Happy International Women´s Day to all you ladies and those who identify yourselves as women out there!!!
Today has been a really good day! I just graduated from Sexpo-säätiö as a sexual advisor (
seksuaalineuvoja) and after one year of studying it was a great, although quite emotional, day. Our class of 20 people have shared a lot and it felt sad to leave it all behind. Also somewhat scary to realize that I now am "ready" and can start building up my own clientele if I have the chance! Yikes and hurrah!
Also, in today´s Hufvudstadsbladet, which is the biggest Swedish print paper in Finland, was a cover + three pages long article about burlesque in Finland and especially boylesque. We had Frank Doggenstein on the cover and Tigger! inside with the text "In the Emperor´s clothes for bigger equality". Pretty fitting for this day,eh? The quote from Angie Pontani here below has to do with Tiggers! point that in burlesque people are equal, that gender, sexual orientation, skin color, marital status etc. really isn´t important. "Burlesque is that place on the earth where it really doesn´t matter" says wonderful Angie. And on this day of Women it´s a really important thing to remember. Equal rights and equal opportunity is NOT a given to all women in the world, not even for us Finnish ladies all the time, so let´s work together to make this a better place, ok? Prejudice, violence and ignorance are all issues we, both men and women, meet often and we can ALL work against that with our own attitudes and deeds. We can only change ourselves, right? Or at least that´s the first one we should start with! Tigger! also makes a good point that even if some people might see burlesque as vulgar his point is not to chock but to challenge set views and opinions with the help of humor. And I have to agree with him (again). Even if you don´t think burlesque is art think about this: it does raise questions about important issues like body image (and the strangeness of our body ideal in 2012) and gender roles. And unless we yearn back to the 1950´s we need to talk about that.
If you read Swedish you should read the whole article
here. Now I bid you goodbye and am off to empty my bags and enjoy those gorgeous tulips my hubby got me! Have a great Friday ya´ll!
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| Words of wisdom. |
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| "Burlesque for men flourish in Finland" with Frank D. |
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Tigger! taking a pose for equality.
P.S I just found this. VERY IMPORTANT about norms (= society´s unwritten rules of e.g how to be) and it is very important to remember that not all girls grow up to be women and not all boys want to become men. This is in Finnish, but if you can read it. There´s also some pretty harsh facts about our schools and the very rigid norms and unwritten "rules" that apply for teenagers. High school is not always an easy place to be, and teenage life for sure ain´t no picnic.
www.normit.fi |
