I am so obsessed with pastel colours lately. I blme my obsession with fairy kei. When I started this wishlist I had no idea of what direction it was going to go, but I realised very quickly it was all about cute colours and prints!
1. Transparent Lace Up Boots from Caramel Syndrome on Storenvy – how quirky and adorable are these? Imagine what cute socks you could wear with them!
2. Starlight Star Bright unicron tank from Dollskill – This is waaaay to expensive but OMG I am so in love!
3. The Awesome Shorties by Black Milk Clothing – not really appropriate to the theme as such but man I want these shorts so bad to wear with all my BM leggings!
4. Magic Backpack unicorn tee from Dollskill – ahhh this reminds me of Lisa Frank! Adorbs!
5. You Scream Ice Cream Leggings by Black Milk Clothing – AAARRRGHHH these are sooooo cute! God dammit Black Milk, why do you do this to me???
6. 14-Character Hello Kitty Scarf from Yummy You – I don’t think I need to explain why I want this!
7. Pug Teapot Brooch by Ella Mobbs – I have the pleasure of knowing Ella and even had a stall next to hers at the last Supanova. This brooch is TOO CUTE!
8. Super Sweetie pink and black Bow necklace by MissaReeGuts – I am friends with MissaReeGuts herself and am always spending my Ruby Kawaii profits on her adorable accessories!
About Ruby
My name is Cara (but you can call me Ruby) and I like the colour pink, cartoons, movies, fist shaking, daggy dancing and 90s RnB music. I live in Brisbane and occupy my time making kawaii stuff for your hairs and face!
I’ve always been appalled at how some of the worst misogyny I’ve ever witnessed has come straight from a woman’s mouth. Most of it’s to do with internalised sexism, after an eternity of being made to feel inferior to men, many women actually believe and vocalise the ridiculous stereotypes about females (have a read about, it’s very interesting). But what really gets my goat is seeing women being sexist to other women in sleazy, harassing ways. I’ve especially noticed this on Instagram and can’t understand why it’s OK for one girl to make lewd comments on another girls picture but if a guy did it, it’s be gross and unwanted. Talk about double standards. You don’t want to be treated like a piece of meat by men, but when a girl is the one making the lewd comments it’s OK? NEWSFLASH: It’s not!
Girls, it is not liberating or empowering to get treated like you’re nothing but a sexual object. I understand girls like to compliment one another and we can get away with telling another girl they’re pretty because it can be said without any intent, which we assume guys have when they pay us compliments. But there’s got to be a line, and making gross comments about boobs, butts or boxes to another girl is totally crossing that line and pretty much taking a crap in its front yard.
There is absolutely no reason for anyone to comment “boobs” on a girls Instagram post, just because you can see their boobs/cleavage in any capacity. Just because a girls boobs are showing in a photo (and because of Instagram’s policies, they’re always covered up because nudity ain’t allowed) doesn’t mean she wants you to oggle her and point out something she is already very aware of. Yep, I have boobs, got it thanks Captain Obvious!
Perhaps I am being melodramatic about this (it wouldn’t be the first time, heh heh), after all the odd compliment from a female friend that may verge on the sexual can be very flattering and inoffensive. Perhaps it’s the lack of creativity that annoys me, I feel like women should be able to come up with something a bit better than what a 13 year old boy like to randomly call out at passing girls because god knows we complain enough when a guy does holler something stupid at us. I just wish everyone would take a moment before tapping “Send” and re-read their comment and make 100% sure they want it out there (this obviously applies to all social media). Do you really want to look like a douchebag by writing “hot bitch”, “#boxgap” or “boobs” under a picture someone has posted? Because the rest of look at that and cringe. Ask yourself, if a male you barely know wrote something like that under one of your photos, would it make you uncomfortable? Would you want to call him on it or maybe just delete it? If so, why are you doing it to someone else? Stop reducing your female comrades to pieces of sexualised flesh and either come up with a creative compliment or shut the hell up. The internet is already full of sexist idiocy, so please stop adding to it!
I love living in Australia, it’s a bloody good country in a lot of ways. But as a general rule, we’re a bunch of racists. Not necessarily outright racists who abuse non-whites for merely existing, but a lot of Australians are “casually racist” in that they don’t really like other races very much but claim they actually do while bitching about “bloody abo’s” or getting angry over the “problem” with boat people flooding our country.
