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so here’s a fun story about this movie. guess who loves this movie? me! i do! i love this movie. i love this movie so much that when i was in the 7th grade and i saw “first wives club 2” on pay per view i was like: HELL YEAH!! FIRST WIVES CLUB TWO!! NO ONE TOLD ME THERE WAS A SEQUEL!!!

here’s the synopsis for first wives club 2:

disgruntled first wives take their ex-husbands’ new lovers under their wing.

sounds great, right? awesome viewing material for a precocious 11-year-old.

so i buy this movie, and like, three minutes into it i’m starting to feel suspicious?? like it’s really low quality and my girls are nowhere in sight?? how come none of the first wives are the same?? how come they’re alone in a bedroom with mood lighting?? why is she taking off her shirt?? why are they both taking off their shirts?? WHY ARE THEY—

here’s what i did not know about first wives club 2:

it is a lesbian porno of no relation to the beloved 1996 classic.

so of course i, horrified that i’ve accidentally bought porn on my family’s account (and in that state of panic that kids work themselves into whenever anything regarding sex is mentioned), quickly shut off the TV and go upstairs and watch an episode of veggie tales to like, cleanse my soul and apologize to jesus, and that’s that.

EXCEPT, OF COURSE:

you have to pay for pay per view.

so the end of the month comes and i have completely put this incident out of my mind, haha, i accidentally bought porn, how funny, TELL NO ONE. right? and i’m sitting at a nice dinner with my mother, my stepfather, and my very religious aunt deb, and we’re just talking about farm things, whatever, when suddenly my mother puts her fork down and says, “okay, there’s something we need to discuss. as a family.”

AS A FAMILY.

and i’m like, running through a list of people i know who could conceivably be dead, and fantasizing about my mother announcing that she’s going to buy me My Own Computer Just Because U Earned It Kiddo, and she pulls out a piece of paper that says DIRECTV across the top. and i’m like: OH NO.

“i received the tv bill today,” my mother said, and i was like, shoveling potatoes into my mouth as fast as i could because i knew that when i went to PORN PRISON they weren’t going to feed me this kind of quality starch. “does anybody want to tell me who purchased the pornography?”

as a reminder, a quick table survey:

my mother, surprised and disappointed by the porn bill (innocent)

my stepfather, a grumbly old cowboy who just wants to sing along to kenny chesney and watch the hunt for red october (innocent)

my aunt deb, a super religious catholic whose best friend is a nun named Sister Placid (innocent)

me, the 11-year-old with a mouthful of potatoes who definitely purchased the lesbian pornography

silence.

my mother said, “i’m not going to ask again.”

silence.

my aunt looked at my stepdad. my stepdad looked at my aunt. NOBODY LOOKED AT ME, THE 11-YEAR-OLD WITH A MOUTHFUL OF POTATOES WHO DEFINITELY PURCHASED THE LESBIAN PORNOGRAPHY.

my mother shook her head and put the bill down. “this was incredibly inappropriate,” she said. “skip, deb, whoever. buy that shit on your own time. i’m not paying for it. what if molly had seen it?”

WHAT IF MOLLY HAD SEEN IT?

“don’t expose my kid to that crap.”

DON’T

EXPOSE

MY KID

TO THAT CRAP

“if you want to watch porn, fine, but do it in private and don’t expect me to pay for it. i can’t believe one of you did that in the living room.”

I CAN’T BELIEVE ONE OF YOU DID THAT

IN THE LIVING ROOM

but molly, why didn’t you own up to it and explain that it was an accident?

are you fucking kidding

i did not want to go to porn prison

the fun conclusion to this story is that i never owned up to it, which means that there are 3 people in the world who have not solved the mystery of the lesbian porn. a quick survey:

my mother, who lives every day wondering whose porn she paid for

my stepfather, who probably wishes he knew less about his wife’s sister’s porn preferences

my aunt, who probably wishes she knew less about her sister’s husband’s porn preferences

but molly, why don’t you own up to it now, with the safety of time and distance and the knowledge that porn prison isn’t real?

are you fucking kidding

this is the best thing i’ve ever done

ohcurtains

what an amazing story

agirlcalledfrost

I LOVE IT SO MUCH WHEN OFGEO’S PORN PRISON STORY COMES AROUND AGAIN FROM A TOTALLY UNRELATED SOURCE

SERIOUSLY THIS ONE HAS LIVEJOURNAL ROOTS MAN IT DOESN’T GET MORE THIRD PARTY THAN THAT ofgeography CONGRATULATIONS

lierdumoa

I made these points in a reblog, but I want to re-state them in their own post, so that it shows up in the main tag.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a story about sexists, told by non-sexists.

I know it’s a bit confusing, because we’re so used to seeing stories about sexists told by sexists. We’re so used to sexism being portrayed by sexist male filmmakers for the sake of a sexist male audience, that we’ve been fooled into thinking this is the only way sexism even can be portrayed.

eabevella’s review of MMFR pointed out that the villains never call women “bitches,” nor are they shown overtly leering at the women in the film, and took this as evidence that the villains in the movie are not sexist. That they objectify women, but only in the way that they objectify everything, and their objectification is in fact quite egaitarian.

