Internet Inspiration – September 4, 2016

Body Positivity was Lit AF at Afropunk 2016. Also I want all these women to choose all my clothes. [via Wear Your Voice]

I loved this, via Thought Catalog. I am a Woman of Distinction. You Will Feel Me When I Walk Into a Room.

I am not afraid to tell you I am beautiful because I have done the work to be at home in my soul’s skin.

I do not shrink to accommodate the insecurities of those around me, but stand tall to remind them gently, why crouch?

My body may be a meat bag, a vessel for the magnificence I hold inside but I cherish each scar on my chin, each freckle, each voluptuous sun bleached curl, each inch of my breasts.

I walk with my head held high when I walk into a room because I know there is space for me in this world — however I may come.

…

I am a woman of distinction and I am not afraid to love you before you are ready.

Frida Kahlo’s illustrious life, illustrated. Good god do I love Frida. This might be a good first Frida biography option, maybe for a young fan. [via BrainPickings]

I’ve recently taken up embroidery as a direct result of spending a month at home with my parents. My mom is always exploring new creative hobbies, and I really love that about her. This article, titled, “If You Want to be a Better Person, Find Something to Do Outside of Work,” speaks really well to our need for hobbies. [via Quartz Magazine]

“Becoming serious is a grievous fault in hobbyists. It is an axiom that no hobby should either seek or need rational justification. To wish to do it is reason enough. To find reasons why it is useful or beneficial converts it at once from an avocation into an industry–lowers it at once to the ignominious category of an ‘exercise’ undertaken for health, power, or profit. Lifting dumbbells is not a hobby. It is a confession of subservience, not an assertion of liberty.”

Also via Quartz, this article was making the rounds on my facebook feed, about why women drink. So many women identified with this message, which is, essentially, the simmering rage and angst that comes when women have no space for their own lives or pleasure. I see it a lot with clients, that we are essentially walking F***-Yous when it comes to self-care.

But knives and booze, yoga and booze, 13 mile runs and booze? What’s next to be liquored up: CPR training? Puppy ballet class? (Not really a thing, but someone should get on it.) Is there nothing so inherently absorbing or high-stakes or pleasurable that we won’t try to alter our natural response to it? Maybe women are so busy faking it — to be more like a man at work, more like a porn star in bed, more like 30 at 50 — that we don’t trustour natural responses anymore. Maybe all that wine is an Instagram filter for our own lives, so we don’t see how sallow and cracked they’ve become.

I’ve been loving these art prints by Evie Seo.

Speaking of art, I also love these reimaginings of Goddesses as Teen Feminists. [HuffingtonPost]