I AM POD, THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE

Being, I guess, somewhat dumb, I'm a big watcher of BBC3, though not if there's anything on BBC4.  So it was that, around 2 AM, I would come across Snog Marry Avoid, a makeover show whose title is loosely based on the playground/road trip exercise Fuck Marry Kill.  The premise of the show, as introduced by former Atomic Kitten and increasingly tan person Jenny Frost, is that British women are over-fond of makeup and under-fond of clothing, and with the help of a sassy computer -- bear with me here -- she will reintroduce them to their "natural beauty."  The phrase "natural beauty" is constantly repeated on the show, but poorly defined.  Removing a quarter-inch thick layer of tarry foundation is arguably moving towards natural, but putting a thinner layer on afterward is contradictory; "natural" seems to be synonymous with "brunette" regardless of the color of hair growing from someone's head; and many of these (mostly very young) women come to the show already in a state of unusual naturalness with regards to dress. 

The course of each makeover runs just so: A test subject / victim / contestant / FUTURE TV STAR is introduced with a 360° turn-around of her body in the clothes and makeup she selected to go on the show, angled from about knee-high.  I don't think I've seen a subject not wearing nosebleed-inducing platform stilettos.  There follows a montage showing her ludicrous fashion sense, intercut with shots of her drinking and dancing at clubs and the hours-long process of applying fake tan, false eyelashes, and hair extensions.  Hours-long processes not stressed as contemptible include hair removal, skincare, salon visits, and plastic surgery--at least half of the subjects have breast implants.  I would applaud the show for its lack of commitment to "natural beauty" when that would mean re-cutting up young women to prise out their silicone, if shows like The Swan and Extreme Makeover hadn't made the decision about whether to slice up women seem more like a matter of production costs than morality. 

After the introduction, the subject meets Jenny Frost, who displays her blinding teeth in an attempt to appear friendly.  Frost makes some neutral-to-positive comments about the subject's appearance, before asking if she is "ready to meet POD."  The subject assents, and the scene cuts to her walking into a darkened room.  With a click, a brilliant light floods the stage, lighting the entire background Frost-tooth white.  The subject looks disoriented as her pupils contract, and a sarcastically posh female voice addresses her.  "I AM POD.  WHO ARE YOU?"  The only reason to watch the show is the conceit that this voice comes from a 70s-sized sentient supercomputer whose primary directive is the promotion of "natural beauty" and whose secondary purpose is to self-righteously slag off these subjects without the distraction of possessing her / its own critiqueable body or style.  Gok Wan, take note!  Deny your humanity and embrace metal gender! 

There's two real flavors of subject on the show: women who have bought into every media-disseminated notion of what makes a woman sexually attractive to men to an outlandish degree (my temptation is to, for the sake of brevity, refer to members of this category as "whores", but this seems like a poor idea for several reasons, the most pertinent being that it strikes me as dismissive of the stylistic choices of actual sex workers); and people who I don't think will be particularly offended if I call them freaks.  Both styles of subject play their role on the show like an audition tape, either flirting and pouting at the computer or acting contemptuously too-cool for its machinations to work on them (respectively, obv.). 

POD is openly hostile and confrontational to subjects about their style of dress and makeup, using an incredulous, personally-affronted tone to berate them about their "fakery".  The show gets away with a great deal here due to its non-human host, including directly asking women if their breasts are "real" (a digression here about this question and its expected response probably deserves to be expanded into its own entry), calling them dirty, stupid, and low-class, and generally treating as stomach-churning the idea that they are making an overt public display of their sexual availability.  And that's before the hard-sell tactics start. 

Everyone is put on the back foot when a computer starts yelling at them, but the freaks tend to be slightly better versed in defending their stylistic choices than the cartoon sexpots.  I always watch in the hope that someone will offer a critique of the idea of "natural beauty", and some do, but I find them all to be pretty inarticulate about it, and to deliver their responses with the arrogance of a snotty teenager who believes she is the first one to have figured out that it's all phony, maaan.  Mostly it comes off as dull people who don't have writers spluttering vainly to come up with a way to own an opponent who has no momma.  Nonetheless, most are deeply protective of their styles. 

The theme of adding a garnish of scientific gravitas to the proceedings continues here with a survey of an undisclosed number of "members of the public"-- a public which appears to consist entirely of moderately attractive men ages 20-35, often the same six or seven men whom I expect are interns on the show -- about whether, seeing a picture of "this girl", they would choose to Snog, Marry, or Avoid her.  Typically there is also a secondary survey asking whether they think she looks like a) a sophisticated lady b) a punny joke answer or c) a filthy whore.  The subject is asked to pick what she thinks the men selected in each case, by pressing a touchscreen button which is also the inside of your television screen.  She views a selection of these men opining about her looks to a camera; they refer to her in the third person and are apparently not privy to her responses.  We the viewer, however, are privy to every emotion that flickers across her face during this time, as the show does not cut away but instead displays the men speaking in a picture-in-picture box. 

