My lilac leopard gradient nails.

I settled on a lilac and gold gradient but wasn’t feeling very satisfied with it, so I threw a few leopard spots on it and voila! I swear these are the best nails I’ve ever done! Some people asked me to do a tutorial so here goes my first attempt at a nail art step by step. I’m not a professional, I don’t have long nails, and my techniques are all self taught so I hope this encourages other people to give it a go.

You will need: base coat, first colour (lilac), a light gold, dark gold, black, top coat, a triangle sponge, cuticle cream, a little palette and a small brush. (Not pictured: polish remover to clean your brush in.)

You don’t have to use these, or even find terribly close dupes! Choose a light/ non saturated first colour, and then you can do the gradient with two colours close to each other. If you only have one gold polish just use that! The light gold I used just helped smooth out the gradient.

Clean nails with base coat.

Two coats of lilac polish.

Dab the sponge in a bit of the light gold polish.

Dab the sponge over the tip of your nail.

A drop of dark gold on the palette.

After dabbing the dark gold over the tip of the nail.

Lilac spots over the gold gradient.

Drop your brush in an old bottle of nail polish remover to clean it.

Paint black polish loosely around the lilac spots.

Black leopard spots with lilac centres.

Finished lilac leopard gradient nails.

A watercolour and ink illustration of a woman with long brown hair with a curly pomp holding up a hand mirror. Text above says "Look at yourself!" and text on the mirror says "Stop looking at yourself".

A set of five handpainted matryoshka dolls, each doll painted with a different fat body. Also a tiny unicorn!

Sorry for the downtime over the last few days, Dreamhost is being an absolute turd at the moment!

Watercolour self portrait of me, standing with a pair of crutches under my arms and wearing a denim jacket, short dress and pink gradient leggings with a CAM boot on one leg. Text in a speech bubble says "GPOY". (Gratuitous Photo of Yourself.)

So, two weeks ago Nick and I were set to head down to Coffs Harbour for a few nights after scoring a deal on Wotif for $32 a night accommodation. I was looking forward to the break and I’d even written out an itinerary of things to do and see while we were in the area. Our hotel was next to the Big Banana! But the bed was foam and once you sat down on it you could never escape! And there was a dolphin and seal park where you could get kisses! As well as a tiny model Dutch village! A butterfly house! A carob factory! So! Many! Things!

On our first full day we decided to drive to Armidale to hang out with a super awesome pal, and I had planned on scouring local op shops for magical rural deals on furniture and whatnot. Unfortunately I happened to break my ankle while strolling through one of Armidale’s gorgeous parklands, just moments after giggling at a dog bathing in a fountain, and ended up falling into a soft bed of grass and fallen magenta leaves. I was helped up by Sonia and Nick, feeling a bit of a pain in my ankle and a lot of pain when I took a step, but we carried on and swung on swings and looked for deer at UNE.

The pain got a bit much for me and we left to drive back to Coffs, with Nick threatening to take me to the hospital emergency. On a toilet stop I totally planned to show him how good I was at walking and not wincing, but I couldn’t take a step unassisted at all! Nick made good on his hospital threat, and well, it was a good idea because I actually broke my ankle. My first ever broken bone!

We left Coffs Harbour the day after I broke my ankle. No dolphin kisses. No Big Banana. No butterflies. No shower because it was in a bath tub and I couldn’t get in because I broke my bloody ankle walking in Armidale. Guh.

So I’ve spent a week at my Mum’s, and I’m now back home. I’ve got a CAM boot as my statement accessory for the next couple of months, as well as a pair of hospital grey crutches. I’m glad I didn’t get a plaster cast, but I’m still very grumpy at myself for ruining our nice holiday, not getting a dolphin kiss, and being unable to properly help when we move in a few weeks. Also, it hurts.

Fancy Lady Industries is closed until I can get fully mobile again, and that might be even after we move in early June! I’m planning on doing a print order, probably on a pre-order system, so if you’ve got requests do let me know!

[Trigger warning: some of the links do lead to places that contain transmisogyny, racial violence and slurs.]

