mi casa es su casa

he/him/his, a 30something gay trans man who enjoys tea and poetry and monsters

[blondebrainpowered]

[brainstatic]

Psst, hey, Marilyn Monroe’s image as a freewheeling sexpot was a carefully constructed lie. The real Marilyn Monroe was a roiling tragedy and her life was an indictment of our society as a whole. She was orphaned after her mother had a schizophrenic breakdown, bounced around between foster homes where she was sexually abused, and married a 21-year-old at 16 to get out of being sent to an orphanage. Hugh Hefner published nude photos of her without her consent that were taken when she was 23 and desperate. She suffered severe anxiety and depression, which she coped with by drinking and using barbiturates, and was already a full-blown addict when she became famous in the mid-50s. Her career was one of exploitation, condescension and alienation, and she killed herself at 36. That Hugh Hefner, a man who was at best an unpleasant footnote in her life, felt entitled to be buried next to her is one more humiliation in a pop cultural landscape we should all be ashamed of.

[class-struggle-anarchism]

“Please don’t make me a joke… I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one… I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity..”

 - Marilyn Monroe, last taped interview, days before her death

She deserved better than this

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

Can I just also say, in addition to all this, that I’m still pissed off about the fact that Joe DiMaggio swooped in and gave Marilyn a Christian funeral before her Rabbi could return from a trip overseas? ‘Cause that shit is fucked up.

So many men who claimed to be in love with her, and not one could fucking respect her wishes, even in death.

[emily84]

“I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let people fool themselves. They didn’t bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn’t argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn’t.””  — Marilyn Monroe

Also:

As one of the biggest Ella Fitzgerald fans, she literally helped desegregate her performances. Ella was not allowed to play at Mocambo because of her race.

Ella Fitzgerald: “I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt… she personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.” thisisnotmyfairytaleendingg (Source: dmvnessa)

ALSO:

In August 1956, Monroe began filming The Prince and the Showgirl, with Laurence Olivier staring and directing. The production was complicated by conflicts between him and Monroe. He angered her with the patronizing statement “All you have to do is be sexy” and his attempts to get her to replicate Vivien Leigh’s interpretation. She became pregnant and miscarried during the production, which heavily worsened her depression and increased her drug abuse.

A L S O , I will never forget watching a documentary about her once and, speaking about her marriage with Arthur Miller, the narrator said, verbatim: “America’s Brain had married America’s Body”. Like, literally, because he was a famous writer, he was entitled to personhood; she, being an actress, and a beautiful woman, was reduced to being “a body”. I have never been more enraged with her portrayal in the media. If you want to be dismissive of her,  literally come for you.

[amuseoffyre]

She was also chronically ill her whole life: she suffered from endometriosis with pain so debilitating that a clause was written into her contracts accounting for the days when she would not physically be able to work during her periods.

She was on courses of strong medication, had invasive surgery to try and limit the damage caused, and despite trying for a baby numerous times, suffered many miscarriages because of her condition. The miscarriages especially sent her into deep depression, since she desperately wanted to be a mother.

There is speculation that the condition may have been one of the triggers in her drug dependency as well, because when you have endo, you will take whatever you can to stop. it. hurting.

Marilyn Monroe was smart and strong as hell in a world that saw her as a sexy doll and nothing more.

[wiciclesatmidnight]

She deserves better

[blamebrampton]

Marilyn was a founding member of the Hollywood branch of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and had lifelong left-wing political views with a particular emphasis on racial equality. She formed her own independent production company that survived for several years and earned a credit as an executive producer on several films. Additionally, she was not only concerned for workers rights, she acted for them, using her own fame to stop staff being unfairly sacked from several of her films. She was a loyal, kind woman and her early death remains a great tragedy. Worse still, as OP notes, is the co-opting of her image by exactly the sort of people she would have loathed in life.

[marithlizard]

(via bsky)

In case anyone hasn't heard, the cyclospora outbreak affecting tons of people in the US right now is coming from Taylor Farms produce. Best to stay away from bagged lettuce and prepared salads completely right now, but especially the ones mentioned in the screenshot:

Taylor Farms Earthbound Farms Little Salad Bar (Aldi) Marketside (Walmart) Kroger House Brand Target private label greens Costco salads and greens etc Trader Joe's chopped salad kits and fresh produce Fast food: McDonalds, Taco Bell, (Yum! Brands), Chipotle, Subway, Pizza Hut, KFC, Olive Garden, Top Golf, Red Lobster, Burger King, etc.

This is not the first time I've heard about a Taylor Farms foodborne illness outbreak. I stopped eating their salads after reading a description of the conditions in their facilities. Doesn't sound like they've improved anything.

We need a fully funded and staffed FDA, and regulations with teeth - and that's exactly what we don't have under Trump. To make things worse, the CDC is no longer tracking these outbreaks. We're on our own.

[depsidase]

[natalieironside]

Shout out to trans women who aren’t computer scientists or musicians or avant-garde artists or whatever.

