Link About It #5: Goat Portraits, Women's Work, and an Ode to Anne Shirley

This is the fifth instalment in a series now known as Link About It, previously called My Favourite Internet Things, in which I compile interesting/amusing things I've seen on the internet this week.

Remember last week, when I threatened to come up with a terrible pun-based name for this series if nobody suggested anything better? Well, I've made good on my promise, and this series is now going to be known as "Link About It" from this point onwards. Personally I think this title works better, but if you disagree.... all I can say is that you had your chance.

Women's work

This week I've somehow ended up stumbling across several excellent articles on the topic of women and labour, particularly the kind of domestic labour that is often invisible and expected from us.

• At The Cut, Lisa Miller considers how women tend to carry more things with them than men do, and what that says about our society. Miller looks at a number of issues, from the lack of pockets in women's clothes to who cleans up messes in public spaces, and ties them all together in a brilliant thesis on women and the baggage (literal and metaphorical) we carry.
• A new study says that the idea that men in general are "dirt blind" is a myth - they just aren't judged for being untidy or unclean in the same way women are. This made me think about the shared memory so many of us have of our mothers panicking over the state of the house when guests are coming over. Perhaps this is because women subconsciously know the house's condition reflects on them, rather than their male partners or children?
•  A lack of time is a woman's greatest enemy, writes Brigid Schulte at The Guardian. Her essay makes a compelling argument that the thing holding so many women back from creative or career success is the fact that they just don't have as much time as their male counterparts, due to the unseen domestic labour expected of them.

Articles on wanting and asking too much

• It's from 2017, but this ode to Anne of Green Gables at Lit Hub is so beautiful that I'd still wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who loves L. M. Montgomery's precocious heroine. I didn't read any of the Anne books until I was an adult, but once I did I related to Anne so strongly that I wish I'd read them many years before. 
• This personal essay at Autostraddle explores desire, being "thirsty", and the radical act of openly claiming what you want. It's excellent, but I will warn that it's a bit NSFW.

Stories and pictures

• "The Crane Wife", by CJ Hauser, also explores desire and emotional needs. It's a beautiful story of a woman recovering from the collapse of a relationship, and how studying cranes in the wild helps her survive the aftermath. I originally thought that it was a piece of short fiction, but now I think it might actually be autobiographical. 
• These portraits of goats, taken by photographer Kevin Horan, are surprisingly striking. I never would have thought of goats as being particularly pretty animals before, but their uniqueness and personality really shine through in this series. 

If you've finished reading this post and are surprised that I haven't shared anything to do with the UK's new PM, I would just like to say that the omission was deliberate. Between the recent heatwave and being ill, I don't have the energy to confront the horror of our current political situation right now. There is a time for action and a time for distraction, and right now I'm strongly in need of the latter.