My About Face

I figured something out when I was 55. That’s round about the time I checked out of the library a book detailing how attractive people earn more money on the job.

Since the 1990s I’ve read that women who wear makeup on the job earn more.

It begs the question: Does a pretty face get promoted even though they shirk doing work–over a plain face that works hard.

At one job I thought that if I could wear a full face of makeup on that job I’d get a better performance review.

Whatever. I couldn’t muster the ability to wear foundation blush eyeshadow–the works–after this. No longer thinking that I should spend my whole life trying to impress people.

I gave up wearing a full face of makeup after that. An old friend told me years later: “You don’t need to wear foundation.” I took her word for it.

For years so far I’ve applied only eyeliner and lipstick every day. I will leave the house only if I’m wearing lipstick. I’ll use mascara instead of eyeliner at times. There’s always lipstick.

A bathroom mirror should come with a warning like at a fire scene: Stand back 500 feet. You don’t view a work of art only five inches in front of the canvas. And every human being is a work of art.

The thing that clinched not caring about outward beauty / seeking a fountain of youth / hope in a jar was acting as a caregiver.

At 86 you won’t fool the Grim Reaper even if you look like you’re 40. If you’re 60 or older and fixated on youth that’s likely understandable in the context of mortality.

I’ll end here with what I’ve learned: How you look can take you only so far.

At 59 I can tell you that the sooner we abandon the low self-esteem the better off we’ll be. If we’re not good enough in the eyes of others no matter how good or compassionate or beautiful we are (and we are!) that’s their issue not ours.

Plus I think using an iPhone camera makes everyone look beautiful : )

What do you say? Isn’t it time to lighten up our faces?

The Benefit brand white tote bag gets at this in pink letters:

Laughter is the best cosmetic.

I think a sense of humor looks good on everyone.

Sartorial Self-Care

One way to defy the womanly norms expected of us in the patriarchy is to dress to please ourselves. No man is worth starving ourselves and becoming precariously thin for.

In coming blog entries I’ll talk about weight again. In here I’m going to write about real life-affirming self-care.

Years ago I thought the Visual Therapy Style Quiz was fascinating. Then I became disillusioned with it as I wasn’t satisfied with the outcome.

At the time it was like I was going through an existential fashion crisis by wondering what my style type was and should be.

Enter Allison Bornstein and her Three Word Method. She advocates that your Style is found by examining the clothes already hanging in your closet.

After two weeks I figured out my three words were Chic Quirky Confident.

Sartorial self-care can be the most joyous form of loving, accepting, and nurturing our authentic selves–and bodies at the weight we are today.

As a 200-pound woman when you dress sharp not only can you feel better you can inspire other 200-pound women to feel good and be confident in their bodies.

Having clothing confidence is not frivolous and isn’t shameful. The way to like ourselves is to dress in the ways that make us happy.

I for one don’t follow fashion trends unless I truly like the color or clothing items being touted.

When dressing up gives us such joy and happiness no one else should be judging us for liking fashion.

Turning to a clothing rack when the going gets tough can really be a form of self-care that sustains us.

In fact it can help us feel better when we’re not rail-thin!

The Beauty Issue

The current Harper’s Bazaar is the Beauty Issue. Ever since Samir Nasr was elevated to Editor-in-Chief of Harper’s Bazaar the magazine has gotten better. I like HB more than Vogue. HB features social justice articles together with fashion columns.

Ever month I turn to the Market Memo and other pages in The Bazaar section of the magazine. It’s a great way to get inspiration for new outfits to create by “shopping in my closet.”

I’m set to read the book I Survived Capitalism and All I Got was This Lousy Tee Shirt. It’s geared to Gen Z and Millennials yet I’m going to read it soon.

In a future blog entry I will talk about a better alternative to consumerism that I will title Sustain-Ability. The average person according to research buys 63 or 66 items of clothing every year. How is this possible?

I’m going to write about Sustain-Ability which is also Beauty in its own way. I will detail how spring cleaning has become a thing of the past for me.

In the coming blog entry I will talk about a book I bought for my birthday from Barnes & Noble. Reading this guide kickstarted my focus on Sustain-Ability.

Rouge

The novel above is spiky, surreal, seductive. Forget that it received only 3.8 stars on Amazon. I recommend that everyone reads this book.

Though fiction the narrative exposes the dark side of the skincare industry. By the time I got to only page 119 I had no interest in buying and using anti-aging creams.

The book should turn all readers off from seeking eternal youth. Save your hard-earned money. Use it to donate to charity. Buy a new shade of lipstick guilt-free. Our skin is beautiful even with lines and wrinkles.

Rouge is the gold standard for the craft of fiction. The book should win a literary prize.

You can check it out of the library if you can’t buy it.

Love is All Sizes

Just like I think “Love is All Colors” I believe that “Love is All Sizes.”

It’s no prize or virtuous feat to weight 105 pounds.

