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I tend to love anything animated but was not impressed by this at all. There are also two lines in the song that bother me.
First: "Yeah, you could ask your mama, but who wants that kind of trauma?" Now, I understand that the United States is culturally different from where I am from, but in what kind of messed up world do you not ask the woman who birthed you advice on everything that has to do with your body - that is like hers? The fact that a brand happily encourages avoiding seeking advice from mothers plain bothers me. I do not think it's wise to normalize seeking anyone-but-your-mamas-advice on private matters. So I'm side-eying the brand for that alone.
Second line, and this is silly but; "it's my body, and it's self-care". Self-care used to be about health and autonomy and actively making your health better or preserving it. Such as being able to check your insulin levels with smart apps so that you can make better informed eating decisions. Or just being able to give yourself insulin. Or staying active and fit to prevent looming health issues.
So yes, I understand that the word now also includes anything that makes people happy. But rebranding grooming to be synonymous with self-care just sounds pretentious to me.
I didn't realize my mention of Tove's first published work being in Swedish was that unclear but I see now how it can be.
Of course, I know she's a Finnish national, and I also about our shared history which means we have Finlandssvenskar/Suomenruotsalaiset residing in both Finland and Sweden, of which Tove Jansson was one as her surname clearly signals. That her work was published in Swedish did help her creation become an immediate hit in Sweden as well. I've never met a Swede that thinks she's a Swedish national, but then my family and my buddies are mainly from Tornedalen and we know what's what. 😉
But Tove's Moomins are a huge part of Swedish lives, we love them just as much as we love everything Astrid Lindgren wrote, so in an odd way it feels like the poster is insulting Swedes twice. Do not mess with the Moomins! 😂 Muumit on pyhiä!
Someone on Twitter brought up your other point too, actually, and reminded me that much of her work was created to ease the anxiety of living in wartime. She said: It’s impossible to target a Moomin character as anything related to war. Tove Jansson would not approve of joining NATO. Tove created the Moomins as a way of escaping the anxiety and horrors caused by World War II. Especially in her story ’The Moomins and the Great Flood’. That's a really good point. But I don't suppose the Russians know that. And like you say, Tove Jansson drew a lot of work for Garm magazine, you could totally run those today only changing the Nazi swastika to a Russian symbol.
Update! I think I see more than just наша at the bottom of this poster now. It appears to say "Наша Победа" - and a suggestion to search that term, just like these new posters with Pippi and Moomin
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She was an elite swimmer, has two Sum-Sim gold medals, and was in a team at Upsala Simsällskap, but stopped swimming when she was 14.
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