“Are you sick….
because you look like you are…
or do you just not have on any make-up?”
Princess Joules
A few days ago, I have rediscovered one of my favorite YouTube bloggers, Princess Joules (Julie Vu). Princess Joules has been documenting her transition from male-to-female for about 3 years. About 5 months ago, she went under sex reassignment surgery and made a complete transition. What I love about her videos is that she is honest about her experiences. In the video below, she tells us about her feelings as she is an hour away from surgery.In class, we’ve read about how a transgender person must have a psychological assessment done before they are approved for sex reassignment surgery. I personally felt that it was upsetting that they had to prove that surgery was necessary; society should not be able to police our bodies, especially when we know ourselves best. However, Princess Joules tells us the truth about her feelings – something that most of us would not expect…
After seeing this video, a few questions came to mind:
- Before Princess Joules came out as transgender, she came out as a gay male. I want to know if surgery changed her perception of her own sexuality. Because she believes that, internally, she is a female and belongs in a female body, and she is now a legal female, is her sexuality labelled as straight?
- How do most transgender people define their sexuality after their transition into their true selves?
- If we completely got rid of gender roles, gender, and sexuality (LGBT), how would we define our self?
Being sexy doesn’t mean it’s sexist.
I think we can all agree that some Halloween costumes make us cringe. But how come we only focus on the sexy costumes instead of the racist or down right offensive (Ebola prevention suit I’m looking at you) one’s
Life in the Petri Dish: Sickness and Acadamia
There is a double standard when it comes to health and school. On one hand, a sick person is encouraged to stay home and get better. It is in the best interest of not only you, as the sick person, but also your peers, as the classroom is a haven for uncovered coughs and sneezes without the extra help. You can afford to miss one day! On the other, you really can’t.
“You’re not fat!”
Contains triggering material.
Can You Call Blackface by Any Other Name?
weight conscious
Forget what a doctor has told me….I’m terrified of what my family has shown me. My lovely, intelligent, role model maternal grandmother died in her early 50s. Even though, she was a neonatal nurse that walked the halls of John Hopkins, she was obese. My big hearted but small statured nana was about my height 5 feet, sadly weighed around 300 pounds. In the last years of her life I saw her suffer from diabetes, heart complications and probably other complications Continue reading
No Shave November
“No Shave November” has become a trend where guys do not shave for the entire month of November, growing their victorious beards and basking in their masculinity. Well guess what boys, I’m participating this year. Continue reading
So, you’re a virgin?
“Yeah, you look like a virgin.”
I can’t even count the number of times somebody said this to me in high school when I told them that I was a virgin. What the hell does that even mean? Continue reading
She bought him a catfish body pillow. Seriously.
Trigger warning: cancer, illness, hospice mention, food mention, weight mention
When you lose a parent as a young kid, you have a lot of questions. “Did daddy like ___?” “Would he like this band or that band or this food or this ____?” I often wonder now if it was hard for my mom to constantly get these questions from me that I only asked because I was insatiably curious and I knew remarkably little about who my dad was personally. A lot of what I remember about my dad (and about my childhood in general) comes in images and in imagined scenarios of how I believe things would have gone. I don’t have many truly genuine memories of my father, but the ones I do have I treasure and actively make sure I never forget. One thing I know for sure about my dad was that he was stick thin. I remember him crossing his bony legs in the morning in his bathrobe as he read the newspaper and drank his coffee. My mom told me that his legs were so bony that he had to sleep with a pillow between them; my aunt even bought him a catfish body pillow (my dad loved to fish, so it was a perfect gift) to put between his legs. It looked like a catfish. Seriously.
Unruly Bodies 