Bird Liberator!

[secondlina]

 

Before everyone starts telling me in the comments - Yes, i'm aware that as much as birds are cute, they are nasty. I was afraid of getting near it and afraid that I would have to go to work with Owl scratchies or worse. I was very cautious. I only tried to pull on the plastic wrap because it looked loose, almost as if somebody had sandwich-wrapped the owl's wing. It was trying to get it off by scratching. I never would have tried if it looked stuck.  I wanted to help because the owl was in the park I cross everyday to go to work... and well kids start to play there EARLY. If the plastic looked stuck, I would have just continued to work and called animal control. I'm not silly or cruel to animals. Plus I love owls.

I was still afraid this one was going to kill me. Sweet Oz. I was scared. This counts as my courageous and good Samaritan action of the week as a double-combo.

In other news. I have no life. A combination of lack of hours, travels, general geekdom and  laziness after a day of work have made is so that my art-related-work is in a horrible bottleneck of badness. I'm pretty much turning into a hermit in the next few weeks to catch up. I'll tell you guys more about that in the next post, along with a bit of an explanation about life as a part-time artist.

For now, I am AMAZED, in a bad way, at Japan again. Apparently, the ideal size for a woman over there is a size 2. Anything beyond is considered fat. WHAAAAAAAAAT! I know that asian women are smaller but, WHAAAAT? This is apparently encouraging anorexia and suicide nowadays among our sisters of the island. I'm outraged. Whenever I feel shameful about my weight (a pitiful size 8 to 10) I just read some kind of tabloid. The pure outrage I feel towards these outrageous standards and unrealistic expectations boosts my confidence. 

Ridiculous.

Lemme tell you that a size 10 character is a lot more fun to draw then a size 2. Curves are awesome. 

- Isa

EDIT : As mentioned in the comments, you should not encourage people to be incredibly thin or tell them to let it be and remain overweight. Feminism is not an excuse for laziness on unhealthiness. Perfection should be being healthy.

Really thin people don't exercise more then overweight ones. They usually try to do exercise to become thinner, and then discover that muscles actually take a lot of room. So the stop exercising, atrophying the muscles and stop eating to diminish the fat. So neither thin or fat people are necessarily healthy. What should be encourage is health, no matter what your "healthy weight" is. Because some people are naturally smaller and others bigger. And charts can determine that according to origin, diet, exercice routines and height.

Comments

[eveshka.livejournal.com]

Try being a 14/16 in a sea of size 5 cosplayers.

/dies a little every time she thinks about it.

[earthstar-moon.livejournal.com]

At least the poor owl was freed and you were wise enough to recognize that wild birds can be dangerous if you're not careful.

@_@ Seriously? Wow, I would be in big trouble if I had to live in Japan. (Granted, this would also explain why weight seems to be such a big issue to female anime characters. I remember there being a Sailor Moon episode regarding Usagi desperately trying to loose weight.)

[rosalarian.livejournal.com]

Lemme tell you that a size 10 character is a lot more fun to draw then a size 2. Curves are awesome.

A-fuckin-men! I looooooooooove curvaceous women. Both for drawin' and for datin'.

[couragose.livejournal.com]

Omg owl!

I feel your pain (pain in this case meaning "terror and desire to help at the same time"). It can get pretty scary when you're dealing with a scared critter who needs help!

[miss-maggiemay.livejournal.com]

Hey! Cool pour le hibou! C'est bien tu lui a probablement sauvé la vie :)

Mais pour le truc des japonais... J'en sais rien.

Oui c'est vrai, il a beaucoup de pression sur les femmes pour qu'elles gardent un corps jeune et mince qui est souvent irréaliste, mais je trouve qu'aujourd'hui les féministes en font sérieusement tout un plat pour rien.

De tout temps les arts et les médias ont encouragés le corps parfait parce qu’ils sont directement liés à l’imaginaire et au visuel. Certaines femmes ont dues souffrir sérieusement plus que nous à plusieurs autres époques. Elles n'étaient peut être pas autant bombardées par la télévision mais il y avaient toujours les arts pour leur rappeler leur culotte de cheval. En plus elles n'avaient pas la contre culture et l'internet pour leur faire connaitre les attirances sexuelles divergentes. Je ne vois pas pourquoi aujourd’hui il faudrait tout à coup baisser nos exigences en matière de beauté pour plaire à mesdames.

Je crois qu'il est tout à fait normal de valoriser la beauté et de demander à nos mannequins d'être belle, parce que c'est leur job après tout.

