BFFs and Bromantifications

Last night, I was checking up on my Deviantart account, and "So You're A Cartoonist" creator has many journal entries about and doodles featuring characters from "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic".  I vaguely remember watching the 80's original, and owning a turquoise coloured pony with sailboats on her arse and a streak of white hair that turned magenta in the sunlight (between two yellow streaks...ah, the 80s and your lurid colour schemes....I won't miss you much).  I believer her name was Main Sail, and she was a first generation MLP toy released in the 1988/1989 season.

Anyway, I decided to check out the new version, and, whilst up to my neck in sparkly, magical pony muck, I came across this website: http://bronies.memebase.com/.  For those of you wanting to know what a "brony" is, it's a portmanteau or squishing together of the words "brother" and "pony".

This sounds like a weird way to get onto the topic I'm about to launch into, but it is a point of modern culture that interests me...Bear with me on this one guys...

As far as sexualities go, on the most basic level, you can be: straight/heterosexual, gay/lesbian/homosexual, or bisexual ("but, what about the "T" in LGBT?" I hear you cry; Being transsexual is not about sexual preference/attraction, it's about how you feel physically in your own body - you could be a transsexual lesbian, for example). Of course these labels are 100% to do with sexual or romantic preferences, and not really associated with other lifestyle choices.  However, there is still a societal attitude that unfortunately prevails even now in the 21st century; that being, that what one chooses to do outside of his/her sexual or romantic life somehow defines the sexuality of that person.  With this attitude has evolved what I am going to call "micro-labelling".

Again, let me explain.  Most people have a label.  I personally am "straight/heterosexual".  So far so good.  However, sometimes I fancy girls a bit, but not very much or often.  This makes me not quite bisexual, so I then become "bi-curious" (as opposed to "a little bit gay sometimes").  I also like to game, which as far as I am aware, has got nothing to do with who I might want to have sex with at any given point in time.  This is, for some inexplicable reason seen as a pretty much exclusively masculine activity, so whereas I should be able to say that I am a "gamer", I tend to have add the word "girl" or "chick" onto the end of it.  As if it is really necessary to point out that I am in fact an actual female and not a man with boobs and child-bearing hips.  This form of microlabelling is, in my opinion backwards and sexist, as it creates a division between men and women in the gaming community - that's a blog for another occasion, I bring it up just as an example.

On the other end of the stick - the male end - if a man decides that he likes something considered "girly" he is immediately considered gay.  And now we loop back to "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic", and the Brony community as a whole.  There is method in the madness...

I find it quite tragic that there is a need in this day and age to have to label oneself in a particular way just to avoid being labelled as something else (i.e. gay).

Why can a man not stand up and loudly proclaim for the world to hear: "I like 'My Little Pony'"?  Without risk of having his sexuality called into question?

More commonly used than "Brony" is the "Bromance" - again the portmanteau involving the term "bro" is an immediate disclaimer of non-gayness.  "I'm not gay, I'm just really close to my mate okay?!".  Interestingly as far as the term "Bromance" is concerned, there doesn't seem to be a female equivalent (I have come across, on urbandictionary.com, "womance", and the far more insulting "hoemance").  I'm not entirely sure why this is, but my guess is that having a friend with whom you connect with on a deeply emotional level, so much so that you feel the need to touch each other at all, isn't considered societally unusual for a woman.  They're just BFFs, yay!

It isn't just applicable to homosocial relationships, but heterosocial ones as well.  Recently I was very good friends with a lad.  The friendship bordered on exclusivity, and we shared a lot of things emotionally.  I later found out that the majority of people assumed we were sleeping together, which wasn't the case at all.

What is wrong with loving someone deeply, but platonically?  I have this argument with people who are desperate to believe that there is some form of slash going on between Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee in Tolkien's Lord of  the Rings, because Sam tells Frodo that he loves him.  Yes he does, that doesn't make them gay!  It also doesn't mean that it has to be labelled as anything else (such as a bromance), other than what it is - a friendship.

Hairwire

PS:  Check out *TomPreston on DA here: http://tompreston.deviantart.com/

Chocolate Hearts and Ice Cream Lingerie

Yes, it's Valentine's Day.  Once again, hoardes of men stream to the shops in the hopes of unearthing something that expresses his opinion in a wholly unique and chocolatey way.  It's like your local supermarket becomes some sort of battle arena for men desperate to prove themselves to their partners.

I'm being deliberately harsh, in honesty.  It is not just men milling to the shops in their droves, of course.

Let me be clear - I have nothing against romance, in fact I quite like it, in all its varied forms, from sugary sweet to tragic and passionate, from practical to slightly unrealistic.  But I am a fervid believer in the notion that it should be borne out of a genuine love and desire for it.

This is where Valentine's Day falls short of the mark.

