When Netflix dropped the trailer for its latest romantic comedy Nappily Ever After over a month ago, I was slightly enamored and reasonably wary. Amid a robust wave of traditional rom-coms with diverse casts, Nappily felt like a purposeful throwback to the popular black films of ‘90s and early aughts—The Best Man, Brown Sugar and Love And Basketball—all of which cemented the film’s star, Sanaa Lathan, as a notable romantic lead. In the first minute of the trailer, we see Lathan as a glamorous, professional woman confined to a life of perfection, and jaded by a lifelong, emotionally fraught relationship with her hair.

Framed as a woman’s path to love and liberation, the plot seemed charming, specific and, to an extent, relatable. Cut to the end of the trailer where a mature-looking gentleman, presumably a love interest, looks into Lathan’s eyes and says, “brothers like women that are real.” She smiles, affirmed by his counsel. Cut to me rolling my eyes.

I held onto that inkling as I watched the film, hoping for fully-fleshed out ideas about black womanhood, intra-racial trauma, and society’s treatment of our hair. Like any projection of marginal struggles, there’s equal opportunity for completely nailing it or getting it all wrong. But stories about black female protagonists can’t be that hard to nail in 2018, right? Wrong.

The 90-minute film follows the main character Violet on a path to self-acceptance through various stages of her hair journey. In the opening scene, she recalls the stringent hair routine her mother inflicted on her as a child—washed, conditioned, and hot combed once a week. When we catch up to her adult life, Violet is a successful marketing executive obsessed with maintaining a perfect but ultimately shallow life, not to mention her straight, shiny locks.

Things quickly go awry when her boyfriend Clint doesn’t propose to her as expected, causing her life to unravel. This leads to Violet breaking up with Clint, attempting (and failing) to makeover her image, shaving her head, and sparking a relationship with a male hairdresser, Will a.k.a Mr. “Brothers Like Women That Are Real.”

We first meet Will in a hair salon where he’s comforting a woman whose appointment gets bumped when Violet snags an emergency walk-in. Staring disappointedly in a mirror at her short, natural hair, the woman bemoans, “brothers like long hair.” Will responds with the same line, “Brothers like women that are real.”

But stories about black female protagonists can’t be that hard to nail in 2018, right? Wrong.
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Cut to me rolling my eyes again. It’s a remark that’s both completely hollow and fully loaded at the same time. Are all “brothers” the same? What is “real” and “not real”? Does it matter what “brothers” think of black women’s hair? Does it matter what Will thinks? The film would argue yes. Unfortunately, this moment encapsulates Will’s entire presence on screen and the false wisdom he provides Violet as a love interest.

While he’s positioned as the antidote to her fragile, insecure life with Clint, he becomes her guiding male figure who somehow knows more about black women’s hair and what they should do with it than the black women in the film. Furthermore, he symbolizes a condescension that many black men retain when it comes to the false perception of black womanhood.

The concept of Will, as a character, feels like a joke. He’s a natural hair guru who considers himself a revolutionary at a time when the natural hair product industry is booming. Despite being a hairdresser, he doesn’t style his daughter Zoe’s hair. It isn’t until Violet strikes up an unlikely companionship with Zoe that she steps in to cornrow her hair in a maternal bonding moment, despite having no experience with natural styles, as if all black women are born knowing how to braid. None of it makes sense. But it’s the black-womanly thing to do, so she magically fills the space with no explanation.

Additionally, Will is a mansplainer. In one scene, Will and Violet get into a brief back and forth about the pervasiveness of perms in the black community, which are becoming less pervasive. When Will asks why black people, who comprise 12% of the American population, purchase 70% of all wigs and weaves. Violet replies that we, black women, hate our hair. Will agrees and argues that black women need to challenge society’s beauty norms instead of reflecting them. The conversation ends there. No talk of who created these beauty norms, no recognition of the pressure on black women to adhere to them. It’s just black women’s fault for buying into the system.

Just like Will’s character, the film assumes that black women are uniquely self-loathing. This false notion has birthed the dichotomy of the Black Queen and the Basic Female that is often touted by straight, black men in our community. A Black Queen, a rare breed, is humble, modest and embraces her natural beauty.

The latter, the majority of black women, is suffering from chronic low self-esteem and wears makeup, weaves, and risqué clothing as a result. Nappily suggests that self-hate among black women is pandemic without offering any historical and political context regarding the way our natural looks are constantly degraded under white supremacy. It does, however, offer a solution to our pain: self-love.

In her recently released book Eloquent Rage, Dr. Brittney Cooper dispels this phenomenon that is often used as a means to advise black women.

Self-help gurus, pastors and poets love to point to women’s ‘low self-esteem’ as the cause for all Black-girl problems. Just learn to love yourself, we are told. But patriarchy is nothing if not the structurally induced hatred of women. If every women and girl learned to love herself fiercely, the patriarchy would still be intact.

Additionally, the polarity of Nappily’s two love interests implies another false notion, like other black romantic films, that financially successful men are bad for black women. Violet’s relationship with Clint, a doctor, is vapid and unsatisfying while her relationship with Will, a working-class man who can’t afford a car, is spiritually fulfilling and helps her embrace “realness.” We see this trend in Tyler Perry’s work frequently.

His 2013 drama Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor is a fable about a woman who leaves her less-than-satisfying husband for a wealthy entrepreneur. As a punishment, she is beaten by her new lover and contracts HIV. In Madea’s Family Reunion, Perry illustrates another toxic relationship between the character Lisa and her abusive husband, who’s an investment banker, while the heart of the film is a romance between another woman and a poetic bus driver. In Nappily, Violet doesn’t slow down her career for either man, but Will’s lifestyle ultimately feels more grounded.

While the film overshoots the emotional confinement black women have to their hair, it significantly underplays the way black women support each other. The second most endearing counsel Violet receives on her makeover and breakup from Clint is from her father. At no point in the film does her marriage-obsessed mother express any empathy for her daughter’s life unravelling. And Violet’s girlfriends (one is black with natural hair) might as well be cardboard cutouts. In one scene, at an all-women group therapy session, where a homegirl intervention is likely to occur, Violet is simply told to “own” her shaven head by the group’s leader, and the scene ends abruptly.

Ultimately, Nappily’s ideas of liberation are too male-driven to upend any of society’s expectations of black women. Its hazy narrative attempts to define “realness” as a lack of physical adornment rather than self-actualization. In the end, Violet feels free from her tiresome facade, but it’s men who define where her true happiness lies. In reality, the biggest comfort of being a black woman with black hair is the experience you share with other black women. Nappily would be a much better film if it contained stronger female bonds and acknowledged the romance within our community of women who share care tips, experiment with different looks and uplift each other’s hairstyles, whatever they may be.

It started a few weeks before my 21st birthday. I got an email from my pen pal, Kim, in Minnesota, asking if I could receive an international package in my country Kenya. I lived in a village where doors were unmarked and dirt roads led to bushes. I had no address. But the vanity that defined me at that age needed that package so bad. It was the first time someone showed interest in celebrating my birthday.

I was working in a cyber café where the only payment was being allowed to use computers and send emails. When Kim wanted to send the package, I asked the owner of the cyber café if I could use his post office box address. After much prodding, he gave a begrudging yes, with a threat that if I used his address to receive illegal things, he would throw me to his snakes. (Yes, he kept huge snakes as pets, but that is a story for another day.)

It took exactly 22 days for my package to arrive from America. From the day she posted it, I scribbled my anticipation in a rugged old diary that acted as my dream board.

Nothing under this earth will ever replace the feeling I got when I finally held the yellow package that was delivered to me at the cyber café. I raced to the toilet, the only place that had semblance of privacy, and delicately tried to open my gift. I could feel my hands shaking from excitement that rose from a place deep inside me.

I made a hole in the envelope and peered inside. There were several multicolored bracelets, a photograph, and tiny samples of perfume. I could also see a sleek silver tube. I tore the envelope further and recognized the tube almost immediately. It was lipstick. My very first! I nudged it open, and it revealed a crimson red color that looked even richer when I moved from the toilet’s fluorescent light and held it against the scorching sun.

I made a swatch on my wrist. It glided smoothly to form a screaming red line. The color of my blood. It stood out like an act of defiance. I hastily rubbed it off; but I knew I was in love.

In my village, and according to my family, owning lipstick was unacceptable. The thought of wearing it was unimaginable. Women with scarlet pouts were something I had only seen in magazines. I marveled at the courage of those women, inwardly wondering if they had parents.

It glided smoothly to form a screaming red line. The color of my blood. It stood out like an act of defiance.
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My childhood is made up of memories of my mother whispering to me about “red lipped prostitutes.” Of village girls who left for the city and got introduced to sex, drugs, and lipstick.

“She started coloring her lips and everyone knew she will get AIDS,” I remember my mother saying under muted light from the paraffin lamp that lit up our kitchen. She was retelling a story she had heard at the market, of a girl who was found dead a few months after she left the village to look for a job in Nairobi. They blamed her death on prostitution and lipstick.

As my mother spoke, tears gathered around her eyelashes. I wondered if she was crying from the pain of the story, or if her eyes were getting irritated by the smoke from the wet firewood she was using to cook. Lipstick was a sin. No decent woman wore it, at least in the eyes of my mother and people around her.

The night after receiving my package, I hid the lipstick beneath a heap of clothes in my metallic suitcase. I could not sleep. I wondered if I would ever get a chance to apply it. When everyone was asleep, I groped through the darkness, opened my suitcase and rummaged through it with my fingers. There it was! My lipstick.

I opened it again and lifted it to my nose — it smelled like delicious bubble gum. I applied it in the dark, smacked my lips together and extended my lips to see if it could shine through the pitch darkness around me. It did not. I rubbed it off till my lips were sore. Then I went to bed.

Applying lipstick in the dark became my ritual. Whenever fear that my mother would notice remnants of the representation of immorality lingering in the cracks of my lips crept inside me, I would wash my mouth with soap.

