Browsing Tag

beauty

cancer, beauty, Guest Posts

Accessorizing

July 11, 2018
chemo

By Annarose F. Steinke

At first the jewelry takes me by surprise: chandelier earrings, layered necklaces, sequined infinity scarves that have no business in a room where store-brand cans of pineapple and orange juice are the only drinks served. A big show is made of giving these things ample space on tiny end tables alongside Dixie cups of Tylenol. Companions are ordered to remember these silver hooks and spirals once the session ends, and in the meantime, to keep an eye on the table should the items’ owners need to use the toilet. Simply standing up while making sure to lift the arm so that the wrist retains the IV and the IV stays attached to the machine that must be wheeled into the bathroom while managing the door lock with the free hand, all while the first dizzy spell begins (no, thank you, I can manage) is such an all-consuming task that asking after your Alex and Ani bangles set in that moment is out of the question.

I used to wonder why they won’t leave these things at home, but now I know why all of it must be worn, even if only in the lobby. I recognize the sigh from the woman two seats down as she uncoils ropes of translucent orange beads from her neck: it matches my tone when telling the scheduling coordinator to hold as I shake out receipts and crumbs and broken pens from three different purses when I could just as easily store the Medical Record Number card in my wallet with my driver’s license and the other items anchoring my everyday. Now I understand that “fighting cancer” does not mean doing certain tasks with gusto but refusing to grant others the time and care they’re supposed to deserve.

As for me, I wear my great-grandmother’s rose gold chain, its sharp rectangles falling just below my collarbone and exactly where a chest port would be if I needed one. My grandmother’s accompanying note reads “I want you to wear her things. NOW!” and I honor her demand. Wearing this chain, I grasp the concept of a “statement” necklace: this piece states that I’m not here long enough for a chest port, this searing jab to my wrist is truly a perk of this good-kind lymphoma, and the nurse is visibly annoyed at the extra work so my demeanor had better be accomodating since my small veins are not. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, The Body

Figure Modeling

April 19, 2017
naked

By Jera Brown

The moment I disrobe and step up naked on a platform where anywhere from two to a dozen pairs of eyes are staring at me has never bothered me. I don’t feel ashamed or embarrassed. Before I started figure modeling, I’d enjoyed other public nudity experiences which led me to believe I’d be a good candidate for the gig.

There were other reasons I started modeling. As a broke graduate student, it is a way of supporting the arts without the ability to buy much. It’s also physically challenging, and I love a good challenge. And — though this was not something I consciously admitted to myself when I considered modeling — I believed it would help me love my body more. I was wrong.

I model for members’ organizations where artists pay a fee for studio space and access to models and for classes where new and intermediate artists learn how the body works and discover their unique style. Here’s how it works: Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, aging

Grief Is Not Always About Death

January 22, 2017
senior

By Marlene Adelstein

We were about to renovate our bathroom, a total gut job, so in preparation, I began to empty out the vanity. Into the garbage went wands of gloppy mascara, old lipstick stubs, and ancient condom packages. In the back of one drawer, I found a blue cardboard box that I hadn’t touched in a while and I felt a surprising surge of wistfulness. It was a box of tampons, for God’s sake, and I was teary-eyed! It had been well over a year since I’d reached for it which meant…I had officially gone through menopause.

No, of course, I didn’t miss the inconvenience, the cramps, the bloating. Those unpleasant feelings had been replaced, first with perimenopausal, and then menopausal symptoms like night sweats, moodiness, weight gain. My bible on all things menopause, herbalist Susun Weed’s book, Menopausal Years, The Wise Woman Way, called it time of the Crone, which did not sound sexy at all, despite her encouraging words to embrace the change. Even though my longtime boyfriend still told me I was sexy, I wasn’t feeling it. What was it about the blue box that created a jumble of emotions? I wasn’t ready to figure it out so I left the damn box in the drawer.

The next week I had my annual gynecological exam, and my doctor, a no-nonsense woman looked up at me from between the stirrups and said, “Your vagina is pale.” Continue Reading…

beauty, Guest Posts

Beauty Comes From Within: What Makeup Can Add

November 20, 2016

By Kathryn Streeter

My friend’s daughter perched stone-still on my barstool, a beautiful 12-year-old going on 17. She is attending a dance soon and wants to be ravishing. Would I do a trial makeover? she begged. With her mom’s consent, I now lightly moisturize her clear skin and proceed with some powders for countering, neutral tones on her lids and mascara. She chooses a pale pink lip color to finish her look. I had hardly done anything yet she is thrilled because normally she is not allowed to wear makeup.

