Shoe porn

My kingdom for an excuse to wear these babies.

Beauty products are not the enemy

This surprises me.

First of all, I'm surprised at the assumption that media and advertising are key in making people feel dissatisfied with their looks. the media has never been a huge factor in my feeling unattractive. I didn't need advertising to look in the mirror and see that the skin around my eyes is dark (exactly like Emperor Popeatine's - yes, even in childhood) and no one else has that. I didn't need the advertising to see that I have more and darker hair on my face and body than any other female around me and, until high school, any of my male peers. I didn't need advertising to be mistaken for a boy by random grownups when my hair was short. I didn't need advertising to know that J.K. Rowling's unflattering description of Snape's physical appearance is also an accurate description of my physical appearance. Anything in the media simply reiterated what I saw with my own eyes every day (and what my peers were only too happy to remind me of on the playground).

Secondly, I'm surprised to see use of beauty products presented as a bad thing, because to me it's been a huge boost to my self esteem. I'll never forget my Grade 8 grad photo. My mother allowed me, for the first time in my life, to wear a bit of makeup. Just concealer and lip gloss. I plucked my eyebrows and bleached my mustache. It was also the first photo I'd ever had done that was retouched. The dark under my eyes was neutralized, my zits were erased, I had two discrete eyebrows and no sign of facial hair. I looked like a perfectly decent-looking human being - and a female human being at that!. Inspired, I continued using concealer and began to introduce other makeup and beauty products. And as I gained control over my unattractive features, I ceased to identify with them. As I mastered covering the dark circles under my eyes, I stopped thinking of my eyes as dark and hollow and evil-looking, and began to think of them as green, well-lashed, and capable of shining or glaring or smouldering. When I started bleaching my teeth I stopped thinking of my smile as yellow and hideous, and started realizing that my natural smile is actually quite beautiful, and can charm or disarm or put people at ease or even successfully flirt. When I got hair stuff that actually keeps my oil under control for over 24 hours (even if there's headbanging involved), I stopped thinking of my hair as oily and gross, and started to see that it's soft and silky and just needs to be washed every day, just like the rest of me. The more control I gain over my physical flaws, the more I see myself as more than a collection of physical flaws. Nothing shows that the physical is ephemeral better than editing the physical using everyday drugstore products.

Third, I'm surprised at the anti-photoshopping sentiment. We all know that it's done, we all know how it's done. And I don't know about you guys, but that's done wonders for my self-esteem. Fifteen years ago, I was thinking "I'll never look like that." Twelve years ago, I was thinking "Maybe with makeup I could possibly look like that." Now I'm thinking "I could totally be photoshopped to look like that, no problem!"

And finally, I'm surprised at the sentiment that spending time and resources on beauty is taking time and resources away from other, apparently more worthy things. First of all, we all do this. It shouldn't need explaining. We all maintain careers and social lives and households and political awareness and hobbies and interests and a decent level of being well-informed, and we all do whatever beauty routine we think is most suitable. Your hair appointment doesn't take away from your self-actualization, so why would you assume the same of a kid? Besides, most beauty routines are physical and mindless - like painting a wall or chopping up vegetables - which leaves all the best parts of your brain open to intellectual work. I'm sure I'm not the only one reading and writing while my nails dry and my arms bleach or doing some of my best creative thinking while I shave and exfoliate.

To me, beauty products are a tool that I use to assert control over my body, to express and present as my real self rather than the sum of my genetics. They allowed me to assert my independence from and ultimately conquer the sources of my self-loathing. If people are starting to achieve this at a younger age, more power to them.

Things They Should Invent: hair removal method for hairs that aren't there

Every method of hair removal will only remove hairs that are there. So why's this a problem you're asking? Let me give you an example:

I pluck my eyebrows every day. This means that at any given time, there are a bunch of eyebrow hairs that are queued up to grow back, but currently are not visible. If I were to go get my eyebrows done professionally, or I were to go get my stray eyebrow hairs permanently removed, they would only remove the unwanted hairs that they can see. A week later, I'd once again have a bunch of stray eyebrow hairs, because the hairs that were not there when I got my eyebrows done will have grown back. If I want literally all my excess eyebrow hairs removed, I'd have to let my whole shaggy unibrow grow back in, which means I'd have to spend probably a couple of weeks walking around looking butch and undignified.