It’s something that’s mostly glossed over, people make a remark that’s kind of racist and people just ignore it. I admit I have, because sometimes it’s too hard to confront someone about it or you just don’t have the time/energy to start a debate on what’s considered racist. A lot of the time these comments are made by people who don’t even realise they’ve said something racist, they’re just saying what they’ve heard a lot of other Aussie’s say and don’t see it as a problem. And because people never really point it out to them, they go through life not understand just how offensive their casual racism can be.
There’s been a lot of media attention on a 13 year old girl who called an AFL player an ape recently. While it seems like an obvious racial slur, the girl insists she didn’t mean it as such and has apologised profusely for yelling it out. But she’s now become the “face of racism in Australia” and has potentially had her young life ruined because the player in question, the AFL as a whole and the Australian media are portraying her as a racist, conveniently forgetting she’s only a kid and has already apologised. She’s more than made up for her silly comment with the aftermath of this event, and I think it’s horrendous how she was treated.
I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m defending this girl after claiming most Australians are mildly racist. Well, in my opinion this little girl is being used as a tool to prove we don’t tolerate racism, and unfairly so. Aussies are so keen to prove they’re not racist by vilifying others when they really ought to be looking at themselves. I’m sure most white Australians can think of something they’ve said or thought that’s far worse than calling a man an ape, so to harass this little girl is absolutely hypocritical of us to do. Even if you haven’t said/thought something like that yourself, think of all the time you’ve heard someone make a racist comment and not spoken up. It’s not exactly the same, but just because you’ve not vocalised such comments yourself doesn’t mean you’re any better than that little girl.
I think casual racism is a big problem in Australian society and every time we ignore it, insist it doesn’t exist, or blame it all on the one person who was caught saying the wrong thing, we are only making it worse. Silence implies consent. If you don’t tell someone they’ve been racist, how will they ever know? I’m as guilty as the next person of turning a deaf ear to racist remark, and it’s something I’m working on (so not only will I be a shouty feminist who berates anyone who makes a sexist remark, I’ll also tell you off for being racist, mwahaha). Next time you hear someone mention complain about some race for doing something they don’t like, let them know it’s not on. You don’t have to be an ass about it, a polite reminder will hopefully stop them. And if it doesn’t? Well, at least you tried. You can’t change the world in a day, right?
To conclude, I am going to leave you with something that’s very painful to watch but relevant to what I have been saying. The woman in this video is NOT representative of all Aussies but she’s definitely not alone in her horrible, racist beliefs. But her vitriol isn’t the only bad thing in this video. That bus has a lot of other people on it and the only reactions she gets involve some other bogan laughing along with her, someone filming it and the bus driver asking her to stop. That poor kid had to endure that abuse alone, and I was ashamed. Silence implies consent, so as far as she knows, she didn’t actually do anything wrong. Anyway, see for yourself. WARNING: FOUL LANGUAGE.
Last weekend I attended the Ipswich Show. I also went last year and had a blast, so was keen to go again. My mum also entered a few items to their craft competition so we wanted to see how she went (she won a couple awards but overall it was a bit of a disappointment, sigh). But it was a lovely day at what is essentially a big ol’ country show.
A few people have asked me about the Living Dead leggings, specifically in comparison to Black Milk leggings. I think they’re very comfortable and well made, but still would choose Black Milk over them. I find the material to be thinner and stretchier than BM printed leggings which is probably OK for other people, but I like how BM holds me “in” a bit. The printing quality isn’t as good either, but they are cheaper and aren’t restricted by licensing issues like BM so they definitely have their appeal.
The absolute highlight of my day was when we found the reptile area where I got to hold a bay crocodile! I was stoked!
