Further, though, the TOMS campaign — like the million shirts — misses the fundamental point that not having a pair of shoes (or a shirt, christmas toy, etc.) is not a problem about not having shoes. It’s a problem of poverty. Shoelessness, such as it is, is a symptom of a much bigger and more complex problem. And while donating a pair of shoes helps shoelessness, it does not help poverty.
Things like jobs help poverty. Jobs making things like shoes, for example. But TOMS doesn’t make its shoes in Africa, it makes them in China where it’s presumably cheaper to make two pairs of shoes and give one away than it is to get people in a needier community to make one pair of shoes.
The result of this setup, as Zizek explains most succinctly, is that on a big-picture level, TOMS (and other buy-my-product-and-donate companies) are busy building the exploitative global structure that produces economic inequality, while on the other hand pretending that supporting them actually does something to fix it.
It doesn’t. It just gives people shoes.
"— The 7 Worst International Aid Ideas (via emmastonemetodeath)
(Source: stfuconservatives, via lostgrrrls)
— [via stfufauxminists, padaviya] (via feimineach)
(via lipstick-feminists)
—
Meredith Grey (Grey’s Anatomy)
(via carelesss-whispers)
(Source: lilmeyer12, via sayyoulovemeback)
— Alyssa Rosenberg, at TP (via thesmithian)
So I think my brain wrote a film last night…
I had a dream and it was very peculiar; it wasn’t a dream that I was actually in, it was a storyline that I was just watching, although I appeared to be quite emotionally invested.
For some reason the story is set in the 1980s. A young girl (about 16 years old) has her parents die unexpectedly and goes to live with an old friend of the family, a man and his daughter, who is about 17 years old. They begin living together and going to school together and eventually the two teenage girls fall in love and begin a lesbian relationship.
The school/other students find out that the two girls are together and basically kicks them out; the dad realises what is going on and supports the girls. They move out of state (for some reason this is all happening in the USA) to someplace where it’s really cold. Things are going well, then one day there’s a train derailment when the girls are coming home from school and the older one dies.
Girl with dead parents and man with dead daughter live together happily ever after.
Things to remember:
- be kind to everyone, no matter what.
- give compliments to at least three people every day.
- recycle as much as you possibly can.
- don’t weigh yourself and don’t count calories. numbers are pretty pointless and they will just make you feel bad about yourself.
- write down your…
Fantastic weekend with fantastic boyfriend. Despite millions of terrible things happening to us. God hates us for being happy. We are going to keep being stupidly happy to spite him.
