A Probability of Being

"We really should eat something before we go out," one half of the reasonable brain said, as we set out on our evening walk. "I know it's early, and by the time we get back it'll be dinner, but we really should eat." We'll call it Less-Conscious Brain, or LCB for short. "We'll be fine," said the other half of the reasonable brain, the one actually in charge. We'll call it Conscious Brain, or CB for short. "Peckish," said the stomach.  "But not too hungry?" CB asked. "Not yet," the stomach replied. "Good, off we go then." About 200 meters into running, everybody was complaining.  "It's too hot in this sweater!" said the shoulders. "I can't handle the burning!" cried the chest. "Our knee pistons are knocking!" the legs complained. "It's been too long since we ran." "We ran just a month ago," CB groused, but slowed down and we wa...

I'm going through my clothes right now and giving a way a lot of my old t-shirts. They're actually really awesome (if you guys want, I will take pictures, and if you like anything you see, I will send it to you) but they're a) black and b) mostly too big for me to tuck into my jeans comfortably. Yes, I know, baggy t-shirts never go out of style, and believe me, I'm keeping a couple of them, but on the whole I do not wear them as much anymore, so I see no reason to keep them. I'm phasing the black out of my wardrobe, ya'll. So, I've also got a ton of shorts, and I refuse to keep those that are too tight to wear comfortably in the near future, so I'm trying them on. Yes, a few really don't fit. I may not agree with What Not To Wear's shaming tactics, but Stacy and Clint were right in one thing: don't buy stuff that don't fit with the secret promise you'll get slim enough to fit. I'm wearing a pair right now, which is kinda tight...

I wear makeup. Yeah, not often, and not much, but I do. I love makeup. I love how foundation evens out my skintone, and how eyeliner makes my eyes stand out. I love how lip colour, whether in lip liner (I use lip liner to fill out my lips sometimes) or in lipstick, fulls my lips. I spent a year looking for the right nude lip colour that matches my lips perfectly which still fills my lips, but looks completely natural. I love how blush and bronzer highlight my cheekbones - the first MUA (makeup artist) I ever worked with said to me, "you have nicely defined cheekbones. Makes it easy to work on you." I always get that warm glow remembering it. I put on makeup without fail for every modeling shoot, even nudes. I have specific foundation that is waterproof for landscape nudes, especially when mucking about in water. Now. Here's the thing. Painting my face this way is really just another way of making myself look as conventionally attractive as possible. It does play into com...

When I got home to Malaysia last December, the first thing Mum said was, "oh my God you're so fat now." (Which might help explain my better relationship with my dad.) The last time she'd seen me, I was rather svelte, a size 4 from Suzy Shier. When I got home, I was a size 10. There are reasons for this. When she last saw me, I was coming down from a high where I was walking to my university, dancing during rehearsals, and ... not eating that much for the amount of activity I was doing. I was very active: I frequently missed the bus and had to walk to university; I modeled, I... got out a lot for someone who doesn't like getting out a lot. Before I last went home though? I was not getting out much. I was hosting NaNoWriMo (I'm the Halifax ML). I was starting a new full-time job. In between, I was stage-managing and acting in a play. It meant a lot of pizza nights, and a lot of meals at the food court downstairs. The weight thing was inevitable. (However, the j...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's kinda weird to have a downer post right after I wrote a really chirpy one on how awesome it is to prettify myself, but I did want to point out that I'm not so much an outlier that I escape all the clutches of external pressure that I cannot help. I don't like my nose. It's too big (my brother says, "it's because our eyes are so small"). It's too rounded without being the cute button-type nose. It's too flat without being that endearing bump. I don't like my whole profile, period. Most pictures of my profile make me look like I have a flat, smushed-up face so in general, I do my best to face the camera. When I was a child, I used to wipe my mouth with the palm of my hand going down across my mouth. The logic being that if I wiped my mouth from the side, any dirt would only appear on the other side, but if I wiped down, any dirt would fall off my chin. (I'm not saying I made sense as a child.) My mother would see...

I do! You know how there's this huge stereotype about feminists being man-hating, hairy-legged moustachieod fat butches with unshaven armpits, right? OK, that stereotype mostly died out by the 80's. Nonetheless, I know some people still buy it. And then there's the stereotype about how the feminine women who pays any amount of attention to her grooming habit is just a colluder of the Patriarchy. Or that women create their own problems by buying into the superficiality of appearances and blablabla. I wrote about it at length here . (I also just had an argument on the Redux Edition about whether or not the Patriarchy exists and I was told that women are the ones who do the most oppressing. Don't ask me how this works.) There are things which are, dare I say it, stereotypically girly that, dare I say it, I actually do . And because I am particularly proud of my own femininity, I shall now catalogue my particular grooming habits, to the best of my knowledge, although some o...

Namely, my surprising lack of some when it comes to modesty. cycads left me a comment on my first post on Skin Trouble about bathing in public spaces, and the resultant, usually inevitable, body-comparison that ensues. I, surprisingly, have never really had this issue with public spaces. My only problem with them has been with other people (namely men) staring at me in that creepy-way that you just know objectifies you in ways you don't want to be. Within women-only spaces, though, this has never been a problem. For example, in my first year, Hurricane Juan hit Halifax, and the university residences didn't have any water beyond the 4th floor (and that was COLD water). Girlfriends and I hit the showers of the gym. There were the communal showers (ten showerheads in a nice big room) and two private shower stalls. Now that I think about it, people with more "conventional" body types were the ones lining up for the private stalls, whereas the communal showers had women ...