I am of the opinion that VD (how ironic), by ever-increasingly selling itself as the most important (if not the only) day of the year to express your feelings for someone, has in fact made hundreds of thousands of men and women feel pressurised into buying bigger and better cards, bouquets and chocolates for their partners, and presenting them in bigger and more expensive gestures, because it's what Bob and Mary-Sue are doing.  It's peer-pressure, commercialised.  And that sucks.  Because peer-pressure isn't romantic.

Here is an example of what VD does to people and how they approach gift-giving in their relationships:  My manager in work yesterday, upon learning that I was about to go to the supermarket to buy my lunch, gave me a ten pound note and told me to get his wife a card for valentine's day.

He said to me: "We said we weren't doing anything, but she'd kill me if I didn't".  Since when does Valentine's Day get to override a decision mutually made by two consenting, married adults?  It defies logic.

Then I said to him, whilst putting the tenner into my purse, "What kind of card do you want me to get - flowery and sweet, wordy, funny, funky, sappy...what?"  And this is the response I got, I kid you not:

"One about this big" (whilst outlining the size he meant with his hands in a vague box shape).

This is quite possibly the least romantic thing I have ever heard in my entire life, on one of the most apparently romantic days of the year.  But the fact remains, he probably would have wanted to put some thought and effort into if he didn't feel as though he "had" to get one.

Anyway, off I go to the store, and  obviously the Valentine's crap is on your immediate right and front as you enter, so it can remind you of what a bad person you are when you realise upon seeing them that you actually forgot about it, effectively guilt tripping you into declaring your love for your, well....love.

The first trial was having to barge my way through (and I'm sorry, but this true) an exclusively male crowd of people, who then proceeded to give me weird looks for rifling through the many "To my Wife" cards.  Having the incredibly limited description of the desired product at my disposal, I had to open and read the majority of the ones there.  In honesty, I was sorely tempted to get the most nauseating card I could find, but I decided to go for something a little less sickening, because I don't really have anything against my manager's wife.

That mission accomplished, I went through the store towards the foody bits.  Whilst walking past the vegetables, I cast my discerning eye over the asparagus.  I'm quite fond of asparagus, I find it very tasty.  This particular supermarket had two boxes of asparagus in their normal packaging - i.e. shrink-wrapped with a rectangular blue label with the word "Asparagus" in a practical, no-nonsense font (think arial, or helvetica)  Behind and above these innocent packs of asparagus, I see...dun dun duhhhh!  More asparagus.  But the thing that set these boxes of asparagus aside was the fact that it had disposed of the blue label, and opted for a pink heart shaped one.  Inside the heart, the word "Asparagus" had been dribbled over the front in some ridiculous, pink, italic, calligraphic drawl.  I couldn't quite understand the seemingly desperate marketing ploy, and the image of somebody saying "darling, to show you how much I love you, I cooked you some asparagus", utterly failed to pop into my head.

Having said all of the above, I am sitting here with a beautiful, small bouquet of flowers and box of chocolates in front of me from my boyfriend, and he in return will be getting a sumptuous home cooked (read: burned) meal and some wine.  We'll probably cuddle up on the sofa and enjoy each other's company and conversation.  But that doesn't mean that on every other day of the year (apart from birthdays and anniversaries of course) we ignore each other, slob out and fart in bed, and generally not make any effort to spend quality time together because it's no longer Valentine's Day.

Of course it's not all bad - I can very easily see how it can help in some situations, for example, teen romances and shy adults.  Those incapable or nervous about taking the step towards professing their feelings for another suddenly have a wealth of material to choose from, and the 24 hour window of opportunity in which to do it.

Like I said, I need to make it clear that I don't actually have a problem with Valentine's day in itself, nor the fact that many people choose to revere it as a day of romanticism.  I just take serious issue with the fact that we seemingly HAVE to do what it says just because it exists, more so because the card companies and supermarkets feel the need to cash in on everything that exists ever, including romance.

I'm off to buy ingredients for a pink peppercorn sauce.

Hairwire

Greetings!

Hi there!

So...this (fairly obviously) is my first post...ever (hopefully less obviously).  I'm new to the blogging game - I've just found myself needing to write essays about things that make my mind tick and irritating all my Facebook friends, so I thought I should maybe take these thoughts and stick them in the right place.  Hello blogger.com!

The things that tend to provoke a reaction in me and thusly you will probably see me yakking about on here are all sorts in honesty - but mostly sexism, racism, ageism, size-ism, stupid-ass stereotypes and appalling grammar.  I will, in most cases, try to make these blogs seem less like an egotistical rant at everyone and everything who/that doesn't agree with me, by occasionally throwing in a link to an article by a learned person...or maybe an amusing picture of a cat.

Hope you find some of what I may talk about interesting.

Hairwire

PS:  http://www.memecenter.com/fun/19917/i-am-cat Tres amusant.