WHAT WE'RE ABOUT
We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
RBI supports all races, genders, classes, and sizes. We try our best to make this a safe space for everyone. If we are not doing our job or checking our privilege, we invite you to please inform us.
Some of the artwork you see here has been created by our founder or moderators, some sourced when applicable. Please be kind enough to source this blog whenever you share it's content.
We are not health professionals. Any and all advice provided on this blog is supported only by our own research, studies, and personal experiences; nothing more.
This blog is part of the Safe Space Network.
I am a gay woman of colour. I have studied Gender and Sexuality for four years, am getting my Masters in the same, have acted for many years in drag, and want to eventually write a book about Drag and Gendered Performance.
And here is what unnerves me a little about the androgyny on Tumblr. I feel alienated by it. For the simple reason that my body/mind/sexuality is left out. Androgyny is an aesthetic. But it is also gender performance, an intellectual perspective and a sexual identity. I am androgynous. Not by aesthetic always. My clothing may reflect it sometimes. I spend a lot of time in drag, and my gender identity encompasses every breast-bind, every change of shadow on my face. But it is not my only body. And I have many bodies, and many mental states, and many bedroom moves – and they are androgynous.
Don’t get me wrong. Aesthetically androgynous women are GORGEOUS. Aesthetic androgyny is GLORIOUS. I am uber attracted to androgynous ladies. Have dated quite a few. But it is not the only androgyny. And sometimes, I want people to remember me. To recognize that you don’t need to know me to consider the possibility of a particular identity. To remember that this identity lies in my stride, in my gender performance, in my mind. To know that I can bend my gender to match you, to contrast to yours, and to fit my will. And all of it is authentic, is genuine, is mine.
I use my makeup to gloss my mouth and shade my eyes sometimes, and to texture my facial hair and draw on a mustache sometimes. The same tools on the same body. The same mind in the same body. A combination of masculine and feminine in the same body.
See me. I can be anything from femme to super butch to quite a motherfucking sexy drag king. I’m not going to wax Foucauldian about gender identities, because I want to break it down to this – androgyny is more than its popular representation. It is something that is visceral, and I do not want it underrepresented. And I am nervous because I don’t want to encroach on the aesthetically androgynous groups, but I want to make myself heard. ANDROGYNY IS OF THE MIND. Beyond all else.
Sometimes it looks like me. Like this.
This is important; also I’m posting this because god damn, this person is fine.
Thank you. I’ve always felt I am androgynous but I would take too much to achieve that mainstream white androg look. But what about me and my internal? Respect that as what it is too. Too much emphasis on appearance when discussing gender
yesyesyes
Zanele Muholi, Bra, 2003, silver gelatin print, 275 x 275mm
Zanele Muholi is incredible.
…and not single fuck was given that day! <3
I. LOVE. This. Especially the angle and her expression and the wrinkly toes because bathtime is awesome. And also, I love Elissa, she is one kick-ass babe.
Fatanarchy: If the notion of “Health” and “Healthy” are steeped in morality.
(some thoughts/questions I’m processing this morning, as I’ve been bombarded with a variety of different messaging on health today)
What happens to these ideas once we remove the notion that there is a binary of health and healthiness that one can succeed or fail at. This idea that what we do with our bodies must align to a static notion of the ideal means that our inability to adhere to what is considered right and worthy for our bodies is viewed as an individual failure to perform or participate in society. This notion underlies the way we view fatness, to food politics, to the fictionalize creation of the welfare queen and her inability to perform in society. This moral idea of health pervades race, gender, sexuality, and class. The morality of that which is right versus wrong, whether you’re fat, brown, or queer, can be viewed from way our bodies are positioned as either healthy or right or broken and wrong.
What if we view health as simply the notion that our bodies can tell us what we need and we have the choice to listen and respond, with no judgement assigned for whatever actions we choose—understanding however that our ability to listen has been tampered with by the external noise of morality, commercialism, colonization, and Lutheran work ethic.
How do we get here, is it even worth arguing for? How can I practice undoing the morality I assign my own body? How do I understand morality as a construct that has been forced upon my queerness, my gender, my sexuality, my brown skin? When does morality serve me and when does it not. How does morality serve to keep me oppressed? How is morality institutionalized into our systems of power?
I’m chock full of questions today with very few answers.
Chicago Dyke March members in the Cunty Hunty Craft Cummittee (CHCC) are keeping it cute
This picture is full of so much adorable that I think I might just die.
