Rebel Girl

I checked this book out of the library and read it in one day.

Rebel Girl was disturbing on all counts. First because of the recounting of the endless stories of seedy men who raped young girls.

Second because of how the Riot Grrl movement didn’t witness the experience of Black Indigenous and Women of Color individuals.

Simply reading about these encounters was hard to bear. The book should be read anyway.

Author Kathleen Hanna was the famous singer and frontwoman of the bands Bikini Kill and LeTigre. She had her own band The Julie Ruin.

Hanna is also married to Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz and has a son Julius she adopted with him.

The story turns out better in the end.

Hanna’s narrative of her life as a survivor of trauma and abuse is worth reading.

Every survivor’s story is worth telling and reading and listening to.

We can’t continue to get into fights about whose pain is worse than everyone else’s.

Nor can we act like the pain doesn’t exist when a person says they’re experiencing it.

Just because we can’t see what’s going on from our viewpoint is not proof that there’s no such thing as sexism or racism.

Too often other women (yes!) and Conservative women authors blame women for reporting rape and sexual abuse.

In the climate of no one else believing that a rape survivor is telling the truth. Or in the way the rape is swept under the rug because the man is powerful or allegedly a pillar of the community.

Or in how women are thought to be retaliating over their guilt about having had the sex in the first place.

Too often women silence ourselves. We fear no one will take us seriously. Though it’s not our fault we can feel worthless. Leading to not reporting the crime because we think nothing will be resolved.

Too women have to jump through hoops in a court of law to prove the crime happened. The establishment cries out that the men on trial deserve “due process.”

Of course there’s due process. The old world order doesn’t like when a member of their tribe is held accountable.

I’m a Rebel Girl too who would call herself a Feminist Punk like Hanna does.

If you’re a woman you’re told it’s okay to open your mouth to kiss not speak.

We all of us whatever our orientation must speak our mind or nothing will change in society.

Wear It Well

The book in the photo above intrigued me to want to figure out my Three Word Method.

Your three words comprise the items in your wardrobe that you choose and use to convey your personal style.

Author Allison Bornstein is a stylist who champions expressing your Authentic Self through how you dress. To her fashion is wellness and beauty is wellness.

Getting dressed in the clothes you love and wear well is an act of self-care and nurturing.

As ever I think everyone is beautiful. Today I’ve come to see that how a person dresses is their own version of having a personal style.

More in the coming blog entry about the myth of needing to buy a Louis Vuitton Speedy to express yourself. Is plunking down $3,000 on a pocketbook the way to be original when everyone else is carrying the same handbag.

The Three Word Method is the best most useful way I’ve found to figure out my personal style. Forget taking a quiz to figure out the style type you should be that a so-called expert tells you to dress in.

The second philosophy I’ve been intrigued with is Carol Tuttle’s Dressing Your Truth.

I bought Wear It Well with a gift card. It took me two weeks to figure out my three words which are Chic Quirky Confident.

I recommend reading the definitions of the words you’re considering using. Bornstein tells the reader that it’s OK if your three words are opposites.

On a video she helped a woman find her three words (Oversized Fitted Warm). I wish Bornstein had more videos that feature ordinary women’s three words.

She advocates that you can find your personal style by examining the wardrobe items you own. Then “shopping in your closet” is the ultimate sustainable method for getting dressed. Her AB Closet Editing System is right-on for deciding what to keep and what to donate or toss.

I’ll end here by venturing that expressing your authentic self through your personal style can help a person heal and recover. Dressing well was how I started to become well in my life after I recovered.

Living Free

The book above I recommend buying though I checked it out of the library.

In I Did a New Thing: 30 Days to Living Free Tabitha Brown cheers on the reader. The more of us who motivate each other like Brown does for her readers the better off America will be.

I was mistaken in the previous blog entry: Brown isn’t an Emmy-winning actor she was Emmy-nominated. Instead of having sour grapes when she didn’t get the award she hosted a celebration for herself simply because she was nominated.

Day one of the 30-day challenge was to Do Something Fearless. For this I swiped on a deep purple lipstick. Not earth-shattering in terms of a bold move. Yet awe-inspiring nonetheless.

Couldn’t find a lavender or lighter shade like the tube I was using that wore out.

Brown has this to say: “Your freedom and transformation aren’t about how big or small that new thing is. It’s about what God is saying to us all through them.”

