two kitties

What Not to Wear: Big Hair Jezebel Jessie.

Kim Cattrall's vintage style.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched the "Jezebel Jessie" episode on TLC's famous show, What Not to Wear. You can watch the "before" and "after" in a quick three minute clip right here.

Jessie was like most of the women on What Not to Wear - she was an attractive woman in her mid 50's  trapped in her own concept of "pretty." And, like most women, Jessie shaped her idea of "pretty" around a time in her life when she felt that way on the inside AND the outside. She felt good about the way she looked, the world of men seems to have agreed, and since that time, her hair, makeup, and clothing have remained exactly the same.

The problem was, of course, that she matured. The role she played at home, in business, and in her marriage changed. Her life asked for less of her big hair and cleavage but Jessie still depended on the reactions of men to decide how she felt about herself.  Inside and out. 

In the short video, TLC cut out the parts where Jessie got really, really upset. Hair stylist Nick Arrojo cut her big hair, and she didn't like it. She was so upset, in fact, that during her final reveal to friends and family, Jessie confessed to making phone calls asking men not to attend the party because she just didn’t think they would think she looked good with her short hair. At the end of the show, she returned home to Dallas, bleached her hair, and had her stylist put in hundreds of extensions.

Beauty is a tightrope. Your body is in balance for a precious few steps throughout your life. I've been there and I speak the truth. I've been both a skinny, buxom blonde that has morphed into a generously proportioned brunette. Life changes. When that happens, you might cling to the old idea of yourself or start shopping for outfits based on what is "good enough", not because of the price or because of the style but just because it covers your scars.

It hurt me to hear Nora Ephron describe Eileen Fisher clothing as "I Give Up" clothing. I have a closet full of Eileen Fisher that I wear for work. But Ephron was absolutely right - I have given up, in many ways. I can just throw anything Eileen Fisher in a suitcase and wind up looking reasonably put together at meetings half way across the country. So what if I look like a grandma? It fits and it doesn't wrinkle. That has more appeal than I ever realized.

Going dark was easier - after seeing a photo of my roots I had no trouble letting go of the notion that I was still blonde. (Perhaps a sign that I had waited too long?) $700 worth of Joe's Jeans and a whole lotta personal training later, I hope I'm looking longer and leaner in those pants. (At least I was until I got this boot cast on my leg, but that's another post.) 

Sometimes I miss the old me, but not as often as you might think. It's kind of nice to have conversations that begin with a topic other than the size of my breasts. I don't miss people making assumptions about me based on my appearance. I remember a Professor at Georgetown (I'll name him if you ask me to) saying to me - in front of our entire class - "You are obviously a shallow person." I was so stunned, I couldn't say anything. Luckily, a classmate replied on my behalf that the statement was "inappropriate and out of line."

How is your body and life changing as you grow older? How are you dealing with it?

Skin.

 

Nothing scars the human psyche more deeply than severe acne during the teenage years. Too many of us believe that a boy wouldn't love you because of the shape of your nose, the kink of your hair or the curve of your hips - but those are things that, with careful discipline, can be shaded, masked, smoothed and straightened. It might take hours, but it can be done.

But skin? Skin is meant to be what protects the body, not makes it vulnerable. It is the jacket we wear for others.  The thing we look at when we are trying to decide whether or not to love someone and it is the thing someone sees, first, when they are trying to decide whether or not to love us.

If your skin is good, you don't even think about it. If it isn't, there is a constant liturgy of questions: Can I take off my shirt in front of everyone when we go swimming? Eventually, we might get married and she'll see me naked. I'll have to let him touch my back when we're making love. In his memoirs, writer John Updike openly admits that he married the first woman who loved him in spite of his skin.

I don't think teenagers appreciate the dramatic improvements in over-the-counter cosmetic treatments for acne. Back in my day (which doesn't really seem like it was that long ago), there really wasn't much you could do. A trip to Walgreen's might yield a giant-size plastic bottle of Sea Breeze Antiseptic, Clearasil with .05 percent benzoyl peroxide and - maybe towards the end of high school - Neutrogena with salicyclic acid.

