All Eyes on Me

Beautiful and terrible as the dawn

2025-10-29T13:35:45Z

Beautiful and terrible as the dawn, all shall love me and despair.

Taken by the talented Mark Edwards. I REALLY love these. I think I look beautiful here, but I particularly enjoy how ”in character” I look, like I’m being someone other than myself. It’s probably mostly Mark’s excellent photography and editing, but it also pleases me to see some of my own modeling skill on display.

These days I don’t do so much modeling anymore, unless it’s something for fun for a friend, because it’s mostly not worth the trouble unless I’m getting paid A LOT. But I used to be kind of good at it, beyond just being skinny with symmetrical features. I mean, it’s not exactly digging ditches or brain surgery, but it takes some effort and skill. I would tell folks, it isn’t just about looking pretty on camera; it’s about projecting an impression that can be captured on camera. You have to know what your body and your face does in a still image and manipulate it to create a whole vibe, a whole persona, only in your still image. It’s similar to acting, but you don’t have some of the otherwise natural tools— no voice, no breath, no motion, no space-filling, no micro-expression —to contextualize you. Of course styling helps, but the limited image of your physical instrument is all you can use to communicate.

So I not only like these because I look good in them, but I can see something of my own modeling skill in them. Like, these are not-Phoebe expressions in these pictures; that’s not how Phoebe holds her face. That is the face of a powerful and slightly creepy witch queen character who I had to assume. Kind of proud of myself that I’m still able to do that.

And of course, you need a good photographer.

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Grunge elf photoshoot

2025-07-22T18:03:14Z

Did a photoshoot recently with Cari as taken by my favorite photographer, Mark, and here's the first image from it. I really like the vibe-- the theme was "grunge elf" and I love how this image is kinda earthy, kind of ethereal as that theme might suggest.

Interesting to me how there's a heaviness around my eyes I feel like I don't usually see in myself, and a lightness around my jawline. (Mark, did you work any editing magic there? Just curious!) I really think it helps with the vibe, like as an elf I am ancient and ageless at the same time.

I also tried to spruce up my plastic elf ears for the shoot. One advantage of watching so many doll customization videos since the pandemic is that I've learned a few things about working with plastic. I primed mine (admittedly pretty cheap) with Mister Super Clear, blushed some more realistic shadows and color variation into them with chalk pastels, and sealed them again to finish them off.

Again Mark probably applied some photo editing magic, but I think they look better. Definitely, when you compare the before on the left and after on the right, it's an improvement.

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“Have you ever dreamed of a better version of yourself?”

2024-10-07T22:09:05Z

I saw The Substance this past weekend, and I am sorry to report I didn’t really like it. Not that it was bad, exactly, but I don’t think it was effective. At least, if it was trying to tell the story I was expecting. SPOILERS AHEAD.

From the marketing, I was going in for a story about a woman whose fear of losing her value as she aged leading her to destroy everything of ANY value about herself. I was preparing myself for this film to, for lack of a better term, trigger the hell out of me, or at least give me big feelings. This is, in theory, a horror movie for me, exploring ideas that I VERY SPECIFICALLY find scary. My fear of aging and becoming ugly is well-documented, after all. But it really didn’t work for me, because I don’t feel like it captured any of what that fear feels like.

To begin with, it is not a subtle film. That’s not necessarily a criticism, but I will say I did not care for it. Anytime a character was remembering something that just happened to them, the moment would be superimposed right on top of things, like it didn’t expect you to make the connection. The misogynist male executive was depicted as loud, gross, and over the top as possible— from having him rant in so many words about how old women sucked, to yucky closeups of him chomping on shrimp. And that’s to say nothing of how over the top the voyeurism of the camera was on Margaret Qualley’s body. I was kind of hoping to see a depiction of pervasive, insidious anti-aging bias is woven into the world, particularly for women, particularly for women in the limelight. It just seemed a bit too easy to have a very yucky man straight-up tell Demi Moore that fifty is too old— especially when she’s so beautiful that she’s able to pass for younger than fifty when she’s actually sixty-two.