Shout-out to tgirls who work at Taco Bell. Thank u queen, society would collapse without you

[snkrfnd]

Over twenty years ago my big brother got me a job at a Taco Bell in the St. Louis suburbs-West County. He warned me that it was the “gay Taco Bell”, but since I was coming from the “gay Howard Johnson’s” I wasn’t shocked. It turns out it was the black trans women Taco Bell complete with black trans women in management. And they’d worked out an arrangement with the local teen Narcotics Anonymous group so that twice a week we would shut down the drive thru and the dining room and exclusively serve 60+ teens in various stages of recovery. And many of the women I worked with were in various stages of being out or transitioning and they were from all generations from teens to over 50. One woman I worked with had a regular corporate job presenting as a man 9-5 Mon-Fri and then came to Taco Bell and worked 6pm -2am Friday and Saturday night so she could be herself surrounded by other black transwomen in those stolen weekends. And we had customers come from all over the metro area because they knew they could be themselves in the dining room. I only worked there from 1999-2001 but for young me, this was a vital, formative experience. Some of the girls came from north city all the way out to the “gay Taco Bell” on Manchester in west county because they heard it was safe to work there. Like- I know times have changed but they haven’t changed much in 20 years. I’m still convinced that for lgbt youth, finding a job at your city’s version of the “gay Taco Bell” is key to survival.

[natalieironside]

Thank u for sharing this with us

[lesbianrey]

every day i get a little madder about the ‘dream job’ narrative… all i want is to have a job that benefits society somewhat, doesn’t abuse me, and lets me live a happy life outside of my job lol. jobs should not be (and arguably can’t be) cosmic destinies and identities

[julucinda]

“If Latin America had not been pillaged by the U.S. capital since its independence, millions of desperate workers would not now be coming here in such numbers to reclaim a share of that wealth; and if the United States is today the world’s richest nation, it is in part because of the sweat and blood of the copper workers of Chile, the tin miners of Bolivia, the fruit pickers of Guatemala and Honduras, the cane cutters of Cuba, the oil workers of Venezuela and Mexico, the pharmaceutical workers of Puerto Rico, the ranch hands of Costa Rica and Argentina, the West Indians who died building the Panama Canal, and the Panamanians who maintained it.”

— Juan Gonzalez - Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America

[enki2]

[imposterogers]

if I was matt murdock and I found out the same chemical spill that blinded me and lit the world on “fire” turned a bunch of turtles into pizza loving ninjas I would lose it actually

[imposterogers]

I’m not going lie the thought of matt finding out he’s radioactive ooze brothers with this particular version of the tmnt has me in tears

[imposterogers]

matt, trying to recount his childhood and ignore the smell of turtle, three day old pizza, and sewer: …..so yah, after my dad died I was basically on my own.

the turtles, already planning on buying their radioactive waste brother a shirt that says “I fell in radioactive waste and all I got was these glasses”: cowabummer dude. our dad’s a rat

[anachronistique]

idk he looks like he's come to terms with it

[infestuous]

Wally Dion, Green Star Quilt, 2019 circuit boards, brass wire, copper tube

[chekhovs-raygun]

I SAW THIS IN THE PORTLAND ART MUSEUM! ITS HUGE!

it shimmers like no gemstones i've ever seen: green as malachite and emerald but shot through with opal, gold, copper. photographs can't do it justice because of how it shines, as well as the way the actual material elements have their own dimensions. you can lean in and study all the fine lines of the circuits or step back and admire how the rearranged whole forms new patterns. it's one of the most beautiful creations i've ever seen.

[forthegothicheroine]

I like to think there's an Ankh-Morpork show (perhaps a live stage show) that's a combination of Great British Bakeoff and Forged in Fire where they bake dwarf bread and then attack a ballistic dummy with it.

[so-much-for-subtlety]

[prokopetz]

The two "created in a lab" fantasies:

Yes, everything about me is fucked up, but what if that was secretly awesome?

Yes, everything about me is fucked up, but what if there was someone to blame?

[trigona-necrophaga]

my devoted but dangerously unstable knight will be hearing about this

[homunculus-argument]

If Ratatouille mechanics were real, there would be a whole market of businesses offering the services of operating rats to people who want them, and it'd be like how bees produce honey. People in the rat business would be so exhausted of having to explain over and over again that no, the rats aren't being exploited. If the rats didn't like how they're being treated, they would simply not return. There's no goddamn way to force a rat to be so passionate about playing the saxophone that they'll figure out how to puppeteer a human to do it for them. All that the business does is finding a way to put that specific rat in the hair of someone who's about to go on stage.

[terrie01]

The rats 100% think the businesses are being run for their benefit and worry about the humans being exploited.

[homunculus-argument]

A rat manager who is a rat and deals on their end of the deal is exhausted of having to explain over and over again that look, an average fully grown adult human being is like 200 times your weight, their hands are very fast and they can throw things better than you want to imagine. If one of them things didn't want you in their hair, you're not going to stay there for long. You'd be yote out the window in two seconds flat.

[uptownthots]

“it isnt something you have to read critically” well 😭

[uptownthots]

this technically is true but I think this also perfectly encapsulates why I am inherently distrustful of like. “”cozy”” “turn your brain off” fiction lmfao. like okay WHO gets to turn their brain off and who has to suffer through bigoted caricatures of themselves while everyone else is having cozy silly no brain time 😐

[dragongirlbunny]

the ruler is hosting festivities in the capital while the nation collapses, and heretics have caused a schism in the catholic church. i love living in the middle ages.

[dragongirlbunny]

we even have a The Plague