Holiday dress round-up

‘Tis the season to wear shiny, pretty, sparkly dresses.

I always enjoy pretty dresses, so I love how they proliferate around the holidays. Many of them aren’t cheap, but they’re still fun eye candy.

Here are a few of my favorites:

This dress from New Look’s Inspire Collection is amazing. In theory, a black dress with gold swirls and puffy sleeves would be….very ’80s. But in practice, it’s gorgeous.

Also from New Look is this lovely, romantic-glam pale pink dress. What I especially like about it is that the sequins are nowhere near the wearer’s skin, so it has no potential to itch! And it would look so good with a pale pink flower crown.

Igigi’s Lakshmi gown = the dress of my dreams. They used to make a version with a pale pink skirt that I liked even better, but this one is still incredibly fabulous.

Global pandemics? Usually a bad idea.

One of my favorite vloggers, Hank Green, recently made a video about, among other things, a tick whose bite causes a severe allergy to red meat. I’d read about it before, and it’s fucking terrifying–the reaction doesn’t happen immediately, so people go into anaphylactic shock out of the blue, and it can take some time to figure out the cause.

Hank, a devoted environmentalist, proposes a question: if you could cause a global pandemic of this allergy, thereby ensuring that no one could eat red meat, would you?

NO NO NO, Hank. Just no.

I know that Hank doesn’t actually want to release these ticks upon the world. I know he’s just trying to get a discussion started about meat and the environment.

But it’s still so, so, so not ok. For many reasons.

1.)  Anaphylactic shock is not a laughing matter. It’s pretty callous to joke about subjecting the entire world to the possibility of it. Actually, it’s pretty callous to joke about infecting the world with any kind of disease, even one that would be supposedly good for the environment.

2.) If you were to infect the entire world with the disease, how would you warn everyone in time? How would you account for the likelihood that some people wouldn’t get the news before eating a hamburger, or that some might eat contaminated food and get sick? How would you account for the very good chance that you would be directly responsible for killing people?

Update on UnReal Women

After submitting to the awesome-sounding new projecting UnReal Women, I received the following email:

Thank you kindly for your contribution.  Sadly due to an overwhelming amount of ignorance, bigotry and hatred aimed in my direction, I have decided to close the project.

I wish you well and hope to see your piece published elsewhere.

All I have to say about that is :(.

It was such a good idea, and it’s sad to see it derailed by hatred before it even began.

People can be such douchemuffins sometimes.

Holiday gift ideas mega-post

Note: I know that not everyone celebrates a holiday in December, or is into gift-giving, or has the time/money/energy to buy/make gifts. If you’re not looking for gift ideas for whatever reason, feel free to skip over this post.

But if you are looking for gift ideas, read on! I’ve got everything from charities to DIY ideas to pencil holders made out of floppy disks, TARDIS lunchboxes, and pizza pi cutters.

One of my favorite holiday past-times: finding things that say “Joy” and cutting off the J.

Charities

Donating to charity in someone’s name is always a good idea if 1.) they really care about a particular issue, 2.) they already have all the material things they want, or 3.) you just don’t know what else to give them.

Here are a few that I like. You can find more on this list of top-rated charities.

Kiva is especially cool, because it’s not a traditional charity–it’s a microlending site. You make a loan of $25 to an entrepreneur from the developing world, and almost always get back the entire loan. Which means, if you give a Kiva loan as a gift, the recipient first gets to help entrepreneur pull themselves out of poverty, and then later gets money, which they can either cash out or invest again. It’s pretty awesome.

–Doctors Without Borders
–Girls Write Now
–Grameen Foundation
–Habitat for Humanity
–Heifter International
–Modest Needs
–Nature Conservancy
–Oxfam
–Seeds of Peace
–Sierra Club
–Survival International
–This Star Won’t Go Out Foundation
–Water.org
–WriteGirl

This cupcake was actually not very tasty, but it was cute!

Holiday Gift Ideas List

I made this list on Amazon, with a bunch of things that I thought might make good presents–from Lego-shaped soaps to geeky music to knitted platypi.  There’s even a Dr. Horrible onesie for your tiny friends.

I’ve listed items from $1.70 to $72, and the majority are $20 or under. There’s plenty of pink and sparkly stuff, since that’s what I gravitate toward, but I’ve tried to include items that would appeal to people with different tastes and interests.

I’ve also made a separate list of fat-positive gift ideas for the rad fatties in your life!

I’ve finally found a quote that sums up my religious views

So, I’m not the biggest fan of Yoga Journal (commercialization of yoga, lots of thin white women, the usual issues I have with most mainstream magazines), but I’ve happened to come by a free subscription, so I enjoy what I can of it.