Again, I get that this extremity and exaggeration was a deliberate stylistic choice. But to my sensibility, when you create a fantasy of a real experience, you are trying to use the fantastical elements to express true ideas in a manner that makes them stand out even more strongly than they do in life. So it wasn’t that I was expecting this lurid sci fi horror extravaganza to realistically depict the mundane indignities of getting older. But I felt like the representations should be clearly alluding to emotions and experiences that were recognizable enough to evoke horror. But I only saw one moment, maybe one and a half moments, that felt like genuine expression of the struggle of aging.

The first and realest was when her growing insecurity over her appearance in comparison to Sue while getting ready for her date led her to second-guess herself so badly, she not only ruined her appearance, she collapsed entirely. As someone who has wiped off fifty percent of all lipstick she’s ever applied in her entire life, because of staring in the mirror and genuinely being unable to tell if it looks good or clownish— as someone who has wondered if I ought to just get that tiny little poke of flesh at the corners of my jaw “taken care of” before anybody but me starts to notice— I felt that.

The only other one that came close, and to me used the extreme fantastical exaggeration effectively for once, was when her trollishly twisted self stood beside the portrait of herself in her glory days. The comparison— of having been perfect once, having known what it was like to have been beautiful, but intensely aware of how fleeting it is —shivered me, because it evoked a terror that runs genuinely deep. I’ve been lucky enough to have kept my figure up to this point, but my face has visibly aged, losing some roundness around the jawline and loosening up just a tiny bit at the jowls. Even as I exult over the fact that I can still wear a bikini I bought when I was nineteen, the changing shape of my face reminds me that it’s all just a matter of time before it all goes away. No amount of beauty you once had protects you from what’s to come.

It also didn’t manage to capitalize on its compelling premise. The idea was that you use a medical procedure to make a younger hotter self, and trade off weeks of getting to go out and live life. When the selves cannot split time and resources equally and become jealous of each other, they destroy one another. But I think they just didn’t build it out right. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll would maintain consciousness when he became Hyde; he had the same memories and awareness, just like everything about himself and his personality were different. He felt Hyde’s experiences, he knew what Hyde did, because— as was ultimately the point of the book —Hyde WAS him. In The Substance, main self Elisabeth and alternate self Sue shared no consciousness at all, and under most circumstances weren’t even able to meet each other. It wasn’t really like having an alternate self; it was more like having a child you had no relationship with, and no ability to develop one.

It really made it hard for me to see what the advantage of the process was— you miss out on half of your life, you don’t get to personally enjoy any of the benefits of being the young hot self, and you don’t even have any ability to develop love or affection for the other self to make you enjoy their success vicariously. The company that makes the Substance has to continually remind Elisabeth and Sue that they are one, but… they don’t feel that way, to us or to them, because they’re really not. The process really doesn’t facilitate anything that would make them feel that they are.

It made me wonder if maybe it was more a story about jealousy, or living vicariously through your child. But that lack of relationship between them left a lot of even that premise on the table.

I also didn’t quite understand the purpose of the extremely sexualizing camera angles constantly used on Sue. At first, I thought they were trying to establish the excitement of suddenly having an amazing body, and delighting in checking it out. That made sense to me. (Although for the record, if Margaret Qualley is hotter than Demi Moore, it’s only by the tiniest bit, which is saying something since Qualley is 29 and Moore is 62.) But they persisted with the objectifying closeups on her until almost the end of the movie. We get several sequences of her dancing shot like porn movies, with a particular focus on her ass. As I said, this is not a subtle movie, but after a while I didn’t get what it was trying to say by carrying it out so persistently. We knew by that point that she was hot, so… what? I thought eventually they might use the extreme objectification to make her body seem grosser and grosser, the way human physicality can become when you chop it up visually and get too close on the details, but by the time they were ready to do that, they actually started making her body itself fall apart. So it honestly started to feel like fan service to me, which seemed very out of place in a movie like this. If anybody has an idea of what they think it was trying to accomplish, I’d love to hear it.

There was also one element that cracked me up— the intense masculine voice that narrated the commercial for the Substance also was the one who answered the phone anytime Elisabeth and Sue called the company to complain. Poor guy, he probably auditioned for an acting gig and got stuck with a customer service job!

