current favorite music & tv & things (+update)

Wow it's been awhile since I've done one of these so my advice is to keep expectations low because I'm no good at this.

♥The Sex Pistols+ Sid and Nancy
I got into the Sex Pistols when I was around thirteen and since then developed an infatuation with Sid and Nancy's relationship which is horribly tacky because I hate it when people romanticize them (spoiler alert: Sid ends up killing Nancy- unless your "goals" are to be stabbed inside of a hotel room, please stop posting on your twitter about them). It's not the actual relationship that gets me so interested it's Deborah Spungen's (Nancy's mom) book, And I Don't Want to Live This Life, that is extremely gorgeous and twisted and endlessly fascinating to me because before reading this, Nancy was incredibly 2 dimensional and almost stock character-eque to me whereas seeing things from a mother's point of view really brings life for Nancy and makes you feel for her on a different level. Back to the topic of the Sex Pistols, I found Never Mind the Bollocks in my dad's CD collection and it's all I've been listening to lately. 

♥Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos 
Though my main genre in music is punk and pop punk, I have been in love with this indie band. They're constantly using strange percussions and the lyrics are so weird and wonderful- I also did a cover of "Broadribble is Burning" (nice going Ann, covering their biggest hit)



♥30 Rock + Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Over February, I got really into old episodes of Saturday Night Live and rekindled my love for Tina Fey since reading Bossy Pants and had a sudden need to watch her show. Long story short, I want to be Jenna Maroney when I grow up. Once that was finished within the span of a good three weeks, I moved onto her co-written show, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt which is about a woman's life in New York City after being rescued from the bunker she was held captive in for fifteen years. It has Jenna and  D'Fwan from 30 Rock and the catchy theme song is enough to watch it. I finished this one within two days and have a mixture of pride and shame for it. 

♥Love Sick: A Smoldering Look at Love, Lust, and Marriage 
I picked this book up at Housing Works in SoHo originally as a birthday gift for Fee who I was seeing later that night but that didn't work out too well since I fell in love with it. The artwork is so retro and unique. Needless to say, this book didn't get to Fiona. 

*That other part of the post where I talk about myself*

I put this little tidbit in because it isn't How Fitting if there isn't a part where I share pictures of myself to prove I'm cute and have friends, right? 

On March 22, me and my emo squad had a vigil for our lord and saviors, My Chemical Romance. At this point, I'm not even being ironic and that worries me slightly (it was all fun and games until I developed an me group). Anyways, we got fries at the diner and cried to Gerard Way's voice and Harper gave me bangs so I look like a proper scene queen. 

(left to right) Harper, Jules, Sam, Madison (my super duper cool girlfriend), and Frank Iero?

We then had a birthday celebration for Jules and my girlfriend, Madison, last Saturday and watched Panic! At The Disco music videos on her TV and went to the park and bought energy drinks (I know- I hate myself) and sat on top of bridges and Sam and I kept saying "dare me to jump off this Jersey bridge" and when you begin quoting Pierce The Veil conversationally, something is really wrong. 

Jules, a piece of shit, Sam, Madison, Harper

I'm sorry I'm complete trash and can't wait to talk about my emo phase (it's not a phase mom) when I'm older. 

Jet Pack Blues

(OK I just noticed this but everything I'm wearing is from Forever21- I'm tacky and hate myself)

classic scene queen photograph

whoa didn't see you there- must've caught me mid dance (and without a neck??)

yung, broke, and fabulous 

(emo trash)

stuck on a puzzle

It was rainy and cold and gross outside so naturally, taking pictures was a good thing. 

♥sweater: gift

♥jacket: thrift 

♥scarf: BP

♥hat: BP

♥boots: thrift

(I also made a lame playlist for rain days on Spotify)

if you wanna leave, take good care, hope you have a lot of nice things to wear

I finally invested in a tripod!! Now I can spam everyone uncontrollably with pictures of me and my outfits!! It's a wild world!!

♥sweater: Target

♥skirt: H&M

♥tights: OASAP (they took forever to come and their "one size fits all" is hardly true- I'd recommend ordering from somewhere else- Hot Topic has cuter and cheaper ones!!)

♥sequin platforms: Buffalo Exchange 

♥Peter Pan collar: consignment

standing outside your figurative door

  ♥ This weekend, my mom and I went to Brooklyn to see my ultimate role model, Tavi Gevinson (for the 5th time), and hear her conversation with Anna Collins on modern day feminism. Starting off, Tavi is one of the funniest people ever along with such a great understanding of feminism and how to talk about it. Afterwards, she held a signing that I of course went to and finally bought my Rookie Yearbook 3 (I just need Yearbook 2 to complete my collection) along with a sheet of super cute stickers (I have developed a new obsession with covering everything in stickers as you can tell by my nintendo DS and guitar, Duckie)

(stickers from The Pulp Girls)

When I actually met Tavi, her immediate reaction was "You made me that jacket!" (I handmade a denim jacket with a bunch of drawn badges that I gave her at a Yearbook 3 party) Also, at the party, I showed her my celebrity mood board I'd made of her for my FIT class and when she said she absolutely loved it, my professor gave me bonus credit. She told me she was super proud of me and we took my worst picture with Tavi in existence (I also find it funny that in every picture I've taken with her, I have a different hair color)

she did write a cute message in my yearbook 

♥OK so I am sure most are aware of my love for Patty Walters and the band As It Is (he's the lead singer of) but since I joined their street team, I got invited to their meet up before their show in New York- Sam and I bought tickets a few weeks ago and I'm so excited to actually meet this band with only five other people in the room. If you haven't heard As It Is and are a fan of pop punk, I would definitely recommend listening to them.

