Posts Tagged ‘beauty’

Since I had a proper Deva Concepts haircut and started using Devacurl hair products, my hair is starting to regain some of its former glory. I am not exaggerating when I say I get about 5 random compliments a day from strangers regarding my hair. I got 3 this morning while at the local coffee shop buying some beans.  This is third day hair, y’all, pulled back with the Love Me Knot technique in Curly Girl: The Handbook by Lorraine Massey:

Luscious Devacurl Hair

That’s right - third day hair in a Southern climate with high humidity! I don’t wash my hair every day, and when I do I use the no-poo or CO-washing (conditioner washing) method with Devacurl products: no blowfrying, no straightening, no curling irons, no hassle. This is my hair in its natural state after washing and air drying. I’ve never loved my hair more. The curls in that photo are a little looser than after a fresh wash because I’ve been sleeping on it for two nights, but you can see it’s still not frizzy. I’m actually amazed by this considering I’ve spent the past 11 years or so abusing it with a flat-iron and hair dryer. It has responded so well to the Curly Girl Routine!

I can’t believe it took me 40 years to figure this out. Curly hair is destroyed by shampoo and harsh lathering agents just as a fine cashmere sweater would be if you used a harsh detergent on it. I can’t be too hard on myself; Lorraine Massey didn’t publish her first version of the Curly Girl Handbook until 2001, and it took me years to find a Deva Concepts Certified curly hair stylist after moving to North Cackalacky. But now that I know my curl type (Botticelli, for the record) and how to care for it, my haircare routine is greatly simplified  and has greater results.

Anyway, if you have curly hair and struggle with frizz and tangles you HAVE to check out the latest version of Curly Girl: The Handbook. This is the second edition published in 2011, and it has a free DVD with video tutorials and styling tips.

Curly Girl: The Handbook - Second Edition

I recently saw a news segment about one of those crazy “Pageant Moms” giving her daughter Botox injections and waxes. If you haven’t seen it, you should – and prepare to be shocked.

This child is 8 years old. Children don’t even HAVE wrinkles, yet this stupid twat insists she only resorted to injecting her daughter with Botox after other stupid twats on the pageant circuit commented on her daughter’s wrinkles. What. The. FUCK?! In my world, the appropriate response to someone who tells a child she “needs to do something about her wrinkles” is

1) to refrain from knocking the bitch into the dirt, and

2) to suggest that she seek therapy immediately and have no contact with children – including her own -  EVER.

Look, I’m not a parent or a therapist, but I know what kind of damage this can do to a person. I am a woman who was once a little girl, and I have my own battle wounds from this type of shit. My mother wasn’t perfect in this regard, either. She wasn’t telling me I had wrinkles and giving me face cream when I was 8, but she had her own body issues and passed those on to me (probably unknowingly). I know my story isn’t unique among women, either, and believe it’s more than anecdotal.

My Mom didn’t inherit her Irish Mother’s petite frame.  She inherited her Cherokee Grandmother’s sturdy frame: muscular with a nice padding of jiggly bits on top, concentrated mainly in her upper body.  I, in turn, inherited her build. So, when she complained about how fat she was, I figured I was fat too. I spent most of my childhood and teen years thinking I was fat. When I would say I was fat, my Mom would just sigh and say, “I know, honey; I wish you had inherited your Father’s build too!” (My father was lean, lanky, and 6’2″.)  “Don’t let your weight get too out of control, though, because it’s harder to lose as you get older. I’m starting this new diet tomorrow. It wouldn’t hurt you to do it with me!”

My Mom never flat-out said I was fat, but she often encouraged me to join her on her crazy diets because I “had her genes.” I internalized that message, as indirect and slight as it was, and spent most of my young life thinking I looked like a harbor seal. This self-loathing was deepened upon being bombarded with media images like this:

Brooke Shields Calvin Klein Ad - 1980

Brooke Shields was 15 years old when that photo was taken. She was lean, tall, and had hardly an ounce of fat on her pre-pubescent body. She didn’t even have breasts yet in that photo! I, with my DD-breasts (which appeared when I was 12), thought I was a porcine beast. I spent a lot of time wearing baggy clothes that were 2-3 times larger than necessary in order to hide my hideous body from the world. And I dieted.  Oh, how I dieted.  I tried yogurt diets, grapefruit diets, hard-boiled eggs & tomato diets, low-fat diets – lots and lots of diets. I never lost more than 5-10 lbs, probably because I never really had a lot to lose in the first place for my particular body type. No amount of exercise (I was an active kid) or dieting removed my boobs; those were there to stay, much to my chagrin.

I tried everything short of actually developing an eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia, and the thing that probably saved me from that was the positive feedback I got from people in college. During college, I started getting compliments about my body from both men and women. One of my female friends talked me into wearing a bikini for the first time during Spring Break, insisting that I looked stunning in one despite my reservations. It still took a long while for me to believe I was actually pretty even though I wasn’t rail thin. After all, the media was pushing Kate Moss as the feminine ideal at the time, even calling it “Heroin Chic”:

Kate Moss - Super Thin 90s Model

One time I lamented about not having a “great body” like Kate Moss, and my boyfriend (now husband) said, “Are you CRAZY?! Your body is amazing. Other women would kill for your body, and it’s soft in all the right place.” Gee, is it any secret why I married him?

Regardless of my awesome husband, I’ve spent my fair share of time trying to overcome the early negative programming. Now that I’m 40, I’m okay with my body most of time. But every so often that ugly little monster rears its head and says, “You’re fat.” It’s usually after I’ve gone shopping only to find a rack full of Size 00 (that’s a double ZERO) in something I like.  Rationally, I know that means the larger sizes are gone because someone else got to them first. However, it’s hard not to think you’re grotesquely obese while staring at the actual measurements of Size 00 – a size, by the way, which would hardly fit a young girl, much less an adult woman. I assure you that I don’t shop in stores that cater to Juniors or Children. I’m talking about Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, J.Crew. I did mention I was 40, right? Yep. I still struggle with these feelings as a 40-year-old woman. That’s probably a good 30 years of loathing how I look. Awesome, right?!

Now, take some time to ponder the psychological damage being done to an 8-year-old girl whose insane mother is injecting her with Botox and giving her waxes and self-tanning sessions. That woman is a horrible, unfit parent, and what she is doing is nothing less than mental/emotional child abuse. She and the doctor who gave her the Botox should be in jail right now. And those crazy-ass kid pageants should be outlawed if this is the kind of feedback given to the poor children who are contestants. These idiotic pageant people like to insist that the beauty pageants for kids build self-esteem, but I call BULLSHIT. They ruin it, especially if the kids are subjected to cosmetic procedures, fake tans, and bikini waxes for imaginary flaws! I mean, c’mon – Botox for “wrinkles” on a CHILD. Unbelievable! The only thing childhood beauty pageants build is future raging cases of Body Dysmorphic Disorder.