did U GUYS KNOW, that the way stores get the balloons off of the ceiling is with ANOTHER balloon, w tape on the top??? and they just dont cut the string so itâs like super long and u gotta aim it right n reel it in. i just found that out today when i DID IT and itâs been the best working day of my life i had a blast blowing up balloons and fetching some off the ceiling. i had so much power? and NO ONE ELSE in my department likes that job so now itâs MY job when need be
omg so I work at a museum and one of our buildings has a) very high ceilings and b) a bizarrely sensitive alarm system that will go off if anything touches the ceiling. Because of this, helium balloons are considered public enemy #1 and are strictly forbidden from entering the museum. But just in case an illicit balloon is successfully smuggled in, the museum has acquired a fucking b.b. gun for the express purpose of shooting down rogue balloons.
I keep thinking about how henry cavill had to taper off water for like three days before shooting any shirtless scene in the witcher and how chris evans pretty much did the same thing playing cap, and honestly hearing that full-on broke any sense of attraction I've ever had for that kind of definition on a guy. I'd had no idea that's what it takes, and if that's what it takes then that's not a thing for me. Drink some fucking water, jesus christ
Everyone should know and understand this. Healthy, hydrated skin is plump and soft. If you see anyone with tons of muscle definition, itâs probably because theyâre badly dehydrated to the point of needing an IV.
I write a lot about this process, known as starching, for two reasons:
-Images of starched bodies in media are used to prop up painful and impossible ideas about diet and exercise.Â
-Attraction is awesome, and I want people who are attracted to men, who are finally getting to explore that, to feel confident in admiring men who are comfortable. I donât want anyone whoâs like, we only just got Chris Evans to feel like oh great, now we have to be ashamed again. Itâs always more messy than that!
Discussion of restrictive diets behind the cut, ending with body- and thirst-positivity.
Broad strokes: itâs not just that theyâre not drinking, but what.
These performers start with restricted-fat diet and an exercise routine that is targeted to build muscle volume on Aesthetic parts of the body and not build muscle volume in areas like the lower abdomen, where any volume is misread as âfatâ. The diet keeps them at the minimum of fat tissue they need to survive to keep exercising.
Then for several days before a performance, they cut total fluids and drink a dense slurry of denatured starch. Typically made from potato starch, the starch has been scrubbed to be sure it contains no nutritional value.
âNo nutritional valueâ is often used to describe fatty or sugary foods that are seen as âcheapâ. But medically speaking, those are hugely âvaluableâ foods: they have a huge amount of fat and sugar that your body could burn for energy. âValuelessâ food is something your body cannot get any energy from, like dryer lint, or potato starch.
Itâs not supposed to be a food. Instead, the high concentration of starch in your bloodstream pulls water out of your cells. (This is the same thing that happens if you drink sea water, if youâve ever heard about shipwrecked sailers getting sick doing that). The fat tissue under your skin is very fluffy, so pulling the water out makes it collapse. With the fat layer scrunched up, their skin is literally thinner. It starts to look like tissue paper, translucent, and it sticks and clings when you touch it instead of rebounding.
People who are severely dehydrated usually look like their skin is hanging loosely off their bodies, because theyâve literally shrunk inside it. To avoid that, right before the performance they do one more round of high-speed exercise, irritating their muscles into puffing up as big as possible to tightly fill their skin-sack.
This look is popularly described as âtoned.â In sports medicine, âmuscle toneâ is the amount of tension in your muscles when youâre just standing around not doing anything: the tenser you are, the bigger they look. Itâs not a plain good or bad thing; how different levels of resting tone affect actual athletic performance depends on what youâre doing. But super high tone is definitely not useful for athletic performance, because if the muscle is already tense, it canât contract to actually do something with full strength.Â
In general, people who have been through masculine pattern development (including trans*men on hormone therapy and exempting trans*women) have thinner fat tissue on their hands and forearms, so you can see their veins and musculature more easily there than on someone with fem pattern development. So if you can see hand veins, that doesnât mean someoneâs starching. (No one can accuse me of not liking hand veins). If you can see veins popping out of their chest, belly, or thighs, places that we carry more fat, you can know thereâs a good chance they are.
You can also, like, ask them. Hugh Jackman is great example of a performer who starched until he was in critical condition, and talks openly about how much he hated it. (Jason Momoa, a treasure, vets his roles by asking âDo I have to have abs ân shit?â) And yet every profile talks about how they eat a bunch of lean chicken and brocoli and work out. Literally just the first step in the process.
The paper-skin look is a symptom of dehydration. It is impossible to look like that without being dehydrated. It is impossible to look like that with diet and exercise alone.
Most people wonât ever starch, but images of starched bodies can convince you that certain foods or workouts will be a silver bullet.
Understanding diet and exercise gives you tools that can make your body strong and capable and cool. But this is not what it will look like. The only way a product will make you look like this is itâs loaded with diuretics and laxatives.
I have no interest in telling anyone not to feel attracted to anyone with any particular body situation.
I donât want to say that actually these performers arenât Healthy and so itâs Bad to be attracted to them. Because that just reinforces the idea that only certain bodies deserve to be loved.
Just because someone is eating/exercising in a disordered way, or has any other illness, doesnât mean their body is disgusting, that it should be sealed off from sexual desire. Thatâs important because the fear of becoming unlovable keeps people from asking for help, especially women: the fear is that as long as youâre âjust skinnyâ, people praise your body, but when you become known as âthat girl with EDâ, people will distance themselves or double down on the message that your body is wrong and bad and a problem.
At the same time, sexualizing the signs of the struggle itself can really hurt people.
So thereâs a balance to find, in how we talk about each otherâs bodies: to not just see any one body part but also keep the whole personâs happiness in mind.
Thirst isnât about turning around and treating men like meat. Itâs the radical statement that  attraction doesnât have to degrade the object: that being the subject of attraction can be a place of celebration and honor. That lifts us all up, you know? So to me, that means Iâm always going to praise boys for their natural look and whatever work theyâre doing to be strong and comfortable.
Carrie Fisher encouraged John Boyega to break his super-strict diet and eat chocolate when they were filming The Last Jedi, and frankly I think we should all hold to that kind of "fuck that noise, eat something good".
LET ACTORS EAT AND DRINK YOU BASTARDS. Healthy bodies are infinitely more attractive than deprived ones.
kinda fucked up how my parentsâ generationâs high school musical classic was about kids driving around in cars and owning leather jackets whereas my generationâs is about a class of kids working food service jobs for a bunch of rich golfers to surviveÂ
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