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- Elizabeth Barrette (
ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
- Mood:
busy
Black Dolls
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Content notes for "The Little Shadow Across the Grass"
These are the content notes for " The Little Shadow Across the Grass." Read about the Grunge. The Ghost Dance was meant to " roll…
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Setting notes for "The Little Shadow Across the Grass"
These are the setting notes for " The Little Shadow Across the Grass." Read about the Blackfeet Reservation. This map shows Glacier…
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Character notes for "The Little Shadow Across the Grass"
These are the character notes for " The Little Shadow Across the Grass." Many of the character names came partly from Blackfeet…
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Content notes for "The Little Shadow Across the Grass"
These are the content notes for " The Little Shadow Across the Grass." Read about the Grunge. The Ghost Dance was meant to " roll…
-
Setting notes for "The Little Shadow Across the Grass"
These are the setting notes for " The Little Shadow Across the Grass." Read about the Blackfeet Reservation. This map shows Glacier…
-
Character notes for "The Little Shadow Across the Grass"
These are the character notes for " The Little Shadow Across the Grass." Many of the character names came partly from Blackfeet…
June 5 2015, 04:01:24 UTC 6 years ago
Curly hair in general almost seems to be stigmatised, unless it's salon-perfect. I have no idea why. It's an acceptable target for bullying, kids are wrongfully accused of not brushing their hair at all and almost all 'hairstyle' books or magazine articles aimed at girls can't be done if you have curly hair. It made me feel like a messy freak, even though it wasn't my fault and I was given no way to straighten it, yet was magically expected to.
Well...
June 5 2015, 04:17:20 UTC 6 years ago
Mine breaks "unbreakable" combs, shatters hair spray or hair gel, and fires clips or bands across the room. It unties itself out of knots and picks things up. I love my hair. I have learned how to work with it. I can do amazing things with it now. But it is not white-girl hair and will not put up with those fussy little hairstyles.
I am entirely certain that if my skin were any darker, it would have turned into an unending stream of harassment instead of occasional complaints.
This is why I pay close attention to how my characters wear their hair. For some of them it's no big deal, but for a woman and especially a woman of color, you can tell a LOT about her from her hair. Or lack thereof, Aquariana is bald due to her aquatic adaptation, and it's still kind of a sore point for her. Hannah straightens hers because self-control is important to her. The Gingerbread Man wears his in cornrows, which keeps it neatly out of the way while expressing ethnic pride. Wile Chile has kinky-curly-nappy prehensile hair that can shoplift or punch people and is impossible to contain.
A man with long hair tends to be either effeminate or very secure in his masculinity, because it attracts negative attention from the gender police that most men don't want. People routinely mistake Lawrence for a girl even though he has a little teen-boy ruff of beard. Go figure. For him the beard is a counterpoint to emphasize his masculinity despite the long hair. Yona now, he is a different sex, because he's got the Male Pregnancy superpower; for him wearing long hair and a beard is a way of claiming both masculine and feminine aspects. And Stan's uncle Gabriel is just an ordinary guy who happens to like long hair.
Re: Well...
June 7 2015, 21:09:54 UTC 6 years ago
Short hair makes a conservative (political) statement. The more military the look, the more conservative the individual is assumed to be. Vets often let their hair grow long as a way of saying, I got OUT, f*ck the grooming regs...
Long hair is presumed to be liberal; this is a legacy from the 60's and 70's.
Carefully sculpted hair on a white guy *can* trip the ol' gaydar; so can colour on just about anyone... my favourite restaurant manager this morning was sporting a pencil-thin mohawk, dyed pink. Oh, yeah. He'll be taking Pride off work.
You almost don't see big afros anymore...
My little boy wears his curls long, and only gets it cut to keep it out of his eyes and tame the split ends... he takes some shit about it at school, too, but proceeds to kick everyone's ass at basketball, so they mostly shut up. (And Friday morning he was rocking the hot pink socks, very much swinging the finger at traditional fashion sense. <3 <3 )
June 5 2015, 06:30:47 UTC 6 years ago Edited: June 5 2015, 06:33:05 UTC
I knew a little about black anchors feeling pressured to straighten their hair, which I thought was irrational and sad of the producers, but I didn't think people would make something essentially unchangeable by genetics (those square follicle shafts cannot be altered and straightening is time-consuming, expensive and can't be maintained indefinitely) into a political racial attack- especially if a black man or woman doesn't go for a hairstyle that 'anti-black stereotype' racist people are scared of such as cornrows or dreadlocks. It's just as bad as being cruel to those with red hair- though that may be anti-Celtic sentiment. Control over biology seems absurd and making it as an excuse for racism seems to be a Dark Ages idea. Curly hair isn't even exclusively African-American, nor is red hair solely Celtic, so the premise doesn't even work.