There must be some kind of thingy inside my skin that tells it "Grow another hair back right here." (I don't have the terminology, but you know what I mean?) I want to be able to take the entire bridge of my nose between my eyebrows and tell all those thingies inside my skin "Don't grow any more hairs here, at all, ever." Or perhaps remove from my skin the thingies that tell it to grow a hair here.

I would pay enormous amounts of money for this.

A Toronto moment

The lady next to me on the subway is wearing exactly the same scarf as me. Mine is intricately and decoratively folded and knotted in my very best imitation of the style worn by some random girl from France I saw on the subway. Hers is wrapped around her head as a hijab.

(Aside: I'm still trying to figure out if I'm allowed to compliment a hijab-wearer on her scarf the same way I'd compliment another woman on her shoes.)

Teach me how to use a curling iron

So I wrap my hair around and around and around the curling iron, all the way up to the scalp because I want the whole length to be curled. I hold it for the requisite 10 seconds. I squeeze the handle to get the curling iron out. The tong thingy does loosen, but the curling iron doesn't come out of my hair. It just stays there stuck. I have to unwrap it most of the way before it will come out, thus negating the curl.

What am I doing wrong? How do I get the curling iron out of my hair without completely unwrapping the curl?

Open Letter to my hair

Dear hair:

I will braid you for sleeping. That is non-negotiable. Your last-ditch attempts to look gorgeous and sexy when I'm getting ready for bed despite being limp and apathetic all day will not change this. So why not be gorgeous and sexy earlier in the day, then get limp and apathetic at night when you're about to be braided anyway?

Things They DID Invent: cami-bras

Me in 2006.

The Globe and Mail today.

Refining the quick fertility test

I previously came up with the idea of a quick general fertility test. Here's a thought on how it might work: test the menstruation for the presence of an ovum. If you've ovulated, the ovum should be somewhere in there, right?

Problems: the ovum is only one cell, so you'd have to go through ALL the menstruation to find it rather than just taking a sample. (Unless it leaves some sort of residuals behind?)

It wouldn't confirm the viability of the ovum, just the presence. That could help - if there's no ovum you've got your answer - but it wouldn’t be a definitive one-shot yes or no.

The test would have to be taken multiple months, because some people ovulate unreliably.

Nevertheless, if they could come up with a simple at-home method to test for the presence of an ovum in one's own menstruation, that would give us considerably more information.

Things They Should Invent: tester-sized mascara

The problem with trying new mascara is you don't know if it will work better than your previous mascara. Obviously they can't have in-store testers for sanitary reasons, but still it really sucks to drop ten bucks on something that ends up being worse than what you were using before (and therefore is useless).

Solution: very small tubes of mascara that sell for maybe two or three dollars. They have the same brush as the regular mascara because the brush is an essential part of the application, but the brush handle is shorter and they only contain a few days' worth of mascara. You drop a couple of bucks, test it, and if it's better you buy a full-sized tube with an easier-to-use full-size brush handle. Maybe they could even sell it at a loss, because people totally aren't going to use mascara brush with an inch-long handle for everyday.

I can think of at least three mascaras I would try if I didn't have to pay full price for them. If only one company did this, they'd be in the best position to win over new customers

Grande mort par petites morts

According to Broadsheet, there are sex ed programs in Texas with the thesis OMG, you're all gonna DIE! (traduction libre).

So here's the thing: when I was that age, I wouldn't have minded dying. Actually I still wouldn't exactly mind - the inevitability of death makes me rather blasé about it - but at that age with the bullies and the schoolbuses and the parental demands and societal expectations and no idea that it would ever get easier and being told "These are the best years of your life," my reaction to the idea of dying was "At least I could finally get some peace and quiet!"

