Writing A Historical Novel Means Knowing How Far They Can Travel On A Horse, This Is Good Info Right

Writing a historical novel means knowing how far they can travel on a horse, This is good info right here.

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For everyone planning to kill themselves in the event of a Trump victory:

Bee

Beatrice

Lee

Leatrice

steph

stephanie

jeff

jeffanie

no shit.

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.

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In Their Words: The Swedish "Heroes" Who Caught The Stanford Attacker

The two men tackled Brock Turner and held him down until the police came. Turner's victim called them heroes.

Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson, the two Swedish Ph.D. students who found Brock Turner sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster at Stanford, said they immediately knew something was wrong.

Nearly a year and a half ago Arndt and Jonsson were biking to a party on Stanford’s campus when they saw Turner, 20, on top of his victim behind a dumpster. They managed to tackle Turner as he ran away and they called the police.

The two men were key witnesses in the case against Turner. The woman was taken to police to be cared for, bandaged, and given a rape kit. Turner was eventually found guilty of three counts of sexual assault and was sentenced by Judge Aaron Persky to three months of a six month sentence in county jail with probation. He said a longer sentence in prison would have a “severe impact” on the Stanford athlete.

Since the victim’s letter was published – followed by other letters from Turner’s father and friend defending him – people all over the world, including public figures and celebrities, have come out in support of the victim and in outrage over Turner’s short sentence.

In a letter written by the victim to her assailant published by BuzzFeed News Friday, she described the two students – who she has still never met – as “heroes.”

Arndt described the night of the assault to the Swedish news outlet Expressen on Tuesday, saying that they read the letter and were very moved. (Arndt and Jonsson did not immediately return BuzzFeed News’ request for additional comment.)

As Arndt and Jonsson approached the dumpsters where Turner was attacking his victim, they said they immediately knew something was wrong.

“We saw that she was not moving, while he was moving a lot,” Arndt said in Swedish.“So we stopped and thought, ‘This is very strange.”

The two graduate students quickly decided to approach Turner to see what was going on. Jonsson approached him first, Arndt said, while he followed.

“When he got up we saw that she still wasn’t moving at all, so we walked up and asked something like, ‘What are you doing?’”

In the victim’s letter, she describes pictures she saw of herself behind that dumpster:

“Unconscious, with my hair disheveled, long necklace wrapped around my neck, bra pulled out of my dress, dress pulled off over my shoulders and pulled up above my waist, … butt naked all the way down to my boots, legs spread apart,” she wrote. She had dirt pine needles in her hair and inside her vagina.

The friends exchanged a few short words with Turner before he suddenly turned to run away from them. Jonsson chased after Turner and managed to catch up with him and tackle him a few feet away.

Arndt leaned over to make sure the unconscious victim was still alive, “She lay perfectly still,” he said.

The two men then restrained Turner and called the police. They held down the then-19-year-old swimmer until the police arrived.

In her letter, the victim said she was told one of the two men was crying, he was so upset by the state she was in. She also said she was forever grateful to Arndt and Jonsson for what they did.

“Thank you to the two men who saved me, who I have yet to meet,” the victim wrote. “I sleep with two bicycles that I drew taped above my bed to remind myself there are heroes in this story. That we are looking out for one another. To have known all of these people, to have felt their protection and love, is something I will never forget.”

Arndt was a teaching assistant at Stanford in math and engineering while getting his degree. He spent time at J.P. Morgan as research associate. Jonsson received his Master of Science degree in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford in May. Previously he attended Uppsala University in Sweden for economics.

Jonsson posted the victim’s letter on his Facebook page Tuesday, thanking friends and strangers for all the “encouragement and support” over the past few months. He said he would not publicly comment on the process or outcome of the trial, but asked everyone to read her letter.

“To me it is unique in its form” he wrote, “and comes as close as you can possibly get to putting words on an experience that words cannot describe.”