Staunchly, vol. 43: French Women Don’t Get Sexual Harassment

(Originally posted 1/20/18)

Hi angels,
 
Hope you are all having a lovely weekend. If you're marching, I hope the weather is nice and that you are furious and fierce but also inspired and climatically comfortable.
 
I'm still trying to find my footing in 2018. A Saturday Staunchly is a sure sign that I've made a habit of procrastinating this week (as is taking two hours out of a Wednesday afternoon to bake a hazelnut brown butter cake), but I’m hopeful that *next week*—oh sweet next week—I will finally achieve my destiny as a high-functioning, methodical-bordering-on-sociopathic, veritable factory of creative content. Watch this space!
 
xo
 

This was the best thing I’ve read about the Aziz Ansari/Babe.net story and the innate sexism of modern sexual choreography and it was written over two years ago because Rebecca Traister knows the secrets of the universe.
 

‘But I don’t want us to ever lose sight of the fact that consent is not the goal. Seriously, God help us if the best we can say about the sex we have is that it was consensual.’

 
Fat-shaming Trump is such a dumb way to talk about a man who has literal infinite faults.
 
Another famous French woman / symbol of midcentury, blonde, eroticized femininity said something profoundly dumb (and insulting) about the #MeToo movement. Brigitte Macron, please get your house in order!
 
(Deneuve has since, sort of, apologized).
 
This twitter thread from a woman whose mans disrespected her precious skin care elixirs had me SHAKING. 
 
I really love this feminist reading of Fire and Fury in Guernica.
 
On Voltaire and Britney Spears.
 
Shocking examples of toxic femininity in the workplace.
 

An article in the Atlantic this week about the intersection of meme culture and astrology culture and Trump-era nihilistic culture got me thinking about my relationship to astrology, specifically my love and defense of the zodiac.
 
Here’s how I feel about astrology: it’s nonsense. (Though isn’t every belief system, boiled to its full flavor?) But it's such fun nonsense! It’s so much fun I almost believe in it, at face value, and I definitely believe in it as a tool for connection. It’s a way to talk about ourselves and our quirks and our desires behind a protective curtain of stars and planets. A loopy language that enables bonding and introspection in very real ways. When we say we identify with our sun signs we are telling you who we are.
 
There are so many different kinds of bullshit in this world. So many things we strap ourselves to for some guidance and comfort and companionship in this roaring ocean before we realize, though we probably knew deep down, they are tethered to nothing. Might as well have a laugh before we drown! (Sorry, too dark?)
 
Anyways, here’s my self-care rec for the week: spend some time with your signs. Do your birth chart. Read your horoscope (check these out too). Learn if you and your partner or crush are compatible in a celestial sense. Mourn the death of The Hairpin by luxuriating in the archives of Rosa Lyster’s iconic “Astrology is Fake, But….” Enjoy the timeless and timely wisdom of the Astro Poets.

Staunchly yours, 

Carey