The percentages of "avoid" and "filthy whore" responses are obviously higher than the subject would like (that is the premise of the show), and it is at this low point in her estimation of herself that POD asks if she is ready to experience a jocularly and typically also insultingly named "make-under" (e.g. "spunky junkie to middle-class lass").  The subject assents and with a small fanfare is instantly transformed by means of a photocopier-style horizontal bar scanning down her body, replacing the old clothes, hair, and makeup with the new.  I don't have much to say about the content of the makeovers except that they tend to feature minidresses worn with black tights, and that all of the subjects are still wearing stripper platforms with stiletto heels, though occasionally not the ones they hobbled in on.  Another 360° turn-around, and then POD asks the subject if she is pleased.  Subjects express surprise and admiration in a manner that, if I were POD, I would instantly dismiss as utter fakery.  The eponymous survey is re-administered, men say they like the looks of this one, and "avoid" responses decrease to zero.

All the subjects possess a familiar air of arrogant desperation: the attitude of those whose foremost ambition is to be on television, and who to that end have worked and strained and struggled every day of their lives to cultivate a talent for applying to be on reality television shows.  In a highly valid survey I conducted with actual members of the public, 100% of them find viewing youths who cop this attitude to bias them towards thinking that these obvious fame-hounds deserve every bit of the humiliation they volunteer for, as well as making me, I mean them, more likely to cut the show slack for treating its contestants with cruelty.  In the interest of creating sympathy for other human beings even when they are televised, I suggest the overzealous medicalization of an ambition for fame, and the treatment of this dubious pathology with the oversubscribed addiction model. 

The subject bids POD goodbye and turns off the light before walking out and reappearing on the street, where they are met by friends, a partner, or their mother, who usually express a more sincere degree of shock and delight at the new look.  Partners, for probably obvious reasons, tend to be the least expressive of any pleasure they may experience, noting that the subject "looks good whatever you wear", but also averring that they hope she will now spend less time on her makeup.  Often a follow-up interview is conduced by Jenny Frost one month later, where she comes upon the subject during the day in a coffee shop and draws conclusions about whether the televised makeover has made a long-term difference to her clubwear.  There is a high relapse rate, probably because unlike some makeover shows, this one does not take the step of destroying the remainder of the subject's wardrobe. 

The show can knock out three of these sequences in 30 minutes, usually pairing two sexpots with one freak.  It's also puffed up with some interstitial segments in which Jenny Frost tests out DIY beauty aids.  In one frankly gobsmacking scene, Frost uses some old pressed-powder bronzer and lotion to concoct a fake tan solution, then puts her finger to her lips and says "Shh!  Don't tell POD!"  I suppose the show's overall message is something along the lines of "don't overdo it, just be genuine", but that is hard to take from a programme with a magic computer for a host. 

Snog Marry Avoid is one of that new breed of cultural products that are crafted to work on numerous levels: as serious advice for women whose beautification routines have become overwhelming; as a freakshow; as a cynical and frankly sinister co-opting of feminist messages to love the body you have; as dystopic post-industrial sci-fi; and as a parade of slim, barely dressed young women in high heels who get justly punished before they are rewarded for wanting to be good girls.  It's sickly fascinating to me for all these reasons, but after watching a dozen or so youngsters be highly defensive of their off-the-rack streetwalker costumes, I think there's an appeal of this fashion that the steamroller approach to making them "natural beauties" ignores entirely. 

There's a lot of reasons for a young person to feel frightened, anxious, and conflicted about their sexuality today, and slipping into a pre-made persona with preset responses from the alternate sex can provide some feelings of security, of being protected by your mask.  More than that, though, if you make yourself into a panto character, and someone slags you off, it becomes easier to dissociate your private, personal self from their put-downs.  It's not you they're insulting; they don't even know you.  Honestly, how could they?

Unsex me here

I'm still wishing I could elect not to notice and not to be depressed by counting up articles with male and female bylines on, say, The High Hat [but also, anything], and noting that the contents of the 1-2 essays penned by women each issue are all, well, Women's Issues (including a Gyrrrl Gamyr piece, which subject absolutely curls my lip by now).  The rest are general interest pop culture stuff, written by male generalists, who don't much belabor the fact that they are men.   

It's hardly that I think Women's Issues are uninteresting, or that women should refrain from writing about them--look at my freaking blog--but more that I am made aware that men have the option of believing their perspectives not to be influenced first and most by their sex.  Like, why would that be relevant? 