Because I'm a late bloomer emotionally, my interest in sex didn't come until a year or two after sex ed was over, and my virginity didn't feel like a burden until even later.

However, if the phase of my life where I considered my virginity a burden had occurred earlier and the phase of my life where I would have welcomed death with open arms had extended a couple more years, and if during this time I had honestly seriously truly believed that having sex would make me die, I totally would have actively sought out sex at the first available opportunity, regardless of quality. My unwanted virginity was primarily due to lack of desirable, suitable and willing partners. If I had seriously thought that sex would cause my death, I would totally have narrowed those criteria down to just willing, or maybe even unenthusastic but coerceable.

So perhaps it isn't the best strategy for sex ed at a difficult age.

Dana Fuchs has miracle hair

Check this out:



She has long wild sexy awesome hair, probably three times as much as I do, with no clips or anything in it. She's on stage, under lights, singing, tossing her head around, arguing with her boyfriend, and only ONCE does a piece of hair fall in front of her eyes. I look down at my keyboard and a piece of hair falls in front of my eyes.

Things They Should Invent: redistributive cosmetics

I use powder to make my forehead less shiny and gloss to make my lips more shiny. I use concealer to make the skin under my eyes lighter and shadow to make the skin over my eyes darker. I spend a lot of money and effort on growing more hair on my head and less hair elsewhere on my body.

There must be a better way! Can't they invent something to just relocate stuff from one area to another?

Can we have headbands come back in style please?

Today I accidentally discovered that my hair looks fantastic in a headband. It looks copious and flowing and I don't look like a trekkie or a polygamist. Unfortunately, the look isn't actively flattering to my face and it isn't in style. Since my haircut isn't fashionable, any hairstyle I do has to have two of the following: my hair looks good objectively, the hairstyle is actively flattering to my face, or the look is in style.

So can we have a headband trend please? I've already suffered enough with leggings and low boots and empire waists and all this other stuff I can't' wear.

Barring that, could we have chunky heels back in style please?

What would have happened if my parents had banned Barbie dolls

Broadsheet discusses parents forbidding their children from owning Barbie dolls.

I had dozens of Barbie dolls - either 27 or 37, I forget which. I liked them because they let me be a girl (in that playing with dolls is a girly thing to do) and they let me role-play at being at the fun parts of being a grown-up woman (dressing up in grownup clothes and heels and, later, having sex.) I'm sure my parents weren't too thrilled with this. They tended to discourage girly things, and I'm sure they didn't want their kids coveting fancy clothes or role-playing sex. However, they did not ban Barbie from our house, which is a good thing because if they had it would have been far worse for my self-image.

You see, as I've mentioned before, I'm very femme mentally but don't look very feminine physically - especially not when I was a pre-pubescent child. I've always been bigger than average for my age, I have a big nose (just like my father's) and a heavy brow (just like my father) and unattractive dark skin around my eyes (which I'd never seen on another person when I was a child). I'm clumsy and awkward and say and do the wrong thing (just like my father). My feet are enormous and rather ugly (just like my father's). My body hair has always been black and more copious than average (just like my father's). I was the first person in my class (male or female) to be able to grow a mustache and the only person (male or female) at the Grade 5 pool party with hairy armpits. When my hair was short people mistook me for a boy all the time, which is why I now wear my hair hip-length.

My parents often tried to discourage me from girly things and point me more towards boy things. I don't know why exactly this is - I don't have a brother so I have no idea which parts of their child-rearing were about raising girls and which parts were about raising children - but I suspect a lot of it had to do with because being girly is less convenient. A kid who doesn't care about clothes is easier to shop for than one who wants to be a pretty pretty princess (and I was especially complicated because I wanted to be a pretty princess but had no idea what kinds of clothes I wanted to accomplish that and hate the process of shopping.) A kid who wants to dig in the garden is more useful than one who runs away screaming "EWWWW! Worms!!!!" It's easier to get everyone off to school on time when no one feels the need to do their hair and put on make-up than when you have two kids wearing a total of five kinds of foundation between them.

