Tea with Abi ☕

  Young, woke, and tired. Addressing people with their preferred pronouns, keeping up with laws regarding women’s bodily autonomy, using less plastic, et-fucking-cetera. Every day there’s a different tragedy in the media, a different cause to care about. We are told to stay tuned; we are told what we can (and should ) do about this and that. We almost never get a chance to deal with the occurrence or cause on its own. It’s as if we’re forced to experience the action, the reaction, the news, and the response. And quite frankly, it’s exhausting. When yet another social justice movement emerges, my fingers are working overtime doing research, signing petitions, and sharing the story. Especially because I am a woman of colour with my own socio-political ideals. In a culture where being woke is good (and by ‘good’ I mean that it illustrates that our society is adopting a way of forward thinking), we sometimes forget that being woke all the time, especially trying to be woke online...

  This is for the women who don’t give a f**k, respectfully.   Generally, when we think women, we think wife, mom, caregiver. We equate women with domestic responsibility. This narrowed train of thought exists because we have been socialized into it.   Women are supposed to be feminine, soft and less aggressive, yet we are expected to be wives and mothers who make sure life's ships sail smoothly. We are expected to take on hard roles while remaining soft. This baffles me. Would you expect an ultimate fighter to punch an opponent softly? Shoutout to all the moms who make this absurdity work.   For decades, social constructs have created an unfavourable narrative for women. We spend our girlhoods glorifying silence, aspiring to be mothers, and fantasizing about the big day as if it were the only important day in our lives. We are taught to tame our passions which is particularly evident in the older generation. “ G ood women don ’ t fight back , ” th...

  Food aesthetics- Say cheese! Exotic food, glamourized food, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich- we see all kinds of food everywhere and anytime. It is in our public spaces, our private spaces, on the internet. Heck you probably saw a picture of food when you opened your Instagram app today. And while we engage with food differently, and attach different meanings to food, one thing is universal: food speaks to an internal part of all human beings. We place so much attention on food, so much that it is almost as if we are obsessed with it. Of course, it deserves all the attention it gets. It is, after all, essential for human survival. But the irony is that we don’t treat it as such. We are more concerned with the aesthetics of food, rather than how satisfying it is. I’m pretty sure almost everyone reading this blog post has, at some point, sacrificed a hot plate and endured cold food just to get the perfect photo for an Instagram story. Don’t get me wrong. As a 22-year-old (...