She believes her whole life: “Is a testimony to what can happen when you release the noise, comparisons, and outside perceptions and simply do the new thing.”

Swiping on the deep purple (the Sephora matte collection Watch Me shade) was a big deal. Precisely because I’ve thought that with my black hair and pale skin I look like a Gothic clown wearing dark lipstick.

Finding a statement lipstick that doesn’t make me look garish was the start of a grand tour in doing new things.

What new things might each of us do if we didn’t care what others think of us?

How to Be Old

I bought this book last week. Critics on Amazon railed against her privilege to do the things she’s achieved. I wasn’t turned off by her lifestyle. In fact it inspired me to think positively about my sixties: the era I call the “This Is It!” decade.

For all my adult life I had a different haircut every three years. That changed three years ago when I fled the second former hairdresser who subjected me to haircut horror.

In 2021 I risked going to a trendy salon. E. expertly cut my hair the way I wanted it showing her a photo of the first woman president of my alma mater. Ever since then I have what is going to be my forever haircut.

Too short my hair resembles what Andy Warhol’s haircut would look like if his hair were black. The haircut costs $90 today not a cheap sum.

I’m thinking of my now forever haircut considering having read How to Be Old by Lyn Slater the Accidental Icon blogger. She has become famous and is 70 years old.

As I turn 59 this spring, I would like to go out of my fifties with a she-bang. I’m exited to turn 59. The eight years since I turned 50 have gone by like eight days. I’m glad to be getting older.

Like Slater who originally quoted David Bowie in her blog I’ll do so here:

“Aging is the extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.”

Ever since I was a teenager, I did NOT want to get married and raise a family. I was only 15 or 16 years old when I knew this. While in college the only thing I aspired to was to have “an artist’s life in the city.”

My goal as I turn 59 is to break the rules at every opportunity. While I might not reach icon status it’s clear that I might always be an iconoclast.

To get you to buy the book I’ll quote Kim Gordon the former bassist of Sonic Youth who wrote in her memoir Girl in a Band: “I’ve always believed that the radical is more interesting when it appears ordinary and benign on the outside.”

How a person appears often belies that they’re radical in their thinking and how they approach living life.

For better or worse my claim to fame will always be living life Left of the Dial.

The older I get I find myself rebelling the status quo as a matter of course.

Your age should be all the rage regardless of the number of candles on the cake.

Living Lightly

On a kick I am after reading Project 333 to simplify my life.

The above book I recommend reading and if you want buying as a reference.

The author attests:

“When you release physical clutter, mental clutter often gets swept away with it, giving you a jump start on your path to inner well-being.”

Too the author understands:

“The goal is not to get more done but to have less to do. Fewer distractions and more focus lead to freer, more fulfilling days.”

The single most useful advice she gives is to create “white space” around objects. Seeing overstuffed cabinets, closet shelves, and dresser drawers can overwhelm us.

After I donated 20 bags to thrift stores in the last three years I no longer need to spring clean all the time. There’s space surrounding everything now. The contents are lean, and I feel serene.

Reading Lightly I had one issue: the author assumes the reader is a woman. Aside from this I recommend reading Lightly first so that you don’t have to get to the point where you need to offload 20 donation bags.

Living lightly upfront you won’t have to go through one of Marie Kondo’s “tidying festivals” in the end.

Project 333 Clothes Encounters

After reading Project 333 I thought long and hard about when we should welcome discomfort versus when it’s better to feel confident.

Ultimately feeling good in our clothes is what we should strive for. Thinking about using a capsule wardrobe I realized that each of us should dress to please ourselves. We don’t need to step out in clothing trends or outlandish outfits.

Dressing in clothes that are ill-fitting, make you appear sick or tired, or that you’re simply not comfortable in is a mistake. It’s the surefire way to feel miserable all day.

Breaking the fashion rules and other rules can be fun and is often necessary. Isn’t it likely that other people expect us to conform to how they think we should behave precisely because they have their own insecurities they can’t live with. They want us to be company in their misery.

Courtney Carver frowns on thinking you have to do things perfectly.

No—I didn’t follow the guidelines to the letter. You can revise how you execute Project 333. My collection is geared to 39 to 44 items so technically you could call it Project 339 or 344.

Plus there are about ten or eleven items of clothing that I don’t wear that I haven’t discarded or donated. They don’t get in the way of reaching for the ones that I want to wear. So they stay for now.

