Even Mother Nature Needs a Little Help

photo by the consumerist

Even mother nature needs a little help. These words stay with me, from a moment in a high school lockerroom when a team mate, who was also a budding model, decided she wanted to make me over. This was even before the rash of pretty woman movies. I wondered then, what about me needed improvement? And I have wondered it ever since.

I have dabbled in the application of make up through my high school years and in college. I would wander into the local drug store and stare at the endless array of cosmetics…and just guess. I would head home and guess again about how to put it on. These days I can go to the internet and look for application advice…what shape my eyes are, or my face. Many newcomers to make up feel uncomfortable about the feeling of being made up. They have seen women with penciled in surprise eyebrows and plastic thick layers of foundation. There does not seem to be anything natural about it. My sister, who is also gay, stated she feels as if she would be giving in to some social pressure that she refuses to bend to.

I recently convinced her to join me and our younger sister at Nordstroms, a nicely appointed department store. The goal was to have her request a day look make up advice session from one of the cosmetic specialists. I was excited to see how it went! My sister rarely if ever wears make up, and is definitely not obsessed with fashion or her appearance. I was curious, how would this elite group of girly girl experts react to a plane faced non-fashionista? Would they blow her off? Would there be laughter and mockery?

I myself have never approached a make up counter either…for fear of ridicule. I was embarrassed by my lack of knowledge and uncertain how these things played out. As we approached the counter…the subtle and natural saleslady. I was surprised! I could detect nothing but an actual desire to be helpful to my sister and to sell her exactly what she was looking for and all in the right color palette. It was natural looking, easy to apply and included a full lesson in application…the representative did half of her face and my sister the other half to help her learn to do it at home. When she was done, my skeptical sister, bought every product recommended and was very pleased with how it looked. Her skin tone was even and much less blotchy, her eyes “popped” and her lips shone.

My other sister and I were so impressed, we each clamored over each other to have the next turn at this tutorial and sat down for our own consultations, and ended up buying some great products also. There was no embarrassment, there was an honest and friendly information sharing session. Make up had progressed a long way since my sister had used it, and working with these ladies can save a heck of a lot of time in product research and take the guess work out of what is right for you and your look. There is no obligation to buy…you can buy some or all or nothing. The information is free.

Walk in and check out the style of the cosmetic rep at the various counters. Does she have spiky multicolored hair, 8 inch heels and eyes so black she appears to have been in a fight? If that is the look you are going for, choose her.   When you approach a make up counter some brands are about natural subtle make up whereas others are bolder and more dramatic. Determine what style you are comfortable with, and you'll choose the right sales rep.  You just might enjoy the experience!





 

A Day in the Life of a Girly Girl

photo by re_'s photostream

My greatest concern about my ability to join the ranks of the girly girl, is what I perceive as the time and effort that must be invested in order to achieve and maintain the perfect look. The main reason for the middle aged mom appearance, I believe, is lack of time. I truly feel I would neglect my children and my job if I were to follow all of the rituals that are potentially involved. Beyond lacking the skill to perfect my hair and makeup application, I just don’t have the energy.

I have trouble scheduling hair appointments before my hair is half dead and my roots are way beyond showing. My uni-brow returns before I realize it and I am at the pool with my kids with fuzzy armpits. I have tried to pre-schedule appointments but often no show because I forget.

 Somewhere I suppose I would need to strike a balance. I never polish my fingernails. I get facials twice a year. I get my hair cut and colored every 3 months (that’s bad I know…). I only wear make up on special occasions. I don’t buy clothes that need to be dry cleaned (if I do, once they get dirty they sit in my closet for months before I take them in and get to wear them again). I don’t do injectables. I rarely shop. I get leg and biking waxes only in the summer (my coat thickens in the winter). I do wax my eyebrows (they really make them look great, I have no idea what I am doing when I do it, and plucking is a lot like torture). I wash my hair every other day (on off days, due to bed head, I wear a pony tail). I don’t have a satin pillow and my purse is filled with grocery receipts. Man, I just realized, I’m a little pathetic.

 I guess with improved organization and time management I could find some primping time. Some of these things are simple pleasures that make me feel happily spoiled when I do indulge. I looooove facials….I find them more relaxing then massage.  I just never get around to scheduling them. I like looking nice and getting compliments. When my husband notices, I know I have accomplished something.

 Maybe girly girls are the masters of planning and organization. Perhaps they have just prioritized "looking good" a little higher on their lists than I have. My issue might be more that I have not put enough stock in how I look or how I achieve it. What would happen if I did? Could this be like the psychological scenario of the under achiever, who through never trying, never has to fail? What if I did really try to look great, and didn’t?

Take it All Off!

