All Eyes on Me

I really like things that smell nice, and wearing nice scents. I particularly love nice lotions, and find them my preferred way to put on fragrance. I have a hard time gauging how much perfume to use— I find the line between my skin eating it and it being way too much is easy to cross. My mother thought using body spray was the gateway drug to not showering and I can’t touch the stuff without hearing her disapproval. So while I’ve got those too, I end up using lotion more than anything else. I have a hard time resisting buying the stuff whenever the opportunity presents, and I sometimes think my ideal state of being would be just living in a big sack or tub of it all the time.

But then the perfume, which doesn’t last forever, goes bad because I don’t use it. So I had an idea to buy a bunch of unscented lotion— I personally like the stuff from the Hairy Farmpit Girls, a charming queer-owned small business who writes hilarious anecdotes of life on their farm. Every time I use it, I’m going to combine it with one of my little “imp’s ears”, which is what Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs calls their little sample vials of scent. They’re kind of an alt, gothy perfume company I’ve been a fan of since friends introduced me to it in college, and they sell little samples that I have quite a collection of at this point.

Some of them I didn’t end up liking, and some I didn’t use up fast enough before the scent changed with age. But of the ones I do like and want to wear, I thought mixing them into the plain lotion would be a practical way to actually make use of them. It’ll be like having a different kind of lotion every day, without having a million bottles cluttering up my life. (Reminder to self not to buy a million more kinds of lotion.) It’s always pleasant to be around a person who smells nice, so I like the idea of that being me.

As you may have seen in various pictures on Facebook, I have cut my hair.



I've had long hair my whole life, and generally have had a preference for it, for myself, and for the majority of women whose appearance appealed to me. I went from hip-length with bangs that ate my whole head in my childhood to growing out the bangs to cutting it to shoulder blade-length in the beginning of college. For years I'd relied on long layers that I never got refreshed often enough. The failed attempt to turn it blonde two years ago and the much more successful dyeing it to pink last year were the only major changes I ever made to it as an adult.



I don't know what possessed me to hack it off. Probably mostly just craving a change, but also because I just wanted to look a little bit "cooler" somehow— whatever the hell that even means. I'm a vain enough person that I get really upset if I don't think I look good according to my own particular aesthetic. If I ended up appreciably less pretty, I would be pretty grouchy until it grew back out to something I found flattering.

But my whole adult life, I've been wishing for, and trying to do everything to make, my appearance to be less "soft." I like my weight low to keep my figure lean and hard; I don't want curves, I want lines and angles, flat planes, defined bones. When I think of the things I'd fix about my face, it's always wishing for my features to be "sharper" and "tighter"— a more angular face shape, a more pointed nose, for the line of my jaw to be harder (with less of a hint of age-related jowliness in my future). I wanted to try and see if "harder-edged" hairstyle might help take away some of that "softness" I see.



I didn't like it when I first walked out of the salon. But learning how to try to style it has made me come around, especially because I have a lot of options to try. It has been kind of fun learning to do it. I was never really able to execute anything with my long hair and tended to default to down, in a ponytail, or in mashed into a messy bun. I’m finding the short hair responds to products a little more easily and am trying different things. I like it best, I think, when it stands up like a bird crest. It makes me look more ferocious, which is kind of the effect I’m hoping for.



Though I do wonder if men will find me less attractive. I mean, not that I want to make strangers come up and talk to me or anything, but I like it when people who look at me across a room think I'm pretty. I wish I didn't care about that, but I do. I’m not actively pursuing modeling right now, but I bet I’d get less work. I so miss the way the long hair framed my face, which probably ultimately was prettier. Of course, I spend so much goddamn time staring at my face it doesn't look like a face anymore. Sort of like when you say a word over and over again, it starts sounding weird and loses all meaning.

I will probably not keep it this way forever. But it’s fun to play around with for now. I’m particularly hoping that as I get better at styling it, I will get happier with it.

