tulletulle:

today was the first day i’ve worn my contacts to school for a full day and i got a lot of weirdly backhanded compliments and a lot of it sounded like a mom relieved that her daughter grew out of her tomboy phase or something, like thank god i got rid of those glasses and am realizing my full beauty potential. which is weird because aren’t glasses cool these days or something? i thought that the glasses=ugly/weird stereotype was outdated! anyway i like having the option of contacts more, it’s easier to not feel tied down to a certain style because i like character dressing, i can do fun bowie eye makeup, etc.
 
my friend said she was talking about me with her brother who is basically a laxbro minus the lax and he was like yeah, she could be really pretty if she tried and wore contacts and straightened her hair and stuff. and it’s like, i’ve tried that phase! it is not for me. (also thank god i’m not getting dressed/made up every morning with you in mind because i hate to think of the utter torture it would be to see me everyday and only think of what could be.) i think i’m pretty now, at least applied to my own idea of pretty, which for me comes from all the things i really love, all the sometimes ugly books and movies and what i see on the walk to school, and i’m more intrigued by the idea of looking like a reflection of that and internalizing it and feeling like a part of everything i really love. and i don’t even think there is anything very subversive about what i look like/how i dress anyway? i still fit the thin and white parts of the mainstream media’s beauty standard. also dyed hair is like..i dunno, it’s the same as glasses, it doesn’t really mean anything. anyway, it would be easy to do the act my friend’s brother was talking about but i am impatient and bored and curious and like looking for beauty in other places.
 
WISE WERDZ:

“I like making images that from a distance seem kind of seductive, colorful, luscious and engaging, and then you realize what you’re looking at is something totally opposite. It seems boring to me to pursue the typical idea of beauty, because that is the easiest and the most obvious way to see the world. It’s more challenging to look at the other side.” — Cindy Sherman

“I know when I first started, I said things like, ‘It’s really great to be beautiful and powerful and sexy,’ and I take a little bit of that back now. What I was saying was that you don’t have to look a certain way or have a certain hairstyle to be a feminist; that just because a girl wears lipstick that doesn’t mean she’s not a feminist. But now I realize that I wasn’t really challenging the standard of beauty. A friend said to me, ‘Why is it so subversive to be beautiful in the traditional sense? I think it’s much more subversive to create your own form of beauty and to set your own standards.’ She’s right.” — Kathleen Hanna

(i’m not trying to fish for compliments, as the point of this was that my idea of beauty is the only one that matters to me. i’m a confident lady! which is quite nice.)