Quibble

A number of blogs I read are written by women who are pregnant. Most of these are my cotton-candy blogs, that talk about clothes and jewelry and interior design and have pictures of cats. So I guess I shouldn't have particularly high expectations about this kind of thing, even when said bloggers are open about considering themselves kind of liberal, and mostly it's just a mistaken misuse of the word--

But I hate it when they refer to a fetus's "gender."

I mean, the kid is still a cashew-shaped blob with a tail, floating about in your amniotic fluid, and you're already talking about how it will conform to societal pressures and expectations about its appearance and behavior.

You mean your baby's sex, people. SEX.

a reminder to The World:

Sometimes, emotion is a rational response.

If you insult me, my anger is not irrational. It is very rational, it is very real, and it is not a reason for you to cease listening to me.

Rationality and emotion are not mutually exclusive, people.

I wonder if this hatred of "emotion" and love of "ration" is related to the equally false mind/body dichotomy? Emotions are felt bodily, therefore they must be separate from and less than the good and rational mind. Men are rational, mind-oriented, women are irrational and body-oriented. Emotion is also bad because it is womanly--so women are bad because they are "emotional," and emotions are bad because they are "womanly," and it all goes in a big nasty circle until I want to grab the next man I talk to who says I'm being irrational and shake him till his big manly brain rattles around in his big manly skull.

And this is an ENTIRELY RATIONAL RESPONSE, people.

Rant brought to you by Tiger Beatdown and all the Freddies of the world.

[ETA five seconds later to add: "mansplaining" is my Word of the Year. Seriously, whoever made it up deserves a medal or something. In the shape of like, a dictionary with a dick.]

Watching the news

Special on the news my aunt is watching this minute:

Reporter goes to a women's gym to horrify the 20- and 30-somethings exercising by telling them that, oh noes! by the age of thirty they only have 12% of their eggs left!

I can't quite pin down exactly what's so facepalmy about this.

Is it the assumption that all women want to have children? That was definitely there. The concern that the human race might come to an end because educated able-bodied white women aren't popping out babies? There was the whole "oh no, women are having careers instead of having babies" thing.

Meh. Just a moment of annoyance while I happened to be online.

On a lighter note, boobies!

After reading Dw3t-Hthr's post about this post, I thought I'd weigh in with my own thoughts:

Having been on the pill for a few months now, I am proud to report that my breasts have grown from 32-no-one-makes-cups-this-small-dammit, to 32-a! The past few years I've mostly worn training bras from Target, which come in a few cute colors and patterns, but are lacking in the won't-show colors of black and "nude," and have oddly-placed underwire. Now, I have one black bra and one "nude" bra that came from the adult lingerie section. I have arrived.

I still don't like my bra selection, though. Bras this small usually have a metric buttload of push-up padding, because most bra manufacturers seem to think that a-cups are something to be ashamed of. I stopped wearing padding after meeting Wulfy, who helped show me that my breasts are fine as they are, thank you very much. Victoria's Secret even has a bra they claim "fit's like custom," which means that d-cups have no padding and a-cups have more padding than I have breasts. And their underwire stabs me like woah.

I also don't like going braless, which larger-breasted women keep marveling at--even though they're small, it's uncomfortable to jog or go down stairs without a little support because they bounce (that, and my boss is the Abominable Snowman who keeps the office incredibly cold and a ridiculous lot of people are offended at the site of a nipple bump through clothes). This, even though my mom had to naaaag me to start wearing a bra when I was thirteen.

I'm more-or-less happy with the way my boobs are now (I was not particularly happy when they grew, as now I only have two bras I can comfortably wear), I just hate whatever idiot designs most bras.

Now, a couple sources for small-sized lingerie. I haven't ordered from these yet, but at least most of the models do actually have small enough breasts that I can get an idea of the fit on petite ladies like me:

Lula Lu petite lingerie has lots of cute lacy styles, and lots of basics.

The Little Bra Company has bras designed by a petite woman just as frustrated as I am about bra design.

Is this thing on?

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it?

I started a goofy new blog about design, my latest relaxing time-waster:

Ange de Design

Sometimes it's hard to write about things I want to write about here; so many other people have a better handle on current events etc, and my personal life is...well, it's personal.  I'm at a point where sharing my life is kind of difficult, for whatever reason.  But "hey, I really like this chair!" is not so personal, so there you have it.

More stuff will go here, I swear, when Winter Break is over and I have classes to write about.