Fat-Positive Spaces And The Unsolicited Thin Voice

I’m going to get serious on you.
(TW: Body Image)

When fat people–yes, I’m using the f-word because I believe it should return to being an adjective, not a pejorative–are having a very real conversation about fat bodies, fatphobia, and how fat representation in media/entertainment affects them personally, that is not the time for folks who are not now nor have ever been fat to come in and get their hackles up because “body dysmorphia exists for thin people, too.”

It would be like if there was a cancer roundtable happening and someone came in and started insisting appendicitis be included in the talk because appendicitis is also harmful, painful, and can be life-threatening.

YES, we know you feel pain, too. We empathize, we don’t want you to hurt, and we recognize that issue is also valid, but that’s not what the conversation is about today.

Our whole lives, our confidence, body positivity, and inclusion have only ever been broadly permissible if we’re including everyone on our journey. You all well know I’m a huge fan of inclusion and of everyone feeling good in their skin in general, and I’m not advocating cruelly excluding anyone or their pain on purpose. However, fat people are indeed allowed to talk about their struggle without–for once in their life–making additional room for advocates of all sizes. Related to that point, fat people are also allowed to be confident without the expectation that we bring enough confidence for the rest of the class. Some of us are wired to uplift multiple people at once, but there are many others for whom it took everything they had in them to uplift themselves.

If a group of people are discussing fat-centric issues and being fat isn’t your journey, then those specific conversations aren’t your spaces to raise your voice. In addition to the many, many, many thin conversations (often actively excluding empathy for fat people) already happening, there are other inclusive body dysmorphia conversations to join that are for the broader picture of body ideals and the damage they cause for everyone. Get involved there and stop screaming “thin people feel pain, too” in fat spaces.

We are not about you today.

We are saving ourselves today.

Let It Go: Airbrush Foundation

For all the people out there still somehow convinced airbrush foundation is the end-all, be-all:
How many of your online faves are still talking about it? Using it in tutorials and videos? How many celebrity makeup artists do you see still discussing it in interviews? Listing it in product credits?
Exactly.
Please, let it go like Elsa and join us in 2019.

In The House Of Tom Bombadil

Michael and I were on our covered porch reading today when the clouds first rolled in. As the rain around us poured harder (and the air blew colder), I found it delightfully serendipitous that this was the exact passage I was reading–
“As they looked out of the window there came falling gently as if it was flowing down the rain out of the sky, the clear voice of Goldberry singing up above them. They could hear few words, but it seemed plain to them that the song was a rain-song, as sweet as showers on dry hills, that told the tale of a river from the spring in the highlands to the Sea far below. The hobbits listened with delight; and Frodo was glad in his heart, and blessed the kindly weather, because it delayed them from departing.
The upper wind settled in the West and deeper and wetter clouds rolled up to spill their laden rain on the bare heads of the Downs. Nothing could be seen all round the house but falling water. Frodo stood near the open door and watched the white chalky path turn into a little river of milk and go bubbling away down into the valley. Tom Bombadil came trotting round the corner of the house.
‘This is Goldberry’s washing day,’ he said, ‘and her autumn-cleaning.'”

Not Makeup Related (except in the broad, cosmic sense)

Back at the turn of the most recent millenium, a person named Rob Brezsny wrote a piece called “Prayer For You.”  It struck a chord with me so strongly that I wrote to request permission (which he kindly granted) to reprint it on the first blog I ran on Blogger.  Now that, my dears, was so long ago that I don’t even remember the username.  What delightful late 90s/early 00s era Kristina angst-o-rama must be floating out there in the ether under a name I cannot even remember?

Anyhow,

He granted me permission and I posted it.  I also saved it in a document on my computer, ported over from machine to machine as the years and the upgrades rolled on, and it is still saved on my current computer as it was in the early 00s, Papyrus font and all.  Way back then, I had written in the preface–

Regardless of one’s choice of spiritual leanings, I firmly believe that the wisdom contained herein can benefit everyone.

I still do believe that, though if the past couple years have taught me anything, they have taught me some people simply refuse to be reached by any wisdom if it doesn’t have the recognized name of their specific god attached to it.

