#fun fact: eddie's tweet was my actual real life message to my friends about those pics

[matchingbatbites]

"What the fuck did you do?"

Eddie wasn't expecting hostility when he answered Jeff's phone call, his best friend's usual calm demeanor replaced with open annoyance. And yeah, okay, the annoyance itself wasn’t new, but Eddie doesn’t think he’s actually done anything recently to earn it.

"Well-"

"Actually, no. I'll tell you what you did. You retweeted photos of Steve Harrington - internationally beloved heartthrob actor Steve Harrington - along with the caption 'not to sound like a subby slut but GOD I would be his puppy baby boy in a heartbeat'. So I guess the better question is, what the fuck were you thinking, Eddie?"

Eddie's jaw clicks shut because- yeah, he had done that. Had seen those photos of Steve smoking circling the internet and spent god knows how long just staring at them, had curbed the desire to shove his hand down his pants by posting a single thirst tweet about it.

“I was thinking, Jeff, that I'm allowed to post whatever I want to my private fucking twitter, man. I mean it's a free country, isn't a guy allowed to make a horny tweet about a sexy man every now and then?”

“You are, when you actually post it to your private account and not our award winning band's main account.”

No. Oh no. There's no way Eddie actually-

He rips his phone away from his face to open twitter, and realizes two things simultaneously. One, Jeff is right, he had posted it to the band's account. Not on his private, locked, personal account, but on the account that's actually open and free for literally anyone on earth to look at.

The second thing he realizes is that their notifications are currently flooded with responses to Eddie's tweet, somehow racking up into the thousands in the few hours it's been since. 

Jesus Christ.

“Eddie?”

The metalhead jerks back into the moment and put Jeff on speaker so he can scroll through the horde of replies, says “Fuck, I fucked up. Are we gonna have to do damage control on this?”

In the mess is a reply from Gareth's own personal account: @ corrodededdie stop tweeting from the band account challenge 🙄🙄🙄

”Maybe. There hasn't been any type of response from Harrington or his people, but they might ask us to take it down if it blows up too much.“

Eddie hums, thinking they might be too little, too late about it blowing up too much, and flips over to his main account so he can reply to Gareth's little jab appropriately. He isn't surprised to see that he has a couple of new messages, probably from other people wondering just what the fuck Eddie was thinking, but when he goes to check them-

He's never been happier that he turned on messages from followers only, because then he would have missed this, missed Steve Harrington's little profile picture beaming up at him from the screen of his phone, along with a new message request.

”Jeff, I gotta go,” he says, not even realizing he's cut the other man off.

“Eddie, what-

”Harrington messaged me. I'll call you back.“

Eddie doesn't wait for a response as he hangs up on Jeff, and his hands definitely aren't shaking as he opens the message from Steve. And listen- Eddie is a fan of the guy, that much should be obvious. 

Steve had grown in popularity around the same time Corroded Coffin had; he’d gotten some part in a drama film that had skyrocketed him into stardom, and Eddie fell in love the moment he saw that gorgeous face on the silver screen for the first time. He's never had a chance to interact with the guy, has been in the same place a few times but always missed him, like ships passing in the night, but Eddie's been fine with pining from afar, just like every other person on the planet that's even remotely attracted to men.

Besides, even with how popular Corroded Coffin has gotten over the years - a couple of Grammy’s here, a dozen chart topping metal songs there - Eddie doesn’t expect Steve to just. Know who Eddie is.

With all of this in mind, Eddie is expecting some kind of semi-casual request to take the tweet down, that it's not a good look for his image-

Anything other than what Steve actually sent.

'If you're puppy baby boy, does that make me Master? Or Daddy?'

And Eddie- 

Eddie slides down, sinks into his couch cushion as all of the blood in his body suddenly shifts, rushing to fill his dick like it's a fucking race. The phone almost slips out of his hand and he fumbles it briefly before taking a deep breath. 

Is Steve serious? He wouldn't send that if he wasn't serious, right?

