Contracted really encapsulates what I like to call Girl Rot. Like when ur just rotting in ur room when on your period or just have had too much. No one in Sam’s life believes her and just thinks she’s on drugs when she’s actually struggling and no one is helping her.
I guess it was made by a moid, but I am nearly sure it was made by a homophobe. A lesbian won´t be attracted to a male in any circumstances and definitely would not sleep with him.
When my nephew was four, a friend of the family passed away. The man was in his 90s and died of natural causes, and we were going to the funeral. We sat my nephew down and explained who this was, and that he had passed away, and now we were going to a sort of quiet party to celebrate him, and that there he might see the gentleman in the casket, and he might be very still, because he had died, but that everything was alright.
My nephew contemplated this calmly for a few minutes, and then said, "I think he will be very flat."
What.
It turns out that at age four, my nephew's only real context for death was roadkill, which he frequently pointed out while we were driving. He therefore believed that the only way anyone died was getting run over by a car.
It was a struggle to teach healthy girls to restrain and repress themselves; but the elite clothes, with tight bodices and long skirts, crushed lungs and stomach and limited mobility. Women's fashions disabled growing girls: 'As women's bodies were deformed from the age of two by metal stays that contracted their upper torso (and rendered their health attractively delicate), so their minds were deformed by the injunctions to remain silent and silly.'
"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory
My apartment building has coin-op laundry in the basement, and on the shelf where people store detergent there are also just enough quarters to start one load in the washer. This is the collective "oh shit I forgot my quarters" bank that anyone can borrow from to start laundry without having to climb all the way back up the goddamn stairs first. These quarters have been steadily used and replaced for multiple years now, and every time I see them I think about how upon such small foundations rests all of human society.