BEAUTY STANDARDS FOR GIRLZ

I recently returned to MAC as a makeup artist, and I’ve worked some shifts this week. It left me thinking about standards of beauty for young women, and women in general, in North American culture, and how I would like to create a story for Late Bloomers centered around that. 

I am starting to put together a list of qualities that contribute to our collective definition of traditional beauty, and here is what I’ve come up with thus far (feel free to add to this list, or comment on something I’ve added):

Long, thick hair

Big eyes
A small nose
Big lips

Strong bone structure, although not “too” strong

a long-ish neck

thinness

long legs

small hands

almost all eye colors, now that I think about it

small ears

straight, white teeth

And obviously there is more. I find this topic intriguing since I consider myself someone who absolutely appreciates female beauty, although I find myself attracted to few of the qualities I understand to make up traditional beauty. It might be because I have eccentric taste, though. 

Anyway, I am thinking about developing a character who is not traditionally beautiful, but is interesting in terms of looks, and has a questionable yet lovable personality. I want to express how people see this person and how she sees herself. 

I am working on that, and trying to narrow down the themes I want to govern each story. I admit, it is a big task and I am feeling intimidated because this project is something that I care very much about. I think I am going to start making some outlines of each story and really work on the structure.

I went back into my creative writing notes from my second year of university and I remember how much more important structure was than the actual writing itself, so that’s something to consider as I work towards what I feel like right now is a massive project. I think I feel that way because things at school in my other courses are also piling up, and now I am taking on shifts at MAC as I mentioned before. 

To close, I leave you with a picture of something I consider to be pure beauty: By the way: yes, it is Dog the Bounty Hunter’s Wife, and yes I think she’s very sexy. I wrote a poem about her in the summer for my friend Alison who is in Creative Communications with me and who also loves her. I will post it eventually.

Image from Google. 

MY FRIEND, MARA

I met with my friend Mara last Saturday. 

I have not seen Mara in months -- we met when we were living in Montreal in August 2010 as part of the explore program. She was 19 at the time, the same age as me. We used to go to Cabaret Mado together, the drag cabaret in Montreal’s gay village that I mentioned in the second post on this blog. She is free-spirited and beautiful, although not in a traditional way. I see her as a statement. And Mara and I talked about love.

Mara has not always had what most would consider to be an “easy” life -- as she grew up her mother, who raised Mara and two siblings alone, struggled financially and the relationship between Mara’s parents, before it ended when Mara was 3, was one defined by domestic abuse.

Her family, like mine, is Jewish and we discovered while living in Montreal during the summer that she grew up in a neighbourhood not far from the one I grew up in. 

She approches style with a sense of humor, but she manages to look beautiful and sexy, even when wearing funny, and potentially offensive garments like sequined bikini she wore into a 7/11 on Main Street last summer when we went to buy cigarettes, or the black shirt with holes in it she was wearing when I met her for breakfast in the village last weekend. It said Fuck you, you Fucking Fuck.

Mara worked as a stripper when we got back from Montreal and I even went to see her dance one night, although it made me sad. I felt like underneath her tough exterior that, on that night, was characterized by a huge fur coat over a sparkling champagne panty and bra set as we stood outside the back door of the club sharing a smoke, she was afraid. I don’t think she wanted to be there depite that she joked, in her very Mara way, that she didn’t care and that the cash was good.

“Maybe I can stop driving around this fuckin‘ beater if I stay long enough,” she said in her husky voice while laughing and pointing across the street to her 1987 Honda Civic. 

She ended up falling in love with her boss, who was a woman, although she told me on the weekend when I asked that she does not consider herself a lesbian. Plus, she met someone recently.

“I met a guy,” she said as we sat at Kawaii Crepe and she ate a Milky Way. 

She started to smile and we both had that look on our faces that keeps us friends -- the one that says one of us is up to no good and the other one is probably all for it. 