I am beset by the notion that I consider my gender the most interesting thing about myself, a fear legitimized by my politics, my interests, my writing, my sexuality, my style. 

I want to be a person.

Highly Reflective But Not Terribly Absorbing

Being against the idea of special privilege (or rather for the notion of extending all unearned privileges to groups which don't currently enjoy them), I do find the pride I take in keeping my pale skin pale somewhat shameful.  I've committed to being a single color all over for aesthetic reasons, and the color I've chosen is that of the flesh I've never exposed to the sun.  What this means is essentially that I am the only American who actually checks the day's UV index and follows associated government recommendations on sun exposure.  I am a clinical paranoid about invisible rays touching me.

There's some practicality in it--my father suffers skin cancer scares every few years.  There is an extent to which I fear aging, "losing my looks", and death, all at levels disproportionate to their objective harm.  Some of it is about a romantic idea of [racist & classist, obv.] beauty standards from the Western past and from parts of the world today where being upper-class means you can afford to avoid laboring in the hot sun all day.  And some of it is simply that I burn very easily, and each of the things I put on my skin or in my body--retinol, benzoyl peroxide, glycolic acid, ibuprofen, rosemary, lime--causes increased sun sensitivity.  Some of it is the idea of privacy, that no one but people I choose have a right to see my bare skin, and that I won't change it to suit a current fashion for non-blueness.  And there's a good deal of sexuality, too--the more that's covered, the more sensual it is to reveal anything. 

This is far from the only area in which my need for self-esteem or pleasure comes in conflict with what I think is right.  What I think would be right for anyone who can pass as white (or male, or upper-class, or able, &c.) is not some kind of decontextualized "play" with race, one that can be put on and taken off as a matter of convenience, but an aggressive campaign to confuse and destroy racial boundaries in every walk of life.  I want white people to black up for job interviews, court dates, and realtors, to adopt indigenous beauty standards, to refigure racial slurs to refer only to each other--all of them with perfect knowledge and perfect love.

But, importantly, I am much less a radical than I am a coward, and I have what I hope is a laudable desire to avoid hurting anyone who may already have it rough. The effect is like that of a mildly racially-aware media executive who, fearing accusations of racism if he allows the portrayal of any person of color, utterly whitewashes ad campaigns, films, and television imagery.  Basically I am the human equivalent of indie music.

What the hell is the point of this

Look, just tell me--are most other women straight, or not?

where does this even figure in to their sexuality I don't know

Dilation

It was only after I'd used all the eyedrops, one bottle after another, that I thought to check whether my contact could be inside-out.

U G L Y

Just as there is no happy ending, but only an early ending, there is no beautiful woman, but only a woman edited for content.

SCOT. LAND.

Ah, Scotland!  Birthplace of capitalism!  Stabbings capital of Western Europe!  Last bastion of the Labour voter!

Blue--Aromaleigh Cool It
White--Medusa's Makeup Blow

Today's eye honors St. Andrew, who felt that being martyred on the same shape of cross as Christ Jesus infringed on His copyright.  Besides being the patron saint of Scotland, he is the patron saint of Russia, Sicily, Greece, Romania, the Philippines, Malta, and fishmongers.

Or you could just watch Aladdin again

Saw Prince of Persia yesterday, one of approximately seven people in the theater, all women.  I thought I'd make a quick attempt at one of the looks from the film, as worn by sole-named-female-speaking-role character Princess Tamina.  It's on the occasion when she's about to be presented to the King of Persia as the spoils of war, and is characterized by a sort of double-lining effect where kohl is used to rim the inner lid, and then a horizontal line is drawn below the eye, which is washed with gold. 

I'd use a less yellowy gold than Medusa's Makeup Golden Boy if I tried this again, and also I'd try much harder to make sure both my under-eye lines were ruler-straight.  The foiling I did with plain water, and as such the metallic effect lasted exactly as long as it took to dry.  Next time, perhaps some Pixie Epoxy. 

Now, I'm white, and Gemma Arterton is white, and Jake Gyllenhaal is white, and Ben Kingsley is white, and Richard Coyle is white, and Toby Kebbell is white, and Donald Pickup is white, and Gísli Örn Garðarsson is Icelandic, and Alfred Molina is Spanish-Italian but born in England, and Steve Toussaint is English but has a French name and in the movie he plays a the only member of a fictional tribe of super-accurate knife-throwers called the "Mmmbaca", and director Mike Newell is famously white and English, but the settings and several of the extras and soldiers in this film are Iranian or Arab.  Should I be concerned about any kind of cultural appropriation here by wearing this possibly authentic and culturally significant makeup?  I'm very troubled!

Incidentally, I spilled a bunch of eye dust while doing this, and not only on my face.  And now I can't reverse time.

