Queer, feminist, childfree spoonie. They/them. Living with my ridiculously cute partner in Europe.
Please let me know if you found AI on my blog. I will remove it.
to be seen on social media, fitness instructors basically always have to have contemporarily attractive body types. whereas fitness instructors you meet in real life have a huge variety of body types.
being a well-qualified fitness instructor requires education and experience and yes, usually a significant level of fitness, be that strength, flexibility, stamina, so on.
Many people have all of those qualifications, while also being fat.
Perhaps the biggest lie advertising has sold you is that being "fit" means being thin. That is spectacularly untrue. The world is filled with fat athletes, amateur, professional, in all variety of sports, performing remarkable feats any of us would be damn proud to accomplish. That's a hell of a lot of experience and talent, including many educators you or I would be lucky to learn from.
Mammal in a Sunday Dress explores the uneasy relationship between femininity, civilisation, and the animal body. At first glance, the figure appears modest and withdrawn. Her posture is composed, her gaze seemingly lowered towards her bare feet, recalling the conventions of nineteenth-century portraiture where women were often depicted as passive objects of observation. Yet as the viewer moves closer, the illusion collapses. Her eyes are not lowered at all. She is looking directly back.
The delayed eye contact transforms the encounter. The viewer approaches believing they are safely observing a woman; instead, they realise they have been observed themselves. The work refuses the traditional power dynamic of portraiture, denying the comfort of anonymous spectatorship. Looking becomes a reciprocal act.
For Cox, the painting considers humanity's persistent desire to separate itself from the rest of the animal kingdom. The title quietly undermines this distinction. A "mammal" is not another creature—it is us. The Sunday dress, rich with cultural associations of femininity, morality, and respectability, becomes an attempt to distinguish ourselves from nature. Yet clothing cannot alter biology. Beneath lace and ritual remains the same vulnerable animal body.
The work also reflects on the historical relationship between women and nature. Across art, religion, and philosophy, women have repeatedly been positioned as closer to instinct, emotion, reproduction, and the body itself, while men have been aligned with reason, culture, and civilisation. Mammal in a Sunday Dress does not reject this comparison. Instead, it questions why proximity to nature has so often been treated as something lesser.
Chiaroscuro isolates the figure within darkness, allowing the luminous dress to symbolise the performance of civilisation while the bare feet quietly return the body to the earth. Neither is presented as more truthful than the other. The painting exists in the tension between performance and instinct, refinement and biology.
Mammal in a Sunday Dress ultimately asks a simple but unsettling question: if every layer of culture were stripped away, what would remain? Not a king. Not a saint. Not a gentleman or a lady. Only another mammal, looking back.
hate when people say something along the lines of "we must get along so well because you are/i am [some astrological sign]" to me. what are you fucking talking about. we get along because im fucking nice. a decision which i regret when you say shit like that
see this is exactly what I'm talking about. this labour is so incredibly invisibilised that there are real human beings, walking about amongst us, leading normal lives, etc., who earnestly believe that machines can make an item of clothing from start to finish.
Hey just in case someone on here doesn’t quite understand how labor intensive making a garment is, here is a list of things that (to the best of my knowledge) cannot be done by machine alone, from a costumer/tailor in training
Cutting - in my opinion, the most labor intensive part of the process. The amount of time/effort needed varies depending on the pattern and if seam allowance is included or marked separately, but no matter what this process can not be done by machine. Each and every panel and piece of fabric that goes into a garment must be cut by hand by a person.
Pinning/clipping - pinning (or clipping) is the stage at which you align the pieces you are going to be stitching together and hold them together with — you guessed it! — either pins or clips. This can not be done by machine.
Stitching - the actual sewing. This can be done by a sewing machine, but that machine still needs to be operated by a human being.
Ironing/pressing - two words that mean the same thing. The iron itself is a machine, but once again, it needs to be operated by a human being.
Finishing - depending on the technique you use, there are certain finishing techniques that can only be done by hand. But, let’s assume we’re talking about fast fashion, which is usually just finished with a simple overlock/serger. Once again: these machines need to be operated by people.
These are just the basic steps to making a garment, and don’t include textile arts that I am not as knowledgeable about, such as weaving, knitting, and crochet. Also, it is important to note that there are a lot of things that can only be done by hand, such as certain stitches and decorative techniques.