Sooooo cute! He was a “freshie” so was very placid, more than happy to be handled by kids without wriggling at all. Naturally I now want one as a pet ;)
I have been meaning to post about this ever since it happened but we only just got the internet and I’m a lazy, lazy blogger. But anyway, guess what? Ben and I are home owners now! It settled late last month and we moved in pretty much immediately. Thank god for Ben’s organisational skills, it was such an easy move where I had to do very minimal lifting (I am such a weakling so the less lifting I do, the better for everyone). We are so in love with the place. We actually fell in love with it the moment we set foot in it, the first day we officially started looking at houses. Right before we went in, we both agreed to not get our hearts set on any of the houses we went to, as it wasn’t worth the disappointment if we couldn’t get it. Obviously we did not take our own advice. To cut a long story short, we managed to get the house and were completely moved in by the 5th of May. It’s a three bedroom, two bathroom house with a massive deck overlooking bushland AND a freaking walk-in wardrobe. YES! It has everything we need and is just lovely. In the future we’ll probably do a few renovations but for now it’s perfect (well, aside from a red feature wall, but we’ll be covering that up soon enough). I am also very excited because we now have a backyard for my beautiful dog, Shiro! He’s been living with mum since I moved back in with her at the beginning of 2012 and I’ve been missing him heaps for the last 5 months that I’ve been away from him. Wow, check out how suburban we are ;) Here’s the floor plan of the house because floor plans are fun and if you’re anything like me, you love knowing exactly what a house looks like:
Look at all that space for activities! I’m not going to share its exact location (sorry stalkers!) but it’s out in the western suburbs of Brisbane which means I’m nice and close to my sister and only a short drive to my mum’s place. Despite being right out in the ‘burbs though, I’m finding it super easy to get to work and I don’t have to rise that much earlier to get to work on time. I consider that a humongous win! I plan to share all of the adventures we have in our new house on my blog, so please stay tuned!
I have been described as a militant feminist a couple of times, including by my boyfriend (though in the nicest possible way, of course). If shouting at people for making g0-back-to-the-kitchen jokes or getting rage when I hear about a new case of victim-blaming in the case of male-on-female rape makes me a militant feminist, then I am fine with this! I don’t think women get angry enough about these sorts of topics and in many cases, are worse than men at perpetuating a lot of these myths about where a woman’s place is.
One issue that I feel strongly about is women taking her husbands surname after marriage. It just feels so wrong to me, I can’t think of how it benefits the woman at all and it’s just another outdated remnant of a time where women lost their identity as soon as they were married. It bothers me so much when I hear of friends who take on their husbands name, though none of my close friends have married yet so I’ve never discussed it with them or asked them why they decided to change their name. I find it old fashioned, unnecessary and totally sexist. But when I tell people this, they think I’m being ridiculous. It’s the done thing, it’d be so confusing not to have a shared family name, it’s no big deal etc. I’m also reminded that it’s a woman’s choice and isn’t that what feminism is about anyway? Letting women make their own choices?
I call BS on all of that. It’s a massive deal to go through the process of changing your surname. It’s not like you just wave your marriage certificate at a few utilities companies and be done with it, there’s expense involved and you have to go through a lot of legal rigmarole before contacting each company necessary to make the change. Then there’s the fact you now have a whole new name! You have to change your signature and make sure you remember to give your new name instead of your old one. And if it’s “not a big deal” then why don’t more men take on their wives names? I appreciate that a part of feminism is respecting a woman’s choice, but I’m of the opinion that most women don’t take their husbands names because they really want to , they just do it because it’s expected. Fuck that! If you have a terrible surname, I can absolutely understand you wanting to take your new husbands name to get rid of it (though if it’s so bad, I would have suggested changing it to something you actually want, not just taking on whatever boring surname your boyfriend-cum-husband happens to have). But when you marry a Smith or Cockburn, please don’t tell me you actually wanted his surname because gurl, I ain’t buyin’!
I just wish women were more open to the possibility of keeping their name, because I feel it’s a massive part of who you are, and to give it away just because it’s the “norm” seems silly to me. Why not explore other options? Why can’t your hubby take on your surname? Why not, if you can, merge both your surnames and both take it on? Sure you still have to go through all of the stress of changing your name, but at least you’re doing it together! I’m also not opposed to the idea of hyphenating names (I mostly enjoy how long and obnoxious they can be). There are other options and you, as a new wife, have every right to explore them and do what makes you happy. If taking on his surname is something you genuinely want, then good for you. But please do it because it’s what you want, not because you feel you have to, OK?
I understand I may be too much of a hardarse on this matter, but I feel really damn passionate about it. I have no intention of changing my surname after I get married (I mean, Westworth is a pretty neat and unusual name, I’d never want to lose it) and my kids will either take on my name or both parents names. I’ll be damned if I’m popping children out, only for their dad to get all the freaking credit! If my husband loves me, then he’ll understand. If he refuses, then I’ll kick his arse til he does or else not marry him!
What are your thoughts? If you’re married, did you take your partners name? What were your reasons for (not) doing so?
