My sagging what?!?!

Taking a spin through Groupon a little while ago and I saw this product and my first reaction was

"Really!?!?! Ear perfect? Ear lifts??? Now I supposedly have to worry about how my EARS are aging???"

Thankfully I clicked through to take a closer look because it gave me a fair amount of food for thought.

180 Count of Ear Perfect Instant Ear Lift Patches

The first note on the box and item description is "Designed for stretched or torn earlobes". WHEW!

I don't have a problem with the idea of self improvement or modification, but I do have a problem with products which make bank by making people feel bad about perfectly normal aspects of humanity like aging. Sadly this is pretty much the base purpose of advertising so a bit hard to avoid entirely, but nonetheless it's important to know what forces are being leveraged against one's happiness and/or health (for a frank but fantastic example of this have a look into the modern history of my favorite insult - douche). 

I've had my ears pierced since I was very young and torn earlobes are DEFINITELY one of my lizard brain fears. For just about as long as I can remember I have been wearing the same style of tiny hoop earrings which release easily if they get caught on things. I actually feel like my face looks kind of wrong if I wear other styles of earring.

Earception earrings (click this caption for source)

It's pretty cool to know that here are alternatives to plastic surgery if you have torn lobes and want to wear regular earrings. I imagine these patches would also be helpful for anyone who is not used to the weight of really heavy earrings.

And of course not forgetting the number of people currently running around with intentionally stretched earlobes who can use these stickies to expand the number of earring styles they can wear.

It's funny when you think of the ripple effects that different fashion choices may have years down the line. Growing up in a fairly conservative home I was always warned against permanent mods because of the effects they may have on my future, but at this point tattoos and piercings have become so ubiquitous the job market is pretty much going to HAVE to accept altered individuals.

I expect we're going to start seeing more stuff like this in regular rotation. It makes me wonder what other body mod friendly products we are going to start seeing - not necessarily hiding the mods - but adjusting to a life where they are commonplace.

The Rick Owens F/W 2015 Paris Menswear Penis kerfuffle (yes, you read that right)

So, Rick Owens Fall-Winter 2015 show "Sphinx" featured (and I do mean featured) exposed male genitalia.

I guess Owens is a bit more of a classicist, as the OG answer is, of course, Man.

And boy howdy does this show celebrate manhood. I know this is going to be a polarizing show, but personally this makes me want to jump up and down and cheer a little bit!

The Man Himself (he is wearing pants in this shot I assure you)

Photo: Yannis Vlamos -Indigitalimages.com

I have no issue with the exposure of bodies in high fashion as clothing is MEANT to accentuate the human body and high fashion is MEANT to push boundaries, EXCEPT in that there is a clear double standard when it comes to exposing men's and women's bodies in fashion.

I'm all for celebrating the female form through fashion and art, so it only stands that the male form should be celebrated too! This sort of show levels the playing field without feeling exploitative.

Note: I consider body image and exploitation questions separately from those of pure nudity but I think that deserves its own post so I'm not going to even try to address it here.

Owens has shown a trend of bucking runway expectations with notable moves such as using a lineup of forty step dancers from Washington, D.C., and New York City-based crews (Momentum, Soul Steps, Zetas, Washington Divas) in place of the usual models in his Spring 2014 show and it's nice to see that he's keeping it going.

It is however a bit sad that either move is even remotely notable in the first place. Celebration of the variability and beauty of the human form and how it looks in a designer's clothing should be the norm in fashion. The focus on a small range of looks and approaches limits creativity and is frankly pretty lazy.

Rick Owens Paris Spring 2014 - "Viscious" Full Show

As for the clothes...

Well there I'm pretty mixed. I like a lot of the coats (mmm double breasted structure in leather and tweed) and I DO appreciate how hard it is to showcase the male form without dipping into the International Male/Romance novel cover side of things, but in general he runs far too oversized/asymmetrical/slouchy for my taste and there's a distinct flavor of slightly rumpled Shaolin Monk (both in the drapey and the lighter structural pieces) and/or "naked guy who had to jump out of bed to answer the door".

image from NewNowNext - original source unknown

I'm still working on finding a video but for now here's a link to the full Style.com slideshow.
They have managed to source their pictures from comparatively modest angles so there's nothing other than chest and legs showing there.

Make no mistake however, this show was CLEARLY not supposed to be "suggestive" of nudity as this NewNowNext article more clearly... ahem... demonstrates. (link is exactly as worksafe as one could expect out of any WOMEN's fashion show, which is to say not even a little bit).

