height five

It can be shitty being a tall girl in a short girl's world.  Height isn't feminine, you can't be tiny and adorable if you're tall.  Height is associated with masculinity, something most of us feminine-identifiers shy away from, something that the boys we're into shy away from too.

Someone on the internet said once that tall girls don't get to do cute, and I think that's true.  Sure, we can be striking, imposing, ferociously beautiful, but cute?  Incongruous and impossible.

We have a lot presence, us tall girls.  It's about handling physical might with grace and strength rather than slouched shoulders and a desperate attempt to be more like our friends around us.

The creative director of J.Crew, Jenna Lyons, is an absolutely legendary figure for the rest of us fashion-y tall girls.  She's 6'5 in heels and wears what the fuck she wants.  Her dark framed glasses match mine, but her impeccable sense of style outpaces my own by far.  She's been at J.Crew for 22 years, and in many ways has made the brand what it is today.  Nymag.com sums up the J.Crew look as "nothing too tight, too short, too synthetic."  Dream of dreams.

Lyons wears striped t-shirts with gold sequined trousers and perfect fuchsia lipstick.  She pairs mens shirts - unbuttoned to the sternum - with khaki pants and manolos.  She never shies away from heels, despite being taller than many NBA players while wearing them.  She ties her hair back and wears almost no make-up.  She twists femininity into severity, twists severity into laid-back, twists laid-back into high-fashion.  I adore her.

More than just a fashion icon, though, Lyons (pronounced lions, awesome) makes it okay to be tall.  She struts instead of shrinking and doesn't overfeminize in an attempt to compensate.  She makes me feel okay about my 5'11-ness, and that is something I'm incredibly grateful for.

interiosity

Today's a soft cloud, I'm not sure where I even am inside of it.  Finding the edges of my consciousness seems impossible, I'm drifting across smiles and foggy interiors. 

It's endless in here, such a strange and vast sky.  I can't see where the clouds meet the water in the horizon of my mind, everything is blurring into a faint and warm grey.

I cry too easily, I take rejection poorly.  I know a lot about myself and hardly anything about anything else.  I'm distracted by my thoughts before I even get out of my own head.

Someone tells someone else that the first person thinks this of the second and that someone else discussed it with the other person.  There's nothing there, so we hear.  Sometimes we need to hear and sometimes I'm not sure that we do.  Talk is cyclical, I forget anybody would bother with me.

#culturenotacostume

Courtesy of the UVic Native Students Union.

activist puns

I HAVE A HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA

BUT I LOVE HER ALL THE MORE FOR IT

sea of

Fuck, I'm in my twenties, indeed.

I spend my time flip-flopping between texting my best friend angstily about my love life and trying to take a perfect mirror photo of my centre part.  "Obsessed!"

I feel guilty when I feel dark and stormy, because clearly I have nothing to feel dark and stormy about.  Here's a rule: just because other people are sadder doesn't mean you can't be sad too.

I run to the bus every day.  I've yet to learn how to sit straight at my computer.

I'm part of a generation of communicators.  I find it insulting that anyone might think we don't connect anymore.  I'm constantly connecting with a network of people that I know I know I know and love.  If something defines us it's this, the mesh of discussions and half-thoughts and giggling fragments that flash across our phones and screens every day.

Fuck, I'm in my twenties.  I'm insulted that anyone might dare not to love me and simultaneously sure that no one does at all.  I'm every hour reassured with likes and hearts and even real life glances and also every hour breaking myself down and finding a thousand things wrong.

I'm used to getting what I want.

affirmation please

story of my life

I'm obsessed with www.fuckiminmy20s.tumblr.com.

permutations and expectations

I have a fleet of friendships.

It might make it easier to create a graph, left right and centre with colours and categories.  (If you've ever seen my agenda, you know I love colours and categories.)

There's a few stragglers from elementary school and my early days.  One or two girls I still have genuine smiles for when I run into them at Christmas or when our parents have dinner together.  There for my first crushes (I've been boy crazy since day one) and for learning how to use mascara and staying up late reading comics.

Middle school brought me my best friend, a girl I know inside out.  She glares a frostily glowing princess glare at me from my wallet every day and I smile back at her every time.

Too many of my high school friends are now either mostly forgotten or friendly acquaintances but there's still a few friends I'd fight for.  You know the ones you have warmth for in your heartest heart even when you don't see them for months?  The Cheshire Cat, MirKat, and M. Pratt - they know who they are. 

University socked it to me with beautiful party girls who love nature and boys equally, an army of girls impossible to know and impossible not to know.  We were who we are and we loved every second of it, rolling as an unstoppable unit and leaving a trail of broken glasses and broken hearts in our wake.  I was and am inseparably a part of this foursome, fivesome, sixsome, tensome.

University brought me my boys, too.  My bestie straight-boy boo who knows who he is and tells me my failings without blinking and keeps me on the even every time. I'm not sure that anyone but us understands our friendship but it definitely depends on a mutual understanding of whiskey and beards.

Law school girls and boys are still just settling in through the cracks, a pressing and pleasant weight on my heart.  The warmth and vivacity is insane and the intellect on these people is unquestionable.  My tribe, absolutely, who can out-think and out-work anyone but always still have time for a glass of wine and laughter for days.

The others fit in here and there - the girls I've met at work over the years, travelling friends, my Americans and Australians and Spaniards and Belgians from exchange.  The girl at the grocery store who complimented my outfit and the girl next to me on the plane who was flying home for the same stupid reason as me.  Every single one of these people is a fibre of who I am (or maybe who I'm trying to become) and I am thankful every day for their existence.  If you're out there and I love you, I love you.  Thanks.

 

 

this was an era, am I right

the baby duck girl house has its first family photo

these girls always.

"paint that other, prettier face on top of the one you already have."

Ugh, life is such a constant quest to be better looking.  It's like every corner I turn is in search of whatever new formula or whatever is going to make me magically beautiful.  It's disgusting and fueling of self-disgust and I'm fully a cog in the system.

Use this facewash and this serum or don't wash your face at all, you're just fueling oil production!  It's better to use all natural products so you don't upset your skin but make sure you wash with chemicals twice a day or you're done.  Try covering up with this but don't forget the second step and if you have the second step you can't go a minute without the third.  Graduate covergirl to sephora to mac.  Constantly find better ways to paint prettiness onto yourself.  

Straighten your hair!  Who are you all curls and curves thinking your colourful peacock self is ever going to be anywhere doing anything?  Garner no attention or at least think that you don't, forget why you even want someone to look at you but just know that you do.  Spend your time and your money on hot irons and blow-dryers, create a sadly twinned conventionality and attention.

You've got to get out of this competition, but this competition is everywhere and the world is the arena.  There isn't any escaping and you can't opt out.  You're approaching quarter-time but end-game is really the end, there's no point in looking forward to it.  I guess I'm just stuck in a rut right now, struggling to get back on top of my game.  That's the paradox, isn't it.  If you're winning, you don't even know you're playing.  I'm stuck at a tie or maybe a point down or two and I've always hated losing.