moranion:

kyraneko:

a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy:

bal-lantine:

ttracer:

draw women in post-apocalyptic world settings with armpit hair, leg hair, bushy brows and pubic hair ya cowards,, draw brown women/women with dark thick hair with arm hair and happy trails and sideburns and mustaches i’m sick of seeing silky smooth soapy clean make up wearing post apocalyptic dolled up women next to stinky sweaty crusty men with dirty nails and sweaty clothes and sweaty greasy hair and 3m long ugly beards

or, if you must depict women maintaining that shit, at least be interesting about it. I can actually buy someone shaving/putting on makeup if that’s their way of coping, something they do to tether themselves to the past or an ellusive feeling of normalcy. So show me the EFFORT put in, yeah? Show that woman risking a zombie horde because she spotted a fucking tube of scarlet lipstick and christ she hasn’t seen that color in five years but it’s what she wore on her first date with her now-dead husband. Show me the girl who is quietly starting to fucking lose it but covers it up with fanatical commitment to her appearance because if she gets these eyebrows right, maybe no one will notice how she stares at things that aren’t there.

I find it completely plausible that some women would go to incredible lengths to maintaining their appearance, because they’ve been socialized all their lives to caring about it, because it’s a part of their identity. So show me how that part gets negotiated with once the world has gone to hell.

Catch me in your local bunker doing a smoky eye with the ashes of my former life.

Straight razors and elaborate makeup drawn in ashes mixed with motor oil.

People that shave their underarms completely and people that shave neat precise lines into them to make it clear that I can, I just don’t.

Raiders may kill you and zombies may kill you but background radiation will kill everybody eventually, what’s a little more toxicity compared to a Geiger counter that will never shut up? Looting the art supply store and painting designs onto each other in oils, the cadmiums and phthalos no longer forbidden against skin, the rich bright saturated colors a second long-term death option.

Men, meanwhile, that grow beards and oil them, wash them, shape and brade them intricately, shave tiger stripes or leopard spots or mandalas or band logos into the hair on their chests and arms and backs, or shave themselves hairless to display that they have time and resources and very, very sharp things.

(When you are struggling to survive, when you are burdened with labor, putting effort into your appearance is a status symbol. It says you are successful enough to have spare time, spare energy, spare resources. It might say you would make a good partner, mate, friend, ally; it might say you are formidable to fight. It might say you have resources that can be appropriated by your killer, and this might be a baited trap.)

tbh this is all a part of a larger issue that, imo, apocalyptic narratives almost always get wrong, and that’s failing to represent humanity’s unceasing drive to create art and beauty and find joy just about everywhere. the biggest and worst wars in our actual history have inspired some of the most touching art ever, and i don’t mean art that people created after seeing the horrors from afar; I mean the art that was made right there, in the trenches and the prisons and in the midst of mortal danger. when shit hits the fan, we don’t stop being creative; we create more. 

so, when a group of apocalypse survivers is sitting around a camping fire in the evening, we don’t morosely stare into the flames – we sing, maybe a rendition of Paint it Black, maybe something new. dwellings made out of trash aren’t grey and sad; they get decorated with just about everything we can find – colourful pieces of trash, old glass, twisted tree branches. bards become a thing again pretty quick – people with great memories who’ve been great readers back in the day, and now they tell us stories that no longer exist on paper, and since it gets tedious to repeat the same old Ana Karenina every day, they make it their own, and now, Ana gets her happy ending. anyone lugging a guitar or a violin or some sort of a musical instrument around deserves massive respect, and we love them all, regardless of whether they can actually play well or not. slam poetry is brought to a whole new level and now even judgy idiots like me love it. most makeup may be gone, and jewelry was all sold in the early days of the catastrophe for food and necessities – but we’ve remembered that makeup is nothing but pigment with some grease and that art supply stores still stand there, yes, and that jewelry is just twisted pieces of metal and colourful bits on strings.