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31 Plays in 31 Days, #11 - “Get in the Door”

2022-08-11T12:10:34Z

An idea I’m exploring with Leah in Dream Machine is the tension between the pressure and desire to be pretty with how it affects your ability to be and do other things. It’s something I find myself wrestling with personally, and it seemed like a good fit for a character who was driven by the desire to do art, but had to deal with the pressures of working in Hollywood, plus a bunch of internalized impulses that had to be unpacked, examined, and possibly unlearned. I started this getting dealt with in episode 5 of Dream Machine, but here’s a lot of expansion on it.

I don’t usually like the monologue form, but it seemed appropriate here.

( Day #11 - Get in the Door )

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Characters support group in the Author’s brain…

2021-10-02T18:23:11Z

SCENE: a long, echoey hallway in the depths of the Author’s brain.

A man in late middle age with a seventies mustache and an expensive, wide-lapeled suit checks the names on a bunch of doors. His oxfords click on the polished floor as he passes them. SYMPATHY PUMPS. POWER FANTASIES. MORALITY PETS. DREAM DADDIES. Intriguing as that last may be, with the blacked-out glass in its window, he continues onward. Finally he finds the one he’s looking for, and slips inside.

The rest have already arrived there. They are a… strange assortment, to say the least. Two have the accents, manners, and attire of middle class Victorians, a lean woman in widow’s weeds and a handsome bachelor toying with a walking stick. The last is a modern professional man, just a bit younger than the newcomer, with slicked hair and sunglasses indoors.

When our first man enters, they nod politely and take their seats. Clearly they have very little to do with one another in most cases— even the two Victorians who share a surname prefer not to be in the same room —but they have one thing in common that has brought them there today.

Styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee in hand, the newcomer addresses the group. “Hey, everybody. I’m the new guy, I guess. The name’s Howard. Howard Stark.”

A chorus of diction-appropriate variations on “Hello, Howard,” sound.

“Yeah, I been on the roster for a little while now— mostly comic relief, I guess.”

The Victorian man cackles. “I know, eh?”

“Yeah, well, she likes writing in my voice— gettin’ to toss in a little midcentury salesman razzle-dazzle here and there. Mostly I had fun, even though I was the butt of something now and again. Showed up, had some fun, fell in love, got a nice little character journey. But then she had another idea.”

The man in the sunglasses snorts. “That’s how it starts.”

“Suddenly it’s fifteen years later, I’m in this mess over Vietnam. And everybody’s mad at me, and I’m drinking all the time, and stepping out on my wife. And when my time-traveling buddy takes me fishing to ask me what’s up… turns out it’s all I’m acting out because I’m—“

The others in the room finish his sentence all as one. “—getting older.”

Howard nods frantically. “Damn skippy. I mean, I know folks like to figure out why I turned out to be kind of asshole— but loose and drunk? Is that even canon?”

“A strong case could be made.” Sunglasses shrugs. “You could say it’s pretty strongly implied.”

“Well. Even so. I learned pretty quick this was a thing with her. Guess I figured she’d get on it again— but you never think it’s going to happen to you.”

“And no mistake,” the man with the walking stick agrees. “She gave me a show all to myself— not even my golden boy little brother got that. And she built it entirely around my romantic escapades. And what do I have, smack dab in the middle of my gallivanting? References to middle age spread and the grim specter of aging past my flirtatious charm. Rather takes the wind of a fellow’s sails.”

“At least you just got the memento mori treatment,” Sunglasses rejoins. “She threw my back out and had me hook up with an old lady just to get my groove back.”

Walking Stick winks at him. “For what it’s worth, Dresden, I think you look smashing.”

“Have to say I agree. But instead of losing my looks, I just had to settle for physical punishment for the sin of not being twenty.”

Finally the widow speaks, barking a laugh. “Ha! You call that physical punishment?”

Sunglasses rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, we know, Hawking, nobody ever gets it worse than you.”

“You’re not the one she uses as a sink for all her doubts. You think you’re pulled through the wringer? Call me when she puts a bullet in your gut!” She raps her fist on her abdomen for emphasis, then fold her arms.

Howard looks uncomfortably from face to face. “So… what do you? When she’s riding you hard about it?”

“Not much one can, I’m afraid,” Walking Stick admits. “She’s the boss. And God knows she’s only going to get worse about it as time goes on.”

