I can’t life heavy things because I’m a girl…
I work at a restaurant as a hostess. I have a couple of male coworkers, one from the Philipines, and the other a very old man from somewhere in India (sorry about the ignorance of nationality). I understand that their culture is different in that they are VERY patriarchal, so I usually try not to get all heated when they say something about me not being able to do or say something because I’m a young lady.
There was one day though, Albert (the Filipino) needed someone to help him lift the big container of soup onto the counter (a task I’ve done many times before with my younger male coworkers). I said I would help him out because he couldn’t find another guy to come help him. He proceeded to laugh at me and say “no no no, you cannot do. I know I know you are ‘strong’ girl, but this very heavy.” I told him that I had done it before. Again, points and laughs and waves me off saying that I can’t do it because I am a girl and I will hurt myself. Made jokes about claiming workers injury etc. Another guy walked into the kitchen, and Albert called for him saying “Angel, you come help me lift soup. She want to help, but *laughs* she is girl. She think she strong enough to lift. Okay we lift.” This was after about 3-5 minutes of just laughing at me and waving me off.
I was SO angry at this point. I wanted to say something, but I held it in. My coworker realized how pissed off I was, and told Albert that I am more than capable of helping him and that I’ve helped him before. This just made it worse.
Why is it that I am so ridiculed for being proud of my strength? Is it still socially wrong for a woman to be able to lift heavy things? I don’t understand why I am still laughed at for offering my help on something to do with heavy objects. When I really don’t have the muscular ability to do something I have no problem with asking for help, but why is it so humorous when I try to help because I know I have the ability?
Anyways, I’m still a little bitter about the whole thing. But so is our society affected by our history.
James Dean
T. Dylan Moore
Inspired by Andrew Bird’s song Hole In the Ocean Floor
(via theonlymagicleftisart)
Want a sneak peek of Slightly Stoopid’s new album, Top of the World, which will be released on 8/14? Listen to the 4-song sampler of the album before it’s released, exclusively on Spotify!
The American photographer Diane Arbus died today in 1971. Norman Mailer said that “Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.”
Here’s one of her most famous photographs, “Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents in the Bronx, NY, 1970.”
via Saatchi Gallery
Klaus Kinski on the set of That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) Photo by Jean Gaumy (via)
“I felt this thing coming up in myself, just really physically growing in myself and happening, but it was a jungle, so I couldn’t distinguish things so much. I knew there were, in myself, the souls of millions of people who lived centuries ago - not just people but animals, plants, the elements, things, even, matter - that all of these exist in me.
… And through the years it became clearer and clearer, this thing; it started to separate itself. I could make it come when I had to concentrate on, let’s say, a person I had to become - this thing became stronger. And took more of me. In this moment, I let it do it, because I wanted, I had to be this person. And as I was led to doing it, there was then no way back. And the more I tried to do it, the more I hated it. But there was no way back anymore; it was always going farther and farther and farther.
Until one day, when I was walking through the streets of Paris, I started crying, because I could look at a man, a woman, a dog, anything, and receive it, anything, everything; there was no difference between physical and psychological. I felt like I was breaking out, breaking up, receiving everything, every moment, even things I did not see. There is no turning back from this.
But this danger is the power you have. It is this same power that lets you hold an audience when you are on a stage. Then it is a concentration, the same concentration that in kung fu is used for the kick that kills or to break a table with your hand. It means that you are sure of the power and that you relinquish yourself to it.”
-Kinski, quoted in Playboy magazine (November 1985)
