Beauty Level-Up #13: Red My Lips Campaign ( + Giveaways)

March 13, 2015 Eli Heinafree stuff, giveaways, inclusivity, lipstick, Red My Lips30 Comments

It’s the second Friday the 13th in a row this year, and this is my 13th installment of this series. This delights me to an irrational extent.

image courtesy of Red My Lips

A few months back, I became aware of the Red My Lips campaign. It intrigued me because I usually save red lips for particular moods, situations, and contexts. This means that many of the people who see me in my day-to-day life don’t ever see my lips painted in red (though they might see them in more outlandish colors like violet all the time because beauty is boring and I do what I want). I’m sure at least a few of them might notice that I’d spent a whole month wearing and touching up red lip color.

What ultimately sold me 100% on Red My Lips is their awesome attitude towards people expressing concerns about potentially problematic language. Continue reading “Beauty Level-Up #13: Red My Lips Campaign ( + Giveaways)” →

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Being More Inclusive of Former Fundies: On Families

March 12, 2015 Eli Heinadisowned, drama, families, parental units6 Comments

Consider the fraught relationship that many apostates of more-involved religions have with our families of origin. If the relationship still exists, it often is predicated on mutually-agreed-upon deception.

Though it may be expressed as a personal opinion, it is possible for “the way I see it” to end up sounding prescriptive or superior. This is especially true when that opinion reflects a more mainstream understanding and/or experience than the alternative. Specifically, in this case, assertions about why hiding anything from one’s parents or other relatives is always wrong can come off as exclusionary for those of us for whom the situation is more complicated.

Continue reading “Being More Inclusive of Former Fundies: On Families” →

Writings From Elsewhere: An Apostate of Towelie

March 11, 2015 Eli Heinaex-muslim, EXMNA, sexism2 Comments

A while back, I wrote a piece on Medium about my early experiences as an out ex-Muslim online called An Apostate of Towelie: Being the Only Woman in the Ex-Muslim Chatroom. An edited version of it appeared in Atheist Alliance of America’s magazine, Secular Nation.

I have built a fledgling (perhaps fetal, if I’m being generous) writing career around it. I promote and am a part of organizations about it. I openly talk about it and identify with it. I am an ex-Muslim atheist, loud and proud, unashamed and out, and have been since 2006. And yet, despite my shamelessness, I mentally buried a significant part of my early history with being an apostate of Islam. The very first time I joined a group for apostates of Islam, I defected after just two group chat sessions.

Indeed, the memory might have stayed buried indefinitely were it not for a particular troll who found my writing at Skepchick.

See Me in Madison, Memphis, & Hickory, NC

March 10, 2015 Eli HeinaAmerican Atheists, Freethought Festival, ReAsonCon1 Comment

My next three speaking gigs are sure to be an awesome start to a (hopefully) con-filled year: Freethought Festival 4, American Atheists 2015 Conference, and ReAsonCon 2015.

You can always check out a full list of past and future happenings at Upcoming Appearances, Where I’ve Been & What I’ve Done, and Recorded Appearances pages. Continue reading “See Me in Madison, Memphis, & Hickory, NC” →

Flash Fiction’s Fashion Equivalent: #FlashCosplay Toph

March 9, 2015 Eli HeinaAvatar, Korrasami, Legend of Korra1 Comment

Despite my fondness for cosplay, I am not much of a crafty / sewing type. I mean, I can mend a button or a small hole quite adequately, but the idea of creating a costume from scratch Mad Art Lab style intimidates me. I personally don’t like the idea of buying a ready-made costume from either a budget or philosophical perspective (for people my size or above, even pricey ready-made costumes often fail us). Without the budget to commission from-scratch pieces from more talented and skilled people, this leaves me with the assembly option.

Usually, I keep my eye out for characters whose signature looks can be assembled out of streetwear with minimal fuss. The required elements of those characters’ looks goes into my mental list of things to look out for when I’m doing my usual bargain-hunting-style clothes shopping. I also save searches across Amazon, Etsy, and eBay in my hunt for specific costume elements at a decent price.

That’s not what happened yesterday, when I found out that official Korrasami fan art was going to be sold for charity at a gallery about 30 miles away from me. Obviously, I was not only going to get my ass there, I was going to not pay the $5 admission fee and cosplay instead.