Oh, I longed for the day I would wear my lipstick in the light of day.

I decided to dare, almost six months after she sent it to me. I tried it because I was tired of hiding. I was just fed up with not being able to express myself because of what my culture made me believe. I was young, I wanted to be different, and lipstick provided that. So I created an awkward pout with my mouth and clumsily drew an unsteady red line on the outlines of my lips. While staring into the cracked mirror that I held close to my face, I filled my lips.

I tried it because I was tired of hiding. I was just fed up with not being able to express myself because of what my culture made me believe.
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My heart was beating fast as I slowly pressed my lips together before applying another layer. The redness of my lips was a representation of rebellion and transformation for me. I stared at myself in the mirror, and fell in love with the contrast the red lips formed against my dark skin. The dark spots on my face and my bushy eyebrows seemed less pronounced from the dominance of the lipstick.

Then, I grabbed the hem of the leso (wrapper worn by women over their clothes to show decency) and slowly wiped it off. I had tasted liberation. I had worn lipstick during the day. It was brief, but it showed a defiance of rules that defined women. I was a part of a mini revolution.

My urge to do more was emboldened. Wearing lipstick became my distant and secret obsession.

The tiny silver bottle contained my freedom. Not being able to wear lipstick reminded me of my oppression. I wanted to do things that were forbidden, things women had been enculturated to believe they cannot and should not do. We were taught that women cannot serve and eat before men had their full share. I remember waiting for my father to finish eating, and it felt like forever. I would get so hungry waiting for men to eat. We were told we cannot laugh out loud, so all my life, I grew up stifling laughter because women were supposed to lower their voices. Looking at a man in the eye was considered rude; so I spent time staring on the ground while talking.

Any time I caressed the tube between my fingers, I was confronted with the reality of how much our culture had made women feel like they have no say in what they do with their bodies.

We were enchained. The only way I could break from those shackles was to wear my lipstick out.

One Saturday morning, almost six months after I received the lipstick, I did it. I wore faded blue jeans that I had gotten for 100 shillings (1 dollar) at a flea market, a white halter blouse, and lipstick. I was ready for the world.

My mama was working in the farm when I stepped out into the brightness of day, wearing red lipstick.

The world momentarily held its breath. As she saw me, she put down the seeds she was sowing, and walked towards me. I stood, waiting.

“What are you doing to me? What is that on your lips?” she asked. Tears choked her, and the more she talked, the more it became apparent that she was crying. Yes, the first time my mother saw me wearing lipstick, she cried.

“What will I tell people? Have you decided to be a prostitute?” she asked; her voice low and dejected. I stood motionless. She begged me to wipe it off.

I weakly told her that I will remove it when I come back. She watched me walk away with my lipstick still intact. I did not have courage to look back.

I felt so free. Lipstick to me was not a mere influence of the “Western world” or corrupt media. It was just me, being a young woman who wanted to try out something new without feeling like I owed the whole community an explanation.

She watched me walk away with my lipstick still intact. I did not have courage to look back.
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I was tired of being told what to wear, what parts of chicken women should eat, how loud they should laugh and what should go on their lips.

I wanted to paint my lips, because they were mine.

I wore lipstick that day, and the days after. Even when my mother said she will miss me when I die, because to her, lipstick and death were related, I still wore it.

Amidst stares and whispers when I walked past people in the village, I maintained my red lips. In no time, the stares reduced. People started accepting my red lips. My streak of red on my lips became normal.

I had gotten my freedom, and they had accepted it. My mother no longer clicked when I tried getting lipstick stains off my teeth.

I started asking Kim to send me more lipstick. When she sent me coral lipstick, my mother lingered behind me as I tried it on.

“I used to think all lipsticks are red. What is that color?” she asked.

I said: “They are in all colors you can imagine.”

She shook her head and smiled. I had won the battle.

In a succinct and biting phrase, British-Iraqi freelance writer Ruqaya Izzidien dismisses Fenty Beauty’s recently launched Moroccan spice eyeshadow palette as nothing more than “shades of cheap Arab tokenism.” The palette features eyeshadows with names like “Sahara Stunna,” “Henna Sea,” and “Cumin Get it.” The advertising is no less hackneyed, deploying colored sands and women strutting around with a camel (of course there is a camel) to substantiate that the palette is, indeed, authentically Moroccan. And yet Moroccan creators and models are conspicuously absent from the campaign.

This oversight is to many, easily defensible. Moroccan culture is “spicy” and “exotic,” the kind  that would inspire beauty. What’s more, Fenty’s founder, Rihanna, is a Black woman, and Fenty has been an industry leader in providing makeup for people of every color. Surely, one would imagine, they must know what they’re doing when it comes to race and color.

The problem lies in regarding malicious intent as the only iteration of oppression. In the Moroccan Spice campaign, Fenty engages with a seemingly harmless yet disappointingly orientalist vision of Morocco. Even within WoC activist circles, there is a great deal of misperception about orientalism as a tool of oppression and subjugation. A term that refers to the lens through which the colonizing West perceives the the purported “East” as a faraway land of the strange and the exotic, it is often dismissed as nothing more than a fascination with the land of the “other.” Without engaging with the harmful history of orientalism, it is easy to mistake Fenty’s palette as a tribute to Moroccan women rather than an erasure of them.

But there is indeed a sinister history underpinning the celebration of the palette as an epithet for Moroccan spice markets. Since the advent of colonialism, the West has produced a veritable cornucopia of stock images of the East, ranging from evil Arabs to overflowing Bazaars to Harems with naked women lounging about for the pleasure of their male owners. These assert and reinforce the belief that the “orient” is a space removed from reality, primitive and uncivilized. Armed with this dehumanizing notion, the colonizers’ justified their “civilizing” mission (read: rampant exploitation and destruction).

Without engaging with the harmful history of orientalism, it is easy to mistake Fenty’s palette as a tribute to Moroccan women rather than an erasure of them.
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Hiding behind clever puns and colorful advertising, Fenty’s palette builds off this agenda by distilling Morocco into a timeless land of deserts, Souks, and spices. With the puns come more visibly negative stereotypes—consider the eyeshadow named “Evil Genie.” Taken together, the names and the advertising produce a theater of Morocco that has no relationship to its reality. This is no simple matter of perception. Persistent orientalist othering of Arabs feeds into the kind of cultural xenophobia that licenses policies like the Muslim Ban and targeted surveillance programs.

Fenty does not appear to have consulted with Moroccan women to produce an accurate representation of the “flavors of Morocco,” but instead built purely from a convenient fantasy etched into the American consumer’s mind. That could have been an easy solution. The camels and Shisha references could have been retired. Yet the brand chose to exploit the same tired tropes that litter notions of the Arab world in the contemporary US. For a brand that purports itself to be inclusive and woke, this is a convenient oversight.

Yet this is an old story, fueled by the twin evils: commodification and ignorance. As diversity and multiculturalism continue to grab eyeballs (as evidenced by those ever-so-subtle university brochures featuring PoCs masking largely white campuses), it has become profitable to cater to women across the spectrum of ethnicity and race. This is not a bad thing. Fenty’s wide shade range and inclusive advertising have a welcome place in an industry plagued by racist narrowcasting. Yet their choices in the Moroccan Spice campaign reveal that the intent was more to profit off the tag of inclusivity than to work towards building it into their brand culture. Fenty’s palette brings an age-old orientalism into the world of late-capitalism by gratuitously commodifying and exoticizing an orient based in spectacle and fantasy to sell their product.

Persistent orientalist othering of Arabs feeds into the kind of cultural xenophobia that licenses policies like the Muslim Ban and targeted surveillance programs.
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This commodification is particularly disappointing coming from a brand spearheaded by a contemporary black icon. Rihanna’s involvement in the palette and its marketing goes further in normalizing the narrative of orientalism even within the ranks of women of color. This is no new phenomenon. Different minority groups have a long history of being at odds with each other in the spheres of recognition and activism—just think of the fervor with which some feminist groups refuse allyship with LGBTQ activists or the ease with which oppressed minorities in the US choose to disavow immigrants. Empower American women it does, but Fenty has little concern for the sentiments of the women whose culture it warps and commodifies under the guise of diversity. This might be why there are no models of Moroccan origin in the campaign; as long as minorities within the American narrative are empowered, it simply doesn’t matter what happens to women on the outside.

Andrea Smith, scholar of indigenous studies, puts this apparent contradiction in a framework she introduces in her essay “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy.” Smith suggests that WoC politics in the US are inadequately framed: “[The current framework of WoC activism] tends to presume that our communities have been impacted by white supremacy in the same way. Consequently, we often assume that all of our communities will share similar strategies for liberation. In fact, however, our strategies often run into conflict.” Fenty and its purported inclusivity are a blatant manifestation of this phenomenon. While Rihanna might claim “Fenty Beauty was created for everyone: For women of all shades, personalities, attitudes, cultures, and races,” her inclusivity falls flat when it comes to involving the women whose culture is commodified in the process of creating and marketing a product catering to “all women” within the US.

Perhaps this is a reckoning. Perhaps instead of fighting for inclusion in an industry that has been built on the exclusion of minorities, a systematic dismantling needs to take place. Blanket empowerment  needs to be retired to give way to a more nuanced and effective activism, one that recognizes different manifestations of oppression, both within and without the US. The onus is as much on us as it is on the likes of Fenty. Want to experience Moroccan spices? Buy some from a Moroccan producer. Want to learn about beauty in Morocco? Follow Moroccan models and increase their audience. Want to use Moroccan beauty products? Support one of the many Moroccan cosmetic brands that actually involve Moroccan women in their production processes.

Dismantling the old-school orientalism that wafts unchecked through the American beauty industry (be it in K-beauty advertising or Fenty’s release) requires nothing more than a desire to engage with the cultures that “inspire” the products of brands like Fenty. It is not enough to champion brands that perform inclusivity, conflating women of color into one convenient package without recognizing the difference in their contexts and oppressions. We need to move beyond blanket narratives and demand real inclusivity from the beauty world and, indeed, from our own circles of activism. Without this, WoC spheres will remain superficially diverse, yet divided as ever.