I forget about this piece sometimes and when I do, something odd happens to make me rediscover it.  Today’s reminder struck me as particularly profound:

If you know me, you know I deal with anxiety and depression.  The more something means to me, the more my feelings around it intensify, and let’s just say this was not a very positive weekend for me and the endeavor I consider most dear.  After not having cracked the cover in years, something made me grab Rob’s book, Pronoia Is The Antidote For Paranoia:  How The Whole World Is Conspiring To Shower You With Blessings from my bookshelf.  Oddly, though I love “Prayer For You,” having read it and shared it multiple times–plus having a copy on my computer–also meant that I have never spent much time reading or referring to those pages in his actual book.  The book should have no markers or spine-memory regarding that section.  However, when I flipped the book open, it opened (impossibly) directly to the “Prayer For You” section.

It has been a while since I’ve shared it, the most recent iteration having been a Facebook Note a few years back.  I think perhaps it might be time again.

Interestingly, Rob Brezsny has changed it over the years, evolving it as he himself has evolved.  In that spirit, instead of sharing the original, the following is the expanded version that currently appears on both his blog and in his book. He has also changed the title since then from “Prayer For You” to the more aptly titled “Prayer For Us.”

Prayer For Us

by Rob Brezsny

This is a perfect moment. It’s a perfect moment because I have been inspired to say a gigantic prayer. I’ve been roused to unleash a divinely greedy, apocalyptically healing prayer for each and every one of us — even those of us who don’t believe in the power of prayer.

And so I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods . . . the God beyond all Gods . . . the Girlfriend of God . . . the Teacher of God . . . the Goddess who invented God.

DEAR GODDESS, you who always answer our very best questions, even if we ignore you:

Please be here with us right now. Come inside us with your sly slippery slaphappy mojo. Invade us with your silky succulent salty sweet haha.

Hear with our ears, Goddess. Breathe with our lungs. See through our eyes.

DEAR GODDESS, you who never kill but only change:

I pray that my exuberant, suave, and accidental words will move you to shower ferocious blessings down on everyone who reads or hears this benediction.

I pray that you will give us what we don’t even know we need — not just the boons we think we want, but everything we’ve always been afraid to even imagine or ask for.

DEAR GODDESS, you wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground:

Many of us don’t even know who we really are.

We’ve forgotten that our souls live forever.

We’re blind to the fact that every little move we make sends ripples through eternity. Some of us are even ignorant of how extravagant, relentless, and practical your love for us is.

Please wake us up to the shocking truths. Use your brash magic to help us see that we are completely different from we’ve been led to believe, and more exciting than we can possibly imagine.

Guide us to realize that we are all unwitting messiahs who are much too big and ancient to fit inside our personalities.

DEAR GODDESS, you sly universal virus with no fucking opinion:

Help us to be disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation, not destruction.

Teach us to know the distinction between oppressive self-control and liberating self-control.

Awaken in us the power to do the half-right thing when it is impossible to do the totally right thing.

And arouse the Wild Woman within us — even if we are men.

DEAR GODDESS, you who give us so much love and pain mixed together that our morality is always on the verge of collapsing:

I beg you to cast a boisterous love spell that will nullify all the dumb ideas, bad decisions, and nasty conditioning that have ever cursed all of us wise and sexy virtuosos.

Remove, banish, annihilate, and laugh into oblivion any jinx that has clung
to us, no matter how long we have suffered from it, and even if we have become accustomed or addicted to its ugly companionship.

Conjure an aura of protection around us so that we will receive an early warning if we are ever about to act in such a way as to bring another hex or plague into our lives in the future.

DEAR GODDESS, you psychedelic mushroom cloud at the center of all our brains:

I pray that you will inspire us to kick our own asses with abandon and regularity.

Give us bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems.
Help us learn the difference between stupid suffering and smart suffering.

Provoke us to throw away or give away everything we own that encourages us to believe we’re better than anyone else.

Brainwash us with your compassion so that we never love our own freedom more than anyone else’s freedom.

And make it illegal, immoral, irrelevant, unpatriotic, and totally tasteless for us to be in love with anyone or anything that’s no good for us.

