On the other hand, a lot of anti-makeup sentiment– particularly anything that starts talking about how “frivolous” and “shallow” makeup is– is also misogynistic and femmephobic. Makeup is a form of visual art. If making your face beautiful is shallow, so is making a canvas beautiful or a block of marble or a hunk of plastic. If you understand why someone would feel satisfied and happy when they make a gorgeous print, you understand why someone would feel satisfied and happy when their makeup looks perfect. I do not think it is accidental that the form of visual art almost entirely practiced by women is the one that gets accused of frivolity and where the talent exhibited by many of the artists is ignored or denigrated.

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.

le-desir-de-lautre:

La veillée

Yann Tiersen

(via saritaroo)

itslaurenyap:

take this flower

(via allbrookling)

octopuspiecomic:

Oh hey guys, NO BIG DEAL, but my fantastic friend Lacey Micallef did the animation in this page. Lacey is a brilliant artist/animator/designer and one of the funniest people I know on this planet. Go fall in love with her work RIGHT NOW!

artistandstudio:

7 contemporary women artists with their work

Yayoi Kusama, Linnea Strid, Inka Essenhigh, Michelle Doll, Terry Strickland, Helene Knoop, and Alison van Pelt

(via howtocatchamonster)

(via ournightsnolonger)