Okay…I am a little wierded out. I was researching bikini wax issues and have seen many very explicit photos, illustrating the various styles. There is a whole subculture of bikini waxing that I was oblivious to! (for those of you who are curious, Wikipedia, which I have read is not a great source to reference, has a great summary of styles along with photos of some of them).

  

I have had several bikini waxes in my life, which I have to say are definitely superior to shaving! Skin irritation, after the post wax redness goes away, is minimal, and the hair stays away longer. Shaving, which I now do in emergencies only has a greater tendency to lead to ingrown hairs. I have tried many different shaving techniques to avoid this, including dry shaving, changing the direction I shave in, using antiseptics prior to shaving, using one time use razors etc. Inevitably I still end up with some form of irritation.

Historically as swimsuits evolved in size, so did the need to remove unwanted hair. This notion crosses many cultures and has been around for thousands of years. Not surprisingly body hair period on women is considered unattractive in many cultures. More aggressive hair removal is much more recent in this country. Hair removal in the nether regions has become very mainstream and this growing market includes young adolescent girls. My aesthetician informed me that the youngest girl she had performed a Brazilian wax (all off, including the back) was 13. Her and a friend took the bus over to her shop, and barely had enough money to pay, literally counting their pennies! They were heading on a beach vacation with their families. For both of the girls this was their first time. My aesthetician was in a conundrum as she didn’t know if this was something parental consent was or should be required for.

Men in Tights: The Height of Fashion!

photo by hagerstenguy (flickr)

I once had an art teacher in high school, who frowned upon realism and lauded abstraction, distributing grades accordingly. Her bias forced me to draw or paint wacky things just to get decent grades. The wackier the piece I handed in, the better in her eyes, as it showed more “creativity”. I would often laugh hysterically as I created these masterpieces. I wasn’t interested in what I was creating at all. What she thought was the right way or the better way to create art, made me conform, and give up the way I wanted to do things. She wasn’t a very good art teacher. The best art teachers are the ones that teach you that whatever you freely create is perfect, and whatever you did to get there is the right technique.


 Self expression is like that. We express ourselves with our personal style. Our level of comfort with colors or flashiness, determine what we migrate towards when we shop. Chances are that each of our closets has a pretty consistent recipe of clothing and that items we have purchased when trying to “step out of our box” or that were a deal too good to pass up, but not quite what we usually buy, collect dust in the dark recesses of our closet, and are never worn. The things that get the most wear, are likely very similar items, that we have a great deal of comfort with.


I feel stuck in a rut of sameness and blandness in my closet. I walk into it regularly, convinced I have nothing to wear (despite the fact that it is a relatively large walk in closet, with very little free space). I really began to feel I lacked the ability to put a wardrobe together that was user friendly and the knack to put items together that worked. Watching shows like “What Not to Wear” portray these incredible fashion transformations with just a few handy tips on flattering cuts, great accessorizing etc. Perhaps if my friends would nominate me for a show like that, all my fashion woes would disappear and I would never look back, ever more the fashion diva!

Are My Labia too Long?

photo by g-hat

Writing this blog, I wondered what the response would be from other women. Am I alone in my ignorance, my insecurities? I timidly opened up about this idea, and some of the reasons I chose to write this, most recently to a group of women, three strangers and one friend. As I read the first artilcle to them at the insistance of my friend, the women in the room began to laugh and then ultimately, to share.

I told my husband the next day, it ended up being the most girly-girl talk I had had…in my life! “That’s saying something”, he said. The women in the group began to talk. And talk. And talk. Insecurities, questions about the unknown, and by the end of the evening (and several cocktails later), we were comparing our labia to assure ourselves that we were indeed normal. There are so many things in women’s lives that are open to insecurity. (Men be cautious when comparing women to other women and then actually saying something about it).

We women don’t often have the opportunity to get up close and personal with other women to compare and share. A whole lifetime of insecurity and questions can be born. We don’t know what our bits and pieces are supposed to look like, or how much pubic hair we should have or how big our nipples should be. We just have what we have. It is a rare crowd of women who can share what they’ve got and compare notes.

 As we get older the concerns and questions change. Ideas were thrown at me about additions to the blog. Manscaping (the male brazilian), box tightening and labioplasty for age related elongation of the labia…one guest in the conversation that night, who happened to be the most comfortable-with-chick-chat man I had ever met, and who also is a physician, stated that he had once met a woman with 6 inch labia. He even drew a fabulous picture illustrating a labial reduction procedure, that looked a lot more like cow teats than anything. But hey, do you know any man in your life willing to draw the female genitals? God it was refreshing to be able to talk about ANYTHING without holding back.