Our parents - who had to endure their zits with no help at all - patted us on the back, assuring that the acne would eventually disappear. They warned against the traps of vanity, and gentle suggestions that, in the meantime, perhaps we should consider avoiding greasy foods and chocolate. Friends with more-than-pimples and helpful parents went to dermatologists but, for the most part, came back disappointed. You had choices, but they weren't good ones. In the 80's and 90's, there were antibiotics and there was Accutane.

Missy was the first person in my high school to try Accutane. She went through a phase so awful it made you crave the burqa. At lunch we'd watch the skin peel off her face in chunks (literally) and, because we loved her, we sat through it and didn't say a word. However horrible it was to watch, we knew how much worse it was for her to go through it in front of everyone. Our inner trolls were all right there, sitting at the lunch table right next to us, talking loud enough so that we could easily overhear what they were saying.

There has to be an answer, we told ourselves. I'll try harder. I'll buy this new thing. I'll drink more water. A just and loving universe would create a solution to this problem. Luckily, Missy pulled the arm of the cosmetic slot machine and won.

In adulthood, when the pimples are [mostly] gone and the science of dermatology can put our kids' zits on the moon, the experience of severe acne still bubbles under the surface. Give a 40 year-old a couple of glasses of wine and mention "high school" and you'll find that the scars are as tender as if they were made yesterday. 

Truth and Beauty.

Ten years ago, I moved back to the United States with a shipping container full of makeup and a dream. (OK - the part about the dream is a joke.)

Like many women, perhaps more than most, I believe that cosmetics - liberally applied - will lead to a dramatic life transformation. It's not exactly vanity. More of throw-your-hands-up-well-at-the-very-least-you'll-stumble-through-your-miserable-little-life-looking "put together"-sort-of-thing. A belief in the possibilities being sold across the counter. A solution to every problem. Or, at minimum, an everyday enjoyment of some nicely scented stuff.

My first makeup artist was Gary at Charles Ifergan in Chicago.   The gay Carmindy of his time, Gary knew what he was doing and he made me not only look, but feel beautiful. He provided me with a take-home Xerox copy of a face, with all the colors brushed right on. A kind of road map to beauty. Though I don't wear the "face" anymore, I still have all the relevant cosmetics (and the map) in my drawer. I can't bear to throw it away the memory of what beautiful felt like.

The origins of this life approach can be traced back to my youth. By 7th grade, I was spending my entire weekly allowance at Walgreen's on Noxema and nail polish, trying to sneak into the house without my "not even lip gloss until you're in 8th grade" mother hearing the crinkle of the paper bag in my hands.

You know what I'm talking about. That internal, teenage feeling of hideous-ness that has relatively little to do with how you actually look on the outside. Where does that come from? One day, you're happy enough and the next the inner troll just appears - whispering comments in your ear as you cross the lunch room: that boy will never love you; if you just had the right jeans with a Goody comb in your back pocket things might be different.

And, just often enough, hair, makeup and clothing does change life on the inside. Ask any fan of TLC's What Not to Wear. The most dramatic transformations are those we watch happening on the inside - the TV client looks in the mirror and usually, for the first time in a long time, sees their own worth. A person worthy of being taken care of, a body and a spirit that has been given permission. A person that deserves time, care, and respect. Maybe a stronger person doesn't need to wear makeup to feel all of that. But that person wouldn't be me. 

Tell me about your experiences with (or without) makeup.

The Beauty Myth.

This morning, New York's Bergdorf Goodman posted this photo on Facebook to advertise an upcoming Marchesa trunk show.

A saavy Facebook follower commented, "This model needs a hairbrush and a sandwich!" and [so far] dozens of others have been quick to agree.

In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf argues that women in Western culture are pressured to conform to ideal (often unattainable) standards of beauty, and that this ideal is politicized - it is a way of keeping women under control by the weight of their own insecurities. 

What do you think?

We'll be talking about beauty all week on Two Kitties for a brand new category on the blog, "Cosmetics Build Character."

Poetry of Glenis Redmond.

How To Write a List Poem.

I love "list poems" not only because they are quick and easy, but because they reveal so much in a very tight space. Here is a simple one I wrote this morning:

 

What’s in the top drawer of my desk?

100 "Forever" postage stamps. 

