After reading this fairly incidental profile of a Top Model contestant with Asperger’s Syndrome, I am wondering if fashion model is the most mind-bendingly ironic job for someone with a diagnosable inability to conform to social expectations. Maybe an Aspie con artist would be more unexpected.
Tag: beauty
Scars, gray hair, “real” beauty
A photo: where I’ve been, by dayzoid on Flickr. A self-portrait I think.
I like this scar— I like looking at most scars, and I work on looking at the rest. But the photo itself seems like the kind of thing that gets referred to as “real” beauty in skincare advertising. An older woman, but with flattering makeup and lighting. Gray hair, but stylish and even. Not a bone rack, but posed to look smooth and curvy, never lumpy or saggy or folded. Making some kind of cute and peaceful facial expression. Definitely feminine, but not sexual (not coincidentally, usually looking freshly washed and clean). It’s a very contrived and limited type of “real.” Looking again, this photo is not as extreme as all that, but the demure smile and the smooth white hair reminded me.
I don’t get why more people don’t rant about how patronizing it is to use “real” as a euphemism for old or fat. I can’t decide if it is better or worse than the older concepts of “imperfect beauty” or “inner beauty.” There are probably more phrases in body image activism that drive me bonkers. The whole focus seems off to me— I don’t think it helps anyone to offer these alternate, consolation prize types of beauty, more ways to win at being beautiful. That doesn’t do anything to get away from ranking people or competing. I really think the focus should be on learning to see more kinds of beauty, to be a better beholder.
Scar pride
At first I was just looking for a few photos of people’s scars, having been reminded by Erin’s copy of the Learning to Love You More book. But, in typical internetto fashion, now I am intrigued by the patterns that show up when you look at a mass of public scar photos. There are some popular subjects— self-harm exhibitionism and processing, scars from pregnancy and cesarians (not so much finding episiotomy scar pics), voyeurism with optional processing (especially around major burn scars, and ritualized scarification by some African cultures), manifestos and statements about beauty and beautiful scars, and more general scar pride and storytelling. I find this last one the least complicated, the easiest to post photos without major accompanying comments. (In this one I’m only spotting basics, about how it’s easier to be proud of pretty much anything when you are cute and posing, but I still like how that calculator watch makes her look tough.)
Scars, stories
Photograph a scar and write about it is still one of my favourite assignments from Learning to Love You More.
Fabulous scar
by the time i hit grade nine i not only had a surface piercing in my scar, but had also cut a scar-shaped hole in a tank top the better to display it.
“Motto for LA”
“The life of art”
I’m reading a book on the history of horror movies (finally, prompted by a haunted house analysis that Dark Daughta linked). My horror book quotes a character from Upton Sinclair’s 1922 novel They Call Me Carpenter, talking about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
This picture could not possibly have been produced in America. For one thing, nearly all the characters are thin. … One does not find American screen actors in that condition. Do your people care enough about the life of art to take a risk of starving for it?
“Babe of the day”
Casey phoned the other day to ask about my top photos of undressed women, as a response to seeing one of those lame “babe of the day” widgets on somebody’s Facebook profile. (I think he wanted to build an arsenal, in case he had the opportunity to unleash it on somebody.) I am pleased that somebody thinks I am a potential resource for images of people who are sexy in the body hair and bellies kind of way, but I don’t have a stash of that stuff at all.
For a start, I thought of Rose and Olive, photographers I found awhile ago, I think on Warren Ellis’ blog. Their photos are often quite posed, and they seem caught up in starving artist glamour and that artier version of girls gone wild that hipsters like (wet shirts, polaroids, poetry…), and they have a blog at Nerve.com which is a creepy place to have a blog… and the photo above is one of only two black models in their entire archive as well as one of a very few models who look older than nineteen and aren’t showcasing skinny bony shoulders… but also, they seem to know that wide thighs and forehead wrinkles and messes are beautiful, and they seem sincere, so I pick and choose from their photos.
I appreciate the love of armpits, textures and complicated facial expressions going on in this photo, and the way the model is kinda subverting a classic pin-up pose. It makes me want to be on that roof, in that light, touching skin with somebody. So this might go in my babe of the day stash, if I had one.