I’m in panic

He wants to see my bare face

I really like him

Would it be okay to show it to him?

Oh, never (That’s right, that’s right)

Let’s keep what needs to be kept (Right, right)

Until you get all of his heart

Don’t ever forget this

–I Got a Boy, SNSD

Beauty in South Korea does not come in all shapes and sizes. It comes with a V-shaped face, a slender body, double eyelids, and pale porcelain skin.

Cis Korean women are expected to go to any length to achieve this perfect look—and they certainly do. South Korea has the highest per capita plastic surgery procedures in the world, and its beauty industry is globally ranked as one of the largest. Every major street and subway station is littered with stores selling sheet masks, Jeju volcanic creams, and the promise of perfection.

But some South Korean women, mostly those in their late teens and twenties, are declaring it’s time to “take off their corsets.” These women do not literally wear corsets; the movement references the restrictive, harmful, and gender-essentialist nature of corsets. 탈코르셋, or Tal Corset (tal meaning to take off), inspires women to cut their hair drastically short, destroy their makeup, and get rid of uncomfortable clothes. Anything that restricts how women express themselves, or asks women to conform to certain beauty standards at the expense of their own desires, is a “corset.” And these women are claiming that it’s time to throw them out.

Anything that restricts how women express themselves, or asks women to conform to certain beauty standards at the expense of their own desires, is a 'corset.'
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Getting a short haircut and forsaking makeup and bras is radical in a nation like South Korea. Like other East Asian countries, South Korea is still heavily influenced by Confucian ideals, which explicitly qualify men as superior, and command women to be obedient to their fathers and brothers when young, then to their husbands, and later to their male children. Though women no longer exist for the sole purpose of bearing a male heir, they are still expected to be passive, soft-spoken, and utterly feminine.

As a result, women’s behavior and appearance is fastidiously scrutinized. In fact, it is often considered rude for Korean women to show their “bare” face in public. South Korea also has the lowest score of any OECD country in terms of the gender pay gap. According to the 2017 OECD report, “women hold only 17% of seats in the National Assembly […] and only 10.5% of management positions [in the private sector].” The patriarchal Hoju System, which by law placed men as the head of households, was not abolished until 2008.

To make matters worse, feminism is still very taboo in South Korea. Anything even slightly related to women’s empowerment is often met with extreme, and sometimes violent, backlash. Female K-Pop idols have faced public uproar and boycotts from male fans for shockingly radical actions like reading a feminist book or having a “girls can do anything” phone case.  Female game developers claim male players surveil their accounts for any feminist activity. If any semblance of feminism is found, they often complain and protest until the developers formally apologize or leave the company.

Introducing South Korea’s First Inclusive Sex Toy Shop
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Steady changes towards women’s rights have been happening for decades, but the efforts somewhat lacked movement. Then, in 2016, the horrifying Gangnam Murder shook the nation and awoke a feminist upheaval. On May 17, a man murdered a random woman in a public bathroom close to Gangnam Station. He reportedly did it because he had been scorned by women too many times. Enraged, thousands of women took to the streets, fed up with the violence of misogyny.

Feminism experienced another resurgence with the explosion of #MeToo, which has toppled down high-profile assaulters, including the aspiring (paywall) presidential candidate Ahn Hee Jung. There have also been widespread protests against spycam pornography, an issue South Korea has struggled with for years.

In the midst of all this, it is only natural for women to start pushing against other forms of oppression—namely, society’s patriarchal obsession with controlling how they act and look.

탈코르셋 캘리그라피 영상입니다! pic.twitter.com/0taZxpA24z

— 김명지 (@kim_noonsong) June 9, 2018

“I didn’t really get the whole concept of Tal Corset at first because I thought ‘corsets’ like makeup, long hair, and high heels were things you do for yourself […] but I got to understand the concept when I saw it as a society, not just from my point of view,” says Myungji Kim, a college student who writes feminist calligraphy.  

Her sentiments are shared by Fennie J*, a high school student. “When I first got to know about Tal Corset, there were so many things that I started to evaluate,” she says. “I wondered ‘is that also a corset?’ […] I finally realized that I had been pushing myself too much to meet female social standards by calling it ‘self-satisfaction.’”

According to these women, joining the movement has changed their lives for the better.

“I tried to lose weight until I almost fainted crossing the street […] as a result of an extreme diet I was on,” says 18-year old Sion Ji. “I have put myself into the tightest corset to meet society’s standards. I don’t do that anymore.”

Besides a healthier and more positive relationship with their bodies, women are also gaining a valuable resource: time.

Myungji Kim boasts that she went from spending an hour getting ready every day to just 15 minutes. And Sion Ji says, “I can now get enough sleep since I don’t need to wake up early to [get ready]. I can instead use that time to study more.”

Besides a healthier and more positive relationship with their bodies, women are also gaining a valuable resource: time.
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Despite the positive changes advocates of the movement exalt, not everyone agrees with its ideology. Most of the criticism comes from people claiming that telling women to not wear makeup or skirts is just trading one set of beauty standards for another. “[…]Are we taking off the corset or putting on another one? Calling yourself a radical feminist doesn’t justify criticizing people with a different opinion.” says @KIMBUNGEO on Twitter.

Yet others say that the movement is more about options. “By breaking off the concept of ‘feminine’ and wearing a [different] look […], I wanted to show [that] there are clearly more options for women,” says Myungji Kim.

Most of the women I spoke to said they felt supported by their family and friends. The public sphere, however, is a whole different beast.

How Conventional Beauty Standards Hurt Trans People
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“I realized that male workers in the service industry treat me differently,” says Sion Ji. “Before, when talking to male workers as a customer, they used to talk to me with a smile on their face, but since I got my hair cut short, they are not like that anymore.” Others said they had had instances of people on the metro commenting loudly and disapprovingly on their masculine look.

For Myungji Kim, things have been more extreme. “I openly engage in feminist activities with my face and name out there. Sometimes my pictures end up on random websites and I get sexually harassed and cyberbullied,” she says. “Some people have left me. Living as a feminist in Korea is really not easy, [it] means you can get fired, your personal information might be posted up on the internet without your consent, and it’s likely to affect your chances of being hired.”

This is one of the reasons many of the women posting about the movement hide their faces online behind carefully chosen angles or cute stickers. Interestingly enough, this pattern seems mostly prevalent on Twitter rather than Instagram.

#탈코르셋_인증#탈코르셋_후기
사실 머리자르고 조금 후회했다
더 일찍 자를걸 더 짧게 자를걸
예전에 어떻게 저리 업업하고 다녔는지 상상도 안됨
머리 감고 말리기까지 3분컷이다 pic.twitter.com/4ZfM13Hgto

— 재기민기밐기 (@formygr8life) May 13, 2018

Sion Ji affirms that she hid her face because of fear. She cites an incident in which a female YouTuber received threats for mirroring, or copying the language men use to attack women to in turn attack men. One of the people who threatened to kill her did so as he filmed himself going to what he thought was her house (from an address provided by netizens).

Fennie J has different reasons for concealing her identity. “If I didn’t cover my face, people would try to find out ‘who from where’ instead of [listening] to the message I want to send,” she said. “People would score my look and see [me] as an object, not a subject.”

The haters may be hating, but it seems like feminism, and Tal Corset, are here to stay. The word is spreading, the world is watching, and women’s lives are changing. As Fennie J  puts it, “This movement is a chance for all women, including me, to have more dignity.”

*Name has been changed as per the source’s request.

**Interviews and texts were translated by Jung In Lee. Interviews have been edited for clarity.

‘Writing is telepathy.’

I n the world of intersectional feminism and social justice, beauty writing must be handled with an extraordinary amount of nuance. On the one hand, people have every right to adorn themselves with whatever they damn well please, be it rouge, neon-blue wigs, spandex pants, or a sequined romper; at its best, “beauty” implies glorious empowerment and fierce identity expression.

On the other hand, the beauty industry is often a heteronormative, whitewashing, fat-shaming, objectifying mess that makes people, on the whole, feel miserable and less than.

Very few people can navigate both these realities at once. Of those who can, few do it better than Jennifer Culp.

Jenn’s “Make Your Face” column, featured biweekly here at The Establishment, is a disarmingly charming, visually stunning reminder that beauty should be an external expression of one’s weird, wonderful, joyous personhood. Moreover, Jenn is careful to remind us that justice and beauty need not be mutually exclusive; sometimes, sparkle is a tool of resistance, and liptstick a powerful way to say “fuck you” to the patriarchy.

Jenn’s catalogue of fabulously freaky columns is long and consistently superb, but here are a few particular favorites:

• Make Your Face Beautiful In The Style Of Bob Ross
• How To Look Like A Reddit Troll’s Worst Nightmare
• How To Look Like Every Sign Of The Zodiac

We can think of just one word to describe Jenn’s work: beautiful.

Read below for Jenn’s thoughts on weird selfies, cheddar cheese, and Nine Inch Nails.

You can generally find me writing in an old recliner on a laptop and/or phone while a dog glares at me. (I’m not supposed to pay so much attention to something other than her, see.)

The writers that have most influenced my life are Jane Marie, Lindy West, Heather Havrilesky, Anne Helen Petersen, and Elaine “Lainey” Lui.

The TV character I most identify with is Lwaxana Troi.

I think “paying writers in exposure” is totally unsustainable from the writer POV. If money is being made, writers need to get paid.

My most listened to song of all time is “Last” by Nine Inch Nails.

The coolest thing I’ve bought from money made writing is a plane ticket to visit friends in Miami!

My 18-year-old self would feel utterly bewildered about where I am today.

I like writing for The Establishment for so many reasons! I really enjoy communicating with expressions and images, and Make Your Face has given me an opportunity to combine both with words to create this irreverent but also sometimes bone-serious sort of ongoing journal about beauty and society as experienced by me. The ‘Stab allows me huge leeway to play with format, consistently trusts me with out-there ideas, and offers such careful and thoughtful editing! And I’m honored by the company I keep as a byline on the site; I learn so much from other contributors’ work.