SCOOOTLAAAAAAAAAAND

Ah, Scotland!  After a hard day of being everywhere, doing everything, you're sure to work up a powerful thirst.  Why not quench it with Irn Bru, the world's most oppositional soft drink?*  And vodka?

It is made from iron and some other things, much like these eye pigments.  Except the blue one, that's made from FD&C blue 1.

Orange--Aromaleigh Ankle-Biter
Blue--Aromaleigh Flutura's Cloud
White--Medusa's Makeup Blow

You could also wear this to a Denver Broncos game between 1967 and 1997, if you were so inclined.


*Except perhaps for Coca-Cola, when drunk in Colombia.

Experiments in Headlessness

This is my favorite skirt.  It's made of heavy brown jersey, constructed quite simply with a waist yoke and a long, slightly wrapped drape.  According to the label it's made by "Lux" and is largely polyester and rayon. 

I got it at a charity shop in Tacoma for $4, about six years ago.  The only thing I know about its former owner is that she put it in the dryer: the jersey is heavily pilled.  I suspect she was as short as me, or shorter. 

I wear this skirt approximately every day when I'm in my house.  I like it because it is slightly glamorous and romantic to go about in a long skirt instead of sweatpants or jeans, and because it occludes my legs, which I consider overly sexual.  I've seen a few similar skirts in online Islamic clothing stores, and that feels slightly glamorous and romantic, too.  However, going up and down stairs in this skirt is a constant worry, especially when I am carrying something. 

I've worn it outside the house a few times, but I don't usually because it drags along the ground, and it is heavily pilled, and because it is special to me and I find I derive psychological benefit from armoring my precious self with less personal clothes when I go out in the world. 

I also like, though I almost never take advantage of, the transformative potential in such a simple garment with so much fabric.  I occasionally use it as a coverup after a shower. 

I am resolved to create more of my own clothes and buy less, to be a few threads less-entangled in consumer capitalism.  One of the things I will do when I'm comfortable sewing and serging jersey fabrics is make dozens of copies of this skirt in varying lengths and colors.

Rape Jokes I Have Laughed At

It is NEVER, EVER FUNNY

The Onion
Hilarity Comics
The Aristocrats
Peter Serafinowicz 
I haven't laughed at Richard Herring, but for some reason I still listen to his podcast every week

SCOTLAAAAAND

Ah, Scotland!  Home of things that are Scottish, and a plurality of the world's Scots.  Its colour profile is very different to the one I'm used to, being made up of greens and greys rather than blues and golds.  Here, I have used it as inspiration for some eyeshadow.

Green--Aromaleigh Cricket (lid) & Tangleroot (outer corner)
foiled over some Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy and primer
Gray--Aromaleigh Tapestry
Largely invisible blue-white highlight--Aromaleigh Bluebell

Note: If you are actually in Scotland, I do not necessarily suggest wearing this eye.  Be aware of your surroundings, and watch out for blue-painted kerbs.

alone, dancing

What I find most interesting about porn parodies right now is that the ratio of male characters to female characters in mainstream movies tends to be reversed in porn, necessitating gender swaps and the addition of, in this case, cheerleaders. Sadly, I do not find anything else about them interesting.

if green pears you like

If I consider it logically, I don't think I'm particularly fashion-forward. I'm the wrong size and shape for a fashionista, runways bore me, I'm afraid of shoes over 3" high, and, most damning of all, I come from an area deep in the irradiated middle of a certain gauche continent.  Nevertheless, it is often my experience that I will fix an object in mind and hunt it fruitlessly for weeks, finally settling on something overpriced and merely similar, only to find a few months later the discount racks flooded with that selfsame object, now a full-on trend.  Interpreting this as some kind of uncanny knack for fashion would be akin to taking my stereo turning on during a thunderstorm as evidence of the existence of ghosts who hate lightning and love Tori Amos.  Still, I'll try my hand at a few predictions. 

INEVITABLE TRENDS
• Steampunk: all the kids who were going to be goth will be this for the next fifteen years, which is a palette-shifted form of goth with brown standing in for black, gold for red, and gears for spiders.  All the kids who were going to be ravers will be werewolves, I guess?
• Head scarves for young muslimahs, but also for non-Islamic punkas protesting the interminable culture wars and girls-gone-wildism. 
• Drag--it will be fashionable for men to dress feminine, and men who refuse will be considered gay. 
• Increasingly obvious factory mistakes in clothing, from "raw edge" hems through "contrast crease details" on prints, right up to the point where workers' fingers are fashionably serged into ruching.  Also look for the return of clothes which are just square, unfinished bolts of cloth, sold as "the universally-flattering sari look".
• A haircut that's, like, a kind of reverse Travis Bickle, with a strip shaved jauntily up the middle and the rest of the hair longer
• Ironic swastikas; ironic yellow stars
• Tooth embellishment; neck tattoos
•All 20th-century decades' retro, always, simultaneously, forever

