All Eyes on Me

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!

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.

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.

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?"

I've been working out in the gym at Lesley University lately. It's been very convenient, as I can go after I teach my classes, and it has very nice facilities. Mostly I just want to run indoors while it's cold outside, as I tend toward weird asthma-like symptoms when I breath cold air for too long.

As a faculty member, I'm allowed to use the gym for free, which is nice. But I've never seen anyone other than students in there-- at least, never anyone I thought looked like post-college-aged adult. I've decided not to feel weird about it, as I know I'm allowed, but it does seem a bit odd. Where are all the other people like me who can use it as a job perk? Why do I never see them? Is it just the timing? Or are there just not many others who choose to use it?



When I'm teaching I dress very professionally to give myself some authority, but in the gym I wear my typical workout clothes, often just a sports bra and leggings. I dislike seeing students of mine in there, as I don't know if it makes a weird impression. Like, hi, I'm in charge of your grade, and here's my midriff? God, I've been dreading running into one in the locker room. I know I would not have wanted to be around my professor while one of us was changing.

And I wonder how the students who don't know me read me. I've been mistaken for a student at Lesley before, but usually by other employees; only once by an actual student that I know of. Do they assume I'm one of them, or to kids of their age, am I obviously older?

I mean, I know I look good. I am beautiful. Honestly I'm in better shape than most of the students, not just in general but even those I see in the gym. But I wonder how old I read, at least to people younger than me. I turn thirty this year. My skin has been really clear lately, thanks to the excellent acne medication I've been using, but I've begun to worry about the two spots on top of my cheeks that I think are beginning to look sun damaged, or possibly just showing age. I'm afraid my metabolism might slow down at any time.

Only a ridiculous person wants to look twenty forever. But aging is a great fear of mine. So I cling a little bit to things like when I get mistaken for still a college kid. But the truth is, I'm not a kid anymore, and I worry when that's going to catch up with me.

So I did what I was threatening to do, changed my hair color for the first time in my life. Because I wanted to be Betty Draper for Halloween but don’t have the right coloring for it, the idea occurred that maybe I could use the costume as an excuse to change it. The idea, once pondered, of a change seemed nice, not just for the costume but to try something new. I was nervous, because I was really afraid it wasn’t going to come out, and some stylists warned me off because of how big the transition was going to be. But you should do something drastic with your hair once in your life, and I never have. So, repeating to myself the mantra that it’s just hair, it grows back, I took the plunge.



I am actually pretty happy with it! It is noticeably a different color, not just a different shade of brown, and doesn’t have that brassy falseness a lot of brown-to-blonde dye jobs turn out. It’s honestly not exactly what I wanted— I was hoping for something a little lighter, a little more golden –and it’s not quite Betty’s color. But one Halloween costume is just the excuse, not the point, and I will take looking good over trying and failing for perfection. I was also concerned that my eyebrows would look odd still being so dark, but now that I think of it my mom's were darker than her hair too. For reference, here's the brown I was previously, in case the difference isn't obvious.



My younger self would be very surprised this was the direction I went in. But my tastes have gotten blonder as I’ve gotten older. I used to be drawn almost strictly to brunet men, but these days I’m finding blonds catch my eye more and more. I don’t know if it’s because of my favorite look for Chris Evans, or if my love for it is symptomatic of the larger pattern. Though I’ve always admired the looks of a number of blond women. I’ve always adored crearespero’s wavy golden hair, and that feature of course naturally made it into my visualization of Mrs. Hawking. There tends to be a particular shade I’ve gone for— not too dishwater, not too platinum, but that medium gold is my favorite.

And then, of course, there’s my mother. My ur-blonde, the first beautiful woman in my life. I remember when I was very small, wondering what I would look like as a grownup, and having a tough time picturing it for some reason because I wasn’t blonde like her. She was also the origin of my admiration for blondes with green eyes, a feature that Frances and therefore Mrs. Hawking share.



I’ve been working to remake myself in a way recently. The shape of my life, generally, but specifically my body. The diet and exercise have been to really to make me become more like what I feel is my true self. But this hair thing doesn’t feel really ME, not really PHOEBE. I thought that might make me uncomfortable. I’ve never been much of an experimenter before. I tend to find myself always working to get to the place I want to be, rather than seeing what possibilities are out there and trying them on knowing they won’t all be forever. So it’s very unlike me to make a change in the service of being something other than what I want to truly be. But I find I’m okay with it right now. It’s fun for right now, it makes me smile and shakes things up a little. Overall I like my natural hair better for me. But this is a nice change of pace.

I wonder if, now that I’ve made the transition, if I could make it more the blonder shade I imagined. I don’t want to over-process it. There was no bleach in this treatment, which I was told spared my hair a lot of damage. I also don’t feel like dealing with that now. But I’m curious, now that I know it’s possible to change at all without completely wrecking things.