Though I have a 17-year-old daughter, this experience is new for me. My girl doesn’t wear any makeup, except to attend her senior prom (where her girlfriends did makeup with her). Even as a little girl, makeup grossed her out.

“You smell stinky, mom! You look funny too.” She wrinkled her nose at my made-up face. Her posture hasn’t changed; she’s simply been slow to warm to makeup.

Time together with the young lady in front of me confirms she’s wired differently than my daughter. My friend’s daughter is pining to grow-up and feels this magical powdery, gooey stuff called makeup will help her get there. On Friday at the Father-Daughter dance, I know she will tingle with joy, feeling every bit a princess with traces of makeup on her face. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Racism

The Natural Step

November 14, 2016
hair

By Trinica Sampson

You can’t remember the day you learned to talk or the day you began to understand speech—language sneaks in when you aren’t looking, and suddenly you can speak, suddenly you can listen as the world tells you that you are not good enough.

It begins with the books you read, with the characters who do not look like you. Next comes television, the bridge to the real world— but it’s a bridge that was never made for you to march on. A million advertisements showing you how to lighten your skin tone with makeup, how to tame your frizzy, curly hair. “7 Hairstyles to Mix Up Your Look!” the magazines shout, but your mixed hair won’t be manipulated like that.

Every Sunday your white stepmother tries to make sense of your hair. You sit in-between her legs for hours as she rips a comb through your curls and strangles your hair into submission with hair ties and gel and sheer force of will. She keeps up a running commentary as she does it, a stream of comments like, “God, your hair is thick” and “you just have so much of it” and “there’s not much I can do with this other than braids.” But you know the language, so the insidious coded message reveals itself to you as bad, bad, bad. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, beauty, Young Voices

Do Not Define Me As You Saw Me Last

November 8, 2016
beauty

Note from Jen Pastiloff, founder of The Manifest-Station. This is part of our Young Voices Series for Girl Power: You Are Enough. We are always looking for more writing from YOU! Make sure you follow us on instagram at @GirlPowerYouAreEnough and on Facebook here.

By Daniela Grageda

I hadn’t seen my older sister in a month and all she saw was the armpit hair on my twin sister.

“If you shave your legs, why not shave your armpit hair?” She questioned my twin sister.

It is a choice. Never did I imagine I needed to ask for permission to not shave, or to ask permission for anything that it is not causing any harm to any other human being.

I hadn’t seen my sister in a month and she questioned me “you’re trying to get locks on your hair?”, when she saw the dreads starting to form. It was the first time she saw my hair let loose after wearing it up for a while.

“No, we just don’t brush our hair” — my twin sister answered for me.

“I haven’t seen you in a month, I don’t know what happened to you guys!”

I felt heavy, in my heart, I felt so heavy.

Yes, she had not seen us in a month, and that is all she had to say. Really, that is all she had to say.

It is not that I was looking for her approval, I knew my twin sister and I were considered the ‘strange’ ones in the family anyway. But the feeling I felt that moment was quite different. My older sister’s eyes were full of judgement and disgust. It was evident. I felt unwelcomed. I was standing in the presence of unacceptance. Eyes that were blind to her own beauty, let alone ours. If she were comfortable in her own skin, she would have no reason to judge ours, I thought.

Do not define me, do not label me, do not remember me as you saw me last. I am growth, I am beauty itself, I thought.

We have grown up with certain approaches to our natural form that it is so bizarre to let our armpit hair grow out because we learnt to shave it as soon as we began to notice it grow. All because it is not ‘acceptable’ for women to glow with their armpit hair!

All because it’s only normal for men to have hair on their armpits.

We are raised around straighteners, combs, shampoos…Essentials right? Essentials that will make our hair beautiful!

With shoes that will make an impression of us looking taller, more confident, and fancy!

With chemicals to spoil our faces, just to get a bit of color on our cheeks!

What if…
I don’t brush my hair everyday?
I don’t shave?
I don’t paint my nails?

Do I somehow betray my own skin? My own body? Am I not considered “normal”?

At one point in my younger years, I did feel it was necessary for me to learn how to walk in heels and how to apply makeup on my face, because I saw every female in my family doing so. But it never felt natural to me. It wasn’t me and to this day, I have no sense of how to apply makeup or walk in heels.

Cosmetics and such appeal to women to look good, to have them look “decent” and many women are comfortable and even happy with those things, but it doesn’t make sense for me.