This was not a question of wardrobe malfunction, penis showing portholes are carefully placed, drapes are carefully arranged and on a whole the effect seems fairly playful.

Baby face

I was stunned to see how aged Matthew McConaughey looks in a photograph from Friday's 2014 Critics' Choice Movie Award and had a MASSIVE realization about crash dieting. I've never been particularly *into* McConaughey but thought him handsome enough. He typically plays rather athletic, hale figures, so I found this transformation particularly striking.

2014 Critics' Choice Movie Award for the Dallas Buyers Club
Kevin Mazur/WireImage

At 44 years old McConaughey dropped 47 lbs for his role in the movie The Dallas Buyers Club. He plays Don Woodruff, an AIDS patient who began smuggling unapproved pharmaceutical drugs into Texas. Seeing the pictures of him in the role were startling, but knowing what he put himself through it was easy to say "well he's dropped so much weight, of course he looks rough". It was the after pics that really floored me though. I stumbled over this picture in my Pinterest feed and my first impression was that he looked like a considerably more aged actor who had gone through great pains to look young.

The Christian Bale emaciated role thing seems to be the new "serious" actor proof in Hollywood and I have felt for a while that these beautiful men (it always seems to be beautiful men) are aging themselves prematurely by this practice.

There is a fullness and softness to youthful faces around the eyes, around the mouth, along the sides of the nose, and in the temples. Ask anyone with an older family member who has had an acute illness, there are only so many times you can starve the youthful fullness out of a face before it stops bouncing back. This is why plastic surgery to fight aging involves tightening *and filling*.

So, male actors starve themselves "for their craft" and often start to look kind of terrible afterward. I have always rather fancied Christian Bale and have watched in over the years as he gradually drained the youth from his features, and so this is something that I worked out a while ago. Every time I hear about a new actor undergoing starvation prep for a role my theory seems to bear out.



But here's the connection I NEVER made before... many female actors starve themselves "for their craft" for their ENTIRE CAREERS. 

Small wonder why female actors seem to "age out" so much faster than male actors! Even leaving aside the stress of the double standard where the media chastises them one minute for being "fat" and the next minute for being "anorexic" it's a lifestyle practically designed to burn through their youthful beauty.

Julia Roberts as Anna Scott in Notting Hill (1999 - Universal Pictures)

This realization has really slammed home some perspective on the limitations of "looking better" through dieting. So much of the beauty message of our society is "be healthier and look better by being skinnier" but that's not the whole story is it? Appealing to people's health doesn't seem to work very well; despite the increasing evidence that crash dieting is unhealthy and doesn't particularly work, eating disorder rates keep increasing and the weird diet industry appears to be thriving.

Perhaps the answer is to fight vanity with vanity. I think it's good for me to have these kinds of concrete reminders of why the quick fix "lose X# of lbs and look better" attitude doesn't really work out, especially given the current pressure to look good "on my big day". Maybe it's time we start highlighting the more visible ravages of unhealthy attitudes toward eating instead of airbrushing them away? (Heads up: both links in previous sentence contain semi nude images and extreme weight loss).

I feel I have been blessed with some pretty amazing genetics when it comes to aging, but I am getting to a point in my life where I have begun to think about how I will be changing in the years to come and what I can do to help it happen gracefully. Again and again the answer seems to revolve around a balanced and nourishing attitude toward my body, which I am sad to admit I have not always practised.

Still, there is definitely something to be said for better late than never. Now here's hoping I can find that crucial nourishing balance point between treadmill time, yoga, and my undying love of fancy cheese.

In Short

My last post dealt with petite figures and body positivity, and as I was mulling it over something really critical occurred to me.

When you look at fashion advice for short women there's a fairly common theme.

The tips I'm quoting/paraphrasing here are all from 18 Fabulous Fashion Tips for Short Girls, primarily because it had the biggest and most straightforward list I could find in one place. They are not the only tips on the post, but they're a good representation of the kinds of things you're going to see any time you start looking into the subject.

• Wearing a single column of colour can give the illusion of height.
• Heeled shoes will physically give you extra height.
• High waisted shorts, pants or skirts create a kind of optical illusion of being taller by playing with proportion. 
• Boot cut and slightly flared jeans can make you appear taller.
• You want a hem that covers most of your shoe as this will give the appearance of longer legs.
• Oversized ‘it’ bags can swamp your silhouette and make you look shorter than you are.
• Shoes with pointed toes can give the appearance of added height.
• V-shapes and U-shaped necklines also aid the illusion of height for short and petite girls. 