“Oh yeah,” I said, already laughing. The best thing about Mara is her sense of humor, which comes through even when she finds herself in circumstances that are less than ideal.

“He’s older, though.”

I asked how much older and Mara told me he is nearly 60. 

We found this funny although I could tell Mara was not laughing in a malicious way, and maybe that became clear to me because of the way she talked about him.

“I love who he is,” she said simply. This was strange because Mara usually provides a ton of explanation, as I tend to do too, which is why our conversations often last hours. “And he treats me nice.”

She told me that she appreciates that he drives her home. After Mara quit working as a stripper, she had to sell the Civic. We went for one last smoke cruise (a term we used to describe driving around to no where, usually in the summer, smoking cigarettes and listening to the song about San Francisco that came out in the 60’s. We usually close such events with a nice round of Would you rather?)

Now, she works at a grocery store in the North End of Winnipeg, not far from where she lives with a roomate, and she said sometimes her new friend will drive all the way from his affluent neighbourhood in the South End to make sure she gets home safe. 

She told me they’ve driven around to cemeteries and talked about nothing when his wife was at work, and although he acknowledges Mara’s beauty and sensuality, he refuses to have sex with her. She said he sees her more like a young person who was never really nurtured, or something like that. He is also trying to help her look into places that might want to sell the ornaments she makes in a glass blowing class she attends once a week, so she will profit from her art.

“I like it, but I don’t get it,” she said about their friendship. “I don’t know what someone who drives a fuckin’ Mercedes, and who shops at specialty grocery stores, and whatever, would want with a kid like me.” 

And I got what Mara was saying, although I didn’t agree with it. To me, Mara is beautiful on the inside and out. She has a thick mane of long, black hair, a mischevious smile, and blue eyes. Additionally, she has a caring and compassionate side to her that is the result of a life where people have not always “treated her nice,” but she has turned it around to make sure not to make others feel the way she has, although that is not always obvious unless you know her story.

At the same time, however, Mara was born on the same side of the tracks as me, and our similar life experiences keep us together because we have an understanding. So I saw why she was confused, and I wished in that moment that she wasn’t so oblivious to her own beauty.

I am using the conversation Mara and I had as inspiration for some of the stories I will be writing for Late Bloomers. She gave me permission, as long as I depict her as “wild and free,” although she already is. I don’t imagine I will base one story on her, but there is a quality and a beauty about Mara that I hope to see in all of my characters, so tidbits of her life might find their way through all of the stories.

Mara won't let me take her picture, and she told me I am only allowed to share her story if I post the following to represent her, although, for what it's worth, I think Demi does not compare.

Image from Google

PHOTOGRAPHIC INSPIRATION

This week I am learning about photography and image editing at school, and I am starting to think about how it relates to Late Bloomers.

Something I have neglected to mention since beginning the blog just over two weeks ago is that the collection is also going to include photographs that will help tell the stories I am writing.

I proposed this aspect of the project because my ultimate professional goal is to become a filmmaker. I have thought about what it means to be a filmmaker, and a significant aspect of it is being able to tell a story through an image. After all, that is what movies are: pictures in motion. 

In a class I am taking as part of the Creative Communications program called Image Editing and Web Design, we had to design and hand in a collage of photographs we created using Photoshop. I put on my headphones, listened to a song called Video Games by an emerging female artist, Lana Del Rey, and put the collage together.

I felt inspired, and I felt comforted. It is always nice to be reminded that you love what you are doing, and it made me look forward to the photographic aspect of my project. 

Something else that has made me feel incredibly inspired is the work of a young Canadian photographer named Petra Collins.

Her photographs focus on precisely what I hope to convey through my short stories: the reality of (some) young women, but the themes are universal enough for almost every young woman within North American culture to relate to on some level.

Here is some of her work. Enjoy, and find more of it featured on www.rookiemag.com, where she contributes regularly. You can also find these photographs and other work of hers at her website, www.petracollins.com. Don’t forget to check out The Ardorous, Petra’s web space where she features a variety of female artists.  