I don’t choose to not do these things so I can be considered a “weird” human being, though I know in my heart I am a weird creature.

I don’t undertake such actions simply because I do not support such things to enhance my beauty. I am comfortable without them.

My beauty just as it is, is pure.

Do not define me as you saw me last, no matter the time frame, because chances are, you won’t see me the same way twice.

I am constant growth.

 

biophotoDaniela Grageda was born in Mexico and is currently living in Arizona. She is an emerging photographer and writer who is working on her art portfolio and a collection of short writings and poetry. Follow Daniela on Instagram @dani.grageda_.

Click pic to book workshop.

Click pic to book workshop.

 

Join Lidia Yuknavitch and Jen Pastiloff for their signature “Writing & The Body” Retreat in Portland March 17-19 by clicking photo.

Join Lidia Yuknavitch and Jen Pastiloff for their signature “Writing & The Body” Retreat in Portland March 17-19 by clicking photo.

Gratitude, Guest Posts

The Peak of Morning

September 9, 2016
window

TW: This essay mentions miscarriage.

By Lauren Myers

This morning after my 4-year old son pushed a full bowl of raisin bran and milk to the floor while complaining that there weren’t enough raisins, I yelled. He didn’t mean for it to land on the floor, but I yelled anyway. I grunted, too. I told my brown- eyed, tousle- haired boy, “I can’t even look at you right now.” Ten minutes later we held hands and sang the do over song, a song I made up one morning after a different day started out poorly (this time with his twin sister pinching his arm until he squealed). These moments, soppy or jagged, I can never get back.  A do over would be nice sometimes.

***

Seven years ago I left Boston for Uruguay a free-spirited woman, who thought it was nothing to pack her bags and move to a Spanish speaking country where she didn’t know the language for a man she fell in love with in ten days. Everyone had warned me to be careful, but I didn’t want to fear love at 43.

That first night we had met at a dim lit bar, his brown eyes remained transfixed on the keyboard of his phone despite me whispering about him to my friend as I peered at him without hiding it. His dark curls hung thick as his skin, and his sturdy frame appealed to me under a pilled sweater that smelled of musty wool as if it just came out of winter storage. Strange that a smell such as this would intoxicate me to this day. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, courage

To Be Beautiful You Have to Suffer

August 21, 2016
dance

By Liane Kupferberg Carter

I was dragged to Ruth Skaller’s Ballet Studio for Girls the year I was seven. I had never expressed any interest in dancing. But earlier that year, I’d had surgery on my eyes, and someone suggested that dancing might help my coordination.

Ruth Skaller was a tall, olive-skinned woman of indeterminate age, whose classes were filled with giggling girls she whipped into line with the snap of her voice. Through a series of barre exercises, we would sweep our Capezio slippers over the polished pale wood floors, plié, rond de jambe, relèvé, to the strains of haunting, melancholy piano music on the Victrola that only years later would I recognize as Chopin. Mrs. Skaller would stand before the mirror, lower face cupped thoughtfully in her hand, humming as she turned out muscled legs beneath her skirt drapery until she had choreographed our next steps. We would line up, and then, like drifting dandelion fluff — or lumbering elephants — cross the room on the diagonal, spinning and spotting, pirouetting our way dizzily across the studio.

Often the next class would arrive while we were in progress. Taller, lankier girls would perch on the painted radiators, or sweep into the dressing room behind the studio, a gray affair of cubbies and wrought iron bars over narrow dusty windows that faced an unpaved alley. Swinging rectangular black plastic ballet boxes with pink Barbie-faced ballerinas painted on the front, they would click open the vinyl snaps to remove leotard and tights, then open cunning spaces at the bottom which concealed the soft shoes, or, for the lucky ones, pale pink satin toe shoes with wooden toe blocks. Continue Reading…

beauty, Guest Posts, Self Image, Self Love, self-loathing, The Body

The Pretty Machine

January 11, 2016

By Melissa Carroll

When I was little I had an armada of Barbie dolls: Princess Ice Skater Barbie, Safari Barbie, Bikini Beach Barbie. My childhood bedroom was filled with legions of busty blondes. When I was little I was a nerdy girl with a big nose, a girl who got picked last in kickball and faked headaches to miss gym class. At home, when I chopped Barbie’s hair off, I loved the chunked slice of kitchen scissors against her plastic strands. Sometimes I stabbed my Papermate pens into her face to give her blue freckles. Sometimes I curiously examined her, took her pink Velcro dress off, and rotated her stiff limbs in their sockets, plucking out a leg or popping off her head to inspect the plastic bulb holding her impossibly beautiful rubber body together.