DEAR GODDESS, you riotously tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically sacred feeling that is even now running through all of our soft, warm animal bodies:

I pray that you provide us with a license to bend and even break all rules, laws, and traditions that hinder us from loving the world the way you do.

Show us how to purge the wishy-washy wishes that distract us from our daring, dramatic, divine desires.

And teach us that we can have anything we want if we will only ask for it in an unselfish way.

DEAR GODDESS, you who just pretend to be crazy so you can get away with doing what’s right:

Help us to be like you — wildly disciplined, voraciously curious, exuberantly elegant, shockingly friendly, fanatically balanced, blasphemously reverent, mysteriously truthful, teasingly healing, lyrically logical, and blissfully rowdy.

And now dear God of Gods, God beyond all Gods, Girlfriend of God, Teacher of God, Goddess who invented God, I bring this prayer to a close, trusting that in these pregnant moments you have begun to change all of us in the exact way we needed to change in order to become the gorgeous geniuses we were born to be.

Amen
Om
Hallelujah
Shalom
Namaste
More power to you

Oh, but one more thing DEAR GODDESS, you pregnant slut who scorns all mediocre longing:

Please give us donkey clown pinatas full of chirping crickets,

ceramic spice jars containing 10 million-year-old salt from the Himalayas,

gargoyle statues guaranteed to scare away the demons,

lucid dreams while we’re wide awake,

enough organic soup and ice cream to feed all the refugees,

emerald parachutes and purple velvet gloves and ladders made of melted-down guns,

a knack for avoiding other people’s personal hells,

radio-controlled, helium-filled flying rubber sharks to play with,

magic red slippers to contribute to the hopeless,

bathtubs full of holy water to wash away our greed,

secret admirers who are not psychotic stalkers,

mousse cakes baked in the shapes of giant question marks,

stories about lightning strikes that burn down towers where megalomaniacal kings live,

solar-powered sex toys that work even in the dark,
knowledge of secret underground rivers,

mirrors that the Dalai Lama has gazed into,

and red wagons carrying the treats we were deprived of in childhood.

Copyright Rob Brezsny 2000
Reprinted with permission

Halloween Tale–Makeup In The Lemp Mansion

I thought it would be fun for October (and Friday the 13th) to tell a story about a makeup job I did in a famously haunted building, The Lemp Mansion.

When I had come home from work that day, I wrote it all out so I would not forget it.  I never thought I’d have a Lemp Mansion story of my own, but here we are.

This is not a work of fiction. 

On Monday, October 17, 2016, I was doing makeup for a photo shoot at the Lemp Mansion. The photographers, the keyholder, and I arrived before dawn. There was no one in the mansion itself except for a guest in the bed and breakfast. The person with the key was one of the models, a friend of the owner who was getting an excellent favor granted. Though it was dark and empty, nothing spooky was going on whatsoever. We went up to the second floor and the two photographers left me to begin the model while they went to the studio to get more gear.

I quickly forgot about my location and set to my task. The room gradually filled with sunlight to help along the ring light and the overhead pendant lights. There were two of these pendant lights, dangling from chains under gorgeous ceiling medallions about 8 feet apart. With the march of time/progress over the decades, Lemp is now overlooking Highway 55, so while we heard a lot of morning white noise, like traffic and big trucks barrelling down the highway, it was nothing unusual.

An assistant and another model showed up, then the photographers, another model, and the office folk. Soon after the office folk, the downstairs dining room opened for lunch. It was broad, sunny daylight and the building was bustling with life. I was barreling to the conclusion of the models, at which time I was free to go home.

The middle model asked me what I knew of the history of the place. I’m a bit of a paranormal fangirl, though I told her I didn’t KNOW much for sure, other than the publicized suicides. I mentioned there was allegedly an illegitimate son who was born with some sort of impairment. Due to the practices of the day, unfortunately, he didn’t get proper care and instead was allegedly stowed away in the attic. I told her I had heard the story on the radio a few times before, but wasn’t sure what details were true and what were fanciful. I said he had a rather rude nickname that it was rumored he hated but I told her if he had hated it in life, I didn’t want to perpetuate it by saying it out loud. We sort of went about our business after that.