Sunglasses grunts. “Well. That’s bleak.”

“Could be bleaker,” the widow commented. “We could be her. We’ll stay as we are forever.” Her eyes roll to Howard. “The only one really getting older here is her.”

He considered this. “In that case… anybody feel like a game of cards?”

Walking Stick grins. “Best enjoy the bridge while there’s only four of us. Because more are certainly sure to come.”

“Hm,” Sunglasses murmurs. “Better set out some more chairs.”

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Eyes above a mask

2021-09-30T23:56:58Z

I’ve been wearing eyeshadow to work very consistently lately. I kind of started doing it regularly over the course of lockdown, with all the meetings on Zoom. It was a nice way to do something different when other people could see me, since I was spending so much of my time on my own. Now I’m teaching in a mask, and my eyes are the only part of my face that my students can see. If I wear good eye makeup, then there’s something distinctive about me that can strike them. My vanity likes to be looked at. And I’ve gotten a lot of compliments from students who liked it in the last year, so I think it’s worth it to make the impression on them.

I’m much better at it than I used to be, or at least I think so. I watched a bunch of Youtube tutorials and have gotten a lot more practice. I don’t try anything particularly unconventional— I just stick with the pretty much universally flattering principles. Darkness on the outer edge of the eye, brightness on the inner edge, so that even eyeliner and crease color stops about two thirds of the way over, and slant the outside upward so it looks lifted. I use basically the application style every time, just in different color schemes.

Neutrals probably look best on me, from a purely flattering standpoint, though I’ve been experimenting with colors. I have bought several palettes from Juvia’s Place, which are well-priced, black owned, and very good quality, though it’s prone to glitter shades and I’m not really a shimmer fan. Trouble is I often find I can’t tell if the look I’ve chosen is too much to be professional, just because of the presence of color even if it’s otherwise the same application. I still avoid blue, but I have done orange, dark red, yellow, and purple. I want to do green but I haven’t yet managed to figure out how to keep it from being overwhelming, and I love grays but the palette I currently have may be too shimmery. Not like my work demands I be buttoned down, but I don’t want it to seem too much for daytime.

Maybe I should only use one bright color anywhere in the eye, in order to keep its presence subdued. The style I do requires like five different colors, and I will often use all variations on one hue. But maybe if I keep them all neutrals like browns except for maybe the lid, the effect might work more subtly while still having some colorful presence. I guess I need more practice.

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Spotty little mushroom person

2021-07-26T13:48:14Z

Not feeling great about my appearance lately. Specifically my skin and hair, but generally haven’t thought I looked great.

Last month I broke out pretty seriously, for the first time since I think the pandemic began. My Curology prescription, which had been doing pretty well by me, seemed to have abruptly stopped working, and my chin has been a spotty pink mess for weeks now. I made an appointment with an actual dermatologist who recommended an expensive prescription-only preparation which doesn’t seem to have made a dent in it, but since going away to see Bernie my use of it hasn’t been that consistent. I probably need to make sure I’m using it every night for a solid period of time before I’m sure it won’t do the job. But in the meantime, the spots are pretty bad, and right over my chin area where my skin is most showing its age. :-/ I’ve been trying not to fixate on it, but a year of Zoom calls has made me very aware of how my face is starting to change.

Sigh. Acne and sagging skin? Why do I have the worst of youth and age at the same time?

And I hate my hair. I’ve been growing it out from my short cut of the last several years, but I really don’t like the weird in-between stage it’s been in for months. I don’t know how to style it so it doesn’t look awkward, like I’m a little mushroom person. I think a lot about shaving it back down into a quiff, tall in the center and razored on the sides. I actually think I made it work, and I enjoyed having the aspect of a fierce bird. But as I’m aging, I think I might be getting too old for such a severe look. God knows I can’t function if boys don’t think I’m pretty, so I think I need to grow it out long again into something more femme. I have kind of missed having girlier hair. But I can’t get there without going through this awkward growing-out period. And if I shave it down again out of frustration, it’ll take even longer to get it long again. So I guess I’m stuck being patient and weird-looking a while more.