However, because I was already wanting to express and present as far more feminine than I was capable of, whenever my parents tried to discourage me from something girly or encouraged me towards something more boyish, I felt like they were saying I don't get to be girly because I'm not pretty enough, and should just be a boy instead. I was nowhere near capable of expressing this at the time, but that's how I felt. They said "You can't wear a skirt because you'll be running around," I heard "You aren't girly enough to dress like a girl, so you may as well just act like a noisy smelly running-around boy." (This is back when boys were yucky.) They made me help my father with home improvements or join him on a bike ride, I heard "You're practically a boy anyway, so you have to keep your father company with his boy stuff." (And to add insult to injury, when my sister didn't have to do this stuff (in retrospect probably because she was too young) I felt like it was because she's prettier and looks more like a girl so she doesn't have to do the yucky boy stuff.) So if they had forbidden Barbie dolls, I would have taken it as "You're not pretty enough to play with these pretty things like all the other girls."

I did like some boy toys and boy activities too. I like legos and trains and science fiction and video games and dodgeball and Ninja Turtles. But these were never a source of conflict. I could do them, I like them, people never tried to stop me, they never made people think I was a boy. It didn't feel like gender expression, it just felt like doing stuff I liked. I don't like them because they're masculine (or even despite the fact that they're masculine), I like them because I like them. But with girly toys, there was always an aspect of gender expression there. I guess it's similar to how if I like a dress it's partly because it makes me look feminine, but if I like running shoes it's because they're nice running shoes.

Now I did (and probably still do) have body image issues, but that had nothing to do with the Barbie dolls. For example, the thing I hate most is the dark skin around my eyes, but that's because I never saw anything similar on anyone else ever except cartoon portrayals of evil. (I have seen it on other people since, but no one who was around when I was a kid had anything like it.) I hate how my stomach sticks out no matter what because my waist is so short there's nowhere else for my guts to go, but that's more from cultural disdain for fat rather than anything to do with Barbie specifically. I'd still have that even if I'd never met a Barbie doll.

But mostly Barbie's figure was irrelevant because I was pre-pubescent when I was playing with her, and she represented a grown-up woman. I did aspire to be a grown-up woman one day, but I certainly didn't want to be one yet. My Barbie play was just forward-looking role-play for one day when I was a proper grownup with breasts and heels and lipstick. I didn't have big breasts or mile-long legs when I was playing with Barbie, but that's fine because I didn't want them yet. I wanted to be a pretty little girl, not a sexy grown-up woman. And by the time I had matured enough physically that I had a woman's body and matured enough mentally that I wanted a woman's body (i.e. in the now instead of in the indefinite future), Barbie was irrelevant. When I wasn't getting laid, the other girls around me who were getting laid were relevant (what does she have that I don't?) and when I was getting laid they were irrelevant too because I was quite clearly sexy enough.

All banning Barbies would have done was make me feel more like I wasn't good enough for girly stuff when I was a child. So it's a good thing my parents didn't.

Edited to add: I started out just writing this as an anecdote, but I think I have a broader conclusion. A lot of the time when parents don't want their kids to have Barbies, it's really that they don't want them to want Barbies, or to want what she stands for. But if the kid already wants Barbies (or whatever else the parents are trying to ban), banning the thing isn't going to stop them from wanting it. So when parents are inclined to forbid something, they should first think about whether what they really want is for the kid not to have the thing, or just not to want it.

How to eliminate all but the most medically necessary late-term abortions

I know, this is a boring topic, but I'm just gonna do this one real quick post with a practical solution to a specific problem that has only recently come to my attention, and then on to more interesting things. They're going through the motions of dropping it, so I'll do the same.

In reading the comment pages lately (I know, I know), I'm surprised at how many people are concerned specifically about late-term abortion. I always thought it was more of an "abortions for all" vs. "abortions for none" dichotemy, but it seems for some people it makes a lot of difference how far along the gestation is.

