As A Nurse, I Was Concerned With How I Looked For Like The First Month, And Then I Realized That I Was

As a nurse, I was concerned with how I looked for like the first month, and then I realized that I was showing up in scrubs (and at that point in time we were masking every day) and all anyone saw were my eyes. Nowadays, I am mainly concerned with having clean teeth and deodorant on. I was also coming from Pandemic Nursing school wherein I barely left the house and had largely stopped wearing makeup daily. It is so true that when you are enjoying your job and you have pride and confidence in your abilities and skills set, you stop caring about if you look perfect or not at work.

Also, I have often heard women say that their makeup routine is "for fun" and "to show off their unique personality", and while something like rainbow eyeshadow might be fun, it's also a lot of damn work and it costs time and money. I promise you can be unique without spending an contouring your face. Something I have discovered recently is that there are fun ways to show off your personality through your appearance that don't require obsessing in the mirror every morning and don't cost an arm and a leg:

-fun glasses! My vision just keeps getting worse and this time I bought round plastic lavender frames which remind me, a little of Luna Lovegood, and then a second pair of 60's inspired cat eye frames.

-scrunchies. If you have a sewing machine, scrap fabric, and elastic, you can make these for free in any color or pattern! Here is a tutorial if needed.

-I have a coworker who always wears fun socks and rolls up her scrubs to show them off!

-I like to do different kinds of braids for work. It makes me feel like the main character of a fantasy novel, even if I can't bring a sword to work.

-if you work in healthcare or somewhere you can wear sneakers/trainers/tennis shoes, buy a well made colorful pair next time you need them.

-if you have your ears pierced and you like wearing stud earrings, there are so many unique earrings on Etsy. I have mushroom ones that are my favorite, but I also have racoon ones, pumpkins, fall leaves, snowflakes etc. I will put a pair in and leave them there for a week.

None of these are required of course, but I think many of us have that inner voice that screams you have to be different™️ and unique somehow, so I think these are fun ways to make your appearance "stand out" in a positive way that doesn't line the pockets of beauty corporations. I had a teenage patient recently who complimented my fun shoes, and a 12 year old girl who had on her own glasses told me she liked my new ones. Oh, and one of my coworkers told me exactly what species my mushroom earrings were, which is the kind of conversation makeup could never spark!

The solution to being obsessed with your appearance is just to get a busy job and/or start working on actually achieving things like I promise you can’t waste time on the shape of your eyebrows when you’ve got competing deadlines. I promise you’ll realise how unimportant your pore size is, when you’re kicking academic or career goals or trying to build something or doing some complicated task. I am begging any woman who is fixated on her face/body to get an intellectually rigorous job or a hobby or focus on a high-intensity sport or some shit. Just do anything that takes you out of your head like I’m not trying to be mean but you can defeat this loser, self-limiting behaviour

Moscow mules are where it's at!

You know those yard signs that are like "In this house we believe: climate change is science, no humans are illegal, gay rights are human rights" etc. and they basically just sum up the American liberal belief in one easy-to-read sign? I want one of those for radfem beliefs that just sums our talking points up. I'm thinking something along the lines of "In this house we know that:

-lgb rights are human rights

-feminism exists for the liberation of women

-abortion and contraception are healthcare

-hormone replacement and plastic surgery for the purpose of gender transition are NOT healthcare

-Pornography fuels the sex trafficking industry and both industries exploit women endlessly for male pleasure

Anyone else have additions?

LGB stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bi. Why on earth would that be a tag for bigots and racists? Sexuality has nothing to do with race.

As to your question about trans people: sexuality is almost always based on a person's sex, not their gender identity. The reason for this distinction is that while sexuality and gender identity are technically both abstract concepts, sexuality is rooted in concrete physiological processes. What I mean to say is that when a human being is sexually attracted to another human being, there are concrete signs of it in their body (ranging everywhere from an increased heartrate/perspiration to an erection to the body self self lubricating).

Gender identity, on the other hand, has exactly zero concrete markers. Let me ask you this: is a trans woman still trans if she has a penis? How about facial hair? What about if she doesn't like to dress in feminine clothing and prefers short hair?

Now imagine the person I described above is an identical twin, but their twin still identifies as male. So both twins have short hair and facial hair, with looser fitting clothing, but one twin identifies as a trans woman and one does not. You cannot tell the twins apart much as their gender identity is one of the few things that is different about them. My guess is that anyone attracted to one of them on first glance would almost certainly be attracted to both of them, because they look exactly the same. So if a gay man is sexually attracted to the one who identifies as male, he is almost guaranteed to be attracted to the one who identifies as a trans woman. Does that now make the gay man straight? Bi? Why does the gender identity of one person affect the sexuality of another person?

This is the problem with using an abstract concept with no concrete markers as a basis of identity for who you are sexually attracted to: no one else can see the abstract concept. Which is why sexuality has always been rooted in a person's sex instead of their gender identity. Lesbian women are only attracted to other females, and they are not aroused by male genitalia. Gay men are only attracted to other males, and they are not aroused by female genitalia. And Bisexual people are attracted to men and women and can be aroused by either set of genitalia. This is something that can be scientifically tracked due to those concrete physiological markers and is in fact, the definition of sexuality.

Let me take my analogy one step farther just to prove the point: say the gay man in my scenario never actually meets these twins, just passes them in public and knows he feels sexually attracted to both of them when he sees them. By your logic, he would be considered bisexual because he was attracted to both a man and a trans woman, but his brain saw two people with short hair, facial hair, and loose fitting clothing who looked exactly the same, so he assumed they were both male. Thus, in his mind, he is still gay.

It's the idea that one person's identity should alter the sexuality of someone else that I have a problem with. Why does a random stranger's gender identity affect my sexuality? If I am dating a man who one day wakes up and feels they should identifying as trans, am I now in a lesbian relationship despite only exclusively being attracted to men my whole life? Do you see the problem with replacing sex with gender identity in the realm of sexuality? It simply doesn't work because it just becomes a tangled web of everyone having to announce their gender identity for people to know what their sexuality is. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to just use biological sex in regards to determining sexuality, don't you think?

You know those yard signs that are like "In this house we believe: climate change is science, no humans are illegal, gay rights are human rights" etc. and they basically just sum up the American liberal belief in one easy-to-read sign? I want one of those for radfem beliefs that just sums our talking points up. I'm thinking something along the lines of "In this house we know that:

-lgb rights are human rights

-feminism exists for the liberation of women

-abortion and contraception are healthcare

-hormone replacement and plastic surgery for the purpose of gender transition are NOT healthcare

-Pornography fuels the sex trafficking industry and both industries exploit women endlessly for male pleasure

Anyone else have additions?

Reblog for a bigger sample size.

Say in the tags what you voted for and if you live in or outside of the US