89 postage stamps marked 39 cents.
12 custom postage stamps with White Kitty's photo on them marked 37 cents.
Number bibs from my two 5K races. 

A wireless mouse I can't find the USB thing-y for. 

Five CDs of sermons by Dr. Steven Koski at First Presbyterian of Bend.
Two $2 bills I received in change from the Bainbridge Island ferry on my honeymoon.

A paper bag full of vintage buttons I've been meaning to mail to @lorilyg for [gulp] two years.

 

What do the contents of my desk drawer reveal to you about me?

You can generate your own list poem here by typing answers to a question in this web-based form. You can also use a pencil and a paper!  Below is a list of possibilities. Pick one to help you get started. You don't have to share with me, but you know I'd love that!

1) Things you are afraid of.

2) Jobs you've had.

3) Things you do every day, without fail.

4) Lies you've told yourself.

5) Grudges  you can't let go of.

Aracelis Girmay: Consider the Hands That Write This Letter.

                        I Have Always Loved You (2008) Heidi Rettig. Encaustic on panel, 8" x 8" x 2".

Consider the Hands that Write This Letter

        after Marina Wilson

Consider the hands
that write this letter.
The left palm pressed flat against the paper,
as it has done before, over my heart,
in peace or reverence
to the sea or some beautiful thing
I saw once, felt once: snow falling
like rice flung from the giants' wedding,
or the strangest birds. & consider, then,
the right hand, & how it is a fist,
within which a sharpened utensil,
similar to the way I've held a spade,
match to the wick, the horse's reins,
loping, the very fists
I've seen from the roads to Limay & Estelí.
For years, I have come to sit this way:
one hand open, one hand closed,
like a farmer who puts down seeds & gathers up
the food that comes from that farming.
Or, yes, it is like the way I've danced
with my left hand opened around a shoulder
& my right hand closed inside
of another hand. & how
I pray, I pray for this
to be my way: sweet
work alluded to in the body's position
to its paper:
left hand, right hand
like an open eye, an eye closed:
one hand flat against the trapdoor,
the other hand knocking, knocking.

-Aracelis Girmay
From Teeth by Aracelis Girmay. Copyright © 2007

Cecilia Woloch: Postcard to I. Kaminsky from a Dream at the Edge of the Sea

Postcard to I. Kaminsky from a Dream at the Edge of the Sea

by Cecilia Woloch

 

I was leaving a country of rain for a country of apples. I hadn't much time. I told my beloved to wear his bathrobe, his cowboy boots, a black patch like a pirate might wear over his sharpest eye. My own bags were full of salt, which made them shifty, hard to lift. Houses had fallen, face first, into the mud at the edge of the sea. Hurry, I thought, and my hands were like birds. They could hold nothing. A feathery breeze. Then a white tree blossomed over the bed, all white blossoms, a painted tree. "Oh," I said, or my love said to me. We want to be human, always, again, so we knelt like children at prayer while our lost mothers hushed us. A halo of bees. I was dreaming as hard as I could dream. It was fast—how the apples fattened and fell. The country that rose up to meet me was steep as a mirror; the gold hook gleamed.

It's National Poetry Month, by the way.

Wallace Stegner: Crossing to Safety.

Through The Looking Glass, originally uploaded by dude,walking,on.

"There is nothing like a doorbell to precipitate the potential into the kinetic. When you stand outside a door and push the button, something has to happen. Someone must respond; whatever is inside must be revealed. Questions will be answered, uncertainties or mysteries dispelled. A situation will be started on its way through unknown complications to an unpredictable conclusion. The answer to your summons may be a rush of tearful welcome, a suspicious eye at the crack of the door, a shot through the hardwood, anything. Any pushing of any doorbell button is as rich in dramatic possibility as that scene in Chekhov when, just as the Zemstvo doctor's only child dies of diphtheria and the doctor's wife drops to her knees beside the bed and the doctor, smelling of carbolic, takes an uncertain step backward, the bell sounds sharply in the hall."

Wallace Stegner, in Crossing To Safety

Embroidered Caswell Carpet: 19th Century American Folk Art Rug

Caswell Carpet c. 1835,  Castleton, Vermont by Zeruah Higley Guernsey (later Caswell), worked in chain stitch in colored wools on dyed homespun. 12 feet x 12 feet 6 inches.