I guess fashion IS kind of like a roller coaster.
Do I at least get funnel cake?

Playing with your appearance can be fun and these tips can be very helpful for putting together a particular look, but always, always, ALWAYS remember:

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING SHORT

Anyone who says differently is selling something.
The Princess Bride (1987, Rob Reiner)

Happily for me this is one thing I took to heart pretty early. I spent a number of years in my teens avoiding heels, not because I found them uncomfortable or couldn't walk in them, but because I ENJOY my shortness. 

I do not think of myself as less, I think of myself as concentrated.

I am all of sixty two inches tall. I would have to wear a fair bit of heel just to reach the average height for a woman in the US. Why fake at being average when I can stand apart by just being me? 

While I was younger I was often called little or cute and yes, that did get annoying at times, but regardless I always stood out. Now I can filter that same look through maturity and I feel like it makes me exotic like a tiny tropical bird, and I wouldn't give that up for any number of inches in height. Well, maybe if I was INSANELY tall. That could be fun, but pretty much for all of the same reasons and anyway I don't think I'll be trading any time soon.

The final tip on that list from above was "Have Confidence" but it's pretty hard to do that when you don't embrace what you have. Don't get me wrong, I recognise that some styles will not be as flattering on me, I really really love heels, and I do strive to create looks with eye pleasing proportions... but I would never EVER wish I was a little bit taller.

Curvespiration and shorthusiasm

There's a great deal to be said for deriving pleasure from your own unique beauty, but that is often an understanding that comes with maturity. When you're young and impressionable and the women society tells you are beautiful are NOTHING like you, or like Rita Hayworth are so far removed from their original look that you would never know, it can be hard to feel like you have a place at the table.

I'm not a fan of the music of Jennifer Lopez, but just about every time I see a picture of her I am massively grateful for the amount of image PR she has provided for petite, shapely, athletic, Latina ladies. When I was young it seemed like NO ONE in the media or in my neighborhood looked like the woman I expected to become, but Boricua (the native word for the people of Puerto Rico and the most dominant element of my genetics) is now SO much more broadly recognized as beautiful, thanks to the wider media exposure to women like J-Lo. 

I feel that in no small way her popularity gave me the ability to quiet at least a couple of the self conscious worries of my youth. But even now it's hard to feel connected to fashion when I'm looking for items to suit a small curvy tanned frame and the world is showing me everything on tall willowy alabaster women.

Internet fashion world to the rescue!

I have begun digging through the internet in earnest and have found some great petite bloggers. This listing of 7 Phenomenal Petite Fashion Bloggers from allwomenstalk has been so beyond helpful - even to the point of confirming that Wendy of Wendy'sLookbook, (which I already followed) is also petite! I feel like she proportions her clothing so well it's actually hard to tell.

At 5'5" even J-Lo is somewhat "tall" as an aspirational figure for me and was certainly not the first Latina women on the scene, but I really feel like she broke things open for the wider appreciation of a certain sassy, hippy, golden hued, button nosed, brown eyed look; and I can sort of relax a bit about whether I could possibly pull off a style when I see her rocking it.

image of J-Lo at the AMAs via http://gofugyourself.com*

Look at those hips! Seriously, I just can't hate on my curves when I see a picture like that.

I may not have a veritable army of personal trainers, makeup artists, and stylists at my beck and call to keep me looking my best, but I DO have approachable sources of inspiration. Very VERY thankfully I also have a brain, a tiny frame, a yoga mat, and a good pair of running shoes, so I think I have a fair shot when I actually put in the effort.

It's easy to get caught up in the differences between ourselves and the darlings of media but it's important to look at similarities too. I personally happen to be five foot two inches tall - so I thought it would be cool to give props also to some other gorgeous fellow five foot two Latina celebs who utterly rock their looks like:

Shakira
Eva Longoria
Christina Aguilara
Salma Hayak
and Gloria Estefan.

These ladies have helped to wake up the world to a wider definition of beauty!


*If you've got a bit of time to spare, the recurring parody depiction of Jennifer Lopez on the Go Fug Yourself celebrity fashion blog is seriously one of my favorite things on the entire internet.