Hej! :) @julia-alt - Tumblr Blog

Yesterday my dad told me something that I think maybe more people need to hear.

You’re allowed to just do things for fun.

He told me that in this modern society, especially the United States, we seem to have this attitude that we shouldn’t do something unless we’re aiming to be the best at it. If we can’t sing like Beyonce or Frank Sinatra or something there’s no point to singing. If we can’t make the next big breakthrough there’s no point in looking into mechanics and engineering.

But, he tells me, it took him a long time to figure out that life doesn’t have to be a race. If you want to take up the piano when you’re a teenager or later you’re not going to master it. You’re not going to be able to play to huge concert halls, but that also shouldn’t stop you. You can study a language out of curiosity and then drop the ball if you want. You can just get okay at something or even be terrible at it. You can drop it for days or years and then pick it up again and it doesn’t have to be a shameful thing.

I’m really glad he told me that because today I opened my sketchpad for the first time in months and just started drawing. And it looks terrible. But I don’t care. I don’t have the talent or patience or spacial awareness to get anywhere near good at drawing, but it’s fun. It helps me focus my mind and nobody has to see it.

And because of what he told me, I’m thinking maybe someday soon I will take up the bass guitar. And I won’t worry about how well I do, or how fast I learn, or that I haven’t played an instrument since sixth grade, or that I don’t have that much time to practice. I’m just gonna enjoy the experience. Maybe I’ll try swing dancing again and take a class because I’m not the best dancer but damn if it isn’t fun.

Yeah, you don’t have to be good at things. It’s not a requirement. Maybe that seems obvious but it had never occurred to me before. You’re allowed to just enjoy what you’re doing. For me, that feels like a life changing revelation. I don’t have to be good at something to like it. I don’t have to put 100% effort into everything I do. It’s kind of amazing.

julia-alt

When was the last time you did something just for the sake of it? or What do you do just for the sake of it?

#words #fun #enjoy #just do it

I guess now’s a good time to let you know I’ve recently created an Instagram account? Feel free to follow me on there. What tumblr is doing is definitely a step in the wrong direction…

#juliaalt #julezalt #photography

T-shirts: Lights, Ellie Goulding, Arkells, TSH

Selling a bunch of T-shirts of Lights and other bands. I still really like all of the bands, no worries, I simply don't wear these. :) Just message me if interested.

1 / Lights Bear / American Apparel XS 2 / Lights Noir / Gildan Ladies M 3 / Lights Skin&Earth bundle / Alstyle S 4 / Ellie Goulding Halcyon / Gildan M 5 / Arkells / S

shirts: 10 € each + shipping costs from Europe / definitely up for an exchange if you have Lights' first official comic book :D

#selling #merch #Lights #Lights Poxleitner #Ellie Goulding #Arkells

inkskinned

how terrifying, to be aging and girl. at 18 i was told by men that i was “the perfect age,” and i still thought it was a compliment. is it because at 20 i figured out how sharp those words were. i felt old at 21, felt like if grey hairs came and my spine cracked i was done for. how scary. i am reminded constantly by “realistic” ideas in fantasy novels that i should have five kids.

my life feels short. like it is squeezed into my twenties. like at 30 i become ghost, just another mother or hard worker or both, just another background character. like if i am not settled and making a difference by 27 i should just give up already. is this something men feel? like a clock is painted on their back, one hand warning: your beauty is something you are valued for and it is something you cannot get back.

and why was i only beautiful, i wonder, at 18 on a riverbank. i’m told often my childish face is a blessing. that i shouldn’t want to look older. one told me i was a trap falling: “you look young but you’re not” he said to me, “it kind of led me on”. am i not young?

maybe i am wrong. maybe it’s just how we all feel, getting old, like time is slipping from us. maybe men do worry that they will be alone forever if they don’t settle by thirty, maybe it’s even because they think they’ll turn ugly. maybe we all squish our lives into that incredibly young decade. what do i know. i’m still learning.

shad0wspinner

I’m almost 25 and I’ve been feeling this a lot lately.

plaidadder

As a 48 year old lesbian, I offer my perspective on aging, and you all can take it or leave it.