In keeping with my recent fixation on improving my complexion, I have wanted for a while to get a facial cleansing brush. They're little handheld, battery-operated devices with a spinning head of soft bristles that's supposed to do a better job of cleaning out your pores than scrubbing your face with your fingers. I've been researching them for a while, but the good ones tend to be very expensive, such as the archetypical Clarisonic, which is basically the Cadillac. So I'd been holding off buying one until I did enough research. Cheap ones exist, but they can be too rough and encourage acne rather than help you get rid of it.

I found a mid-range one from Olay on deep discount at Target, however, so I decided to give it a try. I used it for the first time last night. It's waterproof, has two speeds, and comes with an exfoliating cleanser. The reviews on it tend to be pretty good. Basically you spread your cleanser over your face, wet the bristles, and move it over your face for about sixty seconds. I used my own apricot scrub instead of the stuff that came with it, in order to minimize any reaction to the new process. According to my reading, these automatic brushes have a tendency to break out your face at first before your skin gets used to it, so I thought that might help. I enjoyed the sensation of the brush on my face, but I had some slight sensitivity on my chin, where I've had the most lingering acne. Afterward I used my moisturizer as usual, and instead of spot-treating, I put my acne cream over my whole face, in case that might help forestall any breaking out.

I'm going to try to make a habit of using it, at least for a while, to see if it makes any difference. Supposedly it has a good track record for smoothing and brightening skin. But some people do say don't use it every day. I mostly hope it will eventually help me with my acne. I'm in the process of overhauling my lifestyle recently in order to feel healthier and steadier, and clearing up my face really helps with that.

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. )

The sky is blue, and that’s beautiful.

Everyone thinks so. I mean, look at it. Even people for whom blue may not be their favorite color, they can definitely see how pretty it is. Even if it weren’t obvious to me, everybody around me tends to think so.

If you have eyes in your head, you can see it. By any standard, it’s blue.

I really like how that blue looks; honestly, sometimes it seems like the bluer it is, the more I like it. So I’m actually rather invested in the sky being blue. I work hard to avoid allowing things like pollution and smog to ruin that blue. So the fact that it’s blue gives me a lot of joy, and I put a considerable effort into keeping it that way.

But because I like that blue so much—as I said, sometimes it seems like the bluer, the better — it’s on my mind a lot. The comparative blueness. The quality of it. “God, it’s so blue today! Gorgeous!” “Well, it could be a little bluer, but it’s still pretty blue, and it’s still nice the way it is.” But sometimes it’s not so much about appreciating it as worrying over the possibility that someday, it might turn green. “Make sure you don’t let the sky turn green,” so that I put in the effort to keep the smog levels down. “Ugh, keep polluting like this, and the sky’s going to turn green for sure.”

The sky is blue, not green. The very idea is absurd, and I’m not crazy. I can look at it and see that.

But sometimes— and how often can vary, depending on a lot of things —the little voice in my head actually tells me, “The sky is green.”

The funny thing is? Most of the time, it is not hard to ignore. I mean, yeah, it’s silly that there’s a part of me that thinks that, but it’s OBVIOUSLY, VERIFIABLY WRONG. It doesn’t bother me that much because it’s not difficult at all to just go about my life, free of distress, ignoring the plainly irrational thought without allowing it to change my behavior in any way.

I am proud to say that I’ve never allowed that idea to affect my actual behavior. Maybe I’ve occasionally made a bad choice on an isolated occasion, but it’s never become a pattern and it’s never hurt me. I will confess, though, that sometimes the voice gets loud, and sometimes it gets vehement. Most of the time it’s just an occasional moment of “The sky is green,” but in very bad moments, weak moments, it becomes, “Phoebe. The sky is so fucking green I don’t know how you stand it. Shut down the factory, close off the smokestacks. NEVER OPEN THEM AGAIN.”

I’ll admit, the yelling has on certain occasions become so bad I started to believe it. But still, always, I have never acted on it. I have always been able to understand intellectually that I’m being crazy, even if it doesn’t feel true in the moment.

I suppose there’s still the temptation to go to absurd lengths to maintain that blue. But I’ve never given into it— I am too busy, too healthy, too grounded, thank God. But right now, the sky stays blue pretty easily these days. That may not always be the case.

I know it can’t stay blue forever; even if I don't smog the hell out of it, eventually the sun’s going to set, and all that gorgeous color’s going to go away and change into something else. I don’t like thinking about that. The color of the sky is probably way too important to me. Especially since its change is almost inevitable, no matter what I do, and I shouldn’t put myself in a position to hate the new color and be miserable. People put way too much stock in blue, I know. Other colors can be beautiful, and the world would be a better place if we didn’t care so much about beauty at all. But I’ve internalized it. Blue is most beautiful to me. I want the sky to be blue forever.

When the sun sets— if the sky really does turn green— I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Today is my twenty-eighth birthday.