For the past several weeks, I've done basically nothing except work and watch RuPaul's Drag Race. It comes from not leaving the house much except for job stuff and not having the energy for much beyond TV. So I've watched the seasons available through Amazon Prime of Drag Race and quite enjoyed them.

Drag has always been kind of fascinating to me. While I'm not particularly up on queer culture in any way, this part of it appeals to me because I like how it plays with the arbitrary nature of gender markers. Yeah, X, Y, and Z are traditionally considered indicators of femaleness, but look, a man can put them on just as easily! And vice versa. That kind of detachment from gender norms makes me smile. Drag is of course not the same as actual gender fluidity, but I like the idea of temporarily tossing your gender to the wind and being a different one for a while.

As I’ve mentioned, while my sexuality is about as firmly straight as you can get, my gender has always felt sort of incidental. Sure, I am definitely a woman and I’m comfortable with that, but it’s purely descriptive. If I’d been identified as a boy by society, I don’t think I’d be any more or less comfortable. So, while my straightness feels pretty intrinsic to the person that I am, my femaleness isn't. I often wonder what I'd be like if I were a boy, though I have no actual desire to be one. But I have always wanted to drag myself out and see how "masculine" I could make myself look. I think that would be a lot of fun to play that role for a little while. The technical aspects of drag, makeup, costuming, and other sorts of design, are up my alley, especially because they present a perennially interesting concept to me-- we have a problem (we need to make a male-identified person conform to feminine markers), how do we use technical skills to solve it?

I also think it’s interesting that the artifice of it is so clearly on display. In other aspects of culture related to appearance, I think there’s a lot of tendency to mask all the work and the seams involved. Oh, this model looks this glamorous all the time. She’s this thin naturally. This makeup isn’t hard to do. When in reality such images are the result of carefully composed, edited, stage-managed presentation. Even as I’m aware of that, in my own pursuit of beauty I’ve always gone for that ideal of “naturalness,” by which I mean that I look this good without accoutrement— so I would literally wake up like this. But making that possible actually means an enormous amount of work, including diet, exercise, skin-treating, and shaving. This is my real actual body, but it is certainly not like this left to its own devices. But in drag, I find it neat how the artifice is so embraced, so much part of the game. It's an interesting comment on what gender markers even are, if the strongest ones are those that any person, regardless of how they identify, could put on.

I've noticed my throat has started to ever-so-slightly tighten up when I exercise lately. Not when I run, interestingly. These days I run outside, and while I've always been sensitive to breathing in cold air, I'm fit and accustomed enough that it hasn't been a problem recently. It's only happened when I do my fighter abs routine, which I do indoors in a temperature-controlled environment. It hasn't been much, but in the breaths between, when I transition from one exercise to the next, I've noticed a cold, constricted sensation in my airway. It goes away quickly with a few deep breaths and hasn't really been holding me back in any way, but it's new and a bit worrying. I've always been concerned by my proneness to side stickers, but that's gone away as I've gotten stronger, and this seems to be almost like exercise-induced asthma. Why would that be appearing now, that I'm at the strongest I've been in my life?

I always worry I'm not breathing properly. I have tendency to hold my breath when I'm concentrating, and when putting the effort into finishing a difficult workout I often don't breathe enough. Maybe that's it. I should put some extra attention into regulating that pattern. I've gotten good at doing that when I run, as it distracts me from the sometimes-unpleasant sensation of exertion, but not so much during fighter abs. It definitely couldn't hurt, even if no real problem is developing.

Today is the last day of the semester, which means I am about to start a two-week break before things kick in again. All of my jobs are currently for colleges, so I'll have no work commitments until things get intense for me again when the new semester starts. It's a bit expensive for me not to work during that time, but I will enjoy the time off.

It's almost the end of the summer as I defined it when I made my plan for the months of June through August. I'm in very good shape as far as the goals I set and the things I wanted to accomplish.