 GONE FOREVER
• The big platform tennis shoes of the 90s.  I miss them. 
• Anything that takes a great deal of sewing and tailoring to construct 
• Lipstick
• Being "white"
• Ties for men
• Most hats and gloves
• Pubic hair.
• All vintage clothing, eventually, unless it is sealed in lucite
• Clowns; panties
• The concepts of decency and privacy

Dual Pickup

While researching unpleasant bands for a minor joke in yesterday's entry, I was struck by the neat complementarity of Ke$ha's unconscionable "Blah Blah Blah" and 3OH!3's despicable "Don't Trust Me".  Taken together, the songs can be seen to circumscribe both sides of a near-anonymous heterosexual relationship characterized by mutual disrespect and loathing.

"Don't Trust Me" (which I consistently mistype as "Don't Trust Men"; oh feminism!) takes the form of an account of the damage on the meat popsicle the narrator is about to intubate, imbued with equal parts nausea and pity. "Blah Blah Blah" consists of a set of instructions addressed to the listener/fuckee.  The central exhortation of each song, the demand each character makes of their partner, is to shut up.

For 3OH!3's narrator, listening to the bruised head-case he is focused on spit-roasting would bring to the surface distressing thoughts that circulate beneath the surface of this song--of whether taking advantage of a fucked-up girl after taking pains to dehumanize her makes him an untrustworthy, terrible person.  Ke$ha's narrator seems, well, simpler: she doesn't want to hear from her interlocutor because she is aware any respect he displays for her is feigned, part of a ploy to trick her into doing what she's intent on doing anyway [him]. 

Because these atrocious songs and the horrible sentiments they express are quite popular, my natural next move should be to bemoan the breakdown of social mores they represent, and perhaps to long for a simpler time before the invention of casual sex or young people.  But this would ignore context, both social and musical.  I'm going to just assert that relations between the sexes are better than they were in the past and leave it there; if necessary I'll defend it in some forum that isn't a blog post about disposable alterna-pop. Musically, these songs exist in a rather long tradition of opposition to love songs expressing admiration--think of "I Just Want To Make Love To You" in 1954 or "You're All I've Got Tonight" in 1978.  Moreover, they aren't popular because of how acceptable it currently is to treat a sexual partner like they were Clippy the Microsoft Office Paperclip, but rather because in an atmosphere of increased respect and communication, being an asshole becomes subversive. 

Personally, I find it heartening that neither of these acts is allowed to go on tv alone anymore: each has to feat. other artists in their videos to lend credibility to the notion that another person could stand to be around them for three minutes.

not broken, just a baby

I finally got around to watching the video for Alejandro, Lady GaGa's  recent single (heretoafter referred to as Lady Gaga; I'm not made of capitals), after hearing a number of unenthusiastic reviews ("boring"; "totally derivative of Madonna").  I'm generally pro-Gaga, in the same way as I have been generally pro-Madonna: without being a big fan of her music. 

I'm rooting for Lady Gaga to produce challenging public portrayals of her sexuality, even as sinister Music Biz forces work to make these portrayals more consumable.  So in this regard Alejandro is something of a mixed bag.  While you won't see Ke$ha putting out a video in which she ties 3OH!3 to a bed and fucks their asses (if you read this over a year later, Ke$ha was a pop star who needed help finding men's genitals), there's a great deal of sexual violence in this video and almost all of it is visited upon Gaga's fragile-looking person. 

It's certainly tempting to just count up shots of Gaga being choked or bounced around by the musclemen in this video, compare it to the number of shots of her giving it to them in the ass, and render a score -- Music Videos 18 : Feminism 10 -- but this is terrible film crit practice.  Contextually, many interesting things are going on.  To bring out one example, the majority of the shots of what is delicately termed "rough sex" in porn reviews (rough on whom, exactly?) occur during a scene marked out as a wistful flashback of Gaga's late lamented love affair. 

Even if I really believed that the imagery of rape (not to mention bondage, crossdressing, blasphemy--I'm not scrutinizing these things because they just can't beat rape) that runs through this video was being allowed to pass uncritically as decontextualized aesthetic, it would be trite to attempt to insult director/photographer Steven Klein with something so bereft of the power to wound as accusations of misogyny.  No, I will attempt to insult him with accusations of unoriginality.  Sex and violence are done to death as avant-garde postures.  The power of an image to shock can only decrease as it is disseminated and consumed, and literally all of the images in this video are already available in Klein's back-catalog of photographs.

