Hello! Here’s a selection of goodies from around the neenernet! Enjoy reading & have a wonderful weekend!

This post from Scathingly Brilliant is a bit of a lifesaver: My Top Five Closet Storage Solutions!

Veronica Varlow on the day the muses showed me the map.

Why Women Should Stop Trying to Be Perfect:

“Girls need to have all their grandmothers wanted them to have, while looking as pretty as their mothers wanted them to look … You try so hard to be who everyone wants you to be while attempting to maintain some kind of individuality and in the end you seem to lose everything.”

Feminism wasn’t supposed to make us miserable. It was supposed to make us free; to give women the power to shape their fortunes and work for a more just world. Today, women have choices that their grandmothers could not have imagined. The challenge lies in recognizing that having choices carries the responsibility to make them wisely, striving not for perfection or the ephemeral all, but for lives and loves that matter.

Alexandra Franzen wrote about how getting slightly famous-er has made me a better person… Really!

Do you think Pinterest is killing feminism? I do not. I’m really sick of the “if you do x, YOU’RE NOT A FEMINIST!” argument. Does everything we do have to be so fucking buttoned-up & P.C. all the time? I say NO! There are some great comments below that article, for example…

I also believe there is room for cupcake baking and pretty hairstyles in feminism. Why can’t a strong woman bake cupcakes and have pretty hair while simultaneously working for the UN and generally kicking ass? She can. I see where the author was going with this, but I think she’s just generally overreactive and imbalanced, as you point out… / I think what the author is trying to say is of course women can bake cupcakes and have a great career, but “Why doesn’t your Pinterest account feature pinned items from your career, and why does it only feature diet, exercise, and hair style info?”, Which the answer here is – Pinterest is not a place for career building. If you’re interested in a women’s career check out her on her Twitter, Linked, Quora, and possibly Facebook accounts.

On that note, are you following me on Pinterest?! I love Pinterest. I find the image attribution issue problematic, but I think it is a great tool for refining your aesthetic, & can be used for goal-setting, vision boarding, etc. too. I also believe in the power of aspirational imagery, & think it can help push us to achieve more. I could talk about this ALL DAY! Whatevs. I Pinterest!

This piece on Amanda Palmer’s Kickstarter scandal is quite an eye-opener, & anyone who wants to use Kickstarter in the future would be wise to read it! Edited to add: After an eye-opening email conversation with a reader named Sarah, I wanted to include this response for balance, & ALSO note that just because I have included something on Carousel, that doesn’t mean I endorse the content… In the original link, I was much more interested in the focus on Kickstarter (& its use) than the vilifying of Amanda. Hope this clears things up!

A lesson on how to navigate the online cliques.

With brides like these…

Jen is so right on with this piece on how hanging out with people in real life is now like herding cats, cats that suck. I also LOVED her point about having friends that you just sit with, & friends you do activities with. That’s a really important distinction. The whole thing is great & a must-read, if you ask me.

Anorexia is not — generally — caused by reading fashion magazines (they say this is about 5% of causes). Eating disorders are between 60-85% due to genetics.

On that note, here is an A-Z of eating disorder recovery, by Kathleen MacDonald.

a. I got serious about nutrition and I stopped making me the “exception” to needing to eat. b. I got serious about gaining body fat. c. I learned to be comfortable feeling uncomfortable and I didn’t fall back into the disease every time my body image felt like hell or my guts distended/I felt pregnant. d. I got serious about the fact that every purge could be my last…

No surprises here: many eating disorder sufferers share certain traits with people who are driven to success & fame.

I loved this takedown of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, which is so about tarring women with the same brush, & is totally insulting.

Perfumes Without Pity makes me laugh. “Rounded shape fits comfortably in the hand, perfect for lobbing at the help.” “I used to like this until someone told me I smelled like Lemon Pledge and not like Brigitte Bardot frolicking on the beach.”

Would you buy nothing new for a month? I have done a couple of “no shopping” months over the past two years & it is always an amazing exercise. I always find myself with so much more TIME (no point browsing in shops or online = massive productivity), & feeling quite virtuous in general!