While the assessment that the villains are not shown leering or spitting gendered slurs is correct, I’m going to go ahead and say that the conclusion eabevella drew from this is wrong, wrong, so very wrong.

See, there’s a great lie we’ve been told – that in order for an audience to understand that a character is sexist, women must be humiliated on camera.

The truth is this:

When a male character calls a female character a bitch in a movie, that is not the filmmaker’s way of showing the audience the character is sexist; that is the filmmaker’s way of showing the audience that the character’s sexist point of view is worth hearing.

Read that paragraph over and over until it sinks in.

Mad Max: Fury Road makes it absolutely clear that the villains are sexist, and it does so without ever once implying that their sexist point of view is worth hearing. Instead, we learn that they are sexist second-hand, through context and world-building.

We see that the wives have been dressed in ridiculous, impractical gauze bikinis. We see that the wives are not only young and healthy, but also model-pretty. Through these subtle details, the narrative makes it clear that Immorten Joe, the villain, chose these women not just as useful stock, but as sexual objects in which he took sexual pleasure.

In contrast, when the movie introduces the audience to the wives, the movie makes sure to portray them in as humanized, and non-sexualized a manner as possible. Even when they are literally bathing together, we don’t see any water running down chests while the models arch their backs and run their fingers through their hair and sigh pleasurably. Instead we see a bunch of women perfunctorily rinsing off legs and feet, looking exhausted. When they see Max for the first time, they take on fearful, closed off expressions, and project fearful, closed off body language.

Compare this to, for example, Theon Greyjoy’s castration in HBO’s Game of Thrones. We know he was castrated, even though no one ever says the word “castration” and the camera never shows a penis being lopped off. The filmmakers manage to convey that the mutilation has taken place, but respect the character enough not to make a lurid scene out of it (and yet proceed to make lurid scenes out of every possible denigration and mutilation of every possible female character they can cram into their commercial free timeslot).

As for Imperator Furiosa, it is hard for us, the audience, to not see Charlize Theron as a beautiful woman. But when we compare her appearance in the movie to that of the wives, it’s clear to see that Imperator Furiosa is, in fact, the opposite of what Immorten Joe and his war mongering culture view as desirable, beautiful, or womanly. They do not sexually objectify her because to them she is sexless.

If we ignore our own biased understanding of Furiosa – as a character that a beautiful actress is portraying – and instead immerse ourselves in the culture of the Miller’s world, it becomes obvious that Furiosa has taken great pains to make herself genderless under the villains’ gaze, and that her efforts have succeeded.

From Entertainment Weekly:

It was Theron herself who unlocked the image of the androgynous warrior—a woman who has escaped the fate of other women by erasing her gender.

“I just said, ‘I have to shave my head,’” Theron recalls. Furiosa is a war-rig operator living in a place where all other females have been enslaved as breeding and milking chattel. But Furiosa is barren and therefore of no value to the despot Immortan Joe and his soldiers. She is considered worthless. ”They almost forget she’s a woman, so there is no threat,” she says. “I understood a woman that’s been hiding in a world where she’s been discarded.” [x]

The villains in the movie are absolutely misogynist. They are absolutely sexist. They do absolutely view beautiful women as sexual objects that exist purely for the male gaze.

But the movie is not about them.

The movie, instead, portrays sexist men as obstacles for the heroes of the movie to overcome.

feministmedia

This is brilliant and well worth the read.

mysharona1987

Treating women with respect should not be contingent on whether or not it ‘gets you somewhere.’ Women have value even if we are too fat or too ugly or too loud or too standoffish or too homosexual to serve a ‘purpose’ for men. Women are people.

Lindy West (via thedatingfeminist)

baconfish

Meanwhile, in Scotland.

jongyyy

What cartoon is this

mildlyamused

Guys heads up. When women try to talk to you about rape culture and you start deflecting with hypothetical gray situations, all we hear is you trying to convince yourself that you haven’t been an unknowing rapist in your past

anxietyhaver

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhh

queen-goldfish-deactivated20160

mmmmmmmmmmmm spicey burnin truth

montrealgod

the shade is real 🌚

sinbadism

holy shit hilary was a fucking young republican

aphony-cree

In 1964 Bernie Sanders was 23 years old, graduating college, and had developed his own life and ideals as an independent adult.

In 1964 Hilary Clinton was a 17 year old high school student, being influenced by her family and school teachers who were mostly conservative republicans. By the time she was 23 she had been active in the anti-war campaign for years, during law school she worked on civil rights issues, and by the time she graduated Yale Law she had fully changed her political alignment to be a liberal democrat.

