually just a weird antisocial 20-something obsessed with midcentury “male figure magazines” and drinks monster while planning domestic terrorist attacks on politicians etc