The super hot and smart manybothans (follow asap) and I were discussing how this weird 007/International Women’s Day/Equality video had some seriously transphobic undertones, and I wanted to write a little bit about it. Our discussion brought me to a place where I felt I could write about…
femmeboy.tumblr.com
you are so GORGEOUS.
About the game:
Miedo y La Luz (Fear and the Light) is a small, free “choose your own adventure” style text-based horror game, grounded in some of the cultures and languages of Borikén (Puerto Rico) and diasporicans, and centering femininity and queer/trans* people of color characters. Though the game’s primary language is English, it blends Spanish and Taíno language use throughout.
The game features slow-building psychological and survival horror, mixed with magical realism, dark fantasy, RPG dynamics, and socially-conscious science fiction. Created by and for QPoC. Written by quequieresmrmorden.
Meet the main characters:
Art (above) by knittedlampshade
Art (above) by escl-ert
Vela, they/them/their (ell@) pronouns. A queer Indigenous Taíno person who wakes up to a world of distortions and nightmares and has to fight their way through it, gaining information along the way.
Luz, she/her/hers (ella) pronouns. A queer Black and Indigenous Taíno woman who learns to manipulate the rules of the new horrific universe, and starts to suspect there’s more behind the scenes than meets the eye.
The plan:
I’m making a prologue/introductory game for Miedo y La Luz with money out of my own pocket. I’ll release that online to play for free. After the game release, I might begin a fundraising campaign to commission illustration art, and maybe even some other boricua QPoC writers on staff. I don’t personally want to make money off this, but I want the other QPoC putting in their energies to get paid for their time and efforts.
For now, I’m not requesting any monetary donations. Not until there’s already a playable game and a more concrete plan for future costs.
However, you’re welcome to ask or submit questions, comments, critiques, art, horror things that scare you, and anything else you want!
Signup list:
If you want to, you can fill out this form to get an announcement when the game is released.
There are options on the form for expressing interest in beta testing or helping with the game, too! (But all those sections are optional. Any info you give will be kept private— no spam, mass emails, or sharing of your info anywhere, etc.)
Once again, here’s the form if you’re interested.
Signal boosting welcome! Thanks!
My game! Please fill out the form if you’re interested, and signal boost if you want to! :)
this is so cool!
Hello, my lovelies.~ I am posting here today because I thought I might share my story with you. My entire life I’ve been ridiculed about something or another, i.e. my weight, my glasses, my voice, and so on. It became crippling to the point where I felt as if the world would be better off without me, and I know many other people feel this way. But you know what? I found tumblr, and in so doing I found others like me, and learned what true beauty is. Beauty isn’t the clothes you wear, the hairstyle you have, or the number on a scale, it’s what lies beneath your rib cage. Please take my word for it, you’re so incredibly beautiful, and you deserve happiness. Never let anyone put you down, because you are worth it, and you are amazing inside and out. Don’t forget it!~ If any of you lovely people should ever need a helping hand or a sympathetic ear, I’m here 24/7. I love you all.
About 2 1/2 years ago, I was hospitalized after a severe PTSD episode caused me to lose consciousness. This picture was taken by my girlfriend the day I was released. My arms were bruised from IVs and blood drawings, and there was residue left on my skin from the five heart monitors that had been adhered to my chest. I grew up paralyzingly self-conscious of my flat chest and pale, veiny skin, but seeing this photo of myself in such a vulnerable state helped me see the beauty in my own perceived “imperfections”. It has ultimately helped me in my ongoing journey towards recovery, both from PTSD and from disordered eating and body dysmorphia.
Just posting some sexy photos, I haven’t done this in FOREVER and it felt fucking amazing to shoot these!!!
Just looking at these I feel indescribably beautiful, seeing a body I love, a body that I am proud of and a body that is ever evolving and perfectly imperfect. My scars mark my history, my breasts show my future, and my fat is a powerful statement on shear volume of fucks I do not give about other people’s judgments of my body.I love each and every one of you, and you are all fucking amazing people who have changed my life through the simple act of being a part of it!!! <3
this woman ALWAYS inspires me, god damn. beautiful.
So, I said I was thinking about what being a woman means a lot recently— specifically to me, because obviously I can’t say what it means to someone else. I guess I was interested in hearing what other people had to say, and to see how you guys would respond. (FYI: I’m going to talk generally about some of the types of answers, but by no means were any “wrong” or whatever, this is just me… meandering. Please call me out if I say something that makes you uncomfortable!)
The one thing that jumped out to me most— I was surprised to see as many people who were kind of “meh” about identifying as women, I think? Or who specified that they felt human first, and that being a woman wasn’t a large part of who they were. I don’t think I’ve had a discussion about gender with people who felt that way before— which seems odd, because I think probably a lot of people feel that way. But then, gender! What is it good for? I will get into that in a bit.
