theorigamiphoenix

You are either going to the bathroom with me or going to the bathroom against me

Horseshoe crab!!

an ancient little fellow :3

— Mikhail Tal, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal.

This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.

So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while.  But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not.  Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.

This post is one of those things that I will reblog every time it appears on my dash.  This is so important, and no one ever tells you about it.

I almost didn’t read this but then I did and I’m really glad that I did.

Super important

Tldr: The reason clothes never “looked right on you” is because models and celebrities always had their clothes tailored to fit them perfectly.

I love this post but it always frustrated me just a little because I can’t even afford to buy new clothes let alone get the clothes I have tailored. But then I remembered that a lot of things are easier to do than you think they will be, so here’s some resources on how to alter your own clothes!

Please read this, it’s an opportunity to learn about yourself, possibly a new skill and why it isn’t you, it’s the industry.

turns out there is nothing stopping you from making a pngtuber so you can rp working in a scriptorium

If you have ever been tempted by a Paleozoic Pal, like a a stuffed trilobite or a full size eurypterid body pillow, now's the time to buy one, before they and a really lovely little museum are gone for good 😭😭😭

This was the museum I went to often in my childhood. I'm no longer able to visit unless I visit family, but this place holds a special place in my heart.

As stated in the article, they hold around 7 million artifacts- many of which are orphaned fossils, with the museum taking in collections that otherwise would have been trashed.

Please consider buying a Paleozoic Pal, but I'll also leave a direct donation link as well.

THE GIANT EURYPTERID BODY PILLOW IS BACK IN STOCK

It's really gratifying to see people sharing this and commenting about buying/donating; the Museum of the Earth really is a gem and the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) that runs it does critical work in collecting and preserving "orphan" fossil collections. To explain/expand on a couple things, the financial straits they're in started a couple years ago when a $30 million donation fell through for reasons unknown. They severely restructured and downsized in 2023 to keep things going (including dramatically reducing staff and re-homing about 70 animal ambassadors from the Cayuga Nature Center which is also run by PRI, to ensure the animals got consistent care), but they are now in a critical spot with the mortgage and may be foreclosed on soon.

If you're at all in the Finger Lakes area, I recommend dropping in on a weekend - they've got an incredible mastodon skeleton, a new Blaschka glass specimen exhibit, and a full right whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling; they do Fossil ID Saturdays where you can bring in what you've found and get an expert opinion, and they do mask-required days regularly as well.

I had a dream where I was stuck in bed, and this guy was taking care of me. Kept bringing me soup. He’d talk and it’d sound like very soft mumbling from another room. I couldn’t always understand the words, but it made me feel warm. Calm.

I asked his name and he said “Oh I’m the grim reaper.”

Just so blatantly evil when they took the headphone port out of the phones to force people into getting Bluetooth earbuds like we let them do that to us and no one was jailed or murdered for it? What is wrong with us

Things that have actually happened in pro wrestling:

The world’s strongest man slept with a 77 year old woman who then gave birth to a severed human hand, which grew up and re-appeared years later.

It was established that these two are related.

One wrestler kidnapped another’s mother and declared that their match would become a “Judy Bagwell on a forklift match” with a straight face.

Ladder match for a kid’s custody papers.

WWE’s CEO was going to do a storyline where he was straight-up murdered in a limo explosion, and the only reason he didn’t is because another wrestler died for real shortly after it started.

The inventor of the ‘mandible claw’ move, Doctor Sam Sheppard, became a wrestler after being acquitted of murdering his wife and not being able to go back to his old job because his skills rusted in prison. He used the name ‘Killer Sam Sheppard’ and claimed he could murder a man with his surgery skills, because I guess he just said ‘fuck it’ at that point.

Danhausen.

One wrestler got demon powers by running into the demon king Balor one night and beating the shit out of him on the side of the road.

One wrestler who was previously a cult leader and demonic murder clown is currently being haunted by his southern gentleman brain demon.

Wrestler and his southern gentleman brain demon teamed up to beat the shit out of someone in a match sponsored by mountain dew.

Someone almost won a match by rocking his opponent to sleep, tucking him in with a blanket, pillow, and kiss on the forehead, and having the ref very quietly count to three. It almost worked, but then the ref sneezed and the sleeping guy immediately kipped up and kicked his ass.

Vampires.

Rey Mysterio got thrown off the roof of a multi-story building and apparently didn’t die from that.

Dad beat the shit out of his son in a match sponsored by cinnamon toast crunch. The son turned evil in the first place because a lady repeatedly beat him up and choked him out with her legs until he joined forces with her.

One wrestler’s entire career up until his gimmick change was revealed to be a hallucination in the mind of an asylum patient, who then got possessed by Satan and murdered the two doctors watching over him before escaping and promptly going back to wrestling.

Someone looked at the black lives matter movement and said “what if we did that but instead of helping black people they wanted to destroy wwe.”

Undertaker got beaten up by middle-eastern terrorists.

There were plans for this man to be revealed as having planned 9/11.

What an art form.

Once again, it all speaks for itself.

WHY does the inner ear have a direct line to your stomach? What evolutionary advantage is there to throwing up when you're dizzy?

When your ancestors were fish, this:

The inner ear positional system reports data about your position in three dimensional space in relation to gravity, accounting for acceleration.

Throwing up when you're dizzy might make the predator drop you.

... That makes sense but also why is it always because fish

don't diss your ancestors

they also gave us some other weird shit in your middle ear that means singing with other people gives you euphoria

Hey y’all wanna see the worlds most appropriately unhinged phantom of the opera as it came up on my FYP?

Watch carefully, it's subtle.

Ohhh help help! I'm hurt need help...

FUCK BRIAN GET LOST...

Ohhhh I am hurttttt heeelp... 🐦

i will be the new pdf

ill deal with your files

let me help you

Maps of Oz.