I'm 'most likely' Caucasian- there's a possibility my sire could have been Italian or Greek as I have olive skin, an hourglass figure, a round backside and moderate-to-excessive body hair as well as curls- the curls and olive skin appear elsewhere in my mother's family so it's either completely from them or his genes supported inheritance. Even in Australia, we're cruel to curly-haired kids, even if we don't associate them with being 'black' or Indigenous Australians, and don't get us started on red-haired people- or 'rangas'. Derived from orang-utan. Yes, we are that bad.
Well...
June 5 2015, 06:42:19 UTC 6 years ago
In many places if you have nappy hair and want a job, you have two choices: straighten it so it looks closer to caucasian hair, or buzz it very close to your head. If you are a man you can also shave it all off. Anything else makes people pick on you, not hire you, and generally cause problems. Many workplaces have explicit rules, and the rules always favor white-people hair as normal and everyone else's styles as dirty and bad. Imagine if this were reversed and everyone had to wear cornrows, even people whose hair came out of the braids ten minutes later and they were blamed for having "messy hair." It is a fucking disaster.
June 5 2015, 06:58:02 UTC 6 years ago
June 5 2015, 07:01:46 UTC 6 years ago
This even reminds me of how people diagnosed as having different brains or some mental illnesses aren't allowed to have habits, likes, dislikes or quirks without them being pathologised, yet 'normal' people are allowed to have whims. If someone with Borderline Personality Disorder discloses being bullied or abused, they're being 'manipulative' or 'playing the victim'. A disabled or 'crazy' child being hated by his or her family is apparently the child's problem only and something they have to 'control their response to' rather than the whole 'poor burdened' family needing a talking-to about scapegoating. If an autistic person can't stand being around someone loud, that's them 'being autistic and should not be encouraged', not that the loud person could be shouting or not minding their booming voice.
Yes...
June 5 2015, 07:11:00 UTC 6 years ago
Nobody wants to be around people who hurt them. It is easier to be alone.
Re: Yes...
June 5 2015, 07:29:22 UTC 6 years ago
Re: Yes...
June 5 2015, 07:31:53 UTC 6 years ago
Then they wonder why so many people with disabilities are depressed or anxious.
Re: Yes...
June 5 2015, 16:36:32 UTC 6 years ago
On the other hand a lot of supposed ADD or ADHD is just people needing to move around and do things, focus on other forms of learning, or otherwise not being compatible with the assembly-line nature of modern Western society. Without any particular disorder in play.
Re: Yes...
June 5 2015, 18:33:51 UTC 6 years ago
characterized by an "inability" to focus on a particular subject for
long periods of time, regardless of cause.<<
Far more common, and often misdiagnosed into this category, is an inability to focus on boring things. It's not ADD/ADHD but rather an extremely low bullshit tolerance. They bounce off topics that are meaningless to them, but give them something engaging and useless and they can go for hours.
The difference is crucial because the solutions are different: low bullshit tolerance is best handled by first demonstrating the relevance of formerly uninteresting topics, minimizing the coverage of things that really aren't relevant to this kid, and identifying the areas of interest so they can be developed into life/job skills. Once you've laid that foundation, you can work on coping skills to deal with times when tolerating a dull topic is necessary. But if you try to force these kids to tolerate boredom for 8 hours a day, they will fail and be miserable and make everyone around them miserable. So people usually resort to chemical restraint or jail.
>> I knew a guy who had severe ADD (and may not have known it), who couldn't remember anything for more than about four minutes at a time, and who couldn't live life on his own because of it <<
This does happen. Another thing that causes it is subtle brain damage: a whole host of things from TBI to fetal alcohol syndrome can impair executive function, concentration, and memory. So then it's mostly about coping skills, prosthetic brain functions (task lists, timers, etc.), and having enough of a support network to compensate for what the person just can't do.