A Few Weeks of Clear Skin

Dear diary, I never thought it would happen to me...

What have I been doing?
• oil-cleansing once a day, using wipes or cetaphil otherwise
• changing my pillowcase every three or four days
• witch hazel/lemon juice/aloe juice toner
• rosemary essential oil-- a few drops mixed with jojoba to cleanse or for a night-time moisturizer.
• taking zinc & vitamin C tablets

What haven't I been avoiding?
• sugar
• dairy
• fried foods
• frying foods
• makeup
• sulfate shampoos
• fancy livin'

On Hedonism

My favorite thing about Jennifer's Body--in which Karyn Kusama and Diablo Cody attempt to remake Mean Girls as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and end up with an affected, irritating Ginger Snaps--is the opening scene in which Megan Fox scratches a scab and chews on her hair.  Fox is, in the film as in life, an exqusitely crafted product machine-tooled to the sexual specifications of an aggregated audience of women-fanciers, and despite my knowledge of this, I can't help but enjoy seeing her walk around and even occasionally talk in films where she has not been tinted orange in post-production.  There's something going on with Jennifer's sexual power and demonic energy and physical perfection all waxing and waning together month by month, but I'll be damned if I can tease it out of the web of pointless homoeroticism and immediately dated cultural references.  Anyway, some part of the film's point, whatever that may be, is about the physicality of bodies, and the relative frailty and impermanence of even the most perfect ones.  Moon, too. 

I think I love my body just about as much as is humanly possible for a young woman of this era who doesn't exercise (hence my project of extensively documenting it), but I still get Kafka-esque heebie jeebies from many of the realities of being a consciousness in a big gestalt of semi-autonomous cells, not all of whom share my genetic material.  Sometimes my teeth just hurt for no reason, and I'm always biting the inside of my mouth.  My toenails--are they getting ingrown?  Was there always this much hair?  Does my nose look bigger when I wake up than it did when I went to bed?  Is sitting causing my ass to atrophy?  Why is all this body fat distributed as cellulite instead of smooth curvilinear forms, anyway?  Must my breasts be asymmetrical?  What happened to all the coins and paper and hair and peach pits I ate?  And my skin!  What the fuck!  I'm not even going to go into what goes on in my perineal area, suffice to say that popcorn is a sometimes food.  And as if that wasn't enough to worry about, I'm freaking mortal as well!

Keeping this in mind, it is often difficult not to eat all the cheese I want.

Acnepostin'

I'll stop after this, I just had to document this one.  It's a doozy.

Okay, so they're always a bit more impressive in my imagination. 

It's always difficult not to bust their delicate skin, especially when vigorously scrubbing my face. 

Now that I'm a woman people keep trying to impregnate me with Satan's baby

Wearing sunscreen causes me to break out.

And who are we when we have a big angry forehead zit?  That's right: the Lady Amalthea.

The Last Unicorn is, among other things, a film about how spending time in a woman's body makes you weak and confused and death-prone, but highly lovable.  Unlike the approximately infinite number of other narratives where a strong, independent virgin falls in love and suddenly gets weak ankles (e.g. Rocky, Susan from the Narnia books), Amalthea gets to keep her own body and strength and sense of self, but loses her love.  While I would of course prefer a film where you can have sex without destroying your personality, this one has Christopher Lee, and is therefore recommended.

This hasn't been a good day for Lir.

Solipsist

Perhaps one of the reasons I am so godawful as a lesbian--why I fell so fast and so hard for cock--is that I can't get the makeup down.  I heard the "lesbian look" described (of pre-outcoming Mary Cheney and Candace Gingrich; perhaps it would be more accurate to call this look "passing spinster"), in something I read in the early 2000s -- maybe a memoir of  Ron Reagan Jr. -- as little to nothing around the eyes or on the cheeks, with plain lipstick, viz.:

Pearls optional, unless you're in politics.  

I kind of have something against lipstick.  While my eyes continue to get flashier and madder, lipstick still codes as Trying Too Hard to the buried high school butch in me who still judges all my outfits.  Also, I have mildly asymmetrical lips, and applying a color to them inflames my OCD something terrible.  Wait, not OCD.  What's the one where you self-diagnose with psychiatric disorders?  Oh yes--hypochondria.  But never wearing something has certainly not stopped me from hoarding it, and so I have many lipsticks, nail polishes, pieces of jewelry, pairs of high-ass heels, belts, purses, bits of string, and the like.  These next pictures represent the portion of that collection I could be arsed to apply and quickly snap two photos of.

My lips with nothing on top.

Glosses:

Clear (maybe slightly red?) apple-flavored lip gloss.  Mmmm.

Some drugstore frosted gloss.  Unimpressive-looking, sticky, overpoweringly vanilla-scented.

These are some of my favorites, from Medusa's Makeup--magenta (Smooch) and red (Talk Talk), both with gold and copper sparks.  The purple somehow manages to match my lip color beautifully, and the red is just right for looking sexy but not overdone.  They smell pretty bad and the wands are difficult to work with. 

This one was a freebie from Everyday Minerals, some kind of tube of orange-hued chapstick.  This is another thing I object to about lipstick: my choice of hues, if I want to maintain some self-respect, is limited to the chunk of the spectrum between orange and purple, and that's dull to me.

Liners:

A frosty pink Barry M pencil I mainly use to highlight around the eyes.  Alarmingly metallic, but good under a translucent colored gloss. 

Another orange tone, this brick-colored drugstore pencil is soft and slightly emollient, making it a terrible choice as a liner. 

This looked to me like it would match my lips, but in fact it is dreadful.

Lipsticks:

This one is sort of a medium brown in the tube, called "Divine Wine."  Dark lipstick supposedly makes you look older.  I still think I would make a pretty good goth.

My best Elena Kagan.

 Another sort of matchy berry bronzey metallic thing. I am falling asleep.

Now, this is my favorite thing to do to my lips.  It's just a crimson stain, applied from the center of the mouth and faded outwards.  It makes me feel totally sex.

Also, incidentally, my skin is looking fantastic here, by the standards of my skin.

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.

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.