I need feminism because I’m only pretty and popular on the internet.

freud, “mourning and melancholia”   (via karaj)

Re: the post I was just going to write about shamelessly/shamefully taking phone pictures of myself in a crowded room.

Vanity comes from the latin vanus: “empty.” It seems like a kind of tiresomely Cartesian (Aristotelian, even) thing, the term for “emptiness” becoming so synonymous with the material [body]. To be empty is to be a surface and to have a surface (to have a presence) is to be empty because, you know, fucking Plato or whatever. It’s no secret that this is a very gendered thing. But “vanity” didn’t always mean positively self-obsessed. There used to be a word for that: “vainglory,” the vaunting of the empty exterior because you love it. When did those words become compounded? When did we begin to assume that “obsessed with our bodies” would always mean “in love with our bodies”? I’d like to reclaim vanity for the ambivalent.

Vainglory was once the eighth sin, but it has been collapsed into pride. A positive obsession with our earthly bodies is a subset of that “love of one’s own excellence,” but now that “glory” is implied. Vanity is a sin, a type of pride.

What, then, are our words to describe an obsession with our material bodies? Words that are maybe a little dualistic but certainly aren’t about loving ourselves so goddamn much?

“Narcissistic” is an easy etymology. It would be nice to appropriate Narcissus’s gaze as a physical obsession (compulsion, even), but he was renowned for his self-love. Even though there’s something to be said for narke, narkissos, sleep; no, “narcissistic” isn’t useful at all.

What are our words for “obsessed with our skin and flesh” that do not mean we are also in love with that skin and flesh?

sendmecats:

katydidnot:

so typically, IN ALL HONESTLY, i really really don’t care about any mainstream pop music—it’s just like, not my thing. 

this song/video is one of the most brilliant things i have ever seen, though. oh my god the fucking with conventional images of femininity that go on in this video. (my favorite is when beyonce is seductively dusting off her grammys—if this is not FEMINIST NARCISSISM i do not know what is) the images of failed femininity are brilliant too !

beyonce is fucking with the narrative of loneliness 

This is all very Important To Me for like a bajillion different reasons, but the primary reason being that it is helping me understand feminist narcissism so much better.  

Also these outfits!

Let us be reminded that “Why Don’t You Love Me” (esp: feminist crying is feminist un-makeupping) was the reason I started an archive of feminist makeupping.

(via daintyasshit)

Things that are radical about this video:

• Stacey Dash
• Stacey Dash nips
• Stacey Dash 2003 tube dress nips
• that translucent Louis, I’d give anything for it
• that flopped open Louis, that perfect Louis flopped open like it’s the end of the world oh my god
• Kel Mitchell
• obvious thesis about yeezy subjectivities: mirrors as narcissistic self-consciousness
• and her refusal to look him in the eye
• and her frosted gloss
• and frosted shades
• and tinted windows
• and the way all of his songs are about material but are essentially objectless
• and basically everything

(Source: youtube.com)

karaj:

rgr-pop:

I want to include Kanye in my discussions of #feminist narcissism. Partially because I’m interested in queering Kanye conversations (which, I should note, is more than speculating about his gayness). It’s more, though, about how his narcissism is the most #radical narcissism in America. It’s about how inasmuch as women’s narcissism is pathologized, black men’s narcissism is even more vilified. And man, if Kanye hasn’t been vilified for a whole lot of self-obsession, a whole lot of vanity, a whole lot of oversharing that is so much an integral part of contemporary feminist politics. He is part of a narrative that is important to me.

Duh.

okay. yes. totally. and i want to talk about something that i think is (really really) related and if it’s not you can #feminist narcissism it. so: i would like to think about the way in which some white men indulge in an imaginary identification with (perhaps we just call it “appreciation of,” but) kanye or other narcissistic black rap stars as a way of maintaining a whole host of privileges—ie. unradical white male narcissism which includes spectacularizing themselves; emoting, emoting, emoting; and rampant capitalism—all while construing themselves as progressive, and even feminist. in case i am speaking in code: i mean that there are lots of privileged white men who identify with kanye, and embrace his narcissism, because it gives them license to indulge in ideologies and behaviors that progressive, feminist men are supposed to have given up in 1969. in fact, appreciating kanye can make them appear even more radical than if they liked indie rock. 

see: dudes we’ve all probably slept with

(Source: thekidsnotmyson)

I want to include Kanye in my discussions of #feminist narcissism. Partially because I’m interested in queering Kanye conversations (which, I should note, is more than speculating about his gayness). It’s more, though, about how his narcissism is the most #radical narcissism in America. It’s about how inasmuch as women’s narcissism is pathologized, black men’s narcissism is even more vilified. And man, if Kanye hasn’t been vilified for a whole lot of self-obsession, a whole lot of vanity, a whole lot of oversharing that is so much an integral part of contemporary feminist politics. He is part of a narrative that is important to me.

Duh.

(Source: thekidsnotmyson, via desliz)