It’s Wednesday and I’m sick! I haven’t been sick in a while and it’s awful. Went to the doctor yesterday and I pretty much have to ride it out. So that’s where I’m at! How are all of you? Good? Bad?
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Can’t get enough of Alisha Rai’s writing? Check out this short story she wrote for Refinery29! Hopefully, it’ll help tide you over until her next book comes out.
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September 23rd was Bi Visibility Day! Shoutout to my fellow bisexuals! If you’re like me and want more bisexual characters in your romance, author Dahlia Adler has a great list of recs over at Frolic.Media.
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Authors Kevin Kwan, Jasmine Guillory, Jenny Han, Tara Isabella Burton, and Caroline Kepnes discuss how fashion affects their characters and writing:
“I did a lot of mock online shopping for what Alexa would wear to this wedding,” Guillory says. “I wanted her to feel like the star version of herself, like she has a glow about her the whole night.” Guillory — or Maddie — ultimately selects a red fit-and-flare cocktail dress with a low neckline. The cut of the dress was intentional; Guillory wanted Alexa to be able to wear it without Spanx underneath, in case she happened to later undress in front of her wedding date, Drew Nichols. Instead, she would be able to wear the dress with a pretty, sexy bra and panty set.
For Alexa, the dress inspires a serious confidence boost. “Normally, she would think, ‘Oh, a guy like this would not be interested in me,’” Guillory explains. “But with that dress on, she feels like Cinderella. … It’s kind of a magic dress and a magic night, so she might as well flirt with the hot guy. Why not?”
What are your thoughts on the intersection of characters and clothing choices?
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Did you know Pottery Barn has a Harry Potter collection? RIP your wallet.
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Sometimes, to get through the day, we just need to look at cute animal photos. Enjoy the Zooborns Instagram account!
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Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
Ok, so I have an overthinking of terminology dilemma and perhaps someone here has insight for me.
I have always on some level disliked identifying as bi because I hate that whole false gender dichotomy, but having now spent several decades with that identity and struggling with bi erasure, I can’t quite get comfortable with pan. Thoughts?
Since 78% of the point of Spanx is to stop thick thighs from rubbing together, going without really isn’t an option just because the skirt isn’t skintight. If you don’t want chafed thighs OR witnesses to your ugly undies, you peel them off in the bathroom just prior to nookie initiation.
Signed,
Someone Whose Thighs Touch
Yay bi visibility! And YAY recs! 😀
kkw, I’m bi and ID as nonbinary as well, which I think on the surface probably sounds hilarious… But anyway, I got comfortable with the bi label after seeing it defined as “someone attracted to people of two or more genders”. I could certainly see myself being attracted to someone who IDs as being without gender, too (I mean, I don’t ask every–er, any–single person I just look at and go “wow” what they ID as…) but honestly I feel like bi has me covered pretty well.
Of course, there are people who want to argue a very rigid definition of bi and get all mad that we’re reinforcing the false binary or being phobic in some way, but I’m pretty tired of that, honestly. I’ve seen the word defined to my grammatical satisfaction, and tbh we’re here, we’re queer, if we’re not saying or doing something actually bigoted, mad ppl can just shove off. 🙂
But that’s just how I feel about it.
@kkw & JJB: I’m with JJB in that I see being bisexual as an attraction to two or more genders, which I feel is more accurate for me. I’m not as knowledgeable on the difference between this definition of bi versus pansexual, and I definitely don’t want to comment out of ignorance.
@Ren Benton: Summer is THE WORST. But Monistat has an amazing ant-chafing gel that works really well if you can’t always wear Spanx. I also prefer Jockey’s Skimmer because they’re a bit more comfortable and don’t make me feel like a full body sausage.
@kkw – I’ve had this conversation a lot lately. I’m old enough that I’m more comfortable identifying as bi than pan (if pan was a thing when I came out, I certainly hadn’t heard of it). And I’ve spent so long reminding people that I’m still here and still bi that I don’t love the idea of changing that. But I have a lot of reservations re bisexual – both because of the gender binary and because I think having “sexual” in the term is not so great. Which is why I sometimes use queer and sometimes use bi.