Also, the machinery being operated in textile factories is not equivalent to a domestic sewing machine. We’re talking about one of these guys:
See that gray cylinder under the table, behind the knee pedal? That’s the motor. These machines can sew through your fingers bones and all and not even stop. The people in these factories and sweatshops are operating heavy machinery, and are subject to all the risk that comes with that in addition to all of the work I mentioned above.
Please respect textile workers and continue the fight to eliminate the use of sweatshops and exploited labor in the fashion industry!
Reblogging with some additions from a different post o'mine:
" I'm taking a sewing class and I asked my teacher about how much machines can actually do. She said that while a lot of actual fabric we use in our projects is machine-woven, and sometimes there are machines for particular knitting patterns or for the same small thing over and over and over (i.e. socks), the overwhelming majority of pieces of clothing are in fact just sewn together by humans. Usually women. Underpaid and overlooked. Thousands and thousands of them, working 12 hours a day or more in huge warehouse-factories. You're probably wearing something one of those women created right now.
Most of the students (including me) were horrified. We had *no* idea. We figured that, given that we have supercomputers and massive industrial systems for almost every type of product you can buy, surely we would have figured out a better way? Surely there are machines that can put a t-shirt together by now?
She said, no, that's why fast fashion is really so bad. It's not simply about the quality of the product, it's about the human cost.
When you buy a cheap tee that says "Made in Bangladesh", this is where your clothing came from (and these are from one of the nicer factories):
(By Fahad Faisal. CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89582692)
Don't want to believe it? I understand. Here is the wikipedia page, you can read it in your own time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_industry_in_Bangladesh#Readymade_garment_(RMG)_industry
This isn't just true of clothes either. There's an astonishing amount of human labor behind most of our products. Even the steps that are automated are only possible because humans are constantly cleaning, maintaining, repairing, adjusting and fine tuning the machines.
I've noticed that the media that educates us often edits that out on purpose. In 'how its made' type videos, steps humans do by hand are often skipped because they don't make as smooth a video as watching machines do the parts of the production process that can be automated.
It's done*! It's done*! We're not gonna talk about what I did to my sleep schedule up finish it, but it's done*!
We had a nicely aesthetic walk in the woods, so I figured that'd be a great photo op... And it was 26°C at 10 am already, with 77% humidity, my hair wet from a shower and an incline most cars can't handle. Most of the frontal pictures have me looking like a freshly steamed lobster.
But ho-lee bugnuts, does this twirl. It's not even all that heavy (1590g) or warm (the top is a single layer of linen), considering it's 920-ish pieces of fabric pieced together by hand, but structure the patchwork is just stiff enough to flare out perfectly without hanging weird when you're just going about your day. I was one of the few during the hike who didn't have to worry about bugs or stinging nettles on most parts of their body.
...or, you know, committing shenanigans with the plushie of a friend who is stuck at home.
Several people who have seen it so far said the colors work really well together and it looks so balanced. My BIL, who bought "his wife" a sewing machine with zero** ulterior motives a few months ago, asked where to get fabric that's the color and texture of the skirt. Um.
But yeah, data:
- skirt is Salix by Unendlich Schön, lengthened to 80cm, but with the flare reduced to 75% its usual volume (see pictures above on how little difference that makes)
- skirt has center slit pockets anchored in 3 panel seams and the waist seam. Twirling pictures were taken with things inside the pockets, because years of experience have taught me that backpacks and humid heat are a special kind of hell
- bodice is from the Hinterland Dress by Sew Liberated, made with the 3/4th sleeve without the cuff and the elasticated back hack
- patchwork is the Spiny Peaks quilt pattern by Modafabrics, each strip of blocks applied with foundation piecing to the panels, with the zigzag alternatively running vertical and horizontal across each pattern, quilted down extra hard by following the outside line of the green zigzag. I've got about 80-100 blocks left.
- fabric is some IKEA calico and green linen scraps, one half of a digital print dinosaur duvet cover I bought two years ago and scraps of a floral duvet cover I tried to dye a moody dark gray but which ended up black. Some of the inside fabric is also a duvet cover I bought to use for mockups. The entire project was to see if I could make a coherent, wearable garment out of a pile of scraps that weren't enough to do much with.
