I have a fuller figure (think IG/fashion nova type body) but since I was a teen, I have only been attracted to “indie” (cringe i know) guys. Unfortunately, I feel like these type of men are only attracted to very slim, editorial looking women which I think genuinely at my small height and with my PCOS/hormonal issues, is not possible in my future. I have starved myself in the past, and I will never have an elegant body, at best stocky.

This belief and hatred of my own body type has been furthered solidified in my mind by the fact that almost everyone I have dated has either cheated or left me for a “cooler”/slimmer woman. These women look like they could be in arthouse films. I don’t look anything like that. I have an inner belief that all of the men that are genuinely attracted to my body are basically fetishists or porn addicts and that the men that I am attracted to would leave me the moment someone more their type would present themself. I am frequently used for sex even though I want to be loved more than anything else.

I am not sure why I am this way, maybe because I subconsciously desire for a intellectual or sensitive man with interests in the arts but I have actively tried to force myself to become physically attracted to different type of men but I have had no success. I perceive my own body type as distasteful and unfashionable because I hardly ever see it represented in the type of media I like to consume. I believe that the men I am attracted to feel this way as well.

Has anyone ever felt this way or have advice?

While I understand that efforts to program children into becoming a specific archetype are often in vain, it depresses me when it's obvious that someone is raising their daughter to be one of the popular girls, especially when you know that they were not raised the same way.

My sister, without any prompting from my 6 year old niece, is signing her up for cheerleading. She takes her to get her nails done and a few times a year takes her to the salon for a glamour day to get her hair and makeup. She has an over flowing closet of pink and purple dresses. My niece is enjoying all of this, but it feel a bit much.

When we were kids, we only wore dresses on holidays and our daily wardrobe was t shirts and jeans. We wore no makeup until we were motivated to spend our own allowance on Wet -n- Wild from the drugstore. We cycled through various activities, some girly, some not before landing on dance (tap) and music (voice and saxophone). It almost feels like a mild indictment of our childhood, like she believes her life would have been easier if she had been more heavily conditioned into femininity from an early age.

Also anybody still active on tumblr, cause I love tumblr.

I'm not 100% sure what this sub is or who that girl is but I feel like it warrants its own sub by now

Atrocious conversation. It felt like being on a bad date where you foolishly let the other person drive. Jordan and Ivy were competing for girl tragedy points while the dudes were basically egging it on. At some point someone asked what was wrong with Ian and Ivy said ~"molested as a child" and Ian didn't speak for like 10 minutes. I know nothing about him but now I am afraid he was forced to confront horrific childhood trauma by a girl with BPD bangs. I watched it weeks ago and yet it haunts me. People pleasers avoid at all costs.

I used to be a grungy weed smoking, internet surfing, weirdo/nerd.

Now pot is mainstream, alternative fashion has no sense of culture/community, forums are dead and everyone and their mom is addicted to their phone, sending AI slop memes, talking to their chatbots and sharing conspiracies.

I used to be considered strange and antisocial, then sometime after the pandemic everyone got really fucking weird, now I'm more "normal" than ever, yet somehow still an outsider. The overton window shifted in ways I don't seem to understand.

I still start convos with strangers now and then, I used to be excluded for not socializing enough, now it's like the opposite, and I'm still the weirdo, but in different ways, and now I don't know where to find other weirdos.

I'd like to design my place like this. What does this say about me?

[east of eden book and tv spoilers]

i've only seen two episodes but im like so mad. dumb of me to even watch it. i should've known better.

i figured it would be some sort of girlboss thing with florence pugh involved, but i had /no/ idea that the tv adaptation would go so far as to reimagine cathy's backstory as if her father had beat her. that invents a completely new dynamic and changes basically the entire character on a deep level, because now there is some sort of something to cling to in explanation for her evil. an explanation doesn't exist in the book and it's one of the things that makes the story so interesting and compelling and fun to grapple with. like WHAT? do you mean?

like i wasn't surprised by the narrative with the man she drove to suicide - grooming, she'd have been a childbride, etc. i might have predicted building an antihero on her awareness of how men can be violatingly obsessive. all as much could be logically extended in some girlboss adaptation to explain her darkness with men, but that is not what kazan did. she arguably obliterated a key element of the story grappling with good and evil. cathy is Decidedly Not just an abused and scorned woman - she's a SOCIOPATH who killed her perfectly oblivious boring normal parents because she could.

The nuanced perceptions of good and evil that come later in the book, timshel, the memory of cathy being scared and alone as a child. those are the culmination of the journey. they come at the *end*!! They add weight and substance to all the previous events. it makes it all flash by again.

Kazan's choice to instead bring this grab-able explanation, even set up sympathy for Cathy, just removes it. therefore alters the whole story, the original being where timshel is something learned across an eternity of grappling. The order of these things are important. Everyone has been a frightened lonely child, but not everyone kills senselessly. But some people do. And just because it's a woman, it doesn't mean something terrible had to happen to her. It's inadvertently promoting the same old ideas of women as inherently more good and pure than men. and then nobody thinks we have the same depth as men. we can just be fucking evil. i would've loved to deal with a scary ass twisted on-screen cathy for halloween. Ohhhh my god i cannot believe it.

