(Source: nativethoughts)
"It is disgusting. We are told to love sex but never masturbate or fool around. To love our bodies but we have to be hairless, thin, have boobs, and to never wear make up to cover our flaws. We can like sports and watch them but we can’t play them unless they are toned down and pretty enough to be oggled at. We can be nerds but we can’t be TOO smart or we forget our place. We are told we need a prince charming and to seek him out by constantly changing ourselves and being perfect for him. We are given the message that outside beauty is what matters the most but if we have it and get successful it was because we have a pretty face. We are told we exaggerate and should just go with it when we complain of being objects and property. We are taught that being a woman is worthy of an insult… WE have to fear walking at night. WE have to go in a group if we need to use the bathroom in a strange place. WE have to be cautious of where we are and who we are with. That we are told to hush and get over it if we are assaulted because real life isn’t like the crime shows and it is harder to convict the assaulter. That female artists are degraded and yelled at in artist alleys. That you are judged just by how you wear a t-shirt."
— plucifer [marchen] (via girl-violence)
(Source: queerlittlemermaid, via stupiduglyfatcunt)
(Source: accardinaomi, via concretediaries)
I actually think it’s healthy to have moments of vanity
No one should be ashamed of thinking they look good. As long as you’re not putting other people down, werk.
(Source: afrosinspace)
from The Mysterious Maya, photo by David Alan Harvey//Otis Imboden.
1954 photo of Dorothy Dandridge performing at the Last Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. On her closing night, a new one night attendance record of 1,263 was set. This was the same hotel that in 1953 drained the pool after Dottie deliberately dipped her toe in it (because blacks were not welcome in the pool area). Remember that scene in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge??
(Source: dorothydandridge, via vivalaglamourpuss)
“Illegal Butt Injections Gone Bad”
Teased by her family and friends about her flat “pancake” booty, Apryl Michelle Brown had always been insecure about her backside. Once she got enough money, she told herself, she’d buy herself a better one. ”I didn’t know if I wanted to look like Janet Jackson or J. Lo,” the Los Angeles cosmetologist, 46, says in an exclusive interview featured in the November issue of ESSENCE magazine. “I just wanted a new, bigger booty.”
Tragically, her quest for curves cost her all her limbs and almost her life.In 2004, Brown says she paid a “pumper,” an unlicensed person, to inject industrial-grade silicone into her buttocks. Brown can’t recall how much the woman actually charged — maybe $500, maybe $1,000 — but over time, she says, the area became intensely irritated and painful, and the skin blackened. By early 2006 she says the silicone had hardened, causing severe pain and infection, ultimately requiring her to have lifesaving amputation of her limbs last year.
Now adjusting to her new life with prosthetics, Brown shares her story — and her warning for others tempted to check out “pumping parties” — with writer Amy Elisa Keith in ESSENCE. “I was left here for a purpose,” she says. “I have to get the word out so that nobody else makes this choice.” (via Essence)