Strange issue that never occurred to me, but luckily I have a solution that will reduce late-term abortion specifically:

Make timely abortion easily accessible to everyone.

If you can just get on the bus one day at your convenience, go down to the local abortion clinic, get your abortion, and take the bus back home where you can recover quietly, you're going to get it within a week of peeing on the stick, possibly the same day. However, if you have to plan out-of-town (out-of-province? out-of-country?) travel, scrounge together a bunch of money, take a day off work and lose a day's pay in the process, find a sitter, convince someone to come with you because you can't drive yourself home after an abortion and the only way to get to the clinic is by car, and/or ditch your overprotective parents and find someplace to crash out of their sight while you recover, that will seriously hinder your ability to get it done in the first trimester.

So if, for whatever reason, the idea of late-term abortion bothers you, the thing to do is lobby for increased access for everyone. That will eliminate late-term abortion in all cases except those upredictable ones where the fetus just goes kerflooey (or whatever it is happens - I'm not up on the third trimester) and has to be removed.

Things They Should Invent: curling irons with switchable barrels

If you want to volumize, you need a large-barrelled curling iron. If you want tight curls or a little nest of curls at the top of your updo or those little accent ringlets, you need a small-barrelled curling iron.

But the same people often want both, either in the same intricate hairdo, or in different simpler hairdos that they have in their repertoire. So you have to own multiple curling irons.

Why not make one curling iron where you can switch out the barrels as needed?

Powdering one's nose

"I have to go powder my nose" is a conventional euphemism for "I have to go to the bathroom."

But does anyone actually powder their nose as their primary make-up touch-up?

Personally, if I'm going to powder anything, it's going to be my forehead. I might do my nose, but my forehead gets shiny way sooner and if anything needs a touch-up it's either that or the lipstick.

Do other people's noses get shiny first?

Why photoshopping shouldn't be allowed in fashion magazines

Antonia Zerbisias points out that Jessica Alba was photoshopped and, in accordance with the mandate of her blog, touches upon its effect on women's body image. But that topic bores me; I want to talk about the other problem with this practice.

The other problem is it makes the clothes look more flattering than they are, which, if this is the kind of magazine that lists clothing credits, is essentially false advertising for the designer and gives them a bye on actually doing their job well.

That is not a well-designed outfit. The shorts do nothing to help her hips, and the belt is too wide which makes her waist look thicker because it encompasses some thicker-than-waist areas and marks them as waist-thin. But by photoshopping the model and the clothes, it gives the impression that it's a more flattering outfit than it actually is.

It isn't that difficult to design a flattering outfit - well, I shouldn't say "It isn't that difficult" because I can't do it, but I have a closet full of clothes that are more flattering than that thing. I have a good 20-30 pounds on Jessica Alba, and my outfit right now makes my waist and hips look better than her pre-photoshopped photo - and my outfit was thrown together while running late based on what's clean and the fact that there was a wind chill of -15 when I left the house this morning, and cost less than $50. A professional photo shoot should be able to do even better.

Any designer who can't make Jessica Alba's figure look sufficiently attractive does not deserve to have their clothes featured in her photo shoot. Photoshopping non-flattering clothes so they look flattering is a disservice to everyone who has to wear clothes. We need to hold our designers accountable!

Things I learned today

1. I look like I know where I'm going. I was in a maze of an office building I've never been in before going to an office I'd never been to before, and by the time I got there like three people were following me because they thought I knew how to get to the office.

2. If you stand at the sink in a public bathroom hurriedly applying makeup while appearing to ignore the other people in the bathroom, it won't occur to them that you're eavesdropping. It only works if you do the makeup like you're in a hurry though, so carry a lot of makeup in your purse for situations where you want to eavesdrop.

3. Dan Snaith is even more awesome than I thought.

Things They Should Invent: custom-made birth control pills

Picture this:

They take some blood, analyze its hormone content, then use that information to come up with the doses that will work best for you - either by choosing from commercially available pills or by compounding a new one. They could consult with the patient on the desired side effects and proceed accordingly.

Doesn't that sound like a much better system?