I have worked in office environments for many years now, and for the most part I love it. I get to sit in air con all day, I work in the middle of the City, I get regular lunch breaks, I don’t have to work on weekends etc. But working in an office comes with some downsides, such as being friendly with people who you’d never put up with outside of work and dressing like a chump because apparently you work better in a restrictive business shirt than you do a comfy t-shirt (yeah right).
Among many of my office-related gripes, the one thing that I dread the most about working in an office, are all of the conversations about food. UGGGHHHH! Now, I love food, I love eating it and I even like to talk about it a fair bit. But at some stage it was decided that food was one of those subjects, much like weather, that is a perfect conversation starter in workplaces that everyone can relate to (after all, we all eat food!) and can’t offend anyone.
WRONG!
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not offended by food in any way shape or form, I just find endless conversations about it really friggen boring. I absolutely dread someone wandering into the staff kitchen when I’m reheating last nights tea or cooking steamfresh vegies because I’m too damn lazy to prepare real meals. I’m pretty sneaky about it and so rarely have to worry about boring food discussions but I can’t be a winner every time and sometimes I’m sucked into the vapid, uselessness of work-lunch-chats.
“Ooh someone’s eating healthy!” they say, seeing my steamed vegies and can of tuna.
“Aw yeah, trying” I reply, faking a chuckle and hoping against hope they get the hint and leave me alone.
I actually think that’s why my lunches are pretty boring, if I have anything too delicious or exotic, it will inevitably make people want to talk about it more, until I just want to throw it in the bin and go get sushi instead. Which I know seems super assholish, but I just can’t stand forced conversation, plus I feel what I choose to eat at lunch is no one’s damn business but my own.
Another food-related, work conversation I detest is the long-winded discussion about where to have lunch. In my last workplace where it was all a bunch of white guys aged from 27 to 45, they’d spend a good half hour discussing where they were all going to lunch before actually leaving the office. Between starting to talk about it and then returning from lunch, a good 90 minutes would have passed. I also never got why they all were so keen to go to lunch together or the fuss they’d create when someone suggested something different. I mean, they’d always end up going to Oporto’s anyway, so I never understood the big song and dance about it.
As for where I work now, I always thought of myself as a bit of a foodie, but what I meant was I like to stuff my face with food all the time. I have now discovered being a foodie is about using fancy words when describing food, eating at expensive restaurants where things are sauteed and people feel OK about eating baby chickens because they call it poussin and basically taking the pleasurable act of eating food and making it super boring and crazy expensive. Seriously, how do people who are on similar wages to me afford to eat out that often, let alone at restaurants with actual michelin stars??? It blows my mind, but not in a fun way but in a “holy shit you need to get lives that don’t involve calling a piece of meat a medallion”.
I’m not sure if many people noticed, but my blog was down for a little while there. It was a technical glitch that took a little bit to fix, but all should be AOK now.
I have been a busy little bee lately. Ruby Kawaii has been at a bunch of markets lately, the biggest being Supanova at the Gold Coast on the 20th and 21st April! This is the second Supanova we’ve now done, but we’ve had some experience with other markets now, so this wasn’t such a huge learning experience for us, and because we’d done the previous one in Brisbane, we had time to come up with new idea to really cater for the Supanova crowd.
Manning the stall on the Saturday as Lumpy Space Princess.
The Saturday was CRAZY busy, and it was just mum and I all day as everyone had to work and couldn’t help us out. We both survived the day on about three hours sleep as we stayed up ridiculously late trying to finish everything off and wanted to get there to set up as early as possible (which failed badly as we realised halfway there that we forgot a bunch of crucial stuff and had to turn around. Oops!). But we did an awesome job setting up in one solitary hour with just the two of us! I even managed to get changed, do my makeup and get my wig on in about 15 minutes. Sometimes I astound myself!
On the Sunday with Erin, both dressed as kawaii as possible.
Sunday was much easier though we arrived late again (damn traffic) but we had my sister Erin helping on top of it being much calmer on the Sunday. I also got a visit by Ben and a bunch of friends which was lovely!
I managed to do a spot of shopping in the afternoon after a quick wander around, mostly buying from the other handmade stalls around me. We were actually situated between two lovely ladies, Ella Mobbs and Hungry Designs, so it was lovely getting to know them a bit better and learning from them as they’ve been doing this sort of thing for a while now. I also met and fell in love with the things made by Winnifreds Daughter. I cannot rave on about her stuff enough, in fact I’ll probably do a post about it soon as she deserves to be known by everyone!