If I could share one of my stories by yelling it into a megaphone in the middle of Times Square, it would probably be How to Master the Art of Weird Selfies. Servicey!

How To Master The Art Of Weird Selfies

If I could only have one type of food for the rest of my life it would be extra sharp cheddar cheese.

If I could give the amazing people who sponsor stories anything in the world to express my gratitude, it would be more stories! More complicated stories!! Weirder stories!!!

The story I’m working on now is about astrology and the comfort of choosing to believe in something you don’t *actually* believe in because you enjoy the way it orders the world.

The story I want to write next is a fun freaky ghost story. I’m ready for Halloween!

Writing means this to me: Writing is telepathy. You look at my words and instantly hear my voice in your head. How cool is that??

If I could summarize writing in a series of three GIFs, it would be:

Astrology is bullshit, yeah, yeeeah. Astrology is also really fun!

I ’ve always liked astrology. It’s a consequence of being a Scorpio. When you’re a Scorpio, astrology excuses all of your most unsociable behaviors and tells you you’re sexy all the time. Who wouldn’t be on board with that?

But—probably also as a consequence of being a Scorpio—I never paid much attention to any of the other signs in the zodiac, not until this year, anyway. In these times of racist, sexist, classist dystopia, a harmless egalitarian system of personality categorization and prediction based on birth time suddenly became unprecedentedly appealing to me, and so in 2017 I find myself referring to what I would previously have called “September” or “back-to-school time” as “Virgo season.” Since it is currently Their Time, let’s start making faces with the sixth symbol in the zodiac, mutable earth sign Virgo!

VIRGO

I know and love several Virgos, but one stands out as the exemplary Ur Virgo in my mind. This woman knows more about makeup than anyone I have ever encountered, in regard to both application AND the list of multisyllabic chemicals listed in fine print on the back or underside of the label. She reassured me that life was just beginning when I attained my first forehead wrinkle and taught me how to wield the potent de-undeadifying power of blush.

Once I went to help this woman move residences. Her ex, who she too-politely would not simply tell to gtfo, angst-wailed guitar ballads at us the entire time we hauled all her furniture out of the house and into a truck. Afterward, *I* was exhausted from the heavy lifting and heavier emotional racket, but Virgo couldn’t sleep without first cleaning the bathroom of her new apartment. When she woke the next morning, she launched into action, and within the span of two hours managed not only to clean her new place from top to bottom but straight-up turned that joint into a HOME. We sipped canned champagne to celebrate, then we went out and, in spite of her dogged insistence that no one would ever want to be with her again following the split from her ex, she immediately picked up an extremely built dude approximately seven years her junior to keep her occupied for the evening.

Virgo couldn’t sleep without first cleaning the bathroom of her new apartment.

Though she thrives on routine and the circumstances were far from her typical day-to-day, I think of that weekend every time I try to quantify the essence of Virgo. A Virgo in turmoil is just so ludicrously Virgo, and I mean that as the highest compliment.

LIBRA

Here in Tennessee, Libra has the best skies of the year: so blue, with big white puffy clouds and pleasant gusts of wind, so appropriate for a cardinal air sign! Scorpios often snatch a reputation for being “mysterious,” but in my mind Libras have that quality locked. Clear-eyed and equanimous, how the hell are you supposed to tell what they’re thinking? (Unless they tell you, of course, and I have never known a Libra to hesitate to tell you if you ask.) Once a Libra-Scorpio cusp in his sixties told me “your twenties are for figuring out what you don’t want to do, your thirties are for figuring out what you do want to do, you spend your forties doing it, and your fifties enjoying it.” This was exactly the wisdom I needed to hear on the cusp of my 30th birthday, and also just seemed to me very emblematic of a measured Libra attitude toward life. (Don’t worry — I’m still in contact with him so I can find out what to expect from my sixties, seventies, and so on.)

Also, Jean Claude Van Damme is a Libra. I just thought you all would like to know that.

SCORPIO

UGH, Scorpios. What is there to say about Scorpio? Everybody loves us, and everybody also kind of hates us a little bit (except Capricorns, their love for Scorpios is pure). We’re the only fixed water sign in the zodiac, so I think of us as the Ice Sign. We’re also a little reptilian, frankly; we respond positively toward others when they feed us and warm our cold bodies.

Support Diverse Journalism — Become A Member Of The Establishment

Scorpios secretly believe that they care about what other people think of them…that is, until someone actually does express a negative opinion of a Scorpio and said Scorpio realizes that nothing in the world has ever mattered less. Scorpio has a reputation for holding grudges, but this is only true up to a point — the point when Scorpio forgets about the grudge AND the individual/s against whom the grudge is held and the entire matter simply ceases to exist in the Scorpio’s universe, snuffed out as if whoever inspired the Scorpio’s ire had never been born. Scorpios get Halloween as their holiday, which is proper and correct; Scorpios are unilaterally goth AF regardless of how they present on the surface.

Sagittarius

Sagittarius people are like cartoons — the Road Runner, not poor ol’ Wile. E. You can’t spring a trap on a mutable fire sign; they always land on their feet. I only marry Sagittariuses, who, given their proclivity for adventure and totally indefatigable sense of self, are uniquely equipped to tolerate Scorpio nonsense. Plus, it’s fun to wake up each morning and say things like, “…is that…a didgeridoo?” “Yeah, I got up early and drove across town to wake your brother up with it.”

You can’t spring a trap on a mutable fire sign.

People are always trying to give my husband things: concert tickets, antique furniture, cookies. Once at the grocery store a man yelled “STOP” and sprinted to the checkout to physically grab a package of shop towels out of Justin’s hand before the teller could ring them up. It turned out that the shop-towel-snatcher had an entire box of unopened heavy-duty shop towels sitting in the back of his truck in the parking lot, and he apparently just couldn’t stand to watch a Sagittarius pay for the product when he could give him a whole carton for free instead.

I know another Sagittarius in a relationship with a Scorpio, gender-flipped from my own scenario. Her motto is “more lipstick, less bullshit,” and she has a permanent case of sex-eyes.

CAPRICORN

As Dr. Mindy Lahiri explains so perfectly, a “best friend” isn’t actually a specific person, but a tier of friend. I got an embarrassment of ‘em! That acknowledged, the two individuals with whom I feel most comfortable as my own most essential not-trying-to-entertain-anyone self are both cardinal earth Capricorns. Perhaps not coincidentally, I bonded with both of these women while playing video games together — Caps feel most comfortable when they’ve got a task to do. Both of my Capricorns are mind-blowingly good at any new game they happen to pick up, which follows, I suppose: Capricorns like to do a little leisure work to relax when they’re not working at their paid jobs.

Capricorns are also, unsurprisingly, mind-blowingly good at their professional careers. Capricorns never give themselves enough credit. Both of my Capricorns are also somewhat cheerfully nihilistic — it paradoxically calms their anxiety to assume that the worst is definitely going to happen. So, when we’re all struggling to survive in the coming post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, try to make sure you end up in a bunker with a Capricorn.

AQUARIUS

I found myself a little stumped when it came to designing a look to represent Aquarius, as the two Aquariuses I interact with most regularly are a bearded philosopher and an extremely beautiful man who imagines that he is ugly. *I* tried to imagine what I would look like if the spirit of an extremely beautiful but unaware bearded philosopher lived inside of me, and this is what came out.

Aquarians gotta keep their minds busy and colorful to stay warm as a fixed air sign whose birthday falls in late January to mid-February. I feel like I would be much braver about experimenting with psychedelic drugs if I were an Aquarius.

PISCES

Then there’s Pisces, sign of my much-beloved brother’s wife and also Rihanna. Pisces is a mutable water sign, and Pisces morphs into whatever form she needs in order to suit her environment…or maybe it’s just that the environment morphs in order to suit her. Pisces enjoy a long bath. Pisces can all pull off too many accessories at once. Pisces are all good at dancing in high heels. Pisces all look good in purple. Pisces are supposedly bound to their overwhelming emotions, according to astrological texts I have read, but I have never ever known a Pisces to let a pesky little thing like a feeling get in the way of her making money. Pisces are incredibly empathetic, however; I have oft witnessed sis-in-law grow murderously outraged on others’ behalf. Don’t get on the wrong side of a Pisces, just don’t.

Once, via Instagram, I witnessed one of my favorite Pisces arrive at the beach — wearing a tiny swimsuit, obviously — and perform an exuberant death drop into a crashing wave to express his delight at his oceanic surroundings. Y’all, if that ain’t the most Pisces thing I have ever seen in my entire life.

ARIES

My mom is 5’2″, claims to be 5’3″. Once, when she encountered a refrigerator door that was frozen shut, she gave the thing a massive heave and ripped it entirely off its hinges. My mom is an Aries.

My husband’s sister is an Aries. Good luck trying to take a walk with that woman: She travels at hyperspeed and continually makes you crack up with laughter; I can never manage it without ending up embarrassingly out of breath.

Monthly Horoscopes By A Bitter Astrologist

My brother-in-law’s gf is also an Aries, and quiet, which, when I met her, was new in my experience of Aries. Then we were left alone at the table for a moment and she immediately stuck her fingers into the hot wax dripping from a candle flame, a big goofy grin on her face. Aries.

Aries are all total babes. They’re also total bruisers. A cardinal fire sign in a full-on berserker rage is an amazing sight to behold, but stand back.

TAURUS

Taurus is the witchiest of all the signs. Tauruses have SO MUCH HAIR. Tauruses give great unimpressed stare — not the death laser glare of a Scorpio but more of a flat, relentless “….so?” in response to your best attempts to dazzle them. But then, if they choose to let loose with it, Tauruses also have really loud laughs.