Our understanding of our own aging is very much conditioned by the priorities of straight men, who in the aggregate understand beauty and femininity, indeed women in general, in literally superficial terms. Most of the ads you see for anti-aging products, for instance, focus on its *visible* symptoms: graying hair, wrinkling skin or discolored skin, sagging breasts, changes in body shape, etc. These are the symptoms of female aging that men perceive, and they are the ones that the cosmetics and the larger anti-aging industry therefore target. (Men do have their own anxieties about visibly aging, mostly related to hair loss and body shape; but they are not, for instance, generally terrified by the appearance of wrinkles, unless they work in the entertainment industry.)

But aging is not just something that happens to everyone else’s perception of you; it is something that happens in your own body, at levels deeper than anyone else (especially anyone male) is ever likely to perceive. From my POV the really important thing about aging is how you feel. Your body is where you live; it is for you. Aging is inevitable, but it can to some extent be intentional, in that you can (to some extent; all this is limited by the amount of time and money available to you and the healthfulness of the environments you have lived in and how you did in the DNA lottery) choose to do things that will help preserve the things about your body that make YOU happy to be living there–things like flexibility, strength, and the smooth functioning of your major organs. Generally, if you’re healthy, you don’t think about any of this stuff at 18 or 25; but when you are 40, you will start to take more of an interest as you come to understand how important all of this is to your own ability to enjoy life.

So that sucks, as does menopause, which is the unacknowledged referent of a lot of cultural anxieties about female aging. But the point I want to make is: one of the worst things that the phenomenon described so evocatively by the OP does to girls and young women is to make them so anxious about their own bodies that they are unable to enjoy and appreciate their youth while they have it. And that is theft. It really is. I miss youth, but even more do I regret the fact that when I was young I was so fucked up by cultural obsessions about female beauty that I was unable to fully enjoy the body that I had then. I did not appreciate its many excellent qualities, and it was a long time before I allowed myself to accept and act on its desires. At a time when I was beautiful, I thought I was fat and ugly, and that because no man would ever find me attractive, I was doomed to loneliness and isolation. After I met Mrs. Plaidder, her conviction of my beauty eventually passed into me. As a result, I enjoyed my life in general a lot more in my 30s than I did in my teens. I’ve enjoyed my 40s more too, apart from the cancer and the current catastrophe. Age does actually bring experience and knowledge and, to those able to profit from it, wisdom. You do gain, even as you lose.

Catullus, yelling in Latin verse at his lover Lesbia, asks her venomously, “cui videberis bella?” By whom will you be seen to be beautiful? It’s a question that still poisons our sense of self and our understanding of our own possibilities. By myself, asshole, she should have replied; and so may we all, at any age.

cricketcat9

Long post, but - my three cents. At 67 I don’t feel old and/or ugly. In fact, I really enjoy myself. I’m happy with how I look - because I got over the brainwashed way we see ourselves. As plaidadder said: “even more do I regret the fact that when I was young I was so fucked up by cultural obsessions about female beauty that I was unable to fully enjoy the body that I had then.” BTW, plaidadder - you are STILL beautiful, trust me. The American cult of youth and they way of evaluating women’s beauty as inevitably liked to age is fucking TOXIC. I now live in South America; was complemented ( in a non-creepy way) by two guys less than half my age last week, grey hair & all. Love it here.

justgot1

You will never feel as old as you do in your late 20s to late 30s. Seriously. Western culture makes the passing of youth into a tragic death and that’s – so fucking sad. Once it has passed and you can no longer reasonably think of yourself as young, no matter how desperately you try to hang on to it – you find yourself in a whole other country, you realize that you’ve lived on one side of a mountain all your life and told there’s nothing beyond it only to discover that there is, in fact, an entire world on the other side. Don’t believe the lie.

oceaxe-ifdawn

I’m just going to reblog all these responses because they’re so solid and right on.

indigobluerose

When grown men say that eighteen is the perfect age for a woman, they don’t really mean “prettiest” anyway. They mean “still really vulnerable, but technically legal.”

r2smuse

Yes, the comment about an 18 year old girl being “the perfect age” says less to me about how aging if viewed differently for men and women (it is) and more about the ickiness of the patriarchy in deciding that a woman, finally of legal age, is now ripe (literally). and that someone would say that, out loud, without twirling his mustache. ew ew ew.

tishinada

As someone in her late 50s, I have to agree with the responses. Recognizing and letting go of ageism and toxic beauty standards are incredibly liberating for a woman. When I asked myself what I really cared about and wanted to do, even made a list, I realized being considered beautiful by someone else not only wasn’t important, it wasn’t even on the list.