At least I’ve been in pretty good shape lately. Took a few pictures lately where that’s visibly on point, which makes me feel a bit better about things. I worked out really seriously during lockdown, probably the toughest workouts of my life, so I’ve got that going for me at least. However I basically did nothing over the two and a half weeks Bernie visited, so I feel so week and squishy right now. I need to get back in my good habit so dragging myself through the workout isn’t so painful. It took me a long time to build up the strength, and I really don’t want to lose it. Not to mention the slammin’ body it gave me.

Photoshop takes care of the pimples. If only my hair weren’t so mushroomy.

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Clown eyes

2019-07-24T14:23:22Z

I have been wearing eye makeup more often lately. Not really sure why. Probably watching too many drag queens and enjoying the process of painting. I'm not sure if it makes me look better or more beautiful in any way-- which, if you know me, you know I am always interested in looking. I am fortunate that I do feel beautiful a good chunk of the time, and I very rarely ever feel ugly. But I think that is small in comparison to the amount of time I spend staring in the mirror absolutely unable to decide if I look beautiful or not.

Isn't that weird? You'd think that when you're wondering if you meet an extreme like "beautiful"-- not "nice" or "presentable" or anything of that nature --it'd be pretty clear whether you hit it or not. But it's often not to me. "I can't tell if I look AMAZING or merely fine!"

Check this unflattering industrial lighting

Honestly I think I like the process of doing the makeup more than I like actually wearing it. I probably actually do look prettiest without it. But I do like the process, and I have gotten less terrible at it recently with some practice. I have brown eyes with a bit of green in them depending on the light, so they often do seem to "pop" when there is a color on them. I also have been blessed with long thick eyelashes. So it probably never really looks bad, at least if I do it right.

Like most people, I probably look best when I stick to neutral or skin-adjacent colors-- browns, pinks, grays. But I've been experimenting with bright colors too. The only clothes colors I don't think look good on me are pastel pinks, purples, and yellows; I wear pretty much everything else. With makeup, however, I gravitate to warmer colors mostly. This may be the bias of the Modern Renaissance palette from Anastasia Beverly Hills being the only really nice makeup I own. It's all tones of red-yellow-orange-brown. I didn't buy it; it was in a swag bag I got from going to see a painting demonstration by the drag queen Miss Fame. But it's higher quality and more expensive than anything I'm willing to buy, with the exception of foundation. Also I strongly prefer matte to shimmer; I hate how shiny highlighter has been so en vogue lately.

I think I like how orange looks on me. I sort of like red and have been playing with it a bit, but I think it tends to play up any redness in my skin or the whites of my eyes. Outside of that, I can make a pretty lowkey look with purple, especially combined with brown. And if I use a light hand to not make it too garish, green will bring out the green in my irises.

It occurs to me I've never tried an all-yellow look, though I'd have it as a companion to something in orange, red, or brown. I wonder if that could look nice, or just jaundiced on my pale white girl skin. And I never wear blue. Blue just always, always looks like way too much to me. And I think I internalized this one time when I was a kid my mother commented that blue eyeshadow was tacky. I never remember her wearing more than very minimal makeup-- she was appearance conscious and quite pretty, except she had fairly serious acne scarring, and I think she felt sort of compelled to downplay that with makeup. But seeing as she was young in the seventies and eighties, I can guess where her perception of blue eyeshadow came from. So, since it's beyond my skill to keep it from looking clownish, no blue for me.

I know a lot of people just wear makeup because they enjoy it, not because they feel like it makes them "prettier" or whatever. But I'm not a hundred percent sure I don't look a little silly, seeing as my skill level is low. I also have very little space between my eyebrows and my eyes-- charitably comparable to Cara Delevigne's, though you could say I'm quite literally "low brow." ;-) Maybe it looks crowded and overdone. But it's fun to play around with. Still, and I bet I'd be content if I had another person to do eyeshadow on in the morning instead of myself. Get to do it, wouldn't need to wear it. Heh.

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Dressing like myself

2019-03-28T17:49:47Z

Lately I've felt I've had a hard time dressing day to day in a manner that feels like me.

I know the theory of how to dress at this point. Just after I graduated college I made a point of figuring out how to present myself in a slightly more grownup and stylish way, and I have studied costume design enough that I'm familiar with the ways clothing is used as communication. From my day to day, I pretty much always look nice, put together, and with a little bit of taste. I really, really hate when I don't look good, so even in casual situations where I want to be comfortable, I endeavor to be at least a little considered and to avoid anything unflattering.

