Hugo Henneberg (Austrian,1863–1918)
The Blue Pond, 1904
linocut on paper
“When the handle has snapped off the basket that held all your eggs…” gone girl tier monologue
Reblogging this again because so many people seem to miss the point: the point isn’t “don’t get married” or “Prince Charming doesn’t exist.” The point is that 50%+ of marriages end in divorce and it’s naive to think “oh, that’ll never be me.” That’s what this video is about. It’s about thinking that you’re the exception because you’re special. You’re not.
“But I am! Everyone tells me that I’m special. I’m beautiful and smart and funny and I’ve done everything right. These bad things would never happen to me!”
Watch the video again.
True, you might be lucky and you might live a fairy tale life. But what if you didn’t?
I’m a woman turning 40 this year, and I’ve lived a fairy tale life so far. I met my future husband in high school and we’ve been inseparable ever since. We supported each other through all-nighters and final exams in college, celebrated each other’s first jobs, traveled the world together, kissed under the Eiffel Tower and snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef. We got married and had two beautiful children who get compliments and free candy everywhere they go. We have jobs that give us personal satisfaction. We have a little place to call home that we own free and clear. We still hold hands after 20+ years together.
Despite all this, I still have a backup plan in case anything ever goes wrong.
Why? Because I just need to look at my mom and her generation to see what could easily happen to me, and what happens to many women. My mom did everything right too. She was young, beautiful, smart, hardworking, and kind. She went to college, got a job, got married, and had kids. She cooked, she cleaned, she drove us to piano lessons and art lessons. She showed up at our recitals and she was there on graduation day.
And she was miserable. (Still is.) Because the happiness that was promised to her if she did all this, if she sacrificed her life for her husband and her family, if she was a good wife, did not materialize. Instead she was left an old, lonely woman in a loveless, debt-ridden marriage.
My father was not a bad man. He never beat or abused my mother, he didn’t do drugs or drink excessively, he had no gambling or other vices, he was present in our lives, and he brought home a paycheck. But he was also stuck in a marriage where the love had fizzled under the never-ending burden of dishes and laundry and mortgage bills. Under arguments of whose turn it is to clean up the kids’ vomit and why did you spend money on this and how are we going to pay for the new transmission now. So when a younger woman started giving him attention and didn’t care why he forgot to take out the trash yet again, he started buying gifts for her. Expensive makeup, Louis Vuitton handbags, and the like. He was sad and lonely, and the woman was sweet to him. Meanwhile, my mom who was trying to get us to all of our dentist appointments and parent-teacher conferences, got nothing for Christmas. (She didn’t get him anything either.)
My father was not a bad man. He looked like a good man when they got married. I see their old photos from when they were young, before they had kids and a mortgage, and they looked happy. It hurts to look at their hopeful faces and know how things turned out in the end.
My mom’s story is not unique. All of my aunts are either depressed, divorced, or stuck in loveless marriages. Same with my friends’ parents. My mom recently reconnected with some friends whom she had not seen since college, and these five women were shocked to discover that they all had the same story: graduated from school, got jobs, got married, had kids, and became good wives, only to be bitterly disappointed by their husbands’ lack of partnership. They did what they were supposed to do, they carried their families on their backs, and they ended up with very little to show for it.
This video is about how common this scenario is, especially for idealistic young women who believe that this would never happen to them because they’re special. My mom was special too. So were my aunts. Everybody thinks they are special. Everybody thinks they’ll be the one to beat the odds.
And maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones. My mother looks at me, and she’s told me point blank, “You have a better fate than me, and for that I’m grateful.” When I look at my mother and the women of her generation, I see the lessons they learned the hard way and paid for dearly so that I can learn from their experience and avoid a similar fate. That’s why I cringe when I hear young women dreaming of a traditional life where they put their whole lives into their husband’s hands. I want to shake them and say, “Did you learn nothing from your mother’s sacrifice?!?!”