Taurus is opposite Scorpio on the zodiac wheel, and maybe that’s why I had the bitterest friend blow-up of my adult life with my best Taurus (over something that wasn’t really her fault, but I’m a Scorpio and I was mad anyway). “I don’t want to lose your friendship,” she said, “is there anything I can do to fix this?” “Yeah,” I said, “just leave me alone until I eventually cool off.” And you guys? That bitch DID!! She didn’t try to talk me out of it, she didn’t offer any unnecessary apologies, she just peaced out and did her Taurusy thing until one day a year later I realized I wasn’t mad at all anymore and in fact really missed my Taurus. And then she didn’t even throw it in my face when I turned back up in her life, she was just like “oh good, you’re here,” and we carried on even tighter than we were before. Fixed earth signs, man. Nothing short of an earthquake could rattle that woman’s composure.

GEMINI

Gemini, on the other hand, have no composure, but that’s what we love about them! If a Gemini feels something, you’ll know it; Gemini are not known for keeping their thoughts to themselves. Gemini is the only sign who can use the word “mercurial” to self-describe without immediately thereafter suffering me laughing them off the face of the planet. Gemini all come across to the layperson as extroverts, but that’s just because they talk all the time whether anyone else is around or not. Every single individual Gemini is the eccentric fairy god-aunt of your dreams.

My mutable air role model is a boss baller who chairs a university department. At home, she has a unicorn-themed guest bedroom and keeps a literal cabinet full of jewelry in her kitchen.

CANCER

Cancer makes me think of two things: glitter and swimming pools. Well, three, perhaps: glitter, swimming pools, and obsession. Most astrologers tend to associate the obsessive Cancer quality with other people, painting Cancers as compulsive romantics, but the Cancer closest to me loves art as if the act of creation is a biological necessity. They just can’t stop making images allllllllllll the time, I mean ALL the time—they are the art-makingest art maker I have ever known. I have seen them cover an entire gallery in tiny dots of paint on each itty-bitty bubble of approximately 1,000 Scantron forms; they found it relaxing.

Ruled by the Moon and the lone cardinal, rather than mutable or fixed, sign of the zodiac water trio, Cancer is the most mermaidy of the signs to me. Hell, now that I think on it, the Little Mermaid herself probably was a Cancer.

LEO

Lastly (lol, like they’re ever lastly in life) we come to Leo. I know precisely one Leo who is as cosmetically extra as Leos are “supposed” to be: fake eyelashes for everyday, bright nose highlight to lead the way. My best Leo once told me she was going to put on makeup, so I settled in for a wait — she returned less than 30 seconds later with perfect eyeliner, no other makeup, ready to walk out the door for pizza in the South wearing an I’M WITH HER shirt. Another Leo in my life doesn’t bother with makeup at all. She just shows up, and you’re damn happy about it. Actually, now that I think about it, the primary physical commonality between all of my bosom Leos (ha!) is that they all have awesome racks.

The main similarity between my Leos (besides great boobs) is that they’re all very *present* wherever they happen to be. They’re supposed to be the center of attention, based on most astrological wisdom, but I notice that the middle of the spotlight is often a pretty blinding place to be, and Leos? They don’t let much slip past them. They take everything either 1,000% seriously or not at all so, and the line between can be awfully fine and even waver back and forth from moment to moment.

Leos all have gorgeous smiles.

Astrology is bullshit, yeah, yeeeah. Astrology is also really fun! As astrology will always tell you: You’re perfect, except when you’re not, and when you’re not that’s all right too. Prepare yourself for bad times and appreciate the good. Date and befriend people you’re compatible with; guard your heart but keep yourself open to connections that might surprise you. Enjoy the fabulousness-conferring effect of this week’s full moon in Pisces, and if you find yourself feeling lonely this weekend? Call a Gemini.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/beauty-is-a-preposterous-frivolous-amazing-gift-we-give-to-one-another-4a0764a2650a/ Fri, 30 Jun 2017 21:50:25 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=3324 Read more]]>

Beauty Is A Preposterous, Frivolous, Amazing Gift We Give To One Another

The experience of beauty I share with my friends is a bulwark in a world full of bullshit, a bastion against very real everyday horrors.

Already looking but pre-feeling beautiful on my wedding day, when my father decided to snap a photo of me standing beside a garbage can.

Five years ago today, I walked into a crowded room and everyone stared at me. “She looks BEAUTIFUL,” gasped some blessedly effusive person seated to my left.

Now look dudes, I’ve seen my share of rom-coms and I’ve been to a hell of a lot of weddings based on them. I know the narrative in a traditional-ish Man + Woman tale of matrimony is supposed to go…

and then her nerves vanished when she looked deeply into the eyes of her groom, waiting for her at the end of the aisle. She floated on an ebullient cloud of true love to join hands with her new husband, blissfully unaware of the eyes of the onlookers dazzled by her passage . . .

or something like that.

There’s some truth to the cliche, I think: catching and holding my now-husband’s gaze did make me feel a bit steadier, helped me walk through the sensation of leaping, clawing nerves to meet him in the center of that ballroom to take our vows, but still! The voice from the left, that exclamation from a woman who just couldn’t or wouldn’t withhold verbal appreciation of my wedding day aesthetic, swept me into the center of the room with head high as if my heart weren’t pounding out of my chest.

I don’t know which of my friends or family said it, but I love her. I’ll never think of that moment without feeling the sharp, pleasant pang of sincere compliment, and I still believe that her pronouncement *made* me beautiful in that moment. Perhaps I already glowed from the vantage of outward eyes — I better have looked good, given all the time I spent on my makeup that morning — but it was in that instant that I felt it. “Beautiful.” It echoed in my brain, and that warm, lovely feeling stayed with me throughout the night.

After my brother’s recent wedding ceremony, my dad wrote a little Facebook post that made everybody (or at least definitely me) cry. In it, he made a salient point that, being extremely lucky in the lottery of in-laws, I hadn’t much considered: the legal and sentimental bond of matrimony goes far beyond the two people in the dress(es), tux(es)…or whatever the amazingly Offbeat Bride ensemble(s) they choose to wear for their commitment ceremony.

Marrying somebody is marrying his/her/their entire network of love and acquaintanceship. On a familial level, this becomes pretty apparent as a marriage progresses: your spouse’s family can become, quite literally, your family — you gotta coordinate holidays, you gotta take on pain and part in interfamilial conflict, you gotta go to all the parties. You’re one of the crew now, for better or worse, in sickness and in health.

My Hot-Pink-Loving Santa Claus Father Taught Me What Beauty Is

But when it comes to the wedding day itself, your literal and metaphysical family functions more as a (much-beloved) background, a surrounding tableau of smiles and well-wishes that renders individuals near-anonymous en masse. The people who help you battle anxiety and withstand the enormous pressure of that metaphorical multi-person embrace to survive your “special day” and provide a ceremony worthy of memory are a select group of trusted confidantes: your ride-or-dies, your chosen family, your friends. And especially, if you’re a woman (the woman writing this essay, anyhow): your female friends.

I looked beautiful at my wedding five years ago because Jane taught me how to style my hair in finger waves. I looked beautiful at my wedding because, on the morning of, Lauren said “Jenn, get the hell out of the kitchen. Go do your makeup and I’ll wash the dishes.” I looked beautiful because Hannah, bless her most noble of hearts, attended to my excited, nervous mother all day prior to the ceremony, fetching wine as needed and refusing to allow her to call me about anything potentially anxious-making until the vows had safely been said.

I looked beautiful because Beka offered to make the run to pick up the photo collage that was to-be-displayed by the guest book; I looked beautiful because Lindy literally slapped my father-in-law’s fingers when he attempted to snatch a surplus of hand-made favors from the limited amount available.

When it comes to the wedding day itself, your family functions more as a (much-beloved) background, a surrounding tableau of smiles and well-wishes that renders individuals near-anonymous en masse.

I looked beautiful because I’d received bachelorette night hugs from Bethany, Jen, and Lindsey, who’d all traveled from out of town to be there, because I could hear Kaylan’s laugh ringing before I even walked into the ballroom, because Chenoa wore cowboy boots and Jaime accidentally wore a transparent dress to attend my nuptials.

I looked beautiful because I myself, my own super-best friend, spent a lot of time and effort in consultation with all of the above-mentioned women choosing a dress, making my own jewelry to wear for the ceremony, styling my hair, designing and applying my makeup. I looked beautiful because of the effort and influence of a lot of women, and I felt beautiful because of some woman’s exclamation upon observing the fruits of my enterprise. I mean, damn, I know I’ve repeated the word 78 times in this paragraph alone, but it’s just apropos: what a beautiful, beautiful group of women I know. What a beautiful night!

Recently I’ve been thinking about this form of feminine labor, the way my friends and I utilize our bonds of trust to uplift one another during times of celebration or difficulty. It looks a bit different from the models of adult female friendship I observed growing up, but functions so similarly! I have never made a dish to bring to a church potluck or a loved one in bereavement, but I have packed up every mascara I own and sprinted for the faces of friends who are enjoying accomplishment or suffering heartbreak, eager to provide them with the loveliest self-image I can assist in creating. When Hannah married, I spent more time perfecting the makeup of the mother of the groom than decorating my own face (myself, as a sister, being not nearly as important a figure in the resulting photos).

When Lauren, who typically doesn’t wear makeup, was wed last month, I went to painstaking effort to give her the natural-but-OOMPHED aesthetic she envisioned for the day. When Beka received some bad news that rattled her self-esteem, all I could think to do (besides make dumb jokes and help her through a bottle of champagne) was to whip out some shiny shadow and take a photo that, in its gorgeousness, would make plain the absolute ridiculousness of her rejection. Beauty is my gift to them all, a process-based undertaking that serves to offer both me and my friends reassurance and joy.

How To Make Your Face Look Superb For Your Soulmate’s Seoul Wedding

It’s frivolous, I know. Do any of us need to look or feel pretty? We shouldn’t really, I guess. Not like we need to eat. Do any of us need to be married? Discounting depressingly legit reasons like religion-enforced patriarchal tradition and financial dependence, and good ol’ HEY YOU ANCIENT SPINSTER-style societal pressure—of course not!