What I got from the evening, was that apart from surveying a gynecologist about what the normal box looks like and what styles of pubic hair most women are sporting these days, we really don’t have anywhere to go to figure out how we measure up.  I wonder though if it really matters?  
 
I spent an evening reassuring a woman that her labia were not too long, and in fact looked just fine. (Not sure where I gained the expertise to speak so wisely on the ways of southern labs...but I digress.)  She, however,  had spent a large part of her adult life feeling embarassed by her anatomy, ironically when she had no other labia to compare hers to.  I wondered where she had started to develop this notion that things weren't quite right downstairs? 
 
" A woman doesn't see herself through the eyes of her partner.  Too often she appraises herself in the mirror, one piece at a time.  Whatever she sees depends on more factors than anyone...could ever contemplate, many of them buried in childhood and adolescence, then reinforced through life experiences, social hierarchies, and our culture.  In every piece, she sees what she wants to be, what she could be, what she used to be, and very rarely, happily accepts what she is."  from Finding the Doorbell: Sexual Satisfaction for the Long Haul, Pierce and Morgan.
 
 
 
 

Finding the Inner Girly-Girl

I am a self described tom boy. I think I have always been oblivious and at the very least undereducated about the intricacies of being a “girly-girl”. I would define a tom-boy as someone who seemingly cares very little about what they look like or what they wear. Minimal time and effort is expended in the realm of “primping”, and thus there is a certain constant drab and unnoticeable appearance. I became aware of my short comings in the girly girl world many times over the years. I was oftened confronted directly with information that seemed foreign and yet mainstream. I wondered, how could I not know this? And more importantly, how did you all learn about this?

I was killing some time one Sunday afternoon, recreationally shopping in a large department store, that conveniently hosted a top coffee retailer, to add to my blissful sale surfing. I was bedecked as usual in my most unfashionable, yet highly comfortable capris. I had on some form of urban recreational sandal, again super comfortable, along with my reliable old black purse, and a recreated retro T-shirt. I wore no make-up…because in my town, people notice when you wear makeup, and had my hair expertly fashioned in a mid-skull pony tail.

This was quite a typical presentation for me. As years with young children had passed, less and less time seemed to be available to devote to pretty-fying myself. As I pushed my cart, with hot Chai in hand, I began to observe the other recreating shoppers in the vicinity. A pattern seemed to emerge, and I realized most surprisingly, that we had unknowingly all worn the same outfit! Far from the faux pas of an A-lister party dress duplication, this seemed merely a resignation that life had no time in it for anymore than “throwing something on”. When had we stopped taking care of ourselves?

As my vision panned wider and wider in the store, I realized that most of the other women in the store were dressed the same way. I was stunned by how this had somehow become the uniform of the middle aged woman! There was nothing standout-ish about it! We were a Land’s End catalogue…content to melt into the background of linoleum flooring and heavily discounted cleaning products. We had no shape, no flash! Our toes weren’t cutely colored, our accessories didn’t polish our looks!


As I gazed over the crowd, the odd shopper would seemingly rise above the rest and stand out. A woman walked by, so meticulously put together, I was sure she had spent the better part of the day assembling the package. To make matters more confusing, she had 3 reasonably well behaved and put together children tagging along. Surely she must neglect her children to accomplish such a look. Did she leave her children screaming for her, while she curled her eyelashes? As much as I criticized her, inwardly I was also envious. I too was once a cute, nay, hot young thing. I used to wear makeup and style my hair! My clothes used to fit, and by God I DID NOT HAVE A MUFFIN-TOP (I didn’t even know what that was, until I heard someone mocking another woman with one, and sadly noticed I had one too.)



Could it be that many of the other mom-appareled women were feeling the same way? Who has the time for all that maintenance? Where do they fit it in? I have zero time to even get my legs shaved on a regular basis let alone a perfectly coiffed doo and flawless make up! Surely she was shallow and uninteresting, and what in God’s name could we possibly have in common? I secretly yearned however, for her knowledge- her understanding of the routines and steps to pull such a put-together appearance off. I have always felt that the area of the girly girl was beyond my reach.

I wondered what other details was I missing? What other girly-girl techniques did I not know? I hid behind my tomboy- ness, but knew that there was a dormant girly-girl inside me somewhere, who just did not know how to get out. As youth leaves me, and more attention to detail becomes required to hide that fact, it made more and more sense to learn the ways of the wise and fabulous girly-girl.

In this blog I will share this journey of discovery and transformation with you. For many of you, this will be old hat, but I dare bet that for a larger majority of you, this will be a welcome “how-to-guide” to being a more put-together and cared-for version of you. I will never be a full on “girly-girl”, I intuitively know I just don’t have it in me. I hope at least to learn to run with the pack and stand out a little at the mall.