A cats eye view

It was a cooler wet return this week as the political sorts were plotting and counter plotting over "Brexit", people on the South Eastern Coast of the States were warned about the upcoming hurricane Florence and I felt a bit under the weather.
That's why I'm doing a photo essay thing this week as I get to normal.

 I really love this picture where the cat appears to take the little girls photograph on the medium format film camera (which is why it's square shaped) looking through the viewfinder.
He's really clever.

 I'm a sucker for anything Hello Kitty and this show time star sequine dress is so cute I'm just dissolving looking at it.

 Things around Hello Kitty and teenage girls can get a a bit more complicated as they look for greater sophistication to match their more mature mindset but this just pulls it off with a mod to the Goth Style

 I don't personally see anything at all wrong with wearing female shorts especially where they are cut and even pleated to be so obviously feminine in appeal with plenty of air around the legs and making the most of your hips.

While here they are shown bare legged there's no reason not to team them with longer socks or tights.

As well, I also got around to reading Little Women although I'd had it for a while which is a timeless coming of age story of the four March sisters set in the post Civil War period in the States as though through childhood to adulthood, helped by their mother learning to navigate what it means to be a young woman from sibling rivalry to love, loss and marriage.

Heroes

If you were to say who really was my forever little hero it would have to Christopher who at the time was protesting the shorts ban at his school by wearing a skirt.

That kind of step isn't uncommon in British high schools who seemed to have the most rigid inflexible kind of middle management types running them that ignore what happens in the real world so skirted protests happen while people such as postal workers have a variety within the uniform.

Getting back to what this blog is really about he was more the kind of boy at that time I was and felt because for wearing a skirt which is associated with girls and women (and thus allowed!), the presentation is otherwise male.

His socks are just above the ankle ones common with boys and plain grey, there is no attempt to look like a thirteen year old girl just a boy happy to wear a skirt and to me when it just comes to presentation why not?

This isn't  transsexuality just being a boy in a skirt, although as matured in my teens I realized I was a sissy gurl and the gender roles are just a different element that match with how you see you, not anything else and their agendas.

Gender Spaces and the sissy

Another week and one update to Pale Moon and that still hasn't cured the browser of freezing over so we're still in Firefox which as much as I don't like the interface does work very well.

Spaces are a contentious issue as anyone on Tumblr knows only too well and some of that also applies into off line life too as well as what people do when we allow them into our own.

One area I think worth talking about is gender spaces where yes most of us say people should be free to mix with whoever they want, take part in activities together and not be barred from an activity just because of their gender. 

This you might think is the end product of decades of arguments won when it comes to equal opportunities and as such the very last word but today it's not.

Unlike perhaps a few of you I've been in the work place and it isn't uncommon for female employees to actually have their own social groups that they keep to just women going out together or spending time at each others places.

Even in 2018 here in Great Britain there are Universities that only accept women being founded expressly for female higher education and women have voted to keep them that way because they prefer an all female ethos and under English Law at at least a private members club can be all female only too.

Part of the argument is it is nice to have a place just to talk and share things with without men around who as nice as they are would  change the feel just  by being there and maybe inhibit conversations people need.

The same can be true for Women and Girls but where does it leave people like me, sissies with some connections through upbringing to the experience of men and boys and yet in so many other ways drawn to the world of girls and women cos we're so feminine?

As someone who is age dysphoric in this new-old life given my interest in and love of scouting connected activities it isn't the oh so real issues of children who don't fit into the pigeonholes of boy and girl when it comes to being it it - Girl Guiding or Scouts - it's also within my recreated version I belong too.

All I know is Scouts as in Cubs, that's comfortable as it goes but I'd sooner wear something more feminine outside hiking so outside hiking would it make more sense to wear a period brownie uniform?

It's all stuff I'm mulling over.

Perhaps more give and take on gender spaces rather than battle cries might better suit our needs?

Back in time

 A warm start to the week on the other blog after the usual discourse around different groups on Tumblr saying "If you're a friend of theirs, you can't be a friend of mine" and "if you don't join us you're a nobody who won't be allowed to go nowhere" that can get tiring.