I'm also interested in being, as far as I can google, the first person to connect the video for Alejandro to the 1989 rape and torture of American nun Dianna Ortiz at the hands of the Guatemalan state military.  My evidence for this claim is slight (and I take Gaga at her word that the song itself is nothing more than a tribute to her love of gay men), but Klein has a history of referencing (and sexing up) culturally important rapes.  First, most obviously, the video depicts the gang rape of a nun by Hispanic soldiers.  The weird bowl-cut bobs worn by all the players (bar the commandant or generalissmo or whatever) resemble Ortiz' hairstyle, and the references to cigarettes in the chorus and facial burning in the final shots might be intended to call to mind the soldiers' burning Ortiz with hundreds of cigarettes.

Lastly, when an American CIA operative working with the Guatemalan military (allegedly!) while they were disappearing, raping, and murdering tens of thousands of political opponents--when this alleged operative found Ortiz, before he berated the soldiers for disappearing an American for whom there would be international outcry, before he took Ortiz from the prison where she was held and drove her to Guatemala City in his jeep, before he tried to make her promise to tell no one and to forgive her torturers because it had all been a case of mistaken identity, before she bolted from the car at a stoplight and made it to the American embassy--it was when Ortiz first heard the soldiers greeting a man with an American accent that she heard them call him by name-- "Hey, Alejandro, come and have some fun!"

Get Away From Me, Eye Version

While there's certainly a time and place for makeup designed to make you look nice, pleasant, and thoroughly approachable, doing only this look gets old fast.  Here's a simple and easy "fuck you" eye, inspired by the lovely Lipstickeater's Black Narcissus post.  Wear it when you want to go out and don't want to pull. 

You will need:
• a face
You can put extra makeup on yours or not.  I've elected not, as having a natural face helps lend the impression of monstrousness. 

• at least one eyeliner brush

Make sure your brush is in a state where you are comfortable with the idea of touching it to the area around your eyes.

 • red eyeshadow or liner

 This is available, but you may have to use the internet to obtain it.  It's also wise, though a complete headache, to check the ingredients list against the Cosmetics Safety Database to ensure that you're not filling your face up with lead or cancer. 


Directions
1. Line your lower lid with the red eyeshadow.  You are now done with the makeup portion of the face, although you can continue doing other things to your eyes or head if you wish.  Extending the line horizontally from the outer corners or towards the centre will give a more intentional, makeuppy effect, while lining your upper lid with either red or black will make you look like a bit of a tool. 

2. Using the muscles in your face, lift only the outside corners of both eyebrows, while pulling the lower part of your eye upwards, Clint-Eastwood style.

Avoid making references to Kabuki while wearing this look.

A Further Note On Eyebrows

If you dye your hair an unusual color, and your eyebrows remain a sort of ashy brown, it's advisable to fill them in, either with eyeshadow or eye pencil the same color as your hair, or black.  I urge you to take this step even (especially!) if you use no other makeup.  The face is easily washed out by a bright hair color, and stronger brows can help keep it focal.  Poor examples of this abound, but one you might google up is Lily Allen's recent foray into pink.

A Note On Eyebrows

I recommend them.

Look At This Fucking Haul

These are my men's jeans. I bought them in a department store which doesn't need or deserve the publicity. This store is bi-level, with the men's, children's, and housewares sections on the lower floor, and the women's department on the upper floor. In order to avoid using the men's dressing rooms and potentially seeing a penis, I grabbed a few sizes I thought might fit and ascended the escalators to the section of my gender.

A familiar frisson accompanied this action, the same as I felt after using the men's room at the theatre once. (It was an emergency more than a whim: my film was in progress but another well-attended movie had just let out. Both men's and women's restrooms were packed to the gills, but constant maddening experience has demonstrated to me that the men's line moves faster due to anatomy and a desire not to be thought gay. I waited, staring firmly ahead, in a line of men and children, suspecting that each saw me and resented my ability to invade their space without consequence. It smelled terrible.) After assuring a reasonable fit in the ladies' dressing room (though, like all jeans, these gapped at the back), I brought my purchase to a pretty young clerk. As she rang me up with a retail smile, I envisioned her being blown away by my poker-faced daring, and later telling her friends of her envy and admiration for my style. (I probably shouldn't admit this, as it appears conceited beyond belief; in my defense, I am aware it is a fantasy. This is not what I believe actually occurred.)

I rarely buy men's clothes since I went femme, so this purchase was tinged with nostalgia for teenage dykehood. The feelings of danger in crossing a gender line, I find, vary considerably with the circumstances. The two-level design of the store here forced me to cross the border very publicly, but many stores separate men's and women's sections by inches. I've never been accosted, asked to leave, or treated with hostility while browsing for men's clothes, but I suspect the same would not be true if I were male-appearing and looking at skirts. I feel it can be advantageous to roleplay that, perhaps, you are shopping for a gift for a father, brother, or boyfriend. Or just adopt the same demeanor you'd cop if you wanted to shoplift: you belong and your actions are normal and blameless.

