Fashion. I don't know.

I've been looking up fashion. I'm not... the internet educates. I want to learn where no one can judge me. Isn't that pathetic? That we become creepers on online magazines and blogs, where everyone can read everyone else's opinion? Just to find out what our own opinion? But after everything, fashion is opinion. There are high-ups, who sell t-shirts for $200. I don't research them. I want to know, as a plus-sized young woman, what I can do to just look a little nicer. I'm just trying to explain this to myself. Because I'm still trying to understand plus-size fashion.

I'm trying to understand if it's about complementing and adding to a body or about hiding what you don't want people to see and excentuating the nice bits. It's probably both of them. And it's confidence.

I don't think, at the Macy's level, fashion is specifically about personal expression. There is one plus size section for anyone from 15 to 80, and more often than not, I feel like I'm sorting through clothes to find a blouse that doesn't look like a midlife woman giving up.

Would I feel more confident if I wore clothes that fit well, complimented and excentuated my body? Yes. Could that be as simple as wearing lucky socks? Maybe. It just sounds like there are ever-changing rules in this game of first-impression changing.

Daily Practice discoveries

I'm up to daily self-portrait 85 or so, and I haven't been posting them because I've been home all summer without a scanner. But I wanted to take some pictures and post some of the drawings that are in a style I'm beginning to see more of. It's made of straight lines and curves, and is very very geometric. I want to see how they translate into more three-dimentional drawings, but I like them so far.
#41 Lizy-Doll, #55 Bthing Suit Try-On, #77 Geometry trying to be more interesting, #79 Sitting on my hands, #80 Happy July 4th! (fireworks are scary)

Emotionally, most of these faces are hiding for one reason or another.


 

Vidja games

Here is an official list of things I want to finish*:

Advanced Wars
Fire Emblem
Super Mario Galaxy
Legend of Zelda: Windwaker
Maplestory - Aran up to level 120 by school
Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books (3 more left)
Frankenstein
Painting my room

This is easily 100+ hours.



*Finish: Not 100%, but finish enough. If not finish before school, I'll try to bring them to college.

I can change I can change I can change I can change

Women, do we marry our fathers and become our grandmothers? Do we end up living the same lives as everyone who came before us? Do we inherit our anxieties and pessimisms, fighting them back with diagnoses? That's pessimistic.

The housepainting project included a wall behind a very heavy breakfront, filled with the Nice Stuff. My mother explained where each piece came from. My great-grandmother's plates, made in England. An important Italian trinket given out as a wedding reception gift. Glass from Corning Glass Factory. A rock painted gold.

I got to go to a hardware store today. I just felt this overwhelming rush of potential. Each thing can be used to make something.

It's starting to get late. I wanted to read before I fell asleep from exhaustion. But a week of painting and reorganizing and changing furniture hasn't slowed my pancake quest.

I hope anyone's reading this. I think I'm just writing them to keep up with writing (I haven't even written a dream-record in at least a month) and keep a record for myself.

mroe summer

Still more summer. But I'm gladly busy with my quaint (at the worst, pathetic) goals. Like watering my garden in the morning, and I'm still trying to make the best pancakes ever. So far, they involve cornmeal.

And I guess that's what I look forward to: food. Not fast food, not out to dinner, I want to make it. It's a fantasy of failure and having to try again. It's an occupation of time. I want to find some creative way to mix flour, butter, sugar, and milk. It's precious.

I painted half the livingroom, rearranged the furniture, and packed a full garbage bag full of stuff from a sideways bookshelf.

I'm still doing my self-portraits. I don't know when they'll ever be online, but they will. I should probably put an adult-content warning. Nothing explicit, but as a project inherently about body-image, and clothes are unnecessary.

Keeping Busy.

It's been weeks, and everything is still a mess, except, for some reason, my head. One month till my birthday, another and I'm at school. I'm keeping busy:

Gardening. I borrowed a rototiller and cleaned up a plot in the backyard. It's midway through June, but mom already bought the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. I even consulted my books (what's the point of having them if you don't read them?) to get the spacing and planting right. I love the work. I hope that some day I'll grow my own vegetables.

Painting. I have the paint, I haven't painted my room yet.

Cooking. I'm trying to make the core recipes for next year, make sure I can make real healthy food in a short amount of time with a few ingredients- how much can I do with flour, eggs, butter, sugar? Would it be cheaper to bake my own bread?

Asking Questions. I want to know how businesses and politics work. I love learning about it. What laws govern businesses and religion and politicians and real estate and how they are interpretted. I've become increasingly interested in corruption and I want to be able to understand the economy better than an art student stereotype. I want to have intelligent conversations with people. I'm also preparing myself for the upcoming presidential election.

So, tomorrow, I'll wake up early and make french toast ravioli.
http://www.newlyweds-blog.com/2010/09/23/stuffed-french-toast/.
I probably don't have ricotta, but I'm thinking of putting something else in there, like eggs or PANCAKE BATTER. Pancake in french toast. THIS is what summer is about.

A little catch-up

STACnight. Congrats to the kids who put on an amazing preformance. I heard a lot of "I wish I could have done that" from my fellow alum, and overall, it proved to the parents and the visitors what a compassionate group of kids can do.
It was one of the best, if not the best, STACnight I've been to. It's also my fifth.

At the show, I was asked "are you happy at Pratt". I'm not happy at home. I'm happy when I'm busy. I don't miss the smokers and hipsters and film majors (sometimes all at the same time), but I miss the work.
I'm up to... I think today is #55 of my self-portraits. I don't think I've really seen improvement, but I know that I have to do it every day. I finished a small first sketchbook and started on a new one, which I dislike because felt-tipped pens seep through. I don't think anyone else actually cares about that.
The self-portraits give me 10 minutes a day to think about forming a positive and healthy relationship with my body. To believe, when I am alone, that I am beautiful, or quirky, or interesting, or that I just have big eyes. But I rarely feel ugly. I get down if a pair of jeans doesn't fit the way I'd like it to, but I have a lot of jeans, and I have time.
I have time. I don't know what to do with it. But I have it.
If that was the description of an object, I would throw it out.

I keep going back and forth on my personal religious beliefs. It is very hard to develop a religious opinion without the help of media, ministers, and parents. I don't like religious politics. I like moral lessons through ancient example. I like looking past and understanding context of texts. I hate when religion and politics cross in America.

#400

This is post 400, at the beginning of the 2011 summer.
There are a few things I wanted to do.
I want to finish a few videogames.
Finish reading the Earthsea books, and some of the other books on my shelf. They are technically young adult fantasy.
I've started taking apart my desk, so I should continue that.

I've had 4 cups of tea today. two with morning one with lunch one after dinner and they were all caffeinated so. Maybe I'm addicted to caffeine? Maybe I'll just finish Advanced Wars.