In dealing with that and blogs listed as disrespecting others wishes blocking them, I spotted something that was rather good.

Sadly lacking original artist credits, this illustration is charming in its child-like state suggesting to me they were clearly in a regressed state of mind at the time as the writing is very much of the 'child within' lacking any adult sophistication.

That to me is very much what this thing is about whatever props we may use and however we may present-getting back to that childhood state, enjoying the moment without an adult care in the world.

In her world the teddy bears are going for a walk hand in hand caring and looking out for each other, her response to them will be that of a child.

That is why protecting littles is a very important thing because when we are in that state our adult guard isn't around so we don't do 'adult' things  and any Caregiver shouldn't push them on you.

Boundaries DO matter.

Sharing all

I was brought up partially at a boarding school which is a very different set up from day school where you may have siblings but you are not with your schoolfriends all the time and you go out to be with them.

Inevitably you shared a dormitory so you got changed and took off all your clothes to get to bed in front of each other so you know who had a mole 'there' and they know my spine was twisted, so much so it gives me gyp. 
 

We also talked while getting dressed, in bed before lights out and in each others dorms apart from the Common Room so we were very much had emotional intimacy because we all know everything about each other which made for very deep relationships.

The appeal of Lego is almost universal and I dare say many of us have items  in our collections but where do you think such  a fascination might end?

Many of us have limited space, it may be say your dorm, a bedroom or perhaps a small flat but could it contain such a mania is something that you might wish to consider as even with the advantage of of being able to have a whole room to make and display your models in.

We just just might need to limit our wants to end up with something we can use.

It's hardly surprising then that Boyhood was and is the biggest single influence on my childhood as much as I'd of rather things were different.

I so would of loved to had annuals like this in my dorm but back then it just wouldn't of worked out as much they were me.

Ready to return

We're working in Firefox this week from the Windows Laptop as Pale Moon is having issues that makes it unreliable on Google's sites and touch and go on Tumblr too so I'm kind of hoping to see a bug fix this week.

 There's little escaping it from the press advertisements, the notices in uniform shops and increasingly offers from both online retailers plus certain supermarkets, the New Term is upon us.

In my world I'll be returning come September in grey as I have had a grey school jumper with a V neck which after all this medical stuff since July has preoccupied my time apart from how it's left me.

It should go well with my grey, green and black pleated skirts although unlike her in the picture I don't own a traditional leather satchel and indeed remember them fading out for briefcases or hold alls.

The worst thing you could ever have for carrying books in was the Duffle Bag which easily distorted and rubbed the corners of text books to the point some schools prohibited them for the damage they could cause.

The trouble was of course they were really intended for sports kit being made from a canvas material and not books so had no corners just a long tube shape with a drawstring that pulled the top closed.

Anyway I have my music ready to take away with sorted so bye for now!

Play and what we play with

 I'm feeling better this week so I thought I'd write something a little different than usual.

 Something I started noticing several years back when I first started buying my own stuffies and especially dolls was a difference between what some bought them for and what I did before getting involved around the world of littles.

One of things I found odd was what I later called the "collectors mentality" where people bought them in the original packaging and kept them permanently in that state, boxed up at best on shelf or otherwise in a storeroom.

To me they seemed to see them as objects that admittedly they liked  but the bais was clearly on maintaining that collectors item look and monetary value to the point they weren't handled and cherished even if they were intended for children who would play with them.

Personally, I buy my dolls and stuffies to play with although my porcelain ones are because of their delicateness are more handled than played with.

I take them out to sit by, hug whenever I feel the 'need' to hug or carry on in my hand around the house or wherever I am staying. I create stories featuring them which I then play with in real time together freely.

That's for me apart from those 'special dolls' they are my toys which as an adult child I play with in much the same way that I did as a child and as some saw me recently even gently rocking a pram with dollies.

It's what I get from playing with them that matters more to me than that whole collectors thing.