*

Certain women in Burma coil brass rings around their necks: slender, braced. The rings weigh down their collarbones, which gives the illusion of an elongated neck. It’s a delicate deformation, the hush of bone and blood.

In Mauritania women are force fed camel’s milk, they are fattened like calves for slaughter. Each brimming calabash promises a man.

Women of North America slice their faces open, peel back skin like almonds boiled in milk—thin, slimy, translucent. They cut their nipples open and insert bags of saline, they paint their faces, bleach their hair, they stick their fingers down their throats.

*

I’m in sixth grade, playing in my backyard with my best friend Carly. We’re inventing a rain dance, clucking our tongues, which looks very much like the chicken dance. This time I’m the shaman, pumping my fists in the air, howling vowels at the sky. We laugh wild, unbroken little girl laughs, loud and crackling.

This is before we learn to laugh while trying to look thin, to laugh and pose for anyone who might be watching. This is when our games are simple and our hair is tangled. We are on the cusp of puberty, when our bodies still belong to us. We have no idea that soon, any minute now, we’ll be fed to the American Pretty Machine, like a wood chipper, arms and legs and brains and hearts on the glittering conveyor belt.

The Pretty Machine materializes into plastic surgeries and celebrity gossip rags and eating disorders and an oil slick of self loathing. It pumps young girls with the idea that being sexy is the most important thing in the world, that looking good equals feeling good. Girls are sent, completely unaware, through the machine and come out the other side shellacked and lacquered, shell-shocked and pretty.

* Continue Reading…

beauty, Eating/Food, Guest Posts, Self Image, Self Love, self-loathing, The Body

Weightless

January 1, 2016

By Kara Waite

Birth control didn’t make me fat, but the teacher who confiscated my pill pack said it was probably to blame for my weight. I wanted to tell her I hadn’t needed a prescription to pile on the pounds. Instead, I said nothing and went back to the county health department after school for another free sample. I needed it because my boyfriend, with whom I’d not yet had sex, said he didn’t like condoms. This was not, at the time, a red flag.

Even at fifteen, I was still, in so many ways, a little girl. Actually, I was never little. I burst out of my mother and into the world at a substantial weight of 7 lbs. 9 oz. (22 inches long), and save for a few periods of alarmingly rapid shrinkage, I’ve been growing ever since. In fact, these days my ass is easily twice the size it was back then – back when what I saw when I looked in the mirror was not “slightly pudgy” so much as Jabba the Hut.

The first time I went on a diet, I didn’t know it was a diet. I just knew that, instead of enjoying those shrink-wrapped slices of Velveeta out in the open, I needed to do it in my bedroom closet. I remember the way they melted and stuck to the roof of my mouth, the way they felt sliding down my gullet in un-chewed lumps after I’d wrapped them around filched Hershey’s Kisses and swallowed fast because I thought I’d heard someone coming.

My grandmother was the one to inform me that my weight was problematic. “You need to watch what you eat,” she told me. This made some sense because, unlike the mouth she was always telling me to watch, my food was at least something I could see without looking in the mirror. So I took her advice literally and started making artwork with my lunch. I’d bite my crackers and turkey into shapes – Christmas trees, my initials, a basketball and a hoop. I watched and I watched and I watched. I squinted and studied and nothing happened.

Well, except that I, of course, ate my creations and got fatter.

It wasn’t just that I was fat. I was tall, too, but no one cared about that. The day we got weighed in P.E. the entire class gathered round the scale, watching the nurse slide past eight-five, past ninety, past ninety-five, not stopping till she hit one hundred and six. It was of no interest that I was taller than any of the boys, taller, in fact, than even the nurse. No one wondered or worried about the view from five-foot-two. My weight, on the other hand, was the source of much preoccupation and discussion.

“One hundred six divided by two is fifty-three,” said my best friend, “you’re two of me.” It didn’t occur to her that this was the wrong thing to say and it didn’t (fully) occur to me either – not then, anyway.

The next week, the circus came to town and we went with her mother and my grandmother, two women who wore their bony asses like Olympic medals. They bought us each a bag of peanuts and, because I was ungraceful in addition to chunky, I dropped mine. I begged for another bag, but my grandmother said no. I asked my friend to share, but, being eight-years-old, she also said no. Continue Reading…