But lately I've felt a little dissatisfied with how I've been presenting myself. My clothes have felt like they don't really reflect the image I want to put forth. I feel like this often happens to me in winter, that the need to keep warm makes me layer on items that I don't really want to wear.

I've always had certain style preferences. I have always been attention seeking, and want to be seen as hot even in situations where that is probably not appropriate. I'm pretty attached to appearing thin, and conventionally attractive to men. I like showing a little more skin. I prefer classic styles to trends, but not to the exclusion of looking current. I love blacks and other neutrals but do not want to default to them. Those have been consistent even as I've evolved, learned more about dressing, and had different situations to dress for.

Lately, if I'm honest, the image I want to put forward these days is of a woman that men want but are slightly afraid of. When I settled on my current hairstyle— a bright pink quiff with the sides shaved —I found it looked best when I dressed either harder-edged to match it, or in HIGH FEMME styles that strongly contrasted with it. Those, I think, tend to serve my intended effect. Less declarative looks don't work as well with it— T-shirt and jeans, even the collar shirts and sweaters that I've been sticking to as work wear in cold weather.

Today for tutoring at Bunker Hill with rehearsal afterward, I wore gray skinny jeans, black suede Pumas, and a navy ribbed sweater with a tiny diamond earring and necklace set. I look... fine. But not really how I want to look. I like the shoes, jewelry, and pants, actually— I finally transitioned to skinny jeans after years of wearing bootcut even though they were long out of style, because I didn't like anything making my hips look fuller. But it was a good change, I still look very sleek, and now much more modern. But I guess I always feel a little schlumpy in sweaters unless they're SKIN-TIGHT.

I'm trying to think of my ideal wardrobe would look like, without the practical considerations of the day to day. I think I'm leaning these power femme and hard femme looks. Professional, high-fashion-inflected dresses with skirts no longer than the knee. Gothy-punky styles with motorcycle touches-- the structured leather jackets, heavy boots with hardware, pants with the seamed padding at the knee. And there's probably a dash of Victorian/Edwardian in there too— the look is one of the many reasons I'm fascinated with those time periods. I am mildly drawn to menswear references, but more specifically the military-equestrian-tuxedo touches that come from evoking that era. And everything must always be fitted, fitted, fitted, I guess so that boys never forget how lean and hot I am.

Maybe it's time to go through my wardrobe and get rid of everything that doesn't conform to those preferences. I think I keep a lot of it for work, which is hard to translate to my true aesthetic, which is BODYCON and LOOK AT ME all the time. I still wear bare midriffs despite being over thirty because GOD FORBID anybody forget my KILLER ABS. But maybe I'll try just packing away the stuff I feel ehhh about and see if I can manage without it for a while. At least it might make me feel like I'm not settling all the time for looking blah.

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Local moron cuts own hair, film at eleven

2019-02-04T21:43:11Z

I have done that thing that no vain person should ever do, attempted to cut and dye my own hair.

I have been getting a little shaggy lately, and I wanted to change things up a little. I decided I wanted to go back to dyeing things again, as I thought it was fun. I'm also trying to save money these days, so I thought I'd do it myself. My short hair has to be trimmed so often I figured if I screwed it up, I could just get it all cut off and it would regrow to the desired length again fairly quickly.

So the other night I started by bleaching it, just the top, so once it started to grow dark roots again it would look a little deliberate. First I had to wash it because of how much hair product I've always got in these days. I just bought bleaching supplies from my local Sally Beauty, mixed up the stuff, and left it on my head under a plastic cap for about forty minutes. After washing that off, it bleached pretty cleanly, with minimal brassy tones. I was amused at how it looked— pretty much like the Heat Miser, as my friend Allyn pointed out —and joked that I felt I needed to remedy the fact that I didn't look enough like a douchebag.

The plan was always to dye it a color again— I thought I'd use up the rest of the pink dye I still had from the last time —but I really didn't feel like washing my hair a third time in one day, so I held off until today. I decided to buzz down the back and sides before I dyed anything, so I bought a cheap electric razor, laid down a drop cloth, and got to hacking. I didn't do... terrible? It's not great, particularly the back, but for taking a pair of clippers to my own head, I figure I could look a lot worse. And the price was right.