Now, if there are parts of that culture that you take pleasure from, especially an artistic pleasure, revel in it your own way. My daughter-in-law loves dying her hair and nail polish, but she does them for herself - wild hair colors and very detailed nails - because they appeal to the artist in her. What’s important is to live for yourself, not for anyone else. @r2smuse mentioned the patriarchy. Convincing women to view their very existence through the lens of male consumers is the heart of patriarchy.

I want to cry when I realize that there are still 20 year olds who are wondering if they’re already past their “moment.” Believe me, you haven’t even started at 30 most of the time.

dicht-erbij

this really helps because i often feel like i might as well give up bc i’m 25 and haven’t reached anything yet; i’m too old now, my best years are behind me. somewhere i KNOW this is bullshit but it still makes me feel very useless and tired and ugly and old.

courageous

I think aging is this big thing for everyone, and I too am feeling the pressure of 25 and getting “old”. I love all these responses, all these reflections. I want to add a little bit about what I’ve experienced as someone who has a lot of older friends, and two sisters who are significantly older than me.

My relationship recently ended, and one of the conversation I had with my ex was of how scared he was of getting older. He’s 27, and felt the need to settle down, build a career. As a reaction, he’d go out partying a lot (because he can’t do that when he’s older) and he decided now was the time to buy himself into a business so he’d know he’d be living in the same small town for the rest of his life.

My oldest sister is 14 years older than me. She’s currently 40 and after a lot of years trying is finally getting her second child next month. She’s my BIG example when it comes to aging. She, and her little family, show me that age is just a state of mind. That you can still go out, be silly, build a new career, have a kid, travel around the world, look amazing - basically you can do whatever the hell you want, no matter how old you are. Yes, you get older, and yes you get certain new responsibilities, but this doesn’t have to diminish your possibilities at all. My life just got turned upside down because I thought my last relationship would be “it”. And my feelings go from really excited about the wide-open future to being pretty damn scared about being alone. Will I still find a relationship in time to have kids? Will I dive too much into my career to find a partner and even want kids? Do I still have a chance to “make it” (whatever that is) now that I’m nearly 26? Will I still be attractive? Will my achievements still be looked at as good or interesting, or am I too late to be a young talent? Does it even matter that I’m not a “young talent” anymore? Do I care about that? (yes, I do and I know that’s stupid).

Another little tidbit: my mother is friends with a lot of mothers, and she talked with a few about my breakup. All the mothers with sons said that their son had a sort of crisis around the age of 27. All in a different way (one regretted not having finished college, other regretted he wasn’t married yet, my ex felt like he hadn’t built himself enough of a future yet), but they all had it. I don’t think worrying about aging is a female thing, I think it’s a very human thing. (But yes, regarding beauty, we do have the disadvantage that old women often get seen as less attractive, while older men actually get perceived as more attractive.)

julia-alt

Long and interesting post worth reading.

#words #aging #beauty

K.I.Z 1 March 2018 | WUK | Vienna

#juliaalt #Julia Altenburger #photography #concert #gig #music #live #KIZ #K.I.Z

K.I.Z 1 March 2018 | WUK | Vienna

#juliaalt #Julia Altenburger #photography #concert #gig #music #live #KIZ #K.I.Z

K.I.Z 1 March 2018 | WUK | Vienna

#juliaalt #Julia Altenburger #photography #concert #gig #music #live #KIZ #K.I.Z

Now that was a first: For one night, the WUK was its own little world full of women - which was great! :) The reason? K.I.Z.'s women-only tour. They went all out, the bands were dressed-up as women and besides them I really only saw like five guys around, all of which were working there and also had wigs on.

feeling it | K.I.Z 1 March 2018 | WUK | Vienna