The photographer thoughtfully bought the group lunch between 12:30 and 1. I was almost done with my last model, too warm to eat, and pretty ready to go after being on my feet that long, so I declined. I figured if I worked through lunch, I could leave sooner. The photographers, assistant, and two models were eating at the table under the far pendant lamp, which was 8 feet from where I was standing under the other lamp, doing the face of the last model.

The model I spoke to about the son in the attic asked the model who let us in about him. She said the owners had told her it wasn’t real, it was just a story made up to titillate, and that he wasn’t one of the official spirits that were in the place. She also used the name he hated, “Monkey Boy,” as she dismissed his existence.

After a few minutes, I heard a continuous noise–really only noticed it in the background because I was focused on my job. It sounded like a large piece of machinery with a busted motor mount—a loud, metal rattling. I ignored it, figuring it to be a truck outside at a loading dock or something. It went on, though, and right about the time I was thinking, “Damn, that truck is friggin’ CLOSE!” one of the models exclaimed. I looked up and the pendant over my head was shaking hard, like someone above it was aggressively yanking on the cord/chain above it. It didn’t stop when we noticed it, either.

My model, the photographers, and another model whipped out the cell phones to record it. We were trying to figure out a practical reason for what made it shake (Actual conversation: “Can they land helicopters on the roof of the Lemp?” “No, they can’t land helicopters on the roof here.”) and chatting rather loudly over the noise. One of the models pointed out that nothing else in the room was shaking—no photos, furniture, nor even the other lamp. The one over my head finally stopped moving.

That was all rather interesting enough, but out of the four videos recorded, one showed no movement at all and one showed only the tiniest bit of sway (though you hear us talking super loud about how the lamp was moving, including the helicopter conversation). One disappeared off the person’s phone entirely. I never did get a chance to check in with the fourth model to know what her video looked like.

7 witnesses, broad daylight.

Trendy Trending Trends

People frequently ask me what I think about various Insta/YouTube trends. This week’s request for the Hot Take™ is the squiggle brows, but there have been many in the past and will be many more to come. Basically, here is how I see such things–

1) If it is merely for clickbait, borne of the desperation of influencers to fill space/attempt to engineer the Next Big Thing (because there is nothing new under the sun), or dangerous in either ingredient or technique, I‘m probably rolling my eyes and giving a hard pass. Putting beauty blenders in condoms, using (insert object here) for random makeup application, giving a new name to an existing technique (ahem, strobing), using flour for powder, using random objects to try and create an eye wing, crushing oreos into mascara–all these things fall under that umbrella of “Baby, NO.”

2) If it is a look that is artistic, expressive, fun, creepy, etc. (squiggle brows, blue lips, glitter blush, metallic highlighter, unicorn looks, fx makeup, faded/feathered goth lips, etc), I’m pretty much in the camp of, “do your thing.” I’m all in for makeup as art and self-expression. Do it up, buttercup. If they are staring, you probably did it right.

3) If it is something you can’t do yourself but you’re going to side-eye and harangue your poor makeup artist if they don’t do it “JUST LIKE (insert name here) DOES ON THEIR CHANNEL!” then, again, baby no. Beauty makeup artists know their craft and know what beauty belongs in front of a backdrop/ring light in controlled positions vs. what is going to make you look beautiful when it moves. Furthermore, if you’re doing this nonsense in a store, double shame on you. Retail artists are there to sell makeup and bringing in your squiggle brows to waste 30 minutes of their Saturday when they have sales goals is just rude. If you want to squiggle, sugar, squiggle all day long…but leave the professionals and the sales people alone.

That’s pretty much that.

Makeup Over 40 (or 50 or 60 or…you get the point)

So many Folks Of A Certain Age balk at smoky eyes and lashes, saying that it ages them because that’s what the magazines have always told them. I’m here to say you’ve been utterly bamboozled by the beauty editors of the world, my darlings. The right smoky eye for your face and a false lash will actually take YEARS off…sometimes well over a decade.

No Shame In Your Game

You know how it is:  you see a picture of something on Facebook, then your mind wanders to something related in your own life, then perhaps you reflect on the past.  A post about makeup brushes today had me thinking about the first one I bought, which in turn had me thinking about you.  Yes, you.