- The main expense was overlocker thread. I used... A lot of overlocker thread on this one. I'm actively grateful for it being affordable at my local fabric store. Add 3 machine needles and we're looking at about 15 bucks spent making this. If we factor in that the thread and fabric and tools from my stash still have value, as do the 200+ hours of my time that went into making this... This might be the most expensive garment I own.
* the 6m of hem are overlocked and very much not done beyond that. Shhhh.
The pathologization of anger needs to be talked about. What do you mean my therapist is telling me that there’s something “chemically wrong” with me because I am still angry about my mom DYING OF COVID.
of course I’m still angry? My mom and 1.3 million other Americans are dead and you want me to shoot sunshine out of my ass about it?
“But It’s been 3 years since she died, you have complex grief” yeah and she was on a ventilator for 11 days and she kept writing “I am scared” and “I don’t want to die” on a notepad over and over again. While you were still going out unmasked and unvaccinated and coughing all over each other, I was living a nightmare I couldn’t fucking wake up from. And every single day I’m reminded of it in the form of “haha wasn’t the pandemic such a wacky time haha” and “I’m not getting a booster you can’t make me 🤪 (nobody asked)” and “it’s not real they made the numbers up!!!”
“You’re not coping” Ok here’s the deal; I’ll stop feeling this anger when we have a national memorial (we don’t) or a cdc equipped to stop it from happening again (we don’t) or a population that takes a deadly disease seriously BEFORE it effects them personally (WE DON’T!)
until then, I’m pretty sure my anger is A COMPLETELY NORMAL HUMAN REACTION given the facts at hand
#Beanie babies were at least nice toys (via @tallgreenlady)
okay this has actually led me down the rabbit hole of the beanie baby environmental impact, and apparently the big problem is that they used to be stuffed with PVC pellets. the science in all that is REALLY over my head, but from what i can tell from wikipedia and some googling around, that's actually a suuuper nasty plastic to have your little kid potentially gnawing on. like, "may release noxious chemicals and give them lifelong respiration problems" nasty.
granted, the worst case scenario there is mostly from burning them, but you'll never guess what people commonly did after they became landfillcore.
The problem really isn't even the product itself, it's that we treat ravenously buying things like it's just a hobby, when in truth, it's also falling for propaganda and a failure to reduce consumption.
These companies are convincing people to buy as much useless, plastic crap as possible, crap that can't be reused (because it isn't useful in the first place) and won't be recycled (not that recycling them would even do much).
There's nothing wrong with buying things you enjoy; the problem is that the person with a room full of 3000 unopened Funko Pops isn't enjoying the figurines, they're enjoying buying and owning. It's buying things for the sake of buying things, literally the opposite of reducing.
I know it’s tangential and I should probably properly write up and post my half-joking Breyer horse manifesto, but as a collection hobby it has a lot of reasons to be smug - in addition to being technically made of “green” materials (cellulose acetate is derived from plants, not petroleum), even battered/broken/played-with-and-loved-to-death Breyers retain decent resale value to the painting side of the hobby. Even dismembered PIECES of the horses can be sold onwards to sculptors.
I think at bare minimum all medical professionals need to make sure they are treating patients with more kindness and respect than grifters. if you go to a doctor and they treat you like shit, humiliate you, and send you home without any information on your body or access to treatment, then health-grifters' offers will start to feel more tempting by simply giving the most basic performance of taking you seriously and caring about your well-being. grifters should be condemned for manipulating and exploiting sick people, and doctors also play a role in whether grifts thrive or are successfully identified and rejected. genuine baseline human respect, and beginning a relationship with a patient by earning (rather than demanding) trust, goes a long way.
I do think the Hank Green AI thing makes it abundantly clear that if you have ADHD or any other mental illness and/or you are prone to addiction you need to avoid AI at all costs. This shit will rope you in, and if you have a mental illness that say, starves your brain of dopamine, you're gonna be extra susceptible to that. I won't use AI for a lot of reasons but one of the big ones is knowing how it would fuck with my ADHD and bipolar. Like yes, it's bad for the environment and giving money to rich scumbags and runs on plagarism, but even more than all that, it's straight up not safe at all and you really shouldn't use it if for no other reason than to protect yourself from whatever the fuck it might do to you.