Nonetheless, I celebrate both on June 30: my marriage, and the experience of beauty I share with my friends. Both are, for me, bulwarks in a world full of bullshit, bastions against very real everyday horrors that would sap my spirit unto death. I need strong bonds with other humans in order to survive, and those I share with my husband and closest women friends sustain me.

“Beauty,” as a process, is not meaningful to me as a dreary prescribed practice of daily maintenance, but functions as more of a spiritual ritual by which I create and reify the relationships that give my life meaning.

Would my wedding day have been as significant if Lauren hadn’t offered to clean my kitchen so I could spend more time on my makeup? Would hers have been as meaningful if she’d been married in her usual bare face, minus my cosmetic wizardry? Well…of course, in the sense that we would both still now be legally bound in commitments to spouses we trust and adore. But would the ceremonies have been *quite* as special, as perfectly personal in lasting memory? I think not.

The last words I heard from another person besides my husband on my wedding night came from the mouth of another friend, a slightly different tone than whoever’d gasped “She looks BEAUTIFUL!” Justin and I had just retreated to our honeymoon suite and slammed the door. We stood leaning against it, grinning stupidly at each other, when we heard the elevator outside DING!, disgorging a load of women who’d closed out the dancing following our wedding.

Do any of us need to be married? Discounting depressingly legit reasons like religion-enforced patriarchal tradition and financial dependence, and good ol’ HEY YOU ANCIENT SPINSTER-style societal pressure — of course not!

“But,” issued an appreciative voice from the elevator, bellowing down the quiet hallway, “did you see Lauren’s boobs?” (Reader, I did. On that particular night and always, they looked excellent.) “Did you SEE THEM?!” My newly minted husband and I both lost it, cackling until we couldn’t breathe, laughing until the clamor of other voices faded into the still of night. I knew again then that I’d made a perfect choice of partner: someone who would never begrudge me the feminine frivolity I cherish in my friendships, someone who delights in myself, my body, my family, my friends, and the absurd ways in which we express our affection for one another.

On June 30 it feels right not only to celebrate my love and ever-increasing appreciation for my partner-in-life, but also the women whose blurted words definitively punctuated our ceremony, the friends who saw us to the point of marriage and beyond. Beauty (and boobs, apparently) have bound us all in a broader web than I was even capable of conceiving when I said “I do” on that swelteringly hot evening in 2012, and five years later? All of those loves shine more brightly than ever. How beautiful is that?!

]]> https://theestablishment.co/the-strange-transformative-power-of-dyeing-your-hair-e1c08cc54a4d/ Fri, 17 Mar 2017 21:47:18 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=4962 Read more]]> It seems hair color has always been an indicator of status and worth.

I must confess: I have beautiful hair. At least that’s what people say, and I’m inclined to believe them — even though I’m not entirely sure what they mean when they tell me this. My hair is long and thick, it’s true.

Then again, I’m also always compulsively changing it.

I started saying that I dye my hair to “change my life” when I was around 18 years old, much too young to intentionally change my life at all, as it would inevitably change around me — with or without my help.

In this way, I am not unique.

BASE COLOR // DIRTY BLONDE

The grass is greener than most grass or perhaps it’s the vivid green pitted against the softest pink, the palest, sweetest pink, one can imagine. The child with the dirty blonde hair, maybe three years old, we’ll call her Cassandra, looks dreamily to the right of where the flash must be. Wearing a soft pink t-shirt with brown horses on it, she holds cotton candy of the same pale pink color in front of her. The serving size is larger than her head. She has big blue eyes, and her full pink cheeks show a mouth that looks too timid to smile, but she’s pleased with the soft, sweet, pink candy in front of her and the beautiful green grass below.

Her mother and grandmother always call her their “blonde baby.” She’s never been blonde though. Not really. So their words always surprise her. From a young age, she knew she was supposed to be blonde. Somehow, it would make things better.

This is where she starts. This is her base color upon which everything else relies.

STRAWBERRY BLONDE // Copper Shimmer Color 0356

A neon yellow beer bottle — a lime hanging on the rim — shines in the back of an otherwise black background. There may be a TV on in the left corner, but one can’t be sure. The girl closest to the camera has the biggest smile — it stretches the width of the picture. Her perfect white teeth are shining, her light brown eyes barely open. The girl with the huge smile, let’s call her Chesney, has shiny, short black hair. The girl with the strawberry blonde hair — let’s call her A Little Bit Naive — leans over Chesney’s shoulder what appears to be mid-laugh. Her blue eyes are closed tighter, her smile a little smaller and a little more crooked. Her strawberry blonde long hair covers both their shoulders.

“I’ve never done this before,” A Little Bit Naive says.

“You probably won’t even feel it,” Chesney insists, as she passes the packed bowl and starts to light it for her.

“But how do I…”

“You’re overthinking it. Just breathe in, I’ll do the rest for you,” Chesney assures her.

Chesney is right — A Little Bit Naive doesn’t really feel anything the first time she smokes, but she doesn’t want to be rude so she sits in Chesney’s Land Cruiser and laughs and pretends to feel what she thinks she should.

An often quoted (but largely unverifiable) study done by the hair care brand Tresemmé offers up fascinating facts about women who dye their hair, asserting that almost 25% of women who dye their hair “wish they had never started.” While this may not be the most scientific study ever conducted, it nonetheless offers insightful information into the pathology of why dyeing hair and feeling beautiful are so deeply intertwined. These regretful statistics aren’t that surprising, I suppose, considering the effects that long-term hair dye has on hair; indeed, 75% of women believe that hair dye has damaged their hair, leaving it weaker, thinner, and wrought with split ends.

Let’s be clear: Dyeing your hair is not good for it or you and yet, here we are. We continue to dye our hair for various reasons: to cover up grays, to change our life (guilty), or to simply maintain our self-image. It might be argued that it’s not unlike other self-harm, like smoking cigarettes or tanning, but in a much more aesthetically pleasing, socially acceptable way. A study by Texture Media reports that the average woman spends over $250–350 per year on her hair care and color. Meanwhile, statistics company Statista reports that in 2016, the global hair care market was worth $83.1 billion. Let me repeat: $83.1 billion.

It seems the ways that hair dye damages our hair are largely ignored or understudied, or so our spending habits would suggest. Many of the 5,000 chemicals in permanent hair dye have been proven to be carcinogenic to animals, but we continue to blithely slather it on our hair, and thus, into our skin.

A self-help book for women published in the 1600s, titled Delights for Ladies, offered a handy recipe for women to transform their black hair into brown hair using a few simple ingredients, including Oyle of Vitrioll. The advice cautions to “avoid touching the skin,” which is wise since Oyle of Vitrioll is sulfuric acid. You may recognize sulfuric acid as the common ingredient in battery acid, drain cleaner, or other highly corrosive materials — basically every skull and cross-bones warning label your mother told you to stay away from.

I’m not suggesting that the world at large isn’t dangerous and brimming with things that hurt us, but I am arguing that this one particular habit — done in the search of acceptance of ourselves or others — continues to produce evidence of harm. And this is largely ignored.

BLACK // Leather Black Color 0563

A small girl with chestnut brown hair sits smiling on the lap of another — raven-haired — smiling girl. The balcony they’re on appears to be two or three stories high, with car lights and streetlights shining in the background.

The one with chestnut brown hair, let’s call her Vanessa, squints her eyes tight. One hand softly cups the raven-haired girl’s face; the other clutches a red solo cup. The girl with the black hair — let’s call her Mystified — has her arms tightly wrapped around Vanessa’s waist, her smile wide, wide wide; her eyes stretch open as if she’s surprised. A stray hand belonging, let’s say, to Chace, darts high above the girls’ heads in a fist, as if performing a cheerleaders’ move.

“You stupid fat bitch I don’t fucking want you.”

“I’m sorry, Chace, I had to tell her. Vanessa, you deserve better…”

“Get out of here you stupid cunt, you only wish I wanted you.”

Vanessa stands there with her mouth open, looking from Mystified to Chace. Finally Chace starts coming down the stairs swinging his fist at Mystified, and Vanessa steps in. Mystified has tears in her eyes as she grabs her purse and quickly leaves the apartment. On the way home, Mystified sobs and wonders if maybe all the times Chace had said he loved her instead of Vanessa, and all the times she had rejected his come-ons, she had misheard or misunderstood her best friend’s boyfriend.

When she gets home, she steps into a hot shower and watches as the water runs from clear to black: a mixture of her mascara and newly dyed black hair.

One study published in the Indian Dermatological Online Journal found that more than 42% of those who dyed their hair experienced “adverse reactions,” ranging from “sensitivity” or dermatitis to bronchospasms, but continued to dye their hair anyway.

In 2001, researchers at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California published a study suggesting that those who are frequently around hair dye were twice as likely to develop bladder cancer as those who abstain. There have also been various links to rheumatoid arthritis and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, not to mention the harmful effects on a fetus during pregnancy. Many of these studies have not yet been conclusive, but there are troubling, observable correlations. We dye anyway.

Beauty is more valued than our comfort. Or health. This is not revelatory of course. We’ve always been looking for ways to change. To be beautiful.

In the past, a pigment was added to the hair to dye it. Using henna, indigo, saffron, even gold dust, civilizations as far back as the Paleolithic era found it desirable to have an unnatural color on their head. The ancient Romans lightened their hair with pigeon dung, while the Venetians chose to use horse urine. In the Roman Empire, prostitutes were required to have yellow hair in order to alert others of their profession. As civilization has evolved, the relatively small percentage of natural blonde hair has continued to make it rare and thus, favored. It seems hair color has always been an indicator of status and worth.