“Feminist is a bad word and everything they stand for is bad.”
- Phyllis Schlafly

Is this ripped from an Internet meme? I doubt it; leave it to a conservative to deliver such a droll line without nuance. Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative white lady partly responsible for taking down the Equal Rights Amendment in the USA (but I’m sure she’s nice aside from all that), recently lectured young impressionable male minds and warned them away from dirty feminist ladies who probably have abortions every weekend, even if they are pretty.

“Feminists are having a hard time being elected because they essentially are unlikable.” I picture Schlafly nodding sagely as she proclaims this, largely dismissing the effects of male privilege amongst other factors. Passionate women politicians, even conservatives like Margaret Thatcher, have been howled down for their “shrill tones” and locked out of opportunities because they don’t pee in the same bathroom as the boys’ club. But no, that has nothing to do with it; those feminist killjoys are just too damned unlikeable with their commitment to equity and fair access to reproductive services.

An illustration of a brown skinned woman in a white rose trimmed frame. Text says "Duanna Johnson 1965-2008." Illustration by vizzz, part of a series commemorating trans women who have been killed in hate crimes.

My goodness, imagine if the greater public had the occasion to make acquaintance with a feminist just as committed to the intersection of gender violence, anti-racism, cissexism, transmisogyny, disability, classism and sexuality! Forget unlikeable, brains would divide by zero, yeh? Well, no. How about the cheer that would be sent up from the
• trans people and families
• queer people and families
• gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual and asexual people
• poor families and individuals
• people of colour
• people with disabilities
• carers
• pregnant people
• people who identify as any number of the above.

It’d be a loud cheer, because that’s a significant heft of Australian society, and I’d wage it’d be pretty similar in the United States. Considering that conservatives want to maintain the status quo, because it directly benefits them, it makes sense they’d find a hoard of people calling for the dismantling of their hurtful, murderous and unsustainable systems a bit unlikeable. Schlafly doesn’t need to tell these young men to stay away from feminists because we live in a culture that has already trained them to be suspicious and defensive of anything that challenges their privilege.

It’s not hard to jump to the assumption that these men, taking a class called “Conservative Intellectual Tradition in America” at The Citadel, South Carolina, are rather privileged types. Most of them would be white, middle class (or higher), heterosexual and cisgendered males, but Schlafly’s (and wider cultural) warnings really don’t take into account male feminists, gay feminists, transgendered feminists, non-binary feminists as well as people who don’t identify as feminist but sure as hell want to destroy the status quo. I’m certain there might have even been a few in her audience feeling rather pissed about their erasure. Upon a bit of research The Citadel even appears to have female students, but were they not present at this lecture and if not, how are they ever going to learn about the Importance of Conservatism and the Badness of Feminism? (Apparently women students weren’t allowed to have locks on their barracks doors until 1997…!)

I identify as a feminist. I think I’m a nice person most of the time, and I don’t like to think that I stand for anything bad. Most of us feel like that, even the privileged and conservative and I get it, we all want to believe we’re doing what’s best for ourselves and our own. Here’s the actual truth: a lot of the stuff we stand for is actually harmful, especially in feminism. In fact, feminism has a racist, classist and transmisogynistic history that reaches deep and is still practiced today. I once thought that with each “wave” we’d overcome the shortcomings of our feminist ancestors, but I have been incredibly short sighted because I am privileged as well. I’m a white cisgendered woman in a heterosexual relationship, speaking the dominant language of the country I live in, I would do well to quit being so optimistic and start listening to the lived experiences, and often horrors, of others who live dealing with intersecting oppressions.

A pen drawing of a female gender symbol with the following text written in it, "Fight for women of all colors, fight for trans women, fight for women of every class. Not just white, middle class, cisgender women. We all need to back each other up and fight for equal treatment. (Source needed!)

Many feminists do not believe an intersectional approach (like the one outlined in the list above) is central to their own feminism and maintain a feminism focused solely on dismantling (white) patriarchy is the best way to achieve gender equality. I disagree. In fact, I believe a feminism without nuance, a feminism that focuses predominantly on white middle class women is a violent ideology because it specifically throws trans women under the bus and negates all the work POC have invested in human rights amongst other exclusionary acts.

Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns. Now we hear it is the task of women of Color to educate white women-in the face of tremendous resistance-as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought. In light of these facts, the women decided to forge their own movement, the Black Feminist Movement.
- Audre Lorde

Hell, the vicious rhetoric I’ve seen spew from the keyboards of Radical Feminists in the last week (seriously, explore this tumblr post for the some disgusting radfem displays of hatred) should be evidence of how feminism can be not just bad, but as violent as conservatism itself. It’s no wonder many activists reject a feminist identity all together. Who’d want to be associated with people who seek to erase, exclude and sometimes even murder their existence?

If Phyllis Schlafly is warning virile and tender male minds away from the siren call of feminist women because, and I paraphrase, “feminism is bad and abortion is bad and blah blah I got nothing else” well these young conservatives are going to be flummoxed (perhaps to the point of violence) when they meet say, a fat gender queer feminist, or a black disabled womanist because even radfems quiver when they encounter these magnificent specimens of humanity who are working tirelessly just to survive.

In conclusion: conservatism is a bad idea and feminism can be bad too, but it’s a hell of a topic that deserves nuance and nothing less. I don’t even think I’ve provided enough nuance in this post, and I can only hope to learn more about my own privilege so I can continue working on absolutely wrecking the status quo.

What Transmisogyny Looks Like by Tobi Hill-Meyer
Push(back) at the Intersections: How About Some -isms with Your Feminism? by s.e. smith
Trans-Formative Change – Meaghan Winter interviews Dean Spade
things i need white feminists to do before i will take you seriously by so treu
Why I’m Leaving Feminism by s.e. smith
On feminism, part 2 by The Angry Black Woman

A photo of me rolling around on the bed wearing a blue flower crown.

A photo of a fluro red and a black patch that says "big girls donut cry" around a donut, as well as a fluro red sticker with the same design.

When we move I will endeavor to learn proper screen printing so I can continue making stuff like this and t-shirts too! However! In order to move on to bigger and better things, I need capital to invest back in to Fancy Lady Industries so if you want to support me and see me create even more awesome stuff, go on and buy something from the shop! :D

A photo of my fluro red patch stitched on to the sleeve of my denim jacket.

A photo of my denim jacket, patch on sleeve and studs and spikes over the shoulder.

For my patch I had to figure out how to blanket stitch again. I know there is probably a better stitch to use, but I like blanket stitch! It was a bit awkward sewing the patch on the sleeve, and I didn’t end up with a completely flat patch, but I’m okay with it. I recommend using lots of pins to position the patch, then baste around the whole thing so it doesn’t shift as you blanket stitch. Had I basted first, I probably would have had a much flatter result! (Here’s a clear “two step” blanket stitch tutorial.)

If you’d rather have someone else attach your patch, embroidery places should only charge a few dollars to run around it and it will look spiffy and profesh.

A photo of my jacket, focusing on the spikes and studs running over the shoulder.

A black and white outfit photo of me wearing all black, posing with my hand on my hip in the garden.

I broke up the screen printing with a trip to Robina to have chocolate and buy art stuff with Nick, Heiko and Lilly. This blouse is the Domino Dollhouse one I wrote about yesterday, and it’s my second favourite blouse in the world after the white polka dot one! I have one gripe though: I wish the buttons were black, but that’s an easy fix. The white polka dot blouse also has a slightly more annoying drawback because the collar is far too small for my neck. I’d like to button it up and wear cute ties with it but alas. I wore this black blouse earlier in the week with a cameo necklace under the collar, and it was terribly adorable.

An outfit photo of me, fat and pale skinned with short white hair, wearing a long black sheer blouse with a collar over a slip with jeggings and cage sandals. I also wear a pair of awesome black and white striped sunglasses.

Photo of me being smily.

Photo of the back of me, featuring a surprise black and white polka dot back! (I'm not sure what's happening with the wrinkle bum?!)

A closer photo of me putting on my fabulous black and white striped sunglasses.

A final photo of my outfit, I stand with hands on hips proudly displaying my ensemble.

Blouse: Domino Dollhouse
Slip: From a City Chic dress
Jeggings: Best and Less
Sandals: Spendless
Sunglasses: Domino Dollhouse
Bangle: Evans