♥ My favorite band ever, All Time Low, have just released their next single off Future Hearts and I'm not really sure how I feel about it- when I showed it to Sam, she mentioned it sounded like Dirty Work and even though some of my favorite songs are off that album, it also had "Heroes", "I Feel Like Dancing'", and "That Girl" so that album is pretty infamous and a repeat of that doesn't sound amazing. I'm mainly a little iffy on it because it sounds quite a lot like their previous single, "Somethings Gotta Give", which was an extremely fun song but listening to an entire album of just that is definitely not what I want. "Kids In The Dark" doesn't make me any less excited for Future Hearts but I really would hate it if All Time Low make a Dirty Work repeat.

(also the greatest response to the SGG music video was definitely this)

What is "Chicklit"?

   My favorite novel is Forgive Me Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick. I love this book and would recommend it to anyone from my mom to my best friend (who has read it and loved it). There's a side plot of romance but other than that, the book mainly focuses on Leonard Peacock, a boy deciding to commit suicide on his birthday. The cover looks like this:

This book was obviously written by a man and even though I picked it up in the Barnes and Noble teen section, it goes as a good read for people way older than adolescence and of all genders. By my standards, this is an amazing book. Another one of my favorites is The Disenchantments, a novel about a band going on their final tour over the summer after they graduate high school and how their manager and best friend realizes that he has to eventually grow up and let go of this. The cover looks like this:

   In a recent video by Kristina Horner, she discussed how people market their books by the cover and how certain novels are seen as "chicklit" and trashy because they were written for females and almost every time, by a female. I'm not going to defend every single novel here- in my opinion, The Perks Of Being a Wallflower was better than The Statistical Probability Of Love At First Sight regardless of the genders of the authors and covers. But there is truth to this; when you see Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock at a bookstore, the simple cover is seen as gender neutral whereas The Disenchantments' cover with a teenage girl shown is seen as "chicklit". Think about how you decide which book you're buying at the store or reading next: how do the covers make you feel? Because The Disenchantments has a young woman on the cover, its quality can be immediately debunked and thought of as "light" or a beach read even though the topics discussed in the novel turn rather heavy and majority of this book is quite a lot to take in. Without even wanting to be told, buyers can see this book as lower quality than something gender neutral and immediate assumptions are made that The Disenchantments will be an easy read for the cover is "girly". When novels are called "trashy" it is more times than not written by a woman and usually because the cover looks something along these lines:

and why is that? Why does the immediate thought of a "trashy" book come to mind when a cover with a woman or a female name appears. Yet novels with covers like these:

are seen as high quality writing? All six of these books are bestsellers yet the top three were seen as "chicklit" and on multiple review sights marked as "girly" and therefor lighter and not nearly as meaningful as the bottom three. Why does the appearance of a woman make a novel less important or unacceptable for a guy to read? More importantly, why does something as trivial as a name make people perceive a novel as "fluffy"? If you notice, the top three books are all by women whereas the bottom three all have male authors and just to fill in if you haven't read all of these, have the same intensity. Even though we see ourselves as independent human beings who don't need parents or teachers to tell us what is acceptable to read, we continue to have a blaring red light of what is "trash" and what isn't. Even if someone isn't screaming in your face, something like a female name can set off a siren. An amazing example of this is Joanne Rowling, author of one of the biggest series in the world, Harry Potter. When publishing The Sorcerer's Stone, she was advised to have the cover say her initials instead so boys would want to read it too. Obviously this worked and Harry Potter is a success for all genders but why isn't it mildly disturbing that the name Joanne would drive the male market down? The cover has a picture of a young boy on it and there is a male name as the title yet the fact that that wasn't enough it rather scary. I could barely read when my dad read me Harry Potter in second grade yet second grade me still perceived this series as a "boy's book" because the name JK Rowling sounded like a man- it's alarming that I had such an idea of what was within my invisible "boundaries" as a girl when I was 7. 

     The reason why this is so important not only to me but to so many others is that this doesn't just hurt women. These ideas of what is and isn't OK to read based on a "girly" cover or woman author is of course harming the writers of these novels but also men. Why is it unacceptable for a guy to read The Disenchantments on a train? This isn't to say men don't read books written by women- of course they do but why is it so much harder to have a boy read The Sorcerer's Stone if the name Joanne is on the cover? All in all, what I'm trying to get across here that the label "chicklit" is completely useless, gender neutral covers mean nothing, and you should read The Disenchantments. 

I'd also seriously recommend watching Kristina's video on this because it was my main inspiration for this post 

and also checking out author of 13 Little Blue Envelopes, Maureen Johnson's #coverflip project here