So for some pretext I live in a beautiful semi-rural semi-suburban r+10ish area in a deep blue state. Lots of different characters here is all I’ll say. But a weird thing I’ve noticed (moving here from Portland, Oregon) is how everyone is aesthetically inverted. There are tomboyish women in their 20s with dyed hair who are homophobic Christians, gun-toting boomer Vietnam veterans who are actually the biggest resist libs in the world, the Latinos are all woke and gay with painted nails talking about native gardens and everyone who was woke and gay in Portland is, here, a megachud with a confederate/thin blue line flag lock screen. I genuinely don’t understand it. I get that Portland isn’t representative of America but I feel like my stereotypes are all wrong. Are we experiencing a cultural reversal, where the wokes become blue collar workers while the chuds are the standoffish weirdos?

Was just chilling at work. This chick walks up to me and tells me that I give off “school sh**ter vibes”. I am a pretty quiet guy sure but I do smile and wave to all of my coworkers. Just wondering how I can improve this energy I’m giving off. I don’t want to scare my coworkers

Just thrifted the perfect pair of archival diesel leather boots that fit like a damn glove 🥹Paid $10 btw.

Or is it just me

I was looking at photos of myself pre-smoking and if you want to talk official numbers on the scale I was at least 40 lbs overweight (I’ve gotten closer to a healthy weight from smoking). But somehow it looked more like baby fat because I still had a glow and looked kind of cute and huggable with cherubic little cheeks. Of course I didn’t think that at the time, lol, I was thinking v*lent and hateful thoughts about how I am a disgusting, hideous creature who should hide from the world. Cigarettes seem to have taken the glow out of my skin and also removed some kind of difficult-to-pin-down energy from my overall vibe. Has this happened to anyone else?

took my dad and now my favorite musician doug from tagabow gets diagnosed. he said he doesn’t have insurance either as he is a full time musician

i will always be an outspoken critic of our current system where those who are vulnerable suffer the most. i rarely had insurance as a kid and don’t now as a student because i simply can’t afford it out of pocket and my mom doesn’t have a job with a plan

your employment should in no world be the deciding factor on if you are allowed healthcare

seeing a lot of this discourse about Sacha Baron Cohen lately and it reminded me of how unfunny i thought he was even at the time Borat came out, and how he relied too heavily on lazy shock value

I've been lurking on this sub as a 23m and I find this space quite interesting, so thought I'd try posting something.

a lot of people complain about loneliness nowadays, and so you see a big counterculture encouraging you to go out to events, strike up conversations with strangers (even cold approaching). I've been doing some of those things, and it's not even like it's not enjoyable, it's more that it's made me realise I don't mind being alone as much as I thought I did (or maybe I'm just coping lol).

I finished my master's and I'm living with my parents now until starting a phd hopefully next year. tbh I only made a small number of friends at uni and I talk to them every now and then. but my closest friendships I've been lucky to retain since even before then: my best friend lives abroad and we call once every few weeks, and I have 2-3 close friendships I made in high school. sometimes these friends invite me out drinking or to some event and I have a nice time.

all my hobbies are totally solo, but I suppose they can be done in groups: for example I've been going to a run club. the people there are friendly, and I enjoy the conversations even if it's sometimes boring small talk like 'what do you do, where are you from'. fundamentally, I do enjoy talking to people and when I have social batteries I can be extroverted. nobody thinks I'm weird or anything.

but as nice as all this is, it feels fleeting. ultimately I feel like apart from with my parents, I'm moving through the world *alone* on some cosmic level. it's a strange feeling: I'm not sure whether it's terrifying, or peaceful, or whether I'm secretly miserable and trying to philosophise in order to cope. I felt it most strongly when I solo travelled for the first time recently. I went to several cities, and stayed in hostels, meeting lots of cool people. but it's the kind of thing where you have a really deep convo with someone in the hostel bar, but the next day you have go somewhere else alone so it's nothing more than a nice memory. I ended up spending a good chunk of the trip going to museums and walking tours solo during the day, although in the evenings I was with others.

I guess looking back I just became used to this. in high school I had lots of friends, I have so many great memories from that time, but I was also pretty needy and used to sometimes annoy them because I was so full-on. I then had a long period of what they call 'monk mode'. it made me much more emotionally aware and I had no choice but to figure out how to regulate myself. one thing that's beautiful about this is that even after spending time with others, I always have my own little world I can retreat into. but I'm worried it's unnatural? what I miss most actually is fighting with someone. nobody has insulted me in a very very long time haha and I miss caring so much about what other people think.

also I'm single (as you might guess). I don't have any weird incel BS going on, I just don't really speak to that many women my age. I'd definitely like to, especially being intimate. but I don't really know where to start other than Hinge and I feel anxious about making a profile.

apologies if I've been rambling, but I guess overall I'm okay with this but I want to open up to the possibility of a deep connection when it finds me?

I didn’t grow up in the US so I don’t get it. I have a family friend who lost their job and needs hip surgery now. They are putting it off because they can’t really afford it now but like, why not just get it done and ignore the bill? Does it really affect your credit? This is an older person who already owns a car and home? What would they even need their credit for? Is there something im missing???

Is there any genuine repercussions for not paying a medical bill?

noticed this pattern today

favorite covers that beat the original?