BROWN // French Roast Color 0934

Three girls pose together in what appears to be a foggy, maybe smoky, room with red neon lights and many, many people in the background. The girl on the far left with the olive skin and dark hair squeezes her eyes closed and sticks her tongue out. The girl in the middle peeks between the two girls; her eyes are wide-open and flanked by a beautiful smile. Her long blonde hair rests on the shoulder of the girl to her right. The girl with the brown hair winks with one eye and leaves her mouth agape. A tiny airplane bottle of liquor peeks its head from between the brunette’s low-cut shirt, just grazing her sterling silver necklace. The girl with the dark hair, we’ll call her Shelton, has a perfect manicure that gives a peace sign to the camera, joined by a photo bombing hand that echoes it. The girl with the brown hair — the one winking, who we’ll call Happy — leans into the other two girls, perhaps steadying herself.

The lineup for the Beale Street Music Festival offers three different musicians playing at the same time on three different stages on the Mississippi River bank for three days straight. After the first night out, the girls had taken the second day to eat BBQ nachos and rest up for the third day’s main event — Snoop Dogg and Three Six Mafia — the only concerts that all three had agreed to see.

“It’s pouring rain,” Happy says.

“Let’s not go,” Shelton responds.

“We have to go,” Lauren snaps back, “Snoop Dogg.”

“Well we need rain boots because it’s going to be muddy,” Shelton demands.

After going to two different stores with no luck, Happy called a Bass Pro Shop 30 miles away. They were in luck. They only had one style so the three very different girls match out of necessity.

The concerts are great, probably, but as the girls stomp around in the mud, the more the brown mud splashes about their boots, the less they listen to the music. The mud and the rain could’ve been a nuisance, but it isn’t. Not to them. After a few minutes they realize there was no reason to try to listen to the music, no reason to try to stay clean, no reason for their brand-new boots not to be covered in mud. Eventually Happy starts tossing mud, first at Lauren and then at a pissed-off Shelton, until they start laughing and tossing it at each other like kids, and stomp through puddles. The rain keeps pouring down.

Rebecca Guerard wrote a fascinating article for The Atlantic called “Hair Dye: A History.” She, too, is interested in the ways that this ritual has shaped beauty and cultural standards, but even more so, the chemistry behind it. She, too, ponders: “Why do so many people still color their hair? Why would someone go through the rigmarole and tolerate the expense, the itching, and the smell? Whatever drives our desire to change the color of our hair, one thing is certain: People have deep emotional ties to what covers their scalps.”

She travels to a conference for hairdressers from around the country learning as much as she can about the truly magnificent process that goes into hair color chemistry. Even our hair, a living breathing, chemistry project, is comprised of 50% carbon, 21% oxygen, 17% nitrogen, 6% hydrogen, and 5% sulphur.

The natural color of our hair is determined (like our skin tone and eye color) by two types of melanin — eumelanin, and pheomelanin. Eumelanin is responsible for darker hair (like the amount of melanin in our skin tones) and the most prominent melanin in our hair; darker hair colors are, therefore, far more common.

People have deep emotional ties to what covers their scalps.
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Pheomelanin accounts for red hair, and the various shades of color depend on the genetic balance of these two types of melanin. Blonde hair is the result of relatively little or no melanin. This is, like skin color and most features, determined by genetics.

When we attempt to change genetics and construct a preferable shade to color our hair, the chemistry continues to get more intricate. It’s the reactions of the chemicals that make a perfect shade. If you’re hoping to achieve a brown hair color, you achieve this by applying two chemicals — neither of which are brown. They simply turn brown when they react to each other; it’s the reaction that makes the color, not the pigments that are applied.

Not unlike in elementary art class — where we learned that the rainbow was actually made of just three colors combined with one another — the hair color process works with three compounds usually grouped in red, blue, or green. The key is how these three colors interact with each other.

The length of the reaction — the 30 minutes or an hour or what have you — that you sit with the chemicals on your hair, determines the color that you walk away with.

BLONDE // Pure Diamond Color 0134

The blonde girl in the photo, we’ll call her Sexy, leans in toward the camera drinking out of a martini glass. The tall martini glass is filled with brown liquid and topped with foam, like a perfectly prepared latte. In front of her long, golden blonde hair, a glass of water sits to her right. Vodka bottles appear like children lined up by height on a shelf behind her, above a computer, giving the appearance of a bar. At the end of the bar sits a dirty, empty wine glass. Sexy’s expression can’t be seen under the foam hiding half her face. It can only be seen through her light blue eyes turned red by flash, which shine and smile directly past the empty wine glasses into the camera.

Sexy agrees to have a drink with him. Although she barely knows him, they work together, so she assumes it is harmless enough. They settle into the corner booth of the patio underneath a dogwood tree.

“So how long have you been married,” she asks.

“What?” he acts confused as she points to his ring.

“Oh yeah, we’re not really married anymore, it’s complicated,” he says simply.

She watches as he slips off the silver wedding band and puts it in his pocket.

She drinks her vodka tonic. He scoots closer to her.

He smiles at her and she laughs and darts her eyes away, not knowing what to do with the look he gives her. She isn’t used to anyone looking at her this way. She runs her fingers through her newly dyed blonde hair, pulling it to one side then the other until he grabs her hand and pulls her into his lap and she turns to face him. His stubble grazes her face as he starts kissing her. Sexy starts kissing him back just as forcefully, reaching for his softly shaven head. Her free hand feels him get hard beneath her. In the dark corner no one can see as he parts her legs under the table. Under her simple blue cotton dress he begins to play with her clit. She bites his lip harder to let him know that she likes it. She opens her eyes to see him staring at her while he keeps moving his fingers around, knowing exactly how to please her. She feels him getting harder as she gets wetter until her concentration is broken when the thin blue strap of her dress slips off her shoulder. As she reaches to pull it back up, he grabs her hand to pull it back down.

In 2001, Hillary Clinton gave the commencement speech at Yale. She spoke about the importance of hair. “Your hair will send significant messages to those around you. What hopes and dreams you have for the world, but more, what hopes and dreams you have for your hair. Pay attention to your hair, because everyone else will.’’ I would like to insert a sarcasm font here, as I like to imagine she did, but she’s not wrong, and that’s why for centuries women have searched for the right color to send the right message to the world.

She runs her fingers through her newly dyed blonde hair. She isn’t used to anyone looking at her this way.
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The reason blonde hair (at least in the U.S.) is vastly preferred by men and women can in part be traced back to the fact that darker hair is much more prevalent. Psychology Today reports that 90% of the population has darker hair, while only 2% have naturally blonde locks. Basically we all want something different, something that sets us apart, to catch a mate’s eye. And that something has historically been blonde hair. The scarcer the color appears, the more it is preferred. There is also an innate youthfulness in the hair color, and a seeming sexuality that follows.

A strange, confusing sociological dichotomy appears, the further you dig into these preferences, however.

Anecdotal study after study shows that men approach blonde women more often, and women feel more confident and beautiful with blonde hair. But men and women alike reportedly find brunettes to be the preferred friend or mate; they’re often considered more intelligent. And yet, more interesting still: If you want to be a successful woman, you should have blonde hair.

Professor Jennifer Berdahyl of the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business researched this correlation after attending a conference for women at the Harvard Business School, and noticed that most of the speakers were blonde. Her research found that 35% of female Senators in the United States are blonde, as are 48% of female CEOs of S&P companies.

Her study found that the same words being said by women with blonde hair versus dark hair had a vastly different reaction from male counterparts. The darker haired women were seen as more authoritative and negatively regarded. Perhaps it’s not that surprising, because after all, it is a Man’s World, and the innate sexuality and youth of blonde hair is a clear favorite among the male sex.

This obsession with blonde hair also taps into racial bias. You can’t talk about hair without acknowledging its undeniable power in determining how one is perceived, overlooked, or Othered. Many pieces have been written about the socio-political underpinnings of black beauty being negated—even criminalized—by a racist, Caucasian-centric aesthetic.

Research from the infamous “Good Hair Study” exposed the implicit bias surrounding black hair. Conducted by the Perception Institute, the study found that in asking 4,000 participants to take an online test—which involved “rapidly-changing photos of black women with smooth and natural hair, and rotating word associations with both”—white women held the greatest bias. They rated natural hair as “less beautiful,” “less sexy/attractive,” and “less professional than smooth hair.”

A 1993 study examined the long-standing purveyor of beauty, Playboy magazine, assessing its Playmates of the Year between 1954 and 2007. This study illustrated an increase in the percentage of blonde playmates through the magazine’s duration; the fewest blondes were found in the mid 1960s (about 35%) while the year 2000 found the highest (around 66%).

These numbers reflect what society defines as sexy. As the authors explain in their abstract, “The study’s findings have numerous implications for social issues and research regarding the psychology of physical appearance.”

Similarly, it’s not unrelated that in the 21st century, 75% of women feel sexier and more glamorous when they go blonde. Being blonde sits at the cross-hairs of intersecting socio-cultural phenomenons, including femininity, finding a mate, the ability to procreate, and the appearance of youth, fertility, and desirability. It stems from a desire to be something or someone that we may or may not be — something we believe to be rare, more beautiful, and worth suffering for.

I’ve dyed my hair so many different colors I could fill these pages twice over. Red, purple, black, brown, dark cherry red, blonde, blonder, brown, strawberry blonde, red red — you name it, I’ve tried it. I should say, colored, not dyed, because you dye wool. You color hair.

Whenever there is a big change in my life, something goes right or wrong, I hit the bottle. I want to see this chemistry make me perfectly shaded — even when I don’t know what that means. If I don’t like what I see — if things are going horribly — perhaps a different look is all I need. If things are going perfectly, then I should probably look even better. Hair color offers one more way to categorize people, to categorize ourselves.

In truth, I am all of these people at once, no matter my hair color. But sometimes I like to think that it affects my life in ways I can’t otherwise control. Or rather, my hair allows me to better control my life with a choice of chemical reactions.

Psychologist Viren Swami, who teaches at the University of Westminster, suggests a compelling explanation for my need to dye: “Because hair is so malleable, it can give women a feeling of control over their bodies that they don’t otherwise have.” When I dye my hair, I feel I am taking control over the way I am perceived.