I think women should have the experience of shopping for and wearing men's clothing, not because it is transgressive, but because I think women should understand firsthand what it is like to wear something which has been designed primarily to fit and be comfortable on a broad range of bodies. How it looks is something of a tertiary concern for men's clothing, following well after function and comfort. By the same token, I think men should experience buying and wearing women's clothing, due to my deep-seated hatred of men.


These are my jeggings. Jeggings are a recent point of contention in the fashion police state due to their availability to people who have enough body fat to continue menstruating. They combine two previous fashion trends that were giving people the vapors: skinny jeans and leggings. Numerous rules have sprouted up to mediate the wearing of jeggings. We are instructed that to properly wear jeggings, we must avoid being old, "curvy", thick in the thighs, or habitual wearers of panties.

Basically, the rule is that flaws--those aspects of your body that differ from a purely hypothetical and subjective female ideal--must be concealed for the sake of public decency.  Remember, if you're female, the visible parts of your body belong to a sort of civic trust, and as such are subject to continuous urban renewal and beautification efforts.  The process of disguising the unacceptable reality of your horrible body in a decorative way is known as "flattering", from a term meaning an insincere compliment delivered with an ulterior motive.

Skinny jeans, leggings, and jeggings are unflattering because they fail to conceal the shape of the leg, belly, and buttocks (the most awful parts of the woman, after her terrible genitals), forcing people to view the shape of female bodies which are wider or differently proportioned to the ideal. I plan to wear them with boots. Incidentally, the price of jean-colored spandex sewn into the shape of some leggings is slightly greater than the price of men's jeans. Both are about $15 cheaper than inexpensive women's jeans.

So as you can see, I'm a fashion fucking rebel. But already, inadvertently, I negated any transgressiveness of either of these articles of clothing when I bought them in a chain store, with money, and then took them home and put them on my young white pretty body.  Whether I or anyone else wants it that way, that'll always be a fashion "do".

Oh good, another blog

Reading lipstickeater and threadbared on consumerism and femininity (recently synonymous) has got me thinking about the development of my own gender expression.

As a child I was never able to put conformity before comfort--when my long rusty hair got painfully tangled at the base of my skull, I cut it off.* Dresses were too scratchy, and besides, my feminist, atheist folks didn't want to burden me with unnecessary gender coding. It was purple or teal slacks and Calvin-style striped shirts all the way.

Then before I was really prepared for it, puberty arrived and my comfort eating began to pack on the pounds. My jeans size went up--8, 10, 12 for a long time, then relaxed fit 12, finally 14--and I bought a ton of men's XL t-shirts with superhero logos.

Through some cultural osmosis or other, I came to the conclusion that girls who cared about the way they dressed and wore their hair were stupid, and since my greatest fear was of looking stupid, I'd stick completely to jeans, jean shorts, and a single, floor-length denim skirt. I'd play with lipstick and blush when no one could see, but without access to women's magazines (soooo stupid) I had no idea how to proceed. So.

Around about the end of middle school, I began also wanting my clothes to express a burgeoning queer identity, albeit not one my parents would be able to decipher. Overlarge Doc Martens with rainbow laces--who could possibly ferret out my genius code? I would ask for my hair as short as the Great Clips drone would willingly cut it, but I could never buck up the nerve to ask outright for the stranger touching my head to give me a man's haircut. Even though that would have been cheaper.

It became important that my clothing was labeled for men, which felt so appropriately transgressive to buy and wear. This would have been the late 90s, post Spiceworld, so I also owned a couple baby tees and spaghetti straps--that was my cover, you see. I dressed for comfort, and to express my contempt for the idea of dressing for anything else. I wanted out of my body.

Second year of high school I started getting really into dyeing my hair. Since it had dulled from new-penny to old-penny during the hated puberty, I had been lobbying my mother to help me go as red as drugstore brands would allow. She would instead steer me to some extremely subtle auburns, probably out of lessons learned from her own youthful hair experiments. These hair colors did fuck-all.

It wasn't until I began colluding with my pixieish friend Aviv to watch anime and become bisexuals that I broke out the 30-vol bleach and did what I assured my folks would be only a tiny blue stripe in my bangs. The way it made me feel was addictive. I wanted to look at myself and I wanted other people to look at me and be shocked and impressed. This is how punks must have felt back when they actually existed.

From an allusional Miki cosplay to a full green head for school photos, I tried on every color, eventually settling down to a good-sized chunk of the spectrum between orange and purple. I tried to avoid stepping on the toes of any of my group of friends who suddenly all had the same close crop and orange or pink hair, but Manic Panic makes a limited range, after all.