Despite being cisgender (identifying as the gender I was assigned at birth), I spent a lot of my life trying to deal with Being A Lady. I grew up in a very “gender-neutral” household— my mother never really liked (as far as I know) the traditional trappings of “womanhood”, and I identified more with my father in general, as we were both Gigantic Nerds. I was five and desperately wanted to be Luke Skywalker: the weak nerd from a boring life who was told he was The Only One Who Could Save The World.
In late elementary school, I got really into The Song of The Lioness, a series by Tamora Pierce. It had a woman hero— but to become that hero, basically, she dressed as a man and became a knight. Later in the series she does reveal that she’s a woman, but when she does, she’s stripped of a lot of agency and her life gets harder and much more filled with romance (not, as you know, that I have a problem with this generally). But at the time, I remember thinking— wouldn’t things have been so much easier if she could have kept pretending?
With middle school came anime— and slash fanfiction. Though it was a questionable time over-all, the fanfiction remained. I’m a romantic! We were learning about Queer Stuff! It was exciting! The one thing it didn’t have, though, was: women. And no matter how much fun it was and continues to be, I’m pretty sure it did a serious number on my psyche. All of my ideal romantic relationships? Were between men. All of my role models? Men. I wanted to look like a man, I wanted to dress like a man, I sometimes thought I wanted to be a man.
But I never really experienced dysphoria— just a kind of intense dislike of who I was, who I saw in the mirror. This was probably partly because I was fat, and the pressure from people in relation to that— the men I idolized were thin and angular, fit. But also because no identity— no style of clothing, no costume— fit. Everything I thought to try on chafed. And I was still, unknowingly, on the run from being a woman.
When I did head in that direction, senior year of high-school, I went straight for the heels and dresses. Some felt nice, some didn’t— heels and I never got along, and I was still in a place where I wasn’t comfortable with myself.
Only recently have I started to feel truly comfortable in my skin. Some of it is age: I’ve spent 21 years in my body, maybe it’s finally starting to feel like home? A lot of it is fat acceptance: I’m fat, and that’s okay. But recently, I’m beginning to think that I’ve started going through a process of purging all of the misogyny that’s built up in my brain throughout the years. I was so intent on thinking that I was really into masculinity that I didn’t realize that I was also pushing femininity away.
Turns out internalized misogyny’s a bitch.
(Hah! Did you see what I did there.)
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a woman because I think, finally, I can say I am one and feel good about it. It makes me feel strong. It has nothing to do with whether or not I’ve shaved my legs this week or if I’m wearing a dress, it doesn’t even really have anything to do with my breasts or vagina except that they’re my body and feeling like a woman for me has a lot to do with feeling embodied. To be a woman is to have a history, to be connected to other women in a way that is all about accepting and making yours an identity that has endless baggage. Being a woman, to me, is about re-claiming the things that I used to mark as “weaknesses” because they were not masculine— it is about crying a lot, and liking cook and eat, and sewing, and romance novels in all their forms, and dressing up in the morning to look and feel my best (no matter what in). It is about fancy underwear, and girly drinks.
I am privileged to have been able to take classes on feminism and queer theory and the body, which have allowed me to understand this better and identify my own misogyny which has been eating away at me for so long; I am privileged to spend my time with a gender-variant crew of beautiful people, whose deliberate and deep thinking about their identities have encouraged me to reflect on my own.
It is because of this that I was surprised to see people who are ambivalent about their identified gender— I can tell that gender is Just Not A Big Deal to many people, and that’s cool. But in an age where people might be able accept that there are many genders, what’s the use of one if it doesn’t empower us, or guide us, in some way? What is the use of a label of identity that doesn’t actually help identify?
I may have been assigned the designation “woman” at birth, but it took me a long time to realize I was one. And had I not met the people I’ve met, or read the things I’ve read, it might have chafed all my life, that weird “woman-but-not” label I put on instead, like a suit that fit a little to tight… that I wore every single day.
Being a woman isn’t always fun. (Of course, being a trans* woman is pretty much impossible, I have so much respect for every trans* person struggling through Gender Shit, holy crap.) But it fits like a glove, and I love it, and it’s one of the many pieces of my life that has fallen together recently to make a person who is much closer to whole than she was a year ago, or two years ago, and especially five years ago. Every day when I wake up I get to learn more about what kind of woman I am & want to be, and how to be that for myself and show it to the world.
It’s cool.