Et je crois que ce n’est pas à la représentation de la beauté de changer mais bien à notre mode d’éducation. Je trouve que toute cette histoire ressemble beaucoup au débat de la violence dans les arts. Oui une œuvre violente peut donner des idées à quelqu’un, mais seulement si cette personne était déjà à la base violente. Si une jeune fille veux se suicider parce qu’elle voit une fille jolie à la télévision, c’est qu’elle était déjà malade au départ. C’est de la surprotection, de l’infantilisation, de la victimisation et surtout une projection du blâme sur quelqu’un d’autre que le moi. « Ce n’est pas de ma faute si ma fille est malheureuse c’est la télé! » Ce n’Est pas ma faute si je suis grosse c’est que les médias donnent une idée faussée ».

Je déteste les campagnes anti-minceur où on fait la promotion du mode de vie américain. L’embonpoint et l’anorexie sont à mes yeux deux problèmes majeurs et équivalents. J’ai l’impression que plusieurs féministes y cherchent qu’une raison de ne pas s’activer.

Oui une femme peut être belle (et même surpasser plusieurs mannequins) même si elle ne correspond pas aux proportions suggérées mais reste qu’en règle général, la plupart du temps le corps idéalisé est en générale plus plaisant à l’œil. Soyons clair, je ne suis pas pour la maigreur extrême mais je suis pro corps ferme mince et en santé (fit) et je crois qu’il y aura toujours de la place à l’amélioration.

[putri-nih.livejournal.com]

I madam,have been arting because I force myself to. Other than that...er I've just been catching up with relatives

RE: JAPAN

Tell me about it. I'm considered "big boned" for being size 6. -_-

[vonandmoggy.livejournal.com]

OWL LIBERATOR! That's awesome...good on ya. Owls are cool and that's wicked good karma for you. :D

But, Japan...size 2!? I'm in the 8- 10 size range, too...I was ridiculously thin years ago and I'm much healthier at this size. Plus...curves! :)

It makes me so very sad that women are being driven to hurting themselves over something like this...:(

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Maybe someone *did* try to shrink wrap the owl; there are all sorts of awful people in the world.

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

I've never seen any case of birds attacking their rescuer once they were liberated. Yes, they will lash out trying to protect themselves when trapped by whatever, but once that's gone, they're happier getting as far away from people as possible. (Although there are some cool cases where the bird flew a short distance, landed, studied its rescuer, then took off again.)

Heck, I've never encountered an owl in need, but when I was a kid I found a song bird trapped in the chicken mesh surrounding our garden. I didn't even think about getting scratched or pecked, I did what I could to free the poor thing, and once it was free it took off. I didn't get a single mark from that bird. How I wish I could say the same of Bird E. Bird! ^_-

Still, go you! In a way this makes me feel a bit better for the bird we encountered up in Toronto. We can never save them all, but we should always do so when we are able.

(Forever ago I read about the experiences of an American teacher in Japan, and he did get into a discussion with a Japanese man on women. The Japanese man pointed out that American woman were very fat compared to Japanese women, but then the teacher pointed out that American woman also had much bigger chests than Japanese women. It made the Japanese man stop comparing. ^_^;; All men like women with some shape, even if they don't want to admit it!)

[spankingfemme.livejournal.com]

Hooray! XD You saved the owl day! :P That is awesome of you, and wise that you were very careful! As for the Japan size 2 issue Gah! 0o That IS retarded! (And they wonder why their people are so small... well, when you aspire all your women to be so frail they blow away in the wind, what do you expect your man child is going to come out as? *shakes head* This is just as bad as the small feet crap where they freaking cut off their toes to fit in them! Where does it end? :(

8-10 eh? Me too! =D

[ameban.livejournal.com]

Aw! You're my hero! You saved that thing without taking any risk and safely. I feel really bad when I see hurted swift birds and I cannot help them in any way. Now, prey birds are nasty and have a strong self-deffense sense; I've seen in several TV reports, the best way is covering them with a piece of cloth, because they stop to move with that. Anyway, that is useless if you wanted to get it free of the plastic.

I sorry to heard you haven't a life. We're like pemdulums: one day we're busy till become exhasued... and other day we spend the full day on the armchair because we have nothing to do. That's just nasty.
I hope you can get some half position in the coming days.

Idela size for women? Then, all those hentai books are terribly wrong, aren't they? That people is contradictory.

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

What kind of owl was it? Failing that, what did it look like?