Coloring my hair was a huge relief as a largely degendered outlet for my desire to decorate my person. Makeup would have been a minefield--there were too many girls wearing it well, who would know when I wore it poorly. Becoming a goth was always tempting, but too expensive and too likely to draw unwanted parental attention. Though it dyed my collars, pillows, and walls, my hair situated me within my female peer group while letting me stay androgynous.

I kept it up for a bit early in college, but dyeing in a room you clean yourself quickly became a drag. As far as I can intuit, this is the college experience in fashion: the elaborate looks you've created to code yourself to your high school chums erode rapidly, followed by all decorum and grooming. You'd just roll out of bed and put on whatever was closest to hand and easiest to pull over your head. That's right--those collegiate fuckers were completely biting my high-school look. This could not stand, because if everyone looked like me, no one would comprehend instantly how blindingly superior I was.

I started drawing up plans for my all-new style. It would be based on the tuxedo, all crisp white blouses with black jackets, skirts, and trousers. Basically, I decided that the ideal look would be "waiter". To that end, I started to haunt thrift stores. I started to pay attention.

The other thing that happened was, I started to lose weight. Mainly this was from living on microwave popcorn rather than food, but seeing that it was possible for me to lose weight lit a fire in me. I dieted and exercised religiously, skirting the edge of an eating disorder. I was constantly hungry, angry, paranoid and antisocial, I had a mini nervous breakdown and quit college for a while, and I dropped from 180 lbs to 120. Overall, a classic female success story!

My wardrobe, by contrast, expanded rapidly. A frenemy had opined that I was "unfeminine" and therefore unattractive, and because by this time I was desperate to attract anyone's company, I took it as a challenge. Dresses, skirts, and frilly tops began to attract my coin. I had decided that I would still be queer, but now I would be a femme queer. My logic was, and still occasionally is, that the feminine is degraded and disregarded in a misogynist society, and that I would work on redeeming feminine dress and practices (while reaping the benefits of being viewed as socially compliant).

I wasn't alone, either. All kinds of young women were turning from the androgynous styles of the 90s to "new Romantic" or "retro" or any of a dozen other ways to say a highly femininzed, desperately sexualized fashion turn towards a safe imaginary past. My passage into the feminine had been well-greased by strong cultural forces with an interest in getting me to fit in.

Moving from a socially unacceptable body and dress style to a socially acceptable one did get me positive attention. From guys. In fact, a number (3) of guys stepped up to tell me that they had even liked my socially unacceptable body, but had been wary of asking out an obvious lesbian. The threat to my queer identity boys posed was outweighed by a genuine attraction to men and an o'erpowering desire to fuck someone who was not also a virgin (sorry erstwhile roommate!). I dated a bit, then fell in love with the man of my dreams and, well, put the queer identity on a shelf so as not to be called a bisexual poseur.

Still and all, I hadn't counted on the fact that a decade of studiously ignoring fashion and, well, grooming would leave me without the necessary skills and aesthetic sense to dress myself in the mornings. I wore a bunch of bad shit. Well, they don't call it trial and success, eh?

Despite looking at girls for years, I had no idea how to suddenly become one. The girls of my acquaintance, too, wore jeans and t-shirts, but with a hundred subtle touches that resulted in feminine presentation. But, look, fuck subtlety. If I was going to learn anything about girl drag, I was going to have to try too hard. Instead of looking at the women around me, I looked to caricatures: the sex-nuts Victorians and the 1950s pin-up housewife. An hourglass exaggerated by a full skirt and a cinched waist: that was my jumping-off point into femninity. It felt like a masquerade, a costume you wear until it inhabits you, similar to the enchanted (and sexy!) costumes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's second-season Halloween episode, "Halloween."

In any case, it's been a few years since then and I'm generally happy with my dress sense and makeup skills, though I still have a ways to go with hair. I'm ambivalent about what my newfound love of adornment means for me. When I began to pour my creative energy (what little energy I possess) into looking pretty, I lost much of my drive in art and writing, which I always thought would redeem me being bad-looking. My ambition to do what I consider valuable has plateaued while I work on this new outlet, which is ephemeral, dubiously rewarding, and arguably unfeminist. I read any kind of cultural studies I can lay hands on to try and understand my fascination with and compulsion to create myself anew on the site of my body. So this is my attempt to make a style blog which is against the idea of style blogs, to become an anti-fashion guru, to create criticism, to redereconstruct. My secondary goal is to not be needlessly cruel to anyone while doing this, so if you see me being, say, racist, please let me know.


*Random bolding strategies in this post owe everything to Slog.