I still dream of living a fairy tale life, of growing old with my husband and being surrounded by our children, but I don’t forget the lessons of the women in my family who came before me. I have my own career, I have my own savings, I have no debt, I have maintained my health, I have maintained my own interests, and I have maintained my own social relationships. I can walk on my own two feet if I have to.
The point isn’t to not believe in fairy tales. The point is, don’t be so arrogant and naive to think that you are owed a fairy tale life. You aren’t. Work hard to build the life you want to live, but do it with your own two hands. Don’t blindly put your entire life into someone else’s basket, because it’s easy for someone else to let you down. Carry your own fucking basket, because you never know when you’ll need to be able to walk on your own.
I don’t think this explanation goes far enough. It’s not just “have a backup plan,” or “you’re not owed a fairy tale life” or “don’t be dependent on any man” or even “X kind of life is risky/not feasible.”
The young blonde girl in the background of the video is a politically conservative tiktoker, and this video is specifically about how young, conservative women are buying into a value system that treats women as a replaceable and discardable commodity that exists solely for the benefit of men, while also convincing themselves that they are an exception to that value system. That if they do and say the right things, look the right way, and throw the rights and personhood of themselves and other women under the bus in service to that value system, their reward will be a seat at the table in spite of the very values they uphold.
They convince themselves the men in their lives will recognize and appreciate that they’re different and better and smarter and stronger than other women, and deserve recognition for that. But the reality is that their value system centers men at the expense of women. Their value system treats women as discardable objects. Their value system demands that they exist to please and serve a man. And at some point, their very existence will clash with the values they serve.
They will age. Their bodies and faces will change. They will have needs and desires that won’t always align perfectly with being their husband’s mother-maid-broodmare-fucktoy-therapist. They may get sick, or become disabled, and need support to deal with that.
And when that happens, when they have the audacity to be human, they will be discarded for someone younger, prettier, and more convenient and accommodating. Because their own values dictate that it is natural and acceptable for their husband to do so. They will find out painfully that they are not an exception, that their loyalty was wasted on a man who was never going to return it, not only because putting your life in another person’s hands so thoroughly is inherently risky, but specifically because the very values that drew them together in the first place do not require that of him.
And the video maker’s haunting prediction for these young, conservative women is that if they don’t wake up and get out now, by the time they are forced to realize this they will be too far entrenched in their own flawed beliefs to allow themselves to admit that their dedication to those beliefs is the source of their pain, and they will make that everyone else’s problem.
“Birds eye view of a desert with the word HELP made out of trees and rocks in big writing on the floor”
Created with DALL·E 2, a new AI system by OpenAI that creates realistic art from a description in natural language.
Sharing is caring!
Substack: dalle.substack.com
Twitter: @Dalle2AI
The heading of this post was used to generate the image, src
i went to a tiny counterserve diner once and accidentally poured sugar instead of salt all over my hashbrowns and was eating them sadly anyways. the waitress took them away and started making me another one and I tried to protest, but she just snorted and said “we’re not catholic here”. now every time i’m doing something painful out of obligation i think about how that is not repenting, this body is not a catholic establishment, there is no nobility in suffering.
Twinks Be High Key Delusional For Thinking They Will Get Off Easy When The Neo Sultan Comes Around To Revive The Old Empire 😂😂 They Thinking They Will Be A Palace Concubine Being Spoiled And Shit 😂😂😂😂 Bitch Please!!! You Gonna Be A Janissary!!!!!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Joby Baker (Canadian, b. 1934), Untitled, 1990. Oil on canvas, 182.88 x 134.62 cm
nyc to london is 5567 km
the fastest ant runs at 855mm/s
855mm/s = 0.855m/s = 0.000855km/s
0.000855km/s = 0.0513km/min = 3.078km/hr = 73.872km/day
5567/73.872 = 75.360082304526
so it would take the fastest ant a bit over 75 days to run from nyc to london sorry i just had to share this info
Enzymes be like
(Kicking legs into the air) I’m sooo masc… Hehe… Ooh my gooood I’m Sooo masc!!!!