Match.com used to feature a member’s profile on their homepage.

One guy wrote: “I won’t date fat women.”

That was the first thing you saw when you logged onto Match.com.

How much did a woman have to weigh to be over his ideal weight limit.

If I gained 10 pounds would he divorce me.

Would 150 pounds be too big? Would 135 pounds be just right?

Could he tell by looking at a woman that she was too big?

The MetLife insurance criteria listed that a 5’0″ woman should weight 100 pounds and 5 pounds extra for each inch above 5’0″.

Livid I was that Pamela Peeke, M.D., M.P.H. used this guideline in her book Body for Life for Women.

No girl among us should weigh less than 115 pounds unless we’re one of the exceptions who are rail-thin naturally.

A social worker told me stress causes weight loss. Wouldn’t you rather have no stress and weigh more.

Raisa Flowers the makeup artist easily appears to weigh 220 pounds. I tore out of a fashion magazine a photo of her wearing a colorful-crochet Issey Miyake dress because she looked beautiful. Inserted it in my fashion binder. Yes a famous designer sells gorgeous plus-size clothes.

I would like once and for all for every one of us girls to love the skin we’re in. Whether we’re voluptuous or skinny or in-between.

Take it from me: 105 pounds is no prize. Though there’s no shame wherever the number on the scale lands.

105; 205: Love is All Sizes.

True Style

The second book I checked out of the library was True Style is What’s Underneath: The Self-Acceptance Revolution.

A candidate for a PhD on recovery interviewed me. She asked what I thought the most positive thing was that came from being unwell.

“I value difference,” I told her.

The unique individuals in this guide take off where the others started in the Street Unicorns: Bold Expressionists of Style book I reviewed in a blog entry earlier.

Authors Lily and Elisa had the calling “to uncover what’s underneath authentic style, helping to build a world where getting dressed each morning is an act of self-love.”

I’ll quote from individuals featured in the book as the sparkplug to ignite readers to buy True Style.

Jillian Mercado:

“If you never had to struggle or fight for anything in your life, how could you know who you are and what you’re made of?

If you’re different, that’s sunlight in somebody’s world.”

Tallulah Willis:

“I always say, ‘You know the feeling you’re supposed to have on your wedding day, that you feel like a princess? Why not have that every day?'”

Little old blogger Christina would rather be the sunlight. Not a tornado.

Tunde Truisms

The author of the book above is on the cover of the October/November issue of Women’s Health. I received the magazine two days ago. This weekend I checked her book out of a library. I recommend you buy the guide.

Her SPEAK manifesto is shorthand for Surrender Power Empathy Authenticity Knowledge.

Tunde tells readers to “lead with empathy.” She recounts her struggle with not liking her muscular arms.

Tunde is a Peloton bike instructor who reaches 20,000 cyclists in her motivational workout sessions. She is a face of Revlon cosmetics and a Nike apparel athlete.

Tunde’s book and the pep talks she gave in it touched me. I have the opposite experience of Tunde and other young women. I didn’t think I had to conform or should choose to conform to have other teens accept me.

By the time I was only 6 years old I was bullied. At the same time I was taught my ABCs I learned that the other kids didn’t like me. An outsider from that early age I had no one I thought I should impress.

Often I read first-person accounts of women who tried to starve themselves thin to fit in or get others to like them. They had body image issues like Tunde.

It is not a compliment it’s racist and insulting to tell a person like Tunde: “You’re pretty for a Black girl” or “You’d be pretty if you lost weight.”

I had no admirers either secret ones or others who gave me comments like that.

As for Tunde’s take on Authenticity I’ll get at her abiding belief in my own words: “When you show up as yourself great things happen.”

Secrecy breeds shame. Hiding who you are–and keeping in a closet the parts of yourself you think no one will like or approve of–causes ill health.

My mother doesn’t understand how I could’ve recovered from the bullying in a way where I don’t often think or talk of it. Yet the reality was 6-year old girls had already become bullies and I was their target. Up until I turned 14 and went to a different school.

This treatment should have been the tip-off that as an adult I’d be attacked for speaking out to say that recovery is possible.

Whether it’s from racism like Tunde experienced, ageism, mental or physical illness, political division or anything else we struggle with my mission in this lifetime is to promote recovery and healing.

In the coming blog entry I’ll review the second book I checked out of the library: True Style is What’s Underneath: The Self-acceptance Revolution.

A chip is not the kind of accessory we should be carrying on our shoulder. We each of us have the power to change our lives for the better regardless of our circumstance.

It starts when we take to heart the Tunde-isms in SPEAK and begin speaking up for ourselves.

The subtitle tells it all: Get from where you are to where you want to be. Like Tunde I believe it’s possible to do this.

Nail Polish Nirvana

I turn 58 in the spring. With the prospect of my life getting shorter I have the urge to Dare Beautiful Girl. Like the words on three poetry dog tags I inserted in a ball chain to create a jewelry poem.