Marian Bantjes’ first font
Restraint is a font by Marian Bantjes, something I have wished for many times! So many obsessive, interlocking ornaments that it comes with instructions. (Restraint. Ha ha.)
Red and blue, gate
Erotics of sports?
Here are two things I’ve been trying to combine in my head since June:
- I watched the World Cup soccer games this summer. I’ve never been a sports fan. The competition seemed meaningless, like it was wasting its potential. It was still fun, but I wanted something. Surely atheleticism and competition could add up to more than some arbitrary, slightly psychotic spectacle.
- In his workbook The Erotic Mind, Dr. Jack Morin wrote that “eroticism is the process through which sex acquires meaning.” That made me think immediately of sports, believe it or not. I think my experience with sports might be like boring sex, without any erotic framework.
I’ve just been kind of storing that partial idea, pending further inspiration.
But, I think I found a film I need to watch. I spotted it in the Vancouver International Film Festival guide (after the festival was over— argh!). It’s called Mystic Ball.
Chinlone is a unique combination of sport and dance, a team sport with no opposing team. The focus is not on winning, but on how beautifully you play the game.
For director Greg Hamilton, what begins as a physical exercise soon becomes a meditation and a dance with gravity. Mystic Ball follows Hamilton as he evolves from an awkward beginner to a teammate capable of soloing with the greatest chinlone players in the country. During numerous trips to Myanmar and the city of Mandalay, Hamilton is embraced by a community that shares his passion. We see the development of his friendship with the “Golden Princess” Su Su Hlaing, the greatest chinlone solo artist in the country. And we learn what chinlone means to a couple of elders who have been playing the game everyday for the last 70 years.
That movie might be beyond my New Age threshold (Golden Princess?), and the sport sounds suspiciously like Burmese Hacky Sack, but I’m going to file it away just in case.
Toothcase
I went to the Surgeon’s Hall in Edinburgh, which is the original home of the Royal College of Surgeons. These days it contains three creepy museums on the history of surgery, pathology, and dentistry. It gave me lots of ideas relating to my indie thesis, but more on that later.
Right now, teeth! The Museum of Dentistry was all about collections of things. Sets of antique drill bits, sets of ornate knives, sets of tooth brushes, sets of teeth. I’ve always liked collections of many objects that are similar but not exactly the same.
I remember at the Mendel Museum of Genetics in the Czech Republic, they had all these framed collections showing different phenotypes— 64 similar leaves arranged in a matrix, 25 drawings of similar feathers, 4 types of pea plants in square garden plots. I almost had a seizure, from glee.
I don’t know exactly why I enjoy similar sets so much, but I suspect you’ll just know what I mean. Similar-but-not-the-same objects are so common in nature, and so commonly considered beautiful, that there are whole design books on the topic. (My favourite discussion is in Christopher Alexander’s The Timeless Way of Building. Repetition with variation was a big part of his rationale for pattern languages.)
So these dentistry sets would have made my day no matter what, but the teeth were off the scale. I had never thought about it, but a mouthful of teeth is a similar-but-not-the-same set to start with, and then setting up grids of multiple mouthfuls in different sizes… my mind reels.
Furthermore, some of these tooth sets— which were blanks meant for casting false teeth— were arranged in cases. They were a lot like type cases— if I had a tooth case I would definitely keep the top teeth in the upper case and the bottom teeth in the lower case, like letters in a printing font. Thinking about uppercase and lowercase teeth has multiplied my affection for my mouth, because now it is not just a mouth but a printing press for bite marks.
Compassion for teenagers
I get the Baby Fever off and on, and I usually try to remember that babies don’t stay babies, and that if I want to spawn I’ll have to learn to love a teenager. The hormonal creepiness, the narcissism, the volume levels. I’ve actually been practising this, more because I like new skills than because I am laying away emotional supplies for a baby event. I am like a bird-watcher, for teenagers, except I don’t follow them to their nests or anything.
My favourite teenager thing right now is watching little groups of 14 year old girls out on their own. Physically, they are hilarious— even in groups of eight or nine kids, you only get one of each kind. Small and skinny, big and moosey, tall and gangly, eerily voluptuous: nobody has caught up to anybody else by 14, and nobody understands her own hair. I call these groups Variety Packs.
