| student: | can i borrow a pencil |
| teacher: | i don't know, CAN you? |
| student: | yes, also colloquial irregularities occur frequently in any language and since you and the rest of our present company understood my intended meaning being particular about the distinctions between "can" and "may" is purely pedantic and arguably pretentious |
Josephine Baker, later known as ‘Bronze Venus’, ‘Black Pearl’ and ‘Créole Goddess’ was born in America in 1906 and later moved to France to become a singer, dancer, and actress. She was the first African-American woman to star in a major motion picture, and became famous worldwide.
Though she grew up as a maid in wealthy white households she eventually became an exotic dancer in France, famously appearing in next to no clothing, and became a French citizen in 1937.
Ernest Hemingway referred to Baker as ‘the most sensational woman anyone ever saw’ and she received approximately 1500 marriage proposals in her life time. She became a muse for Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Christian Dior. She had a variety of exotic pets including a cheetah named Chiquita, a chimpanzee named Ethel, a pig named Albert, a snake named Kiki, a goat, a parrot, parakeets, fish, three cats, and seven dogs.
When WWII broke out, Baker became a volunteer spy for France, and assisted the French Resistance by smuggling messages written in invisible ink on sheet music. She made great efforts to aid those in danger of enemy attack, sent Christmas presents to French soldiers, and smuggled information she gathered in Spain back to France by pinning notes containing the information on the inside of her underwear. She was awarded the Medal of Resistance with Rosette and later named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
Baker also aided many civil rights movements by refusing to perform to segregated audiences and storming out of a club in Manhattan with actress Grace Kelly after she was refused service. She worked with the NAACP and spoke at a Washington march alongside Martin Luther King Jr. as the only official female speaker. Baker was actually asked by Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow to take his place as leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, but Baker declined on the grounds her twelve adopted children ‘were too young to lose their mother’.
Baker died in 1975, four days after her final show, attended by such names as Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, and Liza Minnelli.
101 dalmatians {scenery}
sext: sorry just got this text haha. do u still have a boner?
man. pretty much my last relationship. baheh.
“A lot of people just look and see skin color. I’ve actually had people ask me was I Black or was I White first. A White gentleman came up to me and said ‘I thought you might be White, but then I saw your lips.’ One girl said to me ‘I’ve been wanting to ask you this question, but I didn’t feel comfortable asking you because I thought that you might be offended, but are you Black or are you White?’ And I was just like, ‘Well, I’m always Black.’ When we were done with the meat of the conversation, she laughed and said something about my hair and my butt gave it away. People definitely let you know that they view being Black as being very literal – the amount of pigment you have. ‘Your skin is White, therefore you’re White. Or are you?’
— Sembene McFarland
© 2012 Black Fiya Works
Gorgeous individual.
beautiful.
(Source: anextrapeace)
“I really don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what people think about me…I would be totally paralyzed. How could you get up in the morning if you worried about some poll or what somebody said about you? That’s giving up power over your life to somebody else, and I don’t intend to do that.”
“Occasionally I’ll be sitting somewhere and I’ll be listening to someone perhaps not saying the kindest things about me. And I’ll look down at my hand and I’ll sort of pinch my skin to make sure it still has the requisite thickness I know Eleanor Roosevelt expects me to have.”
“I’m not going to mislead anybody. Politics is really hard. And it is harder for women. There’s a double standard, and you can’t complain about it. You just have to accept it, and be smart enough to navigate it. And you have to have a pretty tough skin. To paraphrase a favorite quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: If a woman wants to be in politics, she has to have the skin of a rhinoceros. Most men who go into politics just think they’re great. They believe they can do anything. Most young women, not only in politics but in most areas, are more cautious and more likely to say, ‘Could I really do this? Am I good enough?’ I was talking to a friend and very successful businessman the other day, and he said, ‘The thing that still annoys me more than anything is that I see all these young women who are so much more capable than they allow themselves to believe. And I see so many young men who are so much less capable but who believe they are God’s gift to the world.’ I would just say to women: Try it! Put your foot in the pond and see if you want to swim.”
“When you stumble, keep faith. And when you’re knocked down, get right back up, and never listen to anyone who says you can’t or shouldn’t go on.”
“Let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”
“Gay rights are human rights.”
(favorite person ever)
Carey Mulligan at the Opening Ceremony and ‘The Great Gatsby’ Premiere during the 66th Annual Cannes Film Festival at the Theatre Lumiere in Cannes, France
(Source: feyminism)
(Source: freecocaine)