I then jumped in the shower and used my Overtone pink conditioner to do the dyeing. I was feeling a little lazy and didn't want to deal with the cleanup from my traditional pink dye. But as you can see, the color isn't great. It's paler than I want, and not as consistent; you can see a bit of the bleach color still peeking out. Again, I could have done better on the back of the head. But, perhaps ill-advisedly, I would not be ashamed to leave the house and teach my classes like this.

I am going to go over the dye with the traditional, out-of-shower stuff soon, but I'm a bit burnt out on it for today. I definitely will need to get the top trimmed by somebody who knows what they're doing. It is SO thick, and it won't stand up if it gets much longer. But I'm pleased that I didn't completely botch this, but I'll admit there's a little something of finding your elementary-school-aged kid with scissors in her hand, hacking away at her own head.

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Alexander Brandy, mark 2 -- aka "Drag Hans Gruber"

2018-02-05T02:21:27Z

Tonight on a whim I decided to take a real crack at putting together a drag look. I've wanted to do it for a while now, but thus far the only practical progress I'd made was ages ago. But I saw a really cool drag king look on the Internet and it inspired me, so tonight I brought my developing drag persona, Alexander Brandy, out to play for the evening.

Since I cut my hair, that issue with the look was taken care of. What I really needed to practice was the makeup. I'm familiar enough with the principles of drag makeup— use dark colors to make features recede, and light colors to make features stand out —but I don't have much practice, and the bit I do have I'd only done previously in the service of beauty makeup. So I watched a tutorial of a drag king doing his paint and roughly followed along. I went darker than I usually do, in an effort to broaden and deepen my features, in an effort to carve away the softness and make things a little coarser in a way we associate with masculinity. In my effort I darkened my eyebrows, widened my nose and forehead, carved out my cheeks, extended my sideburns, and broadened my jaw. It's always tricky for me to make contouring not look like just dirty smudges on my skin, but it tends to show up better in pictures than in person.

I also put on my men's clothes, which are unfortunately too large for me, but tried to take them in a little bit with pins— enough to make them appear to fit, but not so much they emphasized my feminine body shape. I'm not exactly a curvy girl, but my waist definitely pulls in. There is also the issue of my decidedly unmasculine proportions. While Phoebe likes her petiteness, Alexander is a bit self-conscious of his size. So to make him look a little more manly, we made an attempt to pad.

I didn't bother to bind my breasts, just smushed them with a sports bra, since they're not that obvious anyway, but my chest seemed weirdly hollow for a man. I have NO pecs, which while a bit surprising given the kind of workouts I do, I actually am quite pleased with; I like the look of how I have kind of big arms and a very small, narrow chest. But it looked wrong on Alexander, so in an effort to make him a little more swole, I stole one of the bustle pads out of the Hawking costumes and stuffed it into the sports bra just under my collarbones. (That thing has been an ass and now a chest!) I'd already had the padded bra I cut in half for shoulder pads and put them in as well. I'm not sure how well-balanced they were together, but I think it's the right direction to work in. A vest and tie completed the look. Nothing fits great, though, and I think I look a bit too "hippy" in the full-length shots.

I am vain enough that if I'm going to look like a guy, I want to be a cute guy. I just do not have the proportions to be the kind of guy I find attractive, even with the pads. Also what I find most beautiful in women (which I shoot for in my regular look) tends to be pretty diametrically opposed to what I find most beautiful in men. I may be able to shoot for that "delicate chiseled modelesque" kind of handsome, but my makeup skills will have to improve.

I also tried the look with facial hair, defaulting to the goatee with the jawline beard, a look I often like on men. I was aiming for something a little more Tony Stark-esque. Instead I seem to have turned myself into a young Hans Gruber. Not what I was expecting, I have to say.

Guess we know who I'd have to do for Snatch Game. Or whatever the drag king equivalent would be. "Chust anotha American cowboy who's seen too many movies?"

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Fuzzyheaded ninnyhammer

2017-09-22T21:06:06Z

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.

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