I’ve come to realize that an easy way to love teenagers is to basically laugh about how ridiculous they are. It’s about camp: “Oh, they’re so terrible— I love them!” I’m working on finding a less condescending way to appreciate pupating humans, but for now, the I’m so bershon Flickr pool is feeding my addiction.
Haircut tip
If you get a haircut and you kind of hate it, and you find yourself being a dink to everybody, phoning up your friends and saying things like, “wanna come see my shitty new haircut?”… there is a way to save yourself. I tried styling it a lot, I tried leaving it alone, I tried waiting, I tried whining, I tried optimism, I tried resignation, and what finally worked was taking a lot of grouchy photos of myself until I managed to take one that looked cute.
My new haircut: a rollercoaster
Now I like it. I can’t decide if I feel silly or not, for spending 24 hours figuring out how to like my new hair.
Almost the same
There are a lot of handpainted apartment doors in my neighbourhood. I should take better pictures of them.
Two Rs that almost match, two 4s that almost match. Repetition with variation might be the Christopher Alexander design thought that I remember most often. I’ve always been into collections of similar objects, and think the slight variations are the root of my fascination. Add them all together and you can see the spectral range of a Rockridge R, or of 1044’s 4s. They put each other in context. I’ve never thought of handwriting as a collection of similar-but-not-quite-the-same objects, but indeed it is.
Who’s a sexpot
For several years I’ve been percolating on a project relating to beauty. Specifically, I’m into people’s differing tastes. I love overhearing people behind me at a movie having a conversation that goes:
“Why didn’t you tell me your friend was so good looking? I would have worn a clean shirt.”
“What, so-and-so? I can’t believe you find him attractive!”
Just now I walked a block or two with a couple of girls from the neighbourhood, and one was going apey for a local trumpet player’s looks. Getting only vague support from her friend and me. Awesome.
I have practically no taste in common with my friends. Whenever Rebecca thinks someone is really beautiful, they just look really skinny to me. Kelby’s definition of beautiful women seems totally random to me. Growing up, I thought I just had immature taste because I could never predict who my mum would declare “beautiful,” but I still don’t agree with her most of the time.
I love this. I love that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so obviously. This is what I think about whenever anyone gripes about the evolution of sexual attraction or the media’s portrayal of women. I think: but none of my friends can agree on who’s a sexpot. I think: I can dress however I like, and someone somewhere will drool.
Galen and I have nearly identical ideas about both male and female beauty, which is a fun thing to have in common. I had forgotten, until I started making a list of my friends who have weird taste in hotties, that we used to say we had the same taste in girls. Right before the two of us got together, Rebecca made the connection that a girl I’d been a bit obsessed with the previous summer was Galen’s girlfriend at the time. That was one of the things that got counted as fate during the infatuation stage.
Now with more catcalls.
About four days ago I decided to make an effort to look more hot, since that’s a pursuit I usually neglect. This basically involved buying a second pair of pants and making a point of brushing my hair.
Results: astounding. Even in the depths of my teenaged depression I was able to appreciate my body as it was, so I’m used to feeling generally happy about my looks. More interesting is the way that every day since my resolution, at least one stranger has complimented or catcalled me.
It feels a little conspicuous, like ““movie stars get their hair cut every day so no one will notice and make fun of them, like at our school”:http://www.kithfan.org/work/transcripts/four/gavpreach.html,” but I can ride it out. I like seeing cute people out and about, so it’s pretty fun to contribute my own cuteness to the neighbourhood. It makes me happy about our neighbourhood that my take on hotness can fly here.
Since I haven’t always been successful at this mission, I’d like to catalogue a few points in case I get off track again later.
- Spending money on my hair is always worth it.
- Exercising: also worth it.
- Clothes that fit. Give the other ones away! I’d rather wear the same awesome skirt three times a week than rotate through a selection of almost-good clothes.
- More than one of things. One scarf solves a problem, but two scarves is more fun. Further, both will last longer.
- Newer clothes look better because they aren’t worn out.
Generally, my barriers to hotness are laziness and being a cheapskate.