My jewelry items are listed separately and Courtney said that’s OK. Nor do I count hats tote bags coats pocketbooks or bandannas.

In the summer I list under one item number each my black and white tee shirts. Since they are basics and I own three or four of each color. Those tee shirts get worn-out fast so it’s fine to rotate wearing more than one. Then list in the 33 only one white tee and one black tee when you actually use more.

The alternative is to wear only one white and one black tee shirt. Discard them at the end of the season when they get grubby. Then buy one new tee each summer.

Again Courtney Carver wrote that you don’t have to do this in a perfect way or follow her 33 guideline to the letter.

Coming up my winter capsule wardrobe.

Project 333 Guidelines

Minimalist maestro Courtney Carver created Project 333 to better manage her health by using a capsule wardrobe of 33 seasonal items worn for 3 months.

Following the Project 333 system makes sense to me. Especially for those of us who have a hard time getting dressed in the morning. Pulling clothes off hangers, throwing on the bed the discards, and finally arriving at the outfit to wear.

Sound familiar? In a future blog entry I’ll go into detail about making our lives easier with other strategies in addition to creating a capsule wardrobe.

Here’s what to include in the 33:

Clothing

Accessories

Jewelry

Shoes (one pair counts as one item)

What not to count in the 33:

Wedding ring or one other sentimental piece of jewelry that you never take off.

Underwear

Sleepwear

In-home loungewear

Workout clothing (when you use the gear to exercise – wearing yoga pants to run errands in town is part of the 33)

Coming up how I created my own capsule wardrobe.

Life-Changing Book

This month I read a life-changing book: Project 333: The Minimalist Fashion Challenge that Proves Less Really is So Much More.

In January I talk about this challenge in detail and how it played out in my life. For me the better part of the guide was when the author talked about life topics like being creative and breaking rules. (Hint: Creative people live longer.)

To get followers to buy the book I’ll quote from it. The single most useful advice was asking readers what other rules we could break along with fashion rules.

To wit:

We should break written and unwritten rules such as “The rules and expectations that other people have quietly (or not so quietly) set for you.”

Isn’t that how it goes that other people think they know what’s best for us. We fall in line and sink into doing what they say. Then we get ill conforming to this false version of ourselves.

It’s time to take back our lives. To trust ourselves to know what’s right for us in terms of how we should think feel live act love and dress.

Our uniqueness and our differentness are gifts we give each other.

Let’s not allow those “minders” to impact how we feel about ourselves.

Lastly: author Courtney Carver gets this imperative stance right too:

“Just because things are crazy around you doesn’t mean things have to be crazy within you.”

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.

Seeing Others

I checked out of the library the book above. This is the book to read if you care about what’s going on and want to aid in changing things.

The first habit to adopt is to see what goes on from the other person’s point of view. It’s called a Point of View for a reason. Everyone’s lived experience impacts how each of us thinks about life, the world, and people.

Scapegoating the readers of books is not the way to end injustice. Authors have been fixated on changing the behavior they assume the reader has when those media darlings haven’t met you.

One of their cardinal sins is hiring a life coach as if wanting to improve yourself is an injustice.

In real life as well as between the pages of books there’s a better alternative to stereotyping people:

Each of us should tell our unvarnished stories. Storytelling is the way to kindle empathy and to motivate readers to act or to change their mind.

In this season when the holiday card greeting Peace on Earth appears to be a cosmic joke I persist in having hope. I remain an optimist.

There’s work that each of us can do to aid in healing. It starts when we choose recovery and reconciliation instead of waging a war with people we view as our enemies.

Positive change IS happening in corners of society in America under the radar of the people who have been given a media platform to spread hateful and hurtful rhetoric.

We don’t have to buy what they’re selling us this season. They can attack us sight unseen when the truth is hiding in plain sight: change is going on.

Let’s not click on the bait or repost bitter barbed-wire attacks.

Love is All Colors just like Love is All Sizes. And Love is Love however it appears. People are falling in love with each other. Individuals are acting as Advocates. Fathers are raising their kids to have manners and compassion.

These tiny acts of justice are going on all around us.

Now more than ever seeing each other and recognizing each other is the way to go.

I’ll end here with what a famous Russian art instructor told me when I took his life painting class. He told me: “Paint what you see not what you know.”

Let’s take five minutes to share our stories with each other. To show who we are and what we stand for. Let’s take a stand against the agents of acrimony who keep us divided.