Grieving for a jar, also known as, my visit to the morgue.

'He danced and probably 
walked barefoot on the beach.
 This foot, had a favourite pair of shoes.'

 Being a glamorous artiste isn't all about fancy studios and bowls of fruit, sometimes it's just you and a few classmates taking a train...to the morgue. I recently took a mandatory Life Drawing class that barely anyone turned up to, and irony of the relatively high level of attendance for the optional Morgue visit was not lost on me (there was limited places and all of them were taken).

So we're sitting there no more than 8 of us in total, just drawing pieces of dead body, heads, feet, hands, hoping to god that the eyes don't magically open...well maybe that was just me, anyway we're all sitting there when our tutor goes 'Jesus, just think, this guy spoke and laughed and kissed' and we'd been voicing similar thoughts all day, so it might have just been the use of the word 'kiss' that silenced us for a few minutes, because it doesn't take anyone else to laugh, or talk, but the thought of the head in a jar kissing someone meant he had a someone to kiss, that someone loved him, that someone thought about him, and although we knew he'd been alive at some point, for me, for the first time, he wasn't just a head in a jar any more.

    

Foetal Skeleton at 6 months

Also at the morgue, was a room for cutting bodies up and stuff, and in this room, on shelves against the wall was a display of dead babies, there was really no way to ease into that so I thought I'd just say it, dead fucking babies on the shelves like fucking ornaments. It maddened me slightly (well more than slightly) that these children hadn't signed consent forms for their new accommodation, like the people in the other room. When I asked the embalmer about how and why these babies got there, she told me they were taken without permission from their Mothers, and the reason they were taken without permission was that they didn't need any, they were taken before the laws changed to protect them, which happened in 1961, I know this because I looked it up. So by that logic some of these children could have been taken 51 years ago, so if a Mother of one of these babies was 20 years old during pregnancy, that would only make her 71 now, so it's a very really possibility that there are women out there grieving for what these people keep in fucking jars.

Foetus with malformations, kept in a jar.

Rape. Actions speak louder than words, or do they?

A while back I was listening to the radio when a song said a woman was raped, and it wasn't a crude rap song being all 'I'm gonna rape everyone you love' and yet it blanked out the word 'rape', rape is very real, and it happens to women and men everyday and maybe we should be doing more to prevent it and get convictions when it does happen, instead of ignoring it and blanking it out. How are we supposed to talk about it, how are we supposed to teach our children about it if we can't even say it? Rape. It's not Beetlejuice. If you say it three times it's not going to appear out of nowhere. We all need to be educated on rape and how to prevent it, and also, what sort of behaviour is, if not rape, is sexually threatening and unacceptable. No means no, and an absence of a no, is definitely not a yes. Also if someone is wasted, that's not a yes either. I leave you in the capable hands of Laci Green to find out more:

Stay safe. Make good choices,

Casual racism and why I'd rather be gay than black. (It sounds worse than it is)

I love calling out racists (especially on Facebook, where everyone can see and they can't get out of it or pretend they didn't say it because it's there in black and white for us all to witness), because a lot of them would cringe if you called them that, because that's not how they see themselves, because that's how easy our society and culture has made it to be casually racist, remarks roll off the tongue and are all over Facebook. Most people would say 'I'm not a racist' or even 'I have black friends', but guess what assuming you are better than someone because you are a colour they aren't, or making assumptions about people based on skin colour is fucking racist. In the same way as saying something is 'so gay' is still a homophobic statement even if you 'love the gays'. Another quick comparison between homophobia and racism, and it starts bad so let me get to the end before anyone goes off on one. I, Abby Jane Pearson, being a young woman living in the UK, would rather be gay than black, and I'll tell you for why right now, because, being gay and black are similar in the sense that, there's nothing wrong with either,neither can, nor should be, helped, they're just facts of life, people are just born that way and it's our differences that make us beautiful and they should be celebrated, but you'll always get some bigot fucking it up for the rest of us, and here comes the reasoning behind why I'd rather be gay than black, as a gay women I can chose when and where, and to whom I come out, when I feel safe and comfortable, sure as shit nobody in the entire world has to come out as black. I've got this friend, she's both black and beautiful, and people think it's okay to shout 'nigger' at her in the street. If a racist approaches her in the street, she cannot deny the beautiful chocolatey tone of her skin, she cannot CHOOSE to be safe. And that my friends, is why I'd rather be gay than black.