And yet I also know the person that I am remains the same no matter the color.

My mother says that she has to color her hair to hide the grays or I won’t recognize her. Is this true or does she mean she hopes no one will recognize her because gray hair is not how she sees herself? Is it in pursuit of beauty that we feel the necessity to color our hair or in the effort to hide our true selves? Or is it both? Is that what we’re fighting with hair dye—the fear of being seen for what we really are?

Sometimes gray hair means we are aging. Sometimes we are aging.

Being blonde sits at the cross-hairs of intersecting socio-cultural phenomenons.
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Dyeing my hair does change my life. It changes my public self and my private self, and I’m not alone — 69% of women reported a vast increase in attractiveness and overall good feelings immediately after dyeing their hair.

After dyeing my hair recently, a friend complimented me on it the first time he saw it, and I said, “oh thanks. I really don’t like it.” “Why?” he asked. “Does it make you insecure?” I laughed and said, “Yeah…I just haven’t gotten used to it yet.”

And then I pondered his immediate response about my insecurity and realized this might have been the single most relevant answer anyone could offer for why we don’t like our base color or our gray color or our new color.

Insecurity. Dyeing our hair is a way to make us publicly feel, maybe even look, more beautiful, more acceptable. For whatever reason, we prefer to cover our insides with a more desirable facade. Our public selves must be much prettier than our insides. The private self — the self underneath the color — must be covered. It feels like therapy for your public self; your insides don’t necessarily feel better for any other reason than you feel like your outsides look better.

Maybe that’s what hair color offers us in a sense, too: an opportunity to be better than what we feel. If you’re blonde, it’s a way to be blonder. If you’re getting older and going gray, it’s a way to be younger. If you’re just bored, it’s a way to excite yourself with something transient. A way to be you, but better. A way to be you, but sexier. A way to be you, but more likeable. A way to be you, but more successful. A way to be you, but more approachable. A way to be you, but happier. A way to not be you.

Welcome to Make Your Face, a makeup tutorial series with a simple mission: makeup by you (me) for your (my) own entertainment, Establishment-style.

I’m a pretty sunny person. I don’t get mad often. When I was younger I stayed angry all the time, simmering away beneath whatever was happening on my face, and I think I finally just burned most of it off. Thankfully, I just don’t have the energy to feel furious anymore. It’s a nice way to be! But when I do manage to get mad these days, I get MAD. My only anger settings are “no big, it’s totally chill, brah” and CASE OF THE RAAAAGE, and therefore there is no place in my world for the regular ol’ yellow angry face emoji. Nah, I go straight from to .

is apparently officially titled “Pouting Face,” but who the hell are we kidding? That emoji clearly has murder in its heart; fiery burning wrath blazes forth from its brow. The heat of its righteous indignation has altered its color from typical emoji yellow to an infuriated red-orange. That emoji is PISSED OFF. That emoji is about to explode from sheer force of feeling. That emoji doesn’t have any hair, but if it did it would be BIG due to the ENORMOUS VOLUME of its VEXATION.

That’s more like it.

The eyebrows of the rage-face emoji don’t extend beyond the tip of their arches, probably because they were singed off in its initial explosion of ire.

Red-hot rage + yellow emoji skin = orange.

The rage-face emoji appears to sport black eyeliner on its upper waterline:

And brown on the lower lashline:

A bit of brown shadow in the crease of each eyelid helps to simulate the fathomless depths of the rage-face emoji’s angry eyepits. The fire of its passion casts a warm yellow glow beneath each eye socket.

Color!

Suffused with red wrath, the center of the rage-face appears as a sort of UT Vols orange color.

A bright flush of crimson blood is apparent further toward the edges of the face, fading to burnt brown at the outside.

Fingers are really excellent tools for blending.

The rage-face emoji’s eyebrows are dark brown, thick with the weight of displeasure.

And its forehead gleams with a bright sheen of self-righteousness.

Its mouth hangs open in outraged disbelief, revealing a hollow well of darkness deep within the emoji’s core.

This is somewhat difficult to emulate with actual human lips in the way, but shading with black and yellow helps to sell the effect.

Aaaaaand….

WOW, “Pouting Face” is a really unflattering look on me!

I just can’t maintain the mad-ness anymore, looking at that photo. Thanks,  ! I feel better already. 

Peace Circle

Even if we may not like it, technology has shaped how we relate to the world. So, too, has it created new ways to curate and create art.

Australian artist Leonie Barton didn’t begin her ventures into art because of technology — but the rise of platforms like Instagram have allowed her approach to ephemeral art to flourish. Beginning in 2014, Barton began her “One A Day” project; the objective was, and continues to be, simple: Each day during a walk, she would commit no more than 50 minutes to creating art out of whatever objects she found outside. Sticks, petals, stones, and bits of plastic — the last the only object Barton does not leave behind — are organized into a work of art that may be blown away the moment that she walks away. But that isn’t the point: It’s the act of creation that matters. While the project itself doesn’t require technology, the ability to share posts preserves Barton’s designs and arrangements long after they cease to exist.

The Establishment spoke with Barton about her inspirations and designs, and what she hopes to accomplish with the “One A Day” project.

Sarah Galo: How did you get into art?

Leonie Barton: It sounds cliched but I didn’t really get into “art.” Making things or drawing was something I just did a lot of as a child. I grew up on a river and spent the majority of the time outside roaming and exploring. I was always off on my own, collecting things to construct with, back at my secret places.

Drawing was what I did when I had to be inside. My brother and sisters had all left home by the time I was 5, so these were all good ways to occupy myself. When we eventually moved to the city, the drawing stayed but the natural elements went. I did art at school until I left at 16. Art school wasn’t on the agenda; life happened, and I went into the film industry. I didn’t really revisit art until my kids were at school and I opened an art supplies store so I could have studio space. I sold the shop in 2010 because I could never paint there. I just kept dabbling from then on, but after I visited Namibia in 2012, with only a sketchbook and a camera for company, I was determined to stop talking about it and really commit to being an artist everyday. I set about finding a day job that would allow me to paint for a living and that could sustain any creative projects I wanted to take up, like the last year of ephemeral art.

Sarah: What is the “One a Day” Project?

Leonie: Like any other “One a Day” [venture], it is a daily commitment to a task for 365 days. In my case, it meant going outside, regardless of the weather, my location, or circumstances, and creating an ephemeral art work, using only the materials I found in the moment, usually from the ground, using no tools or props, and then leaving it behind for others to experience. I documented each day by photograph and posted it to social media as confirmation I had completed the daily task.

Sarah: What are the inspirations behind your project?

Leonie: Shona Wilson was the artist who suggested I take up the challenge. I came across Shona’s project three weeks before she finished her year, and I just loved the concept of creating some art that would give me permission to engage in some of my favorite pastimes. I could go for a wander outside; I could forage and collect, which I had always done anyway; and I could do it all no matter where I was in the world, and it didn’t require me to buy any art supplies or be a consumer. I sent Shona a message to tell her how much I had enjoyed her project and that I was sorry to have come across it so late. She said I should go and do my own. So I did. I resisted going back through her project, as well as ignoring other people’s suggestions to look at other great ephemeral artists before her. I did that when I was painting and it put me off. This time, I was determined in this instance to find my own voice and style.

Sarah: Do you have an ultimate goal with the project? Do you see it as an extension of a personal philosophy?

Leonie: I had very different goals at the start of this project compared to the goals I have now.

In the beginning, it was about completing a task and making a commitment, as I had never been a great finisher before. It was about not having to make “perfect” artwork, as in my other creative pursuits, where I got way too hung up on it being perfect. I’m quite anal. Because this way of working can be so random because of what you find, it can’t be perfect. Done is way better than perfect. It was about taking some time out for me: away from my job, my house, my kids, my own life.

But now, it’s become very much about reminding myself and other people to slow down and pay attention to what’s around them. Nothing is going to last, so we need to notice it now. Everything perishes in the end, even us. I think we are becoming more and more detached from our immediate surroundings and too busy looking at screens. I want to remind viewers that there’s beauty in the world that needs protecting; we are, after all, just caretakers of it, for the generations to come.

Sarah: On your Instagram, you mention that the works are left behind after being photographed, except for plastics. Could you explain your approach?

Leonie: Initially I left the works behind so I could teach myself not to be attached to them, thus helping with the “perfect” hang up. Then, because I was always constructing them in public spaces, it became about surprising somebody if they came across it, if it hadn’t already blown away or washed away by the tide. Then I started posting a wide context shot to give a perspective on materials and scale of the artwork. This then led to people using it as a location finder, and a group of people used it as a location hint, so they could find them on their own walks.

As I live in a small community, it became a game of hide and seek. I still get messages from people that ask about the art pieces. I can’t leave the plastic ones behind, I have to bin them (so I tend not to do those anymore). I’m a keen follower of the “Take 3 for the Sea” project, where everyone is encouraged to pick up three pieces of rubbish when they go to the beach or other waterway. But it’s a good principle to have every time you are outside generally. I really like that my artwork eventually returns to where it has come from or been created with.

Sarah: What is the relationship between technology and art?

Leonie: Technology makes art available to most people, it inspires them, discourages them, educates them, provokes and challenges them.

Sarah: Do you think this project would have been possible before social media?

Leonie: Would I have been prompted to do it? Perhaps not at the time that it happened, because that was where I came across Shona. But because I was starting to investigate the art world, perhaps I would have come across masters. But before social media, nobody would have ever known it existed. In fact, I would have just continued on doing it as I always have done, not photographing it, and without thinking the world might like to take a look at it.

Sarah: Do you have any advice for young women who are hoping to enter the art world?

Leonie: If you can help it, don’t look toward anyone else’s work. Find your own voice. Be prepared to create hundreds of artworks to be happy with one. Practice practice practice. More than likely, nobody is coming to discover you. If you believe in your work, you must go out and show the world.

***

All images: instagram.com/leoniebarton