I finished the first draft of Base Instruments, and had a very enjoyable and productive reading dinner for it. The first draft turned out better than I thought it would, and it was so much fun hearing friends read it aloud. They made some great, helpful suggestions-- these reading dinners are the best --that will be great for the direction of the next edit. I am currently taking a week or so away from it before I dig in, though, so I can look at it with fresh eyes. Part of the job will involve cutting it down-- it turned out much longer than I wanted --so I think I can't be this close to it when deciding what I can afford to lose.

I just finished my syllabus for my class at Lesley. That proved much more difficult to make than I thought it would, mostly because of the constraints I set down for myself. I needed things with culturally significant protagonists, that my students could get for free online, that weren't all white dudes. I did the best I could with that, and I think I will enjoy teaching the pieces I chose. The only thing I'm not sure about is if I gave them the correct amount of work-- neither too little nor too much. I guess we'll see, and I can always adjust if things aren't working.

My diet and exercise plan I've managed to stick to for almost twelve weeks now. I'm pleased with the results, though I'm pretty sure I've plateaued. I have definitely got better abs now than I ever have in my life, but they're still not where I want them to be. Maybe my expectations are unrealistic. But I may investigate into what I can do to jumpstart things again. In any case, I'm happy enough with the progress that I think this is how I'm going to be eating from now on.

Now to make a plan for the two weeks. I'm sure there's a way to make the most of the time, so I've got some thinking to do.

I’ve been investing a lot of effort lately into working up the old mortal shell through which God would have me experience His creation. I am probably a little too wrapped up in my own vanity, but I also care about keeping myself healthy and in shape. It makes me feel really good to look pretty and feel strong, so though it adds a fair number of extra responsibilities to my list, for me it acts as a form of self-care.

( Content warning for body and diet talk to follow. )

At the end of my first week of my new exercise plan, my body is shockingly sore. I'm really surprised to be in this much pain. I didn't think the new stuff would be that much different than my previous regime. But my thighs and my back, of all things, are killing me. My new routine is mostly ab-focused, and while my abs feels fine, it's common for when the abs wear out in the course of a workout the back muscles engage to compensate. 😝

Otherwise I mostly feel healthy and good. It hasn't been hard to hold to the new diet, as I like eating mostly meat and vegetables, especially with the one cheat meal built in. But my muscles really hurt. I don't think it's any injury, just being ripped up from the effort, but it's been a while since exercise-induced muscle soreness bothered me this much. I actually ate some Advil today, which I usually don't use for anything except migraines and cramps. It used to help a lot to get massages, but without Bernie, it's tough to arrange without paying for it.

I think I am reluctantly going to make today the rest day for week two. I hate starting off the new week with one, as that means it's gone already, but I think I need it. One the positive side, if I'm feeling it this much, probably means it's working.

Body positivity is a weird thing with me. I tend to have a pretty good self-image, and through rigorous mental retraining I'm learning not to apply my crazy ideas to anyone else's body, but I have a hard time letting go of them when it comes to my own. Sometimes my crazy comes out in weird ways.

A few years back, during a period where peak depression intersected badly with a much more sedentary schedule, and I gained a small but noticeable amount of weight. It wasn't obvious to most people, but it made it so my clothes didn't fit. I had an incident where I popped a button off of a pair of jeans due to being too big for them that really left me upset. I should have just thrown them away, but I stuffed those jeans in a draw in a rage and tried to forget they existed.

I slimmed back down relatively soon after that, and all of my old clothes fit again, including those jeans. It's very satisfying to me that I can now fit my hand inside the waistband where once I wasn't even able to close them. I put a new button on them, but because the old one tore up the placket so much, it's probably not going to stay attached much longer. So they're kind of a pain to wear. But I keep them, I keep wearing them, instead of throwing them away. Because to get rid of them would be to admit they DEFEATED ME. And my crazy WON'T ALLOW THAT.