The "Caswell carpet" is an outstanding example of American folk art of the 19th century. The project took Zeruah Higley Guernsey Caswell the better part of five years to embroider.

Caswell was an accomplished needle worker. She sheared, carded, and spun the wools from her own sheep, dyed them, and wove the coarse "homespun" fabric that was used as the foundation for the embroidery. Her father was a known manufacturer of spinning wheels and related tools and so it is said that Caswell used a wooden needle to do this work.

The embroidery was done on a tambour frame; each of the sixty-six motifs was worked separately and sewn together later. Two of the squares carry the initials of two Indians of the Potawatami tribe who were studying at the medical college in Castleton, Vermont. Each of the townspeople took turns boarding the students and it was likely during their stay at the Guernsey (Caswell) house that the two panels were made.

Point yourselves to the Met's textile database on the museum website so that you can zoom in on the panels!

Pattern Corrections: Slouchy Cardigan Knit Cafe Book

Several people have asked for the pattern corrections for Knit Cafe's "Slouchy Cardigan." Here they are (changes in bold):

RIGHT FRONT:

(RS) Decrease 1 st at beginning of this row, then every other row 23 times, EVERY 4 ROWS 9 TIMES, every 6 rows 6 (8) times--34 (36) stitches remain. AND AT THE SAME TIME WHEN piece measures 16 1/2" from beginning end with a RS row AND SHAPE ARMHOLE (WS) at armhole edge BO 5 STS TWICE 4(6) STS ONCE then decrease 1 st every row 3 times -24(26) sts remain.

SHAPE SHOULDER: (WS) BO 5 STS TWICE.....

SHAPE SLEEVE: (RS) DECREASE ROW: [K7,K2tog] twice, k13(16),[k2tog,K7 twice - 57 (60) sts remain.

*All that being said, the second one I made was still wonky as hell. But knitting isn't my gift.

The Prayer Book for Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg

I've been working in the art studio with a six-month goal of finishing two pieces each week. I'm working on completing old projects (some of them I started ten years ago!) as well as newer, encaustic pieces that use my bird photographs.\

The deeper I get into the bird work, the more I think about the symbolism of classical painting. This week, I'm thinking a lot about that, and just happened upon this image from a 16th century prayer book over at the Getty Museum.

It so happens I have a work-in-progress with a similar, rose colored circle. In my piece, the circle frames the head of a baby bird and cherubs look down at the baby bird in consolation, and an oval laurel wreath (a grave rubbing from Butte, Montana) frames the scene.A coincidence. But I love the colors in this piece so much, I might try to manipulate the similarities even more.

The classical work you are looking at is called The Worship of the Five Wounds, and was created by Simon Bening, a Flemish artist, between 1525 and 1530 A.D. Bening used tempura paints and gold leaf on parchment paper.This image is part of a prayer book for Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg. Because it was part of a major exhibit mounted by the Getty called Imagining Christ, you can see the Prayer Book in its entirety right here.

Peepshi aka "Sushi" made from Marshmellow Peeps.

Inspired by Serious Eats, the girls and I made Peepshi yesterday. Seriously cute.

Resin Bottlecap Collages

I've been trying to take a little stay-cation time in the art studio. If I've been out of the studio for awhile, I usually choose a small, no-brainer "warm up project."  This project - bottle cap collages coated with clear ICE brand resin - was inspired by CPF "The Sassy Crafter.

The funny thing about "warm up projects" is they are small in size, but never wind up being no-brainers. These took about a week, and the resin pouring was about ten minutes of that time. But I'm in love with ICE resin and I don't care who knows it. I made some resin paper and plan to do some other resin projects soon!

M. chose a bottle cap for his desk, but the rest are headed to my sister in Minnesota. 

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Wiener Dog Races

Random, I know, but I signed up for a booth at my local Wiener Dog Races 2010. I'm going to sell Wiener Dog themed crafts. This will be my first craft show. Any advice for me? The organizers told me about 200 people attended last year, but they expect even more this year, since "a guy will be bringing about 40 wiener dog owners from [Southwest Montana]." How much should I make/bring?