They do have some gorgeous images and lovely quotes, like this one that I found:

“What if religion was each other?
If our practice was our life?
If prayer was our words?
What if the temple was the Earth?
If forests were our church?
If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and oceans?
What if meditation was our relationships?
If the Teacher was life?
If wisdom was self-knowledge?
If love was the center of our being.”
– Ganga White, founder of the White Lotus Foundation

This is perfect. This is exactly how I feel. This is why I can’t take sides in the God vs. no God dichotomy, or even the religious vs. spiritual one–my beliefs are in a different place altogether.

Blargh.

It’s always disappointing to come across a fatshion blogger who seems cool, only to find that they buy into the same fat-hating crap as the rest of society.

Especially when they’re a bit older and have pink hair. I have an automatic affinity for other pinkies, and if they’re older, even better. I hate how our society fetishizes youth, and even though that benefits me right now–as a 27-year old who looks even younger–I know it won’t last. Some day I’m going to be a 40-, 60-, 80-, God willing 100-year old fatshionista, and I’m not going to stop having fun with style just because society thinks I should. So, I really like finding fa(t)shion role models who show that you can have kickass style at any age.

Which makes it all the more disappointing to read a post like this one. Clare posts a lovely picture of herself wearing a lacy dress that she hand-dyed lavender, and says:

When I was a skinny teen I wore short skirts all the time but over the last 15 years my hemlines have become a more sensible length as my body mass has increased. Now I’m a UK size 18-20 I’m really cautious about wearing short skirts for fear of looking like, well….. a fat slag. 

ARGLEBARGLE FATSHION HULK SMASH. The picture she links to, and the whole concept of a “fat slag,” is a horrid caricature.

What part of  PEOPLE COME IN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES, ATTRACTION IS HIGHLY SUBJECTIVE AND NOT A BASIS FOR ANYONE’S WORTH, STEREOTYPING PEOPLE BASED ON SIZE IS MEAN-SPIRITED AND CONTRIBUTES TO A CULTURE OF DISCRIMINATION don’t some people understand?

*retreats to cozy corner of fat-o-sphere*

OOTD: Pink and black and ’90s all over

Somehow I’ve become old enough that this skirt I got in middle school now feels “vintage.”

Shirt: Old Navy, vest: Torrid via fatshionxchange, skirt: maybe Marshall’s?, shoes: Sugar Shoes via eBay, necklace: gifted, earrings: Claire’s, hat and purse: not sure, wristband: Pacsun, pink ring: Kelsea Echo, claddagh ring: not sure

I got it in either 7th or 8th grade, along with another one in cream and brown. I didn’t wear the cream one much, though, so I gave it away a few years later.

This one, I’ve always loved. And thanks to the powers of elastic waists, it still fits me (which is why I love elastic-waist skirts so much, and hate the ones with zippers, which become too tight or loose with even minor weight fluctuations).

I used to think it was Victorian/goth-y, but now it just screams ’90s to me.

This is amazeballs!

Kath of Fat Heffalump has come up with an awesome idea: a blog for and by women, with better, more interesting writing than the traditional ladymags.

The rules for UnReal Women’s content are: “no stigmatising language, no shaming anyone, no weight loss promotion, no Hugo Schwyzer.” Heh.

XOJane, which infamously published His Mansplaining Douchiness HS, does have some great writing. Personally, I haven’t stopped reading it because maybe 25% of the posts are inflammatory linkbait. At least half of the writing there is really, really good–especially the regular posts by Marianne, Lesley, Somer, Kate, s.e., and Emily. In fact, it’s so good that I usually link to at least one XO post in my Friday links roundups.

But I still love the idea of a women’s online space that’s 100% awesome, instead of maybe 75% or 50%. And grassroots projects like this make me happy. This is how social change happens.

And I can’t wait to be a part of it. I just submitted a few posts, and encourage you all to submit as well! Cross-posts are accepted, so you can send along posts from your own blog.

I read frumpy catalogs so you don’t have to

The other day I got a Roaman’s catalog in the snail mail. Flipping through it, I found that there were actually some cute items mixed in with the sea of blah.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Ruffles + metallic = awesome:

Metallic Knit Flutter–tier top

This one could easily go Lolita, fairy kei, or even Victorian.

Beaded Lace Sweater by Denim 24/7

Cocktail party at Shake the Tree

Last night, Steve and I went to a jewelry party with free cocktails and cupcakes at Shake the Tree, a boutique in the North End.

This is one of the things I love about Boston: there’s an abundance of free cupcakes, if you know where to look.

Delicious lemon cupcake!

Shake the Tree has these parties once a month. This is the second one Steve and I have been to; we stumbled on the first one completely by accident! A few months ago, we went into the North End, planning to get cupcakes at Lulu’s Sweet Shoppe–my favorite cupcake place, which had closed years ago and then re-opened in a new location. And it just so happened that Shake the Tree, less than a block away, was having a party with free mini-cupcakes from Lulu’s!  There’s nothing better than intending to buy something and then getting it for free. 🙂