Petra Collins

Petra Collins

Petra Collins

GIRLS WILL BE BOYS AND BOYS WILL BE GIRLS

I submitted my proposal for the short story collection.

At school, each student must submit a proposal for their own Independent Professional Project. It’s exciting because each student gets to choose the project they want to do, so there is tons of room for creativity. I see it as an opportunity to create an original work of art, and the instructors in the Creative Communications program encourage students to try something they may never get to do again.

As a follow-up to my last post, yes I saw her. I saw the queen of artful self-expression and it was not everything I hoped for, surprisingly.

She is currently on her MDNA world tour and I found a few things disappointing. Before I talk about those, however, it is important to bear in mind that I discovered Madonna through my mother when I was around the age of eleven, in 2000. I was introduced to her early work from the 80’s and the work that came later in the 90’s.

I was disappointed first and foremost because there was an extremely violent portion of the tour, which involved Madonna shooting a number of different men with a rifle. I was shocked and disheartened because the Madonna I know and love has always used her fame and power to express messages that are often not given enough attention, but that have the ability to provoke positive social change; like when she hung from a cross while singing Live to Tell and brought attention to dire situations in developing nations through thousands of photographs that flashed on the screen behind her during her Confessions tour. It was beautiful and moving and it made a statement that I will remember, unlike this one; which I hope to forget.

I feel as though Madonna has become self-conscious because of her age, too. To me, that is incredibly disappointing because the thing I have always admired most about her, and a theme I am going to explore through many of the stories in Late Bloomers, is that of confidence. I feel as though she is worried about her record sales and public image, so rather than creating trends, Madonna is now following them. 

The experience in Montreal was amazing for so many reasons, however. A theme that defined the trip for me, and that will also govern one of the short stories I am writing for the collection, is gender identity.

There is a club in Montreal’s gay village that I frequent when I go called cabaret Mado. The owner, Mado, is one of the most beautiful beings I have ever seen. I tell her that incessantly and bring her makeup whenever I go to visit (I work as an artist at MAC). She is truly a walking work of art, and it is interesting to hear her speak in French about her own gender identity; she neither considers herself male or female.

The standards are changing in North American society; two distinct genders will slowly not exist as the only options anymore, and for that I am thankful. 

I have never struggled with gender identity personally, but Erik, who I stayed with in Montreal and who took me to see Madonna, has. He was teased growing up because of his feminitity and at night, he is no longer Erik, but Tranna Wintour. 

Mado

Erik and I sat on my bed, also known as his couch, in his cozy Montreal apartment. His walls were plastered in pictures of Madge herself, and of Dalida and of Liza and Cher and Barbra. It was the early hours of the morning and we were laughing, quietly, about how we met at Cabaret Mado only a year earlier.

“I have a question,” I said, eating a piece of peanut butter toast.

“Yes?”

“Do you consider yourself male or female?”

Erik thought about it for a minute.

“Biologically, I am a male. But my soul is female,” he said. “So I guess not one or the other.”

Knowing Erik, and considering Mado my personal heroine in life, are some of the reasons I am happy that the lines between genders are blurring. Niether of them fit perfectly into one gender, and the combination of the two makes Erik Erik, or Tranna, and makes Mado Mado, or the very private man he exists as during the day, and whom I’ve tried to spot around Montreal to appease my sense of curiousity, but have thus far been unsuccessful. I love all of the aspects to those two people I think it is important to carry on the discussion about gender identity and its status in our culture today.

That is my goal, anyway. I will be interviewing Erik in the future as part of this project, and creating a work of fiction based on his experience. 

I feel a little nervous, admittedly, because it will be challenge to try to write something honest from the perspective of a role that I have never assumed in real life, but I will overcome it and try and do it justice because I continue to believe in the importance of being part of redefining what our culture considers to be a young woman.