Once again, people are pitting an adult male against a teenage girl and denouncing the teenager for not having reached the same level of maturity and life experiences as the grown man. I do think Bernie Sanders is the better choice for president but we should be showing this through their current politics, not by claiming that a 17 year old girl should have had all of her political views fully sorted out before graduating high school. The real life experiences that shape our political views usually happen in our early 20s, it’s not uncommon for someone to change their mind about political issues during this time.

grumpygrizzlies

dirigibleplumjam

addictionly:

mahinaalexander:

rainbowsaur:

andypseudo:

grumpygrizzlies:

Robin Williams street art tribute off Melrose in LA on 17 August 2014

Whoa.

This makes me sad

hannahbakerkelleyohara

My little gay heart was already exploded by the time I saw this. NOW IM BURSTING

putyouinabettermood

everybodyhateskimi-deactivated2

Look at those little feet!

breemaquillage

Toe beans

anothercleverjedimindtrick

laughing-moons

popculturediedin2009

February 16, 2007

When Britney Spears arrived at Esther’s Hair Salon in Tarzana, California, the world was watching her every move. Hours earlier, she had arrived back in California after spending less than 24 hours in a rehab in Antigua, and for months prior, she was plastered all over the tabloids as another girl gone wild - alongside Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan (who had just checked out of rehab weeks earlier). For the past year, Britney had been under constant scrutiny: driving with her son Sean on her lap, then almost dropping him on a sidewalk, melting down in an interview with Matt Lauer, and then gaining weight. But when she filed for divorce from Kevin Federline, the worst had been set into motion. Endless nights of partying, passing out in nightclubs, drug use, and viral crotch shots had cemented her fate as another Hollywood trainwreck. With Anna Nicole Smith’s death still making front pages, it was hoped that the media would show more understanding for a 25 year old woman who had been through more than she could handle - and with a close relative dying of cancer still fresh in her mind, in addition to a custody battle intensifying by the day, things weren’t getting any better. When Britney arrived at the salon at 7pm that night, paparazzi said that they had seen her crying in her car for 10 minutes - tear stains still visible on her sweatshirt. She asked the owner to open the salon, and then to shave her head. The owner refused, so Britney grabbed the buzzer, and in one moment, Britney had added another twist to her tabloid narrative. Once the ‘virgin’ - then the ’bad girl.’ She had now become the ‘mad girl.’ When she left the salon that night, paparazzi asked her why she did it. She said, “Because of you.”

whtoleander

this is so sad

phosphorescentt-deactivated2015

If I could offer a young person advice about anything it would be do NOT make life decisions based on your boyfriend or girlfriend. Girls especially. Do NOT stay close to home for him, do not skip opportunities to travel or study abroad, do not pick a safe college to be with him. Expand your horizons. Broaden your own life. He is not the world.

mfjrr

onlydoll

woody allen, the irredeemable creep whose obvious misogyny was misinterpreted as creative genius by the college-boy mentality.

gfdsnbjsfkdsvnc-deactivated2015

#gosh i wonder why sylvia plath’s poetry is important to young women when we’re bombarded with so much misogynistic literature written by ~the greats~ of the 20th century #if you want to talk about highly romanticized and overrated writers we can talk about bukowski hemingway kerouac ginsberg and so on #who were not only basic writers but were also vile people irl #i don’t understand how people can idolize pedophiles and wife beaters and then mock people who like plath? ~fionaapples

professorsparklepants

Oh wow yes, let’s talk about how Plath’s struggle with motherhood and desire for bodily autonomy aren’t relatable to a college-age teenage girl. Let’s talk about how teenage girls are twice as likely to develop depression as their male counterparts. Let’s talk about how countless other men have had their deaths romanticized beyond belief without any question, but the second women grasp onto someone they’re shot down as silly and overly invested.

elizabitchtaylor-deactivated202

It’s ~interesting~ how there are tons of jokes about Sylvia Plath (and Virginia Woolf) committing suicide, but none about Ernest Hemingway or David Foster Wallace

demonprincex

And even worse, those female writers’ suicides are immortalized in a freakin’ fashion spread.

#Uuuuuuuuuuugh

Jesus Christ…

okay, now I’m mad

OITNB most slept on 😍 ♜

airxaymaca

Hell yea

peaceloveandyanni

I be tryna tell y'all

alonerwolf

dont say “man up” say “level up” instead because video games are cooler than gender binary

cavaleir-eternal-deactivated202

I don’t understand why the media will not acknowledge that some of these women have girlfriends or wives, yet they have no hesitation in acknowledging male partners. This bugs me so much. They have gone public with their relationships so there is nothing stopping these people from just saying it. Their relationship is just as valid as any of the straight women who are celebrating. It’s not that hard to say ‘girlfriend’ or ‘wife’ instead of ‘fan’ or ‘friend’.

hotcoins

me n the kids

kids: where does the sun go at night?

me: where ever the fuck it wants, who the fuck are you

madeofpersonal-deactivated20160

Cast list released for a new film? More like

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