In keeping with this I’m emailing elected leaders on issues that should be taken up. Like acting on the 100+ year-old promise to give the Cherokee Nation a seat in Congress.

Elsewhere what I’m doing points to the fact that a person is not ever too old to change their tune.

All my life I’ve only used clear nail polish to give myself a manicure.

This week I didn’t want my talking hands to fade into the woodwork either.

Confetti-sparkle nail polish to the rescue.

Out of the blue I craved color on my hands to express a lively feeling.

Wit happens when you’re 57.

I see the world differently than I did at 27.

It’s called risking. And risking that my nail polish might chip.

This is neither here nor there in the scheme of world peace.

Yet anything that would make the trial of being a caregiver today worth it I’ll take.

We should cherish that our mother or father is still alive. Forgive them if we must for how our childhoods were.

Often: “The pain is real” as the expression goes. Whatever trial we’re going through I say:

To turn an ordinary day into a celebration buy that $5 bottle of nail polish.

What I would like to do when I retire is volunteer my time to take individuals with disabilities to Sephora. To pay for them to get a makeover.

Neon green nails here I come!

The Power of Plus

I checked this book out of the library.

At the same time I’ve been studying the topic of microaggressions too.

One common comment is “You’d be so pretty if_______.”

I don’t want to trigger followers by typing in the rest of the sentence.

Who in their right mind would think this is a kind and caring thing to say?

Why would they think only thin people are pretty?

In my view I don’t think most people need to lose weight. Some of us carry more weight on our frames.

The author of the Power of Plus is Gianluca Russo an Italian freelance journalist. He exposes the folly of the thin white-centric ideal of beauty that designers foist on fashion models and consumers.

Russo ends the book on a positive note quoting powerful ladies.

To get readers to buy the book or at least check it out of the library I will quote one section toward the end.

Per Russo:

“I never knew what it meant to live authentically until I entered the fashion industry…That is what the plus-size community has taught me: true self-expression is perhaps the strongest power to exist on earth.”

Right said Russo.

If you ask me followers it all comes down to self-expression being the pathway to success.

In 2015 when I published my memoir I was the first woman writing about mental health who talked about how self-expression via dressing in fashion helped her recover.

I knew this then and I know it now: individuality is what makes a person beautiful.

Why should any of us feel the need to conform to what’s viewed as normal or acceptable?

True self-expression is irresistible to others.

Become who you are. Regardless of whether people like this

Shrinking ourselves to make others feel better is no way to live.

Shine on fabulous ladies.

Dress Code

The 2022 book shown above should be required reading.

The author is the Fashion Features Director at Elle magazine.

It’s a biting, incisive critique of the fashion industry, the Instagram Influencer trend, and the obsession with self-care.

I was born in the first year of Generation X. I have zero interest in engaging in the white-women influencer self-care practices or in buying the products they’re hawking.

The only form of self-care I’ve adopted is eating well, walking everywhere, and exercising 2x per week for 30 minutes as often as possible.

In 2011 when I turned 46 I decided that I had to start doing strength training. Before that I hadn’t lifted one 5-pound weight.

In January 2014 three years later I could dead lift 205 pounds at the gym.

No–I didn’t start “lifting” to lose weight. I didn’t do this to attract a man.

In February 2011 I was in a pizzeria having a slice. I could only eat half the slice, and threw the rest away.

I had the sense that something terrible had happened and this was verified that night.

I decided right then that I must start strength training. When women are going through a hard time I doubt most of us in an instant think that the solution is to lift weights.

I’ve failed at performing other acts of self-care. What struck me about Dress Code is the idea that self-care has become an impossible standard to live up to.

I don’t light candles (I’m a firefighter’s daughter afraid my apartment would go up in flames).

Nor am I keen to buy a product like Glossier lip liner in an attempt to feel good.

“Shopping in my closet” to create new outfits doesn’t cost a dime. Listening to music on audacy.com is free too. Checking books out of the library saves money as well.

What upsets me (why?) is the reference to how other women’s ugly bodies are not displayed and fawned over in the fashion media and Instagram accounts.

First: Everyone living on earth is beautiful. There are no ugly bodies in my view.

Why do critics persist in using the term ugly to describe bodies that don’t fit the fashion norm the critics rail against?

Too often women internalize shame about our bodies.

Do you want to know the only reason I exercise and eat well?

My father had Stage 3 colon cancer that spread to his liver.

My great-aunt, grandfather, and 57-year old cousin were in comas at the end of their lives.

My mother had breast cancer. One other aunt had cancer.

With that track record in my family history I won’t take chances by sitting on the couch watching TV all night.

In the epilogue to Dress Code author Hyland gives the rosy view that things appear to be changing and will get ever better in terms of the representation of women on social media.

Do you want to feel good? Then do good. I found a way to do this that I’ll talk about in a coming blog entry.