Recently in Deep Thoughts Category

An interesting post by Emily Nepon from the website Enough:

In 2001 I bought a house in Philadelphia in partnership with a close friend. We called our new relationship "homownersexual" because we were queers in a committed partnership with each other that had nothing to do with marriage or monogamy. We bought a three story, five bedroom house that was in good shape for $25,000, with a personal loan from her grandparents and an agreement to pay it back at a relatively low interest rate (7%).

We and our various friend-housemates were white flamboyantly-gendered queers moving into a neighborhood that was 99% working poor African-American. I had been living for a few years in the Baltimore Ave area of West Philly, where gentrification is a major issue, but where the neighborhood has also been home to a mixed race and class community for a long time.

In the house we bought, it was immediately clear that we were outsiders and probably invaders. We bought the house because we knew the only white people in the neighborhood, a couple with a great reputation among their neighbors which helped people feel a bit more comfortable with us, but we still had a lot of answering to do. I'm thankful for the relationships I built on that block, but if I had it to do over again, I would not move there - the ongoing feeling of being an invader in Philly's Black community never went away. I saw very few white people in that neighborhood in the five years I lived there, but it wasn't just about race, it was also clearly about class. We were from a range of class backgrounds, but as a household we didn't fit the class makeup of our neighborhood any more than we fit it racially.

Read the whole post here. Emily has some really interesting things to say about this dilemma, which I know I think a lot about. I also am very aware of my own role in gentrification as a young professional living in a primarily Latino neighborhood whose demographic is rapidly changing. While I am Latina, I am very obviously part of this new wave of yuppies moving into the neighborhood, mostly because of class and education differences. I can afford to pay a lot more for my housing than most of the Latino immigrant families that have been living in my neighborhood, so I am part of driving up prices and driving these families out. But I also love living in a multi-cultural Latino neighborhood, hearing Spanish in the businesses and on the streets.

Wearing white after labor day is a fashion don't. So, apparently, is being black.

PS. I would really like to know how to get "political" hair.

Thanks to Lydia for the Deep Thoughts logo!

Getting a bikini wax is bad.

Catching your bikini waxer huffing paint thinner is worse.

(P.S. I think "Deep Thoughts, by Feministing" may become a regular feature. Any Photoshop mavens out there want to make us an accompanying logo? The above one is Ann's quick and dirty shot at it.)