[(Anonymous)]

Kinda like a Short-eared Owl (I looked up online afterwards). So maybe it was that. But my owl knowledge is pretty minimal. I don't even know what types of owls we have here. Heck, since I moved to montreal, I didn't even hear any owls (make sense, there's barely any trees)

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Bah, don't feel bad. as long as you are healthy, you are awesome!

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Yeah, plus Owls themselves can get pretty agressive (as proven by the stupid mass wave of people adopting owls after the Potter craze).

I don't know if you read Gajiin Smash, the blog of the professor in Japan, but apparently it's a pretty big issue in the school. And people aren't afraid of telling you they think you're fat.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Hahahahah. Awesome.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Especially since I am totally not a fauna and flora type of person. I don't connect with animals. At all. Beyond the "Look at that cute little guy!" thing.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Puisqu'il étais dans un parc pour enfants et ou les gens promène leurs chiens et tout et tout c'est ce que me suis dit. Pauvre hibou. Il paniquait complètement.

Je trouve que les campagnes de minceurs et celles qui disent "rester comme vous êtes même si vous n'êtes pas en santé!" sont tout les deux horribles. D'abord, parce que oui, le poid peut être représentatif de santé, mais pas toujours. Je suis pas très grosse, mais je ne suis pas en forme. Par contre, mon père en "gros" mais il fait de l'exercice 3 fois par semaine.

Il existe des "poids santé" qui peuvent être déterminé selon ton origine, ce que tu bouffe et ta taille. Les médecins les ont et les "vrais" pro de gym aussi (ceux qui sont vraiment entraîné pour). Je dit plutôt qu'on devrais encourager les gens à s'informer, manger mieux, faire de l'exercice, et quand tu sera en santé, tu aura le poid que tu aura, un point c'est tout.

J'ai l'impression que beaucoup de gens font de l'exercise pour maigrir, sauf que, dépenddant du type du corps, tu ne maigris pas nécessairement. des muscles, ça prends de la plate. Alors autant chez les super maigres que j'ai ceux qui sont gras, il n'y a pas d'exercice. Si ton poid santé c'est un 8, tu va faire de l'exercice et tu va être un 8. Pour qu'un 8 passe à un 6 ou un 4, la personne arrête de faire de l'exercice (atrophiant les muscles) et arrête de manger (diminuer les masses de graisse sans augmanter les muscles). Alors dans les deux cas, on a du monde vraiment pas en santé.

Je pense pas vraiment que c'est des feministes qui cherche des raisons de ne pas s'activer, mais plus des gens qui prennent le feministe comme un belle excuse (un peu comme les femmes qui clâment qu'elles couche avec tout ce qui bouge par feministe). Assume tes envies et ta paresse et arrête de l'associer avec un "cause grandiose".

Mon seul problème avec les mannequins, c'est que je trouve que oui, c'est normal qu'elle soit belle, mais j'ai l'impression qu'elle sont de plus en plus traitée comme des cintres. Plutôt que créer des vêtements à la mode pour une femme en forme de taille normal, les designers font pas mal du linge sans courbes. Ça me rends un peu triste.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Très bons points en passant! Merci!

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Right, you're from that part of the world aren't you? Eeek.

As mentioned in the above comment by someone else, neither thin or fat is good. Perfection should be being healthy. Really thin people don't exercise more then overweight ones. They usually try to do exercise to become thinner, and then discover that muscles actually take a lot of room. So the stop exercising, atrophying the muscles and stop eating to diminish the fat. So neither thin or fat people are necessarily healthy.

What should be encourage is health, no matter what your "healthy weight" is. Because some people are naturally smaller and others bigger. And charts can determine that according to origin, diet, exercice routines and height.

[earthstar-moon.livejournal.com]

Also, swans, they can be nasty.

I believe it. (Granted this is only from watching anime, so no idea how accurate this this) but I do also recall different episodes of anime of when the Japanese students having to get weighed at school. Geez, talk about embarrassment. @_@

[putri-nih.livejournal.com]

I had to shop for clothes recently and you know how embarassing it was to have the clerk go "HEY (INSERT NAME HERE) DO WE HAVE AN xL-SIZED SHIRT/JEANS??" I mean nobody was staring but OH THE EMBARRASSMENT.

I'm pretty OK with the way I look, just...not when I shop.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

And Imus. Don't forget Imus.

I find for situation like those, anime is probably sadly accurate. I think it's weird when they have characters drawn like stick figures whine about being horribly fat. girl, you should worry more about if you're healthy or not.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

....6 is extra large? What?

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

I used to be completely out of shape and was a size 4. I'm still out of shape (oh, I really should take better care of myself), but a lot less out of shape. and I do look less like i'm going to die.