All in all, it was a big, busy and fun weekend. We met a lot of lovely people and had a number of return customers which was a delight to see (especially the young girl who sought us out to buy some earrings as she loved the pair she bought from the previous Supanova so much).
I tend to get on my feminist high-horse on a daily basis. There’s always something going on in the news about some poor woman being raped/murdered or simply highlighting the inequality between men and women. Depending on my mood I tend to post links to my facebook where I have a bit of a rant about the injustices of the world and maybe have a bit of a discussion about it with friends. Occasionally there is debate, sometimes heated but almost always respectful and well intention ed.
I made a point of mentioning that as it’s from the Daily Mail, it’s automatically kind of hard to believe or take seriously, but that I recommended it because of how it proves misogyny is still a big problem these days, even amongst the well-educated and wealthy, and that rape should never a joking matter. I feel these two facts are pretty obvious, and so I am always shocked and appalled when I get resistance to them from people. There was a massive fight about it, with one person being particularly vocal about how it was probably all a lie because of the site it was on and discounting it as female hysteria because there were no back up sources online (wut?). As one friend put it “Being critically aware is cool, but doubting off the bat has its roots in victim blaming and misogyny itself”.
It’s not just the media that’s sympathising with the rapists, the average joe on twitter has an opinion on it too as highlighted on Public Shaming (Warning: This tumblr will probably enrage you).
It is perplexing to me that even in the year 2013, people still don’t “get” what rape is. It’s as though rape is only genuine when it involves an innocent girl is raped by the creepy pervert hiding in the bushes. There is always a question of “what did the girl do to deserve the rape?” because it seems that unless you were dressed conservatively, are sober and you were walking in a safe area during daylight hours, it’s basically your fault that you got raped because you did something wrong (dressed “provocatively”, drank too much, walked in a bad area at night without a male escort etc) and you really should have know better. And unless a man forced himself on the violently, there’s always doubt about whether it’s really rape because maybe she lead him on, she just regretted having sex with him the next morning or the ever popular “well she didn’t say no”.
Just to be absolutely clear: RAPE IS RAPE.
We need to be beyond a time where we doubt a woman’s claim of rape before she even has a chance to explain what happened. Her being drunk or the fact she wore a short skirt should never, ever be justifications for her being sexually assaulted by anyone. There is no “lesson” being taught when a girl is raped. There is never something she has done to deserve rape as a punishment or lesson because no matter how repugnant she may be as a person, rape is never acceptable. It makes me furiously angry that everyone doesn’t know and accept this, but with everything that’s been happening in the world lately, it’s pretty darn clear that the general public either doesn’t realise or simple refuses to believe the truth. The fact a woman can be gang-raped to death and have people ask “Well why was she out after dark with a man who isn’t her husband?” or have a girl molested by a group of boys and have thousands of people the world over blaming her because she was drunk, only proves that there is a huge amount to do in terms of educating people on how victims of rape deserve to be treated. It’s not going to be easy and we’ll probably never get 100% there but I honestly think it’s possible.
I have so many opinions on this matter but I feel they can all be summed up with the following:
What people don’t understand is when we say “Teach men not to rape,” we’re not talking about telling them not to jump out of the bushes in a ski mask and grab the nearest female. We’re talking about the way we teach boys that masculinity is measured by power over others, and that they aren’t men unless they “get some.” We’re talking about teaching men (and women) that it’s not okay to laugh at jokes about rape and abuse. We’re talking about telling men that a lack of “No” doesn’t mean “Yes,” that if a woman is too drunk to consent they shouldn’t touch her, that dating someone – or even being married to someone – does not mean automatic consent. We’re talking about teaching boys to pay attention to the girl they’re with, and if she looks uncomfortable to stop and ask if she’s okay, because sometimes girls don’t know how to say stop in a situation like that. We’re talking about how women have the right to change their mind. Even if she’s been saying yes all night, if she says no, that’s it. It’s over. That’s what we mean when we say “Teach men not to rape.
This is a bit of a late one, I wore this outfit to work a couple of weeks ago which I then transitioned to a night out seeing one of my favourite bands live (the Presidents of the USA, who were also the first band I ever saw live as a matter of fact). I was in a very skully mood but wanted to keep it feminine, so I added a dash of lavender with my shoes and lipstick and chose a dark but pretty necklace.