This could be it, could be Eddie's one chance to impress Steve, to get his foot in the door of Steve's interest. He bites his lip and types out a reply, something quick that he sends before he can change his mind.

‘I’m open to either, actually. Do you have a preference, sir?’

He doesn’t expect the typing indicator to come up immediately, and just knowing that Steve is somewhere right now, typing out a response to Eddie, is enough to have him nearly vibrating in his seat.

‘I’m partial to Daddy, myself.’

Fuck fuck fuck.

Eddie takes a breath, tries to think of a response that isn’t just ‘Please, Daddy, can I sit on your massive dick that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since that one indie film you did that just had all of your junk out in the open?’

Steve saves him by sending another message.

‘But maybe we could start with Steve, and possibly dinner? Though I’d be happy to see where things go after that.’

He- What-

Eddie must have stopped breathing, because the next time he takes a breath his lungs burn, his mid races because there’s no way Eddie’s long term celebrity crush just asked him on a date. He sits there long enough that the screen goes dark and he scrambles to turn it back on, sees the message still there, real and unchanged.

There’s no way he can say no to this, to Steve, and his hands shake as he types out a response.

‘Dinner would be great. Just name the time and place, Daddy.’

[kansascityhappenings]

Céline Dion launches gender-neutral clothing line for children

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — Five-time Grammy winning singer Céline Dion wants children to have comfortable clothes that fit in neutral colors with simple prints. She said she aims to change the dialogue on clothes with her new collection CELINUNUNU. The fashion-line name kind of looks like a jumble of letters — the name comes from Céline + the fashion company Nununu.

The new clothes feature 70 stereotype-free styles for kids aged 0 to 14. Nununu specializes in unisex designs and is based in Israel.

“I’ve always loved Nununu and what they represent,” Dion wrote on Twitter Tuesday. “Partnering with [founders Iris Adler and Tali Milchberg] to encourage a dialogue of equality and possibility makes so much sense.”

Dion said she has tried to stay away from gender stereotypes while raising her 8-year-old twins, Eddy and Nelson, and 17-year-old son, René-Charles.

As for the CELINUNUNU line itself, Dion said, “The message I’m trying to get across is you raise your children the way you want to raise your children. You have to decide what’s right for them. We’re just proposing another way to take away the stereotype.”

Below we will cover how people feel about the new fashion line from all angles, those in support and critics included.

Benefits of new clothesline

Not everyone loves the idea of clothing without a gender designation, but it can actually help some kids be safer, particularly girls. Some of the fashion for girls today can be really over the top, and parents have complained that shorts for girls are often too short or other items are too mature. It can be unsettling to compare shorts length for girls and boys and wonder why less material is given to girls. Pulling back on gender stereotypes might actually let girls be girls — instead of pressuring them into items more appropriate for adults.

The intent of several non-gender clothing lines is in part to stop sexualizing kids. Simple t-shirts and jeans can be a life saver, and can take pressure off kids who feel like they have to be fashionistas. Céline Dion wants children to feel comfortable in their own clothes without feeling that pressure, and kids can decide for themselves whether they love pink, want flowery prints, or bows and pearls. Nununu does have some more frilly items, but none of its clothes are remotely suggestive.

Marketing firm Mintel found that 20 percent of parents with children under age 12 who had bought kids’ clothing in the past year support gender-neutral clothing options.

Prices can vary widely in gender marketing

Some of the gendered marketing can spike prices — compare men’s shampoo and women’s shampoo, or men’s razors and women’s razors. Some hygiene products have nothing to do with gender, and often the items marketed toward women cost more, so it’s smart to shop around and see how marketing companies could be stereotyping you in an effort to get money off you. It might make more sense to buy the men’s razor and get your money’s worth.

Kids toys can have the same problem: LEGOs, action figures, playing cards, board games, and other items have over the past 20 years been marketed more toward gender. Do LEGOs need to have certain colors to appeal more to boys or girls, or do kids just like playing with blocks? It’s an important question that marketing experts believe they have solved, but perhaps kids just like to play with toys.