Over many, many years I’ve had many, many clients say things like, “Oh, I don’t know how to do it like you do,” or, “Brushes confuse me,” or, “I’m embarrassed I’ve reached this age knowing nothing about makeup.”

(I would like to break away for a moment to address that–even though makeup is my business–knowing about makeup is not a life-requirement for anyone.  We could all live a whole life never knowing how to put on eye shadow and life would still happen joyously.  Makeup is fun and can be functional, but it is by no means necessary.  I definitely do not think anyone should feel shame for not being versed in it…at any age.  I’m specifically talking to the people who are interested in makeup and who want to learn about it.)

I cannot draw.  I cannot paint.  I have tremendous difficulty summoning a unique picture from scratch.  Where my specific Visual Arts talent lies is in being able to look at someone’s face and determine the best way to bring forth their features.  This is why I’m a beauty artist and why, though I have mad respect for it, I do not work in latex and F/X.   That is what gives me my ability to do makeup as a job, but my clients don’t even need that specific talent to be able to do their own faces.

Also, though I’ve always been drawn to the beauty industry as a consumer, large swaths of it puzzled me.  That first makeup brush I mentioned?  I bought it in the earliest of the 90s, back in those pre-internet days when Anita Roddick still owned The Body Shop and the only way my small-town Illinois self could acquire any was mail order.  I bought a brush from the Barbara Daly Colourings line.  I felt like such a big deal when it arrived, yet I had no idea what to do with it.  It didn’t seem to work with my shadows, and I was young enough to not be bothering with concealer at the time, so I sort of collected it.  It sat in my Caboodle looking all grown up, getting dirty from other makeup that would shed onto it–but never from actual use.  Makeup obsessed as I was, I was still using sponge-tipped applicators and my own fingers to put on my eyes, just like many of my clients do today.

I taught myself liquid liner by using a regular pencil as a guideline until I got the knack, but the cool, blended eye shadow looks eluded me.  It was not until I got a job in retail makeup that I started figuring out how to properly use brushes, what brush did what, and the difference they made.  I also did not figure out until then that my beloved Colourings brush was not useless–it was only useless with my thinly pigmented drugstore shadows at the time.  Who knew?  Not me, not until I was shown.

I was self-taught on a lot of different makeup techniques, but everything went a lot faster (and looked a lot better) when I allowed other people to explain things to me.  After that, it was a lot of practice.  I did not pick up that very first palette (Merle Norman, btw; it belonged to my friend Angie) and go to town expertly because I had some latent inner artist.  I had to practice techniques.  Even now, sometimes I’ll go to try something on myself and say, “Oh…no, no, no, not doing that today.”

If you want to learn how to put makeup on yourself, you can do it.  You may need to be taught and–sorry–you may have to practice a bit, but you’ve got it in you.  Brushes confound you?  They did me, too.  Techniques elude you?  They did me, too. I do not care if you are 18 or if you are 80.  If I can go from being flummoxed by my first brush to being a professional makeup artist, I promise you that I (or someone like me) can teach you how to do your own face.

What You Water Will Grow

I’ll never get over how beauty brands treat “influencers” so much better than their own employees.

Overheard In The Beauty Department (Or “Mean Boys (And Girls) Suck”)

Overheard in the beauty department, uttered by a high-ranking artist from a makeup brand I know you all know:

“Ask her what her favorite designer is. If she doesn’t have a favorite designer, well, she probably has no business wearing (makeup brand redacted), but we’ll sell her stuff anyway.”

I do not possess the vocabulary to adequately express to you how horrified I was.

Though I heard this particular fellow say this rather audaciously on the selling floor, I can name you at LEAST two other brands who have trainers and/or ambassadors who have said things like that behind closed doors.

It is this kind of unconscionable snobbery that is part of driving consumers to buy online. We all want to feel pretty and not be judged. The sad part is that there is some sort of longstanding badge of honor to be exclusive, especially among the executives in the cosmetics industry, so this sort of thinking winds up being encouraged instead of re-educated…then brands wonder why they aren’t getting their increases.

Including people feels a hell of a lot better than excluding them–on ALL sides.