Chen Huijia, Hua Yilan, Qin Lei And Yang Xiru By Nick Yang For W Magazine China March 2024

margiela in footprint: the tracks of shoes in fashion - geert bruloot, hettie judah + dodi espinosa (2015)

kinda wild how many doctors will go "welllll we dont want you to have the increased risk of breast cancer that all cis women have so we will be giving you osteoporosis

Sculpture by Ryo Arai

inside out

i hate that “cosmetic surgery isn’t self-care it’s the result of an advertising campaign to sell you on surgical misogyny.” because yes, it’s factually correct, but it also doesn’t interrogate the entire conceit of ‘self-care.’ the wellness industry disproportionately targets women (men are obviously affected too, but i do not remember tiktok having a ‘clean boy aesthetic’ that involved all the thirst trap guys going out and getting identical athleisure sets). ‘real’ self-care, if such a thing even exists, is mostly about executive function and not product. being your own tradwife. taking a bath, making a tasty dinner, meditating, medicating, exercising. and even then, it’s done in the service of the grind. take a bath so you don’t feel as stressed about work, so you can go to work tomorrow without mailing pipe bombs to the ceo. get enough sleep, so you don’t have a meltdown during your lunch break. get some salad in you so you don’t develop a nutrient deficiency and go to the hospital and stop working. or, if you do your work from home and it’s unpaid domestic labor: eat greens so your husband doesn’t leave you because he’s found another younger, hotter wife. lose weight so you can safely birth more kids. the ritualistic elements also are placebos– if you do it you must be doing it for a reason and it must be working.

all of self-care as we know it is in the service of capitalism. even the things that DO work (eating healthy foods, exercising, sleeping enough) to improve mental/physical health and aren’t on their surface things you buy end up serving the patriarchy. you get rewarded for being the ideal capitalist subject. especially if you’re a woman.

so i’m going to be a bit satan-like and argue that yes, plastic surgery IS self-care. but self-care is NOT empowering. nothing we do as individuals is. for women, it’s business expenses all the way down. as i’ve said before, it’s not the ‘choice feminism’ of the libs and it’s not the ‘radical feminism’ of radfems. it’s something both more nihilistic and more coherent than either.

Always worth re-sharing this.

INTO

Trans Rules of Engagement - INTO

We are all flawed, traumatized humans at the end of their rope.

Lily Gatins

i slept in a plywood prop coffin once on tour and while i think i maybe woke up a little whenever i had to roll over it was otherwise a wonderful experience. nowhere near as claustrophobic as i might have feared and it was pretty warm and snug with the lid on

i think it would be great to sleep in a coffin actually. not goth or suicidal but instead very autistic about my sleeping environment

kyla mccallum