Robyn Oachs is a bi activist who defines being bi as having the possibility of being attracted to people of two or more genders, which opens things up more.
The older definition of bi is someone who’s attracted to men and women and I think (but I may be wrong) that pan developed as an alternative that avoided the gender binary.
Because I’ve already invested some years into fighting bierasure, I personally would rather expand the definition of bi to include genders besides male and female, although I get why some people don’t. I know of some queer women who are attracted to more than one gender but reject bi because to them it implies they’re attracted to men (and either they’re not or they don’t want to be or they’re only rarely attracted to specific men).
And I’ve heard pan defined different ways too – recently I meant someone who IDs as pan and who defined it as being attracted to the person regardless of gender.
So one of the definitions I’ve heard in regards to bi vs. pan is that pansexuality is an attraction to all genders/gender plays no role in who a person is attracted to, whereas bi means attraction to two or more genders (but not necessarily all genders)and may imply differing degrees of attraction based on gender. I’ve been struggling a bit with labeling myself, lately, and for now I’m most comfortable with calling myself queer.
@Amanda and Ren, Soma smoothing shorts changed my life. I pretty much only wear dresses/skirts so I am wearing these literally every day it’s not cold enough for tights/leggings
Also, thanks for the bi romance link and here’s a bi tv character quiz (that I only got 60% right because I kind of stopped watching series tv like 10 years ago)
https://www.autostraddle.com/bisexual-tv-trivia-quiz-433453/
Hope you feel better soon, Amanda.
I like using queer instead of bi or pan, it just feels more right for me.
@Ren Benton: Before “thigh gap” became such a thing, I always assumed *everyone’s* thighs touched to a greater or lesser extent. I never realized this was (yet another) thing I was supposed to feel bad about.
@Susan: It’s biologically a secondary sex characteristic post puberty in human females, so nothing to feel bad about!
*as with all other bodily mass distributions, bodies develop differently, and thigh size is not a value judgment in the “real women” wars any more than breast size is, so nobody start that crap
Yeah I spent 12 years only identifying as bi (just learning the word was an aha! moment), but these last 2 years mainly saying queer.
But I love bi and still seek out people who share that identity.
Also, I spent spring semester writint about bisexual characters in tv, but only got a 70% on that quiz!
Nonsensical side rant, but… I’ve never been able to get into Alisha Rai. The one book I attempted to read by her started out with the heroine spying on the hero without his knowledge/consent. I mean, I think I read in a review later that he did know or something, somehow, but it didn’t change the fact that that was improbable bs and the heroine thought he wasn’t aware. Like, she literally got home from work, got a snack for herself and watched this dude for hours…and this was a daily occurrence or something. It felt creepy af. If the roles were reversed, a hero watching a heroine every night in his creepy dark bedroom, against her consent… To me, I just…can’t.
I feel like I’m wrong to feel weird about this, because everyone loves that book and the writer. But, I just can’t bring myself to read more by the author, it left such a bad taste in my mouth.
@Lindsay: There are plenty of authors that my fellow romance readers love that I can’t read. I just wanted to pop in and say it’s okay! Please don’t feel bad for not wanting to read something you don’t enjoy.
I am not the biggest fan of Alisha Rai, and I do like that some of her books can be fantastical (imo): fun or enjoyable to think about, but don’t feel believable to me in the real world. As readers sometimes want to lose the real, real world and immerse in a fantasy, and she does that well, with real world settings. If that makes sense?
For example, interesting to read about, and to see different dynamics in the book relationships, but not something I would be comfortable or find enjoyable in real life. I guess that is true for a lot of authors.
Also, I have always felt that people are attracted to people, not based on gender or sexual preference. Whether or not there is a word to describe that, I am just happy to figure out how I feel about everything. Trying to adhere to external definitions is often part of the problem with truly understanding yourself. Why do we need labels?
I already knew about the Hogwarts aprons but OMG THE OWL CHAIR AND THE ROCKING HIPPOGRIFF. I can already see my son buying all this stuff the minute he becomes an expectant father (says the mom who is already busy designing the next batch of Harry Potter finger puppets and whose best seller in her Etsy store is the Hogwarts wedding sampler. Why no, I’m not the one who fostered this literary obsession…)