Many nerdy and geek-type events and spaces have flash fiction competitions. I was going to flash cosplay this thing or die trying. Continue reading “Flash Fiction’s Fashion Equivalent: #FlashCosplay Toph” →

Beauty Level-Up #12: Makeup Isn’t Always Worn to Look “Pretty”

March 6, 2015 Eli Heinabeauty norms, Kim Kardashian, natural makeup, no makeup look, shadows3 Comments

Last month, Kim Kardashian was featured on a cover that got less attention than her problematic “Internet-breaking” Paper one, but that I think was actually quite quite a clever, fascinating, and subtle statement on beauty, specifically the kind of beauty of which she has become something of a symbol.

Kim Kardashian on the cover of LOVE magazine — Photo credit: Steven Klein for LOVE magazine.

Do you see what she did there with the shadows? I do! Continue reading “Beauty Level-Up #12: Makeup Isn’t Always Worn to Look “Pretty”” →

I Woke Up Like Dis – The Day I Was Brown

March 5, 2015 Eli Heinaethnicity, Latin@, passing privilege, race, wage gap1 Comment

This is a guest post by Marina, an awesome writer, social-media-managing freelancer, podcaster, and overall person that I know. She and I are trading blog posts for today on the topic of Realizing that You’re Brown. You can check out my post for today as well as the rest of her writings at her eponymous site, Marina Rose Martinez.

Glendora, California is where I became a Mexican. It was 1999, the summer before my freshman year in high school, and I was standing at the check-stand in Albertsons still sweaty from the walk over and totally, completely, freakishly alone.

I don’t know how many times before this day I was in a building with only white people in it. It would have never occurred to me that we were different from each other, so it probably happened a lot. My grandmother and her second husband were both white, and they raised me from two to 13. I went to a private school, I took horseback riding lessons, I had a therapist. Whiteness was my entire jam. So, white was normal, I felt normal, therefore I was basically white. It didn’t help that my education, while extensive in most areas, left me with the incorrect impression that the history of racism in American was this: Slavery; Lynching; Dr. Martin Luther King; Racism is over.

So when the middle aged cashier told me a beaner joke, it was basically a scene in a horror movie for me. Continue reading “I Woke Up Like Dis – The Day I Was Brown” →

Girl Grows Up to Be Not-a-Woman: On Non-Binary Gender

March 4, 2015 Eli Heinagender, genderqueer, non-binary gender, questioning gender14 Comments

I’ve never had an understanding of my own gender identity within the binary standards of male vs. female. As a child, I said that I was a girl because that’s what they told me to be. Since I had heard that girls grew up to be women, that was what I thought I was going to be. I’d grow breasts and start understanding how to dress myself and get a husband and have sex and have kids. Bam, woman.

Yet, in my self-reflective writings, I talked about how I went from kid to pre-teen to teen to young adult to adult, not girl to woman. Not even in my journal entries about getting my period did I talk about becoming a woman. I talked about giving up on childish things, about puberty, about my sexuality, but never about girlhood or womanhood.

Feeling like a woman was something that simply never happened for me. When I realized that was the case, I did quite a lot to try to feel like a woman without consciously admitting to myself what all was going on. None of it worked. Continue reading “Girl Grows Up to Be Not-a-Woman: On Non-Binary Gender” →

Top Ten Favorite Books By White Male Authors

March 3, 2015 Eli Heinaclassic literature, male novelists, white male authors20 Comments

A lot of angry people from YouTube are showing up to tell me that the reason I haven’t read many authors besides white male ones is that I wasn’t interested in books about identity politics. In other words, they think that white male authors write about general issues, while non-male and/or non-white authors write about who they are.

They also think that by not reading white male authors for two years, I’m somehow stopping white men from writing. So that says a lot about their ability to properly understand context.

But maybe this is my fault. Maybe I needed to be clear just how much I admire the white male ability to write. Here are, in no particular order, ten of my favorite books written by white male authors as well as what I found to be so compelling about them.
Continue reading “Top Ten Favorite Books By White Male Authors” →

Heinous Dealings

Here to disrupt your narrative.

Month: March 2015