Damn, Honey is the positive, feminist pamphlet of Marie Lotte Hagen and Nydia van Voorthuizen. In their podcast and book(s) they discuss topics that today’s women have to deal with and they call to do what you feel like doing. Marie Lotte and Nydia showed us their Internet in October. These are the images they encountered and they’d like to share with you.
“We were around 30 (!) when we learned what a clitoris looked like. In case you’re wondering what you are looking at: this is it. This is a clitoris. Isn’t she gorg? Our sex education in high school was dominated by STDs and how to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. We learned that losing our virginity was all about penis-vagina-sex (heteronormative, much?) and magazines taught us how to pleasure our male bed partners, instead of prioritising our own pleasure. Time for a sex ed update! Teach young people more about sexual pleasure, consent, the whole rainbow of diversity in sex and gender. Show them all kinds of love. And what a clitoris looks like, please.”
“Alex Dacy, also known as @wheelchair_rapunzel on Instagram, is a disability activist who fights against unrealistic body expectations. She says: ‘I have curves, crooks, small boobs, floppy limbs, and I’m body positive’. The body positive movement isn’t, and shouldn’t be, just for curvy girls, but for every body and so everybody should be included. Magazines, ads, fashion shows and movies rarely feature people with a disability. People like Alex only see themselves represented on flyers for charity events. This must change and Alex is one of the changemakers we love.”
“Feminism and armpit hair are somehow connected. For a long time we hated that and were keen on letting everybody know that we were ‘fun’ femme feminists with clean shaven armpits. But then we heard about this razor brand called Billie, which was the first in razor history to show hair on female bodies. We thought about all the old commercials where you see a razor gliding across hairless skin and realized how fucked up that is. Women have hair, but we never get to see it. Not even in commercials about women having hair. It’s not surprising that we all hate it so much. Now we are fun femme feminists with armpit hair. Thank you, Billie.”
“We could put it on a sign: representation matters! Stock photos are a huge part of mainstream media, but if you search for transgender and non-binary people, you get a lot of photos of a hand with a transgender pride symbol. There are few identifiable faces or bodies shown. Broadly wanted to change that and created the Gender Spectrum Collection. It’s a stock photo library of over 180 images, featuring 15 trans and non-binary models, that aims to help media better represent members of these communities. You see people having careers, relationships and talents, just like it is. This picture is called: ‘A transmasculine gender-nonconforming person and transfeminine non-binary person nuzzling.’”