History behind colors and marketing

Fun fact: pink hasn’t always been the color of choice for girls. A Ladies’ Home Journal article in June 1918 said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” The article with this quote has been saved at the Smithsonian.

At the end of the day, neither pink nor blue are seen universally to denote a boy or a girl. Across the world different cultures use colors in different ways: in South Korea pink is common in male fashion, blue is the number one favorite color for people across the globe, but in some cultures blue is a barely recognized color. For a long time, the Egyptians were the only culture that could produce blue dyes. In some parts of the world today, blue isn’t considered common. A research team worked with the Himba tribe from Namibia and found there is no word for blue nor real distinction between blue and green.

If we go back just a hundred years, children’s clothing has largely changed — mostly for the better. For centuries, it was standard practice for children in the West to wear white dresses until age six, which sounds more like trying to project an unappealing ghost-gender, but the clothing choice was out of practicality.

The baby boomers were the first generation to wear gender-specific clothing according to the Smithsonian. In the mid-1800s, pastel colors, including pink and blue, were linked to baby clothes but not directly to gender. Several guides before the 1940s suggested clothing color should be based on hair color or eye color.

“What was once a matter of practicality — you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached — became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted,’” Jo B. Paoletti, author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America, told Smithsonian in 2011.

For Nununu founders Iris Adler and Tali Milchberg of Tel Aviv, Israel, the effort to change conventions in children’s fashion started a decade ago. The company offers clothes in neutral color palettes. The designers said children’s fashion doesn’t have to be silly, fussy, or frilly. If you look on the company website, a pale almost-beige-pink is used in some items.

The styles from the company may be better described as down to earth and comfort-as-a-priority.

The clothes can be found at Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Avenue, and other retailers, as well as from the Nununu website. According to the designers, the word “Nununu” is what Israeli parents say to naughty children.

Critics unhappy with non-gender specific kids clothes

Not everyone agrees with Dion’s decision to partner with Nununu. Thousands of fans tweeted they lost respect for her. Critics have dogged Nununu for focusing on changing clothing concepts. There is concern that the clothes cause kids to lose their identity or make them feel confused.

For Adler and Milchberg, implying gender norms with kids clothing didn’t sit well with them. Mitchberg said she didn’t want children growing up thinking they had to either play football or play with Barbie dolls. She said these are things kids should play with only if they want to play with them.

When Adler and Milchberg told their friends they wanted to start a unisex kids clothesline, they faced ridicule.

“When we started, friends and people we know said, ‘What? Are you guys out of your minds — unisex clothes for kids?’” Milchberg said in an interview with Vox. “‘You will lose your money and your career.’ But we felt strongly about it,” said Milchberg.

Dion first bought clothes from Nununu fives years ago for her children. She reached out to the company to start a clothing line last year. The ad for the campaign was uploaded to YouTube in November and has garnered more than 412,000 views. The commercial features police confronting Dion when she goes into a baby ward. The advertisement could be a little misleading (or dramatic) for viewers — so to really get an idea of what is in the fashion line, here are some pictures.

Courtesy CELINUNUNU

Courtesy CELINUNUNU

Courtesy CELINUNUNU

Courtesy CELINUNUNU

Courtesy CELINUNUNU

Courtesy CELINUNUNU

So is the fashion line for everyone? Probably not. It does have a limited amount of items and some of them are pricey. Some of the coats are more than $100, and something similar could probably be found at Walmart or Target. The designs are also limited and might not really fit with every child. A whole wardrobe based off the one line or company would be impractical, but some items from it might help expand a kid’s wardrobe and give them more options. Some of it looks great for pajamas.

Most of the clothes are for comfort, not for formal outings. If you head to the main Nununu website, it has far more options — including tutus. You might be able to get a better idea of their company through their Instagram page.

If your kids are into Tim Burton movies, if they like skulls, or if they like things that are simple-not-complicated — then these clothes probably fit their style. It can be a little edgy.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2018/11/18/celine-dion-launches-gender-neutral-clothing-line-for-children/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2018/11/19/celine-dion-launches-gender-neutral-clothing-line-for-children/