Beauty « Margaret Cho

Posts Tagged ‘Beauty’

Monday, March 5th, 2012

You’ve sparked my pinterest. It’s kind of crazy. I believe I am an addictive person. I come back to the well for more and more and more, no matter what I said before. No matter what was regretted in the morning. The mind does gymnastics in an effort to justify any action.

Excuses are a test of your creativity, but the length of lies to the self, and the strength of belief – it’s pretty well unbelievable. What is lucky and good – I kick most things easily, after about three days of monotonous suffering, mimicking the cross, which I can handle always, which is the other side of the story, what keeps me out of certain facilities at least for now, and out on the street, kicking these restless legs all the way to the bank.

But Pinterest, now you are talking about something else. Pinterest I have spent a little more time than I like on. Yesterday I spent in a haze of pinning. It’s a shade like sewing, touches of styling, a bit of editing, putting all of it together. The boards I put up are disorderly though. Random pictures thrown up in a chaotic burst of enthusiasm and aesthetic bliss. I never knew where to put those pictures of things I save on my desktop, that live on in my mind’s eye, after my face’s eye has enjoyed them.

There’s lots of Catherine Deneueve, lovely and rich looking. Untroubled in the 1960s and then later in the 80s when it looked like a touch of trouble had come on. But always, she’s beautiful. There’s Steve Mcqueen, the man of every motorcyclist’s dreams, riding and smoking and simply magnificent in his uncomplicated masculinity. I can imagine if he were around today, he’d have a Husqvarna engine revving for a ringtone on his iphone, but he’d never hear it because he’d always be riding and so would text you back hours after the fact. He’d be a guy who would like you, but he liked other things more, so too bad about you.

There are girls on bikes like Marianne and Jane, as well as rock pairs from then and now. I have some photos of Brigitte Bardot I want to put up but I’m conflicted about her. She’s made such a mess of her iconic status, with her racist and homophobic politics. In France, she is the worst of anyone you’d see here running for office. There’s no equivalent. She’s really that bad – worse than David Duke even. It kills me because she was so fierce and yes she loves animals but hates people of color and gays so what is beauty and style if you are not even a human being? She looked good though. I want to maintain that. The bitch looked awesome. I just might need to pin her with a disclaimer.

I will pin and repin until they put me in the pin-itentiary. Come have a look.

Tags: Beauty, Pinterest
Posted in BLOG | 5 Comments »

Brows

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

I want to pluck my eyebrows badly right now and I can’t. It’s too dark anyway, and I don’t have tweezers, but even though I can’t see all those stray hairs clearly, I know they are there. I spotted them on the last hopeful but unproductive bathroom visit before the long drive to LAX, and I wanted to get my tweezers out of my luggage and pluck them then and there but there wasn’t time. I thought about the stray hairs on the drive to the airport and now I am on the plane and I am still thinking about them.

These are the times I know I am OCD but there’s nothing I can do but acknowledge this frailty and just suffer. Could I go into the tiny airplane toilet now and try to pull the offending hairs out by the root with my bare hands? Probably not. I don’t even have fingernails, cut to the quick earlier this week in anticipation of holiday jam sessions, loosely planned easy days where my guitarist friends come over and marvel at my tremendous collection of 6 and 12 strings.

I don’t think I can grab at the hairs with my fingers, especially with the newly re-formed calluses from all the feverish playing between Christmas and New Years. My hands are not tight enough and the hairs are too fine, after being plucked diligently for more than two decades. My shiny Asian hair is slippery and defies the grip of even the most needlenosed of my Shu Uemuras.

The girl who showed me how to pluck my eyebrows was the girlfriend of a guy I know well. They had a tumultuous relationship that tortured him and cost him many friends who hated watching him wither under her gaze. It is strange and something that afflicts the young more than the old, groups of friends that shatter under the weight of a new relationship, opinions about him or her becoming the concern of the whole rather than the individual. There is the splitting and the taking of sides and possibly attempts to reconcile, which never quite works, the initial break too traumatic to recover from, the cracks irreparable underneath the facades of certain kinds of friendships. When we age this happens less, friends being harder to come by. The machinations of life kicking us all into higher gears, it is a pleasure to downshift with those you know you love and can go slow with.

Fashions have changed and browstyles have come and gone but I still use her technique, plucking all the hairs in the direction of their growth. Her initial pattern remains the one I adhere to. I haven’t plucked them more or less from the shape she first created, in the exact image of hers, looking each like adam’s rib, delineating the space between my eyes and my forehead. It’s like she did it yesterday, or actually the day before yesterday because now they are growing in and driving me crazy.

She was slightly older than me and I remember she held herself in a great importance, which was one of the reasons why my friend loved her so, and also why she infuriated his friends. She was always frustrated and sighing over some insult. Every day brought forth a new calamity. She made an art of her dissatisfaction because she wholeheartedly believed she deserved better, whatever better meant. She sighed at my eyebrows and she sighed as she plucked them. She didn’t ask permission to do so but I didn’t need her to. I desperately wanted her attention because it seemed incredibly valuable and much more than I could afford. She worked on my brows and her steady exhale into my face made me shake visibly but of course I hid this as best I could.

When she was done I was shocked at how different I looked and also how glamorous and pampered I felt. She made a gift of her $20 tweezers and my heart leapt out of my chest. She gave me a tight smile that showed both her indifference and her kindness. “They look good. Pluck them every day.” and I did. And I have.

It took many years for my friend to finally break up with her but she and I never hung out again. He brought her up in conversation recently and I could feel the love he still felt for her freeze the air around us for a moment until it was warmed over by a joyous interruption from his young son.

I tried to keep my eyebrows the same way, and probably will until they turn grey and are framed by wrinkles. All these years have not changed them. They are a symbol of my youth but also my coming of age. They remind me of the moment I knew that I was queer and loved women as easily as I loved men if not more.

Tags: Beauty
Posted in BLOG | 13 Comments »

Beauty

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

Old dogs listen up! New tricks can be learned! It takes an extra bit of effort, but it’s worth it. I think that beauty is mysterious but fair mistress, and the more you do to keep her, the longer she will stay. There’s a myth that beauty is pain, a harsh dominatrix who desires nothing but your suffering to sate her perverted desires. She wants your blood, your hunger, your money and she gives you back the empty pleasure of your vanity – but I realize that this is not a true being. There is no evil queen, no sleep inducing poison apple, no one is the fairest of all and that’s not the way beauty is. Beauty is more like a friend who has some conditions on the friendship, so not a true real deep friend, more of a shallow one. Like “you give me a ride to the airport, I will pick you up at the airport” kind of buddy. You wash your face at night, I won’t make your face erupt in adult acne in the morning. You use toner on your t-zone, I won’t aggravate your combination skin. You find the right color of lipstick, I will make valet parking attendants bring your car up around first and give it to you for free (of course I insisted on paying – but such is the strength of knowing your own colors).

My mother first informed me of the idea that beauty was pain, as she plucked her own thickly natural eyebrows into the hard, 70s spare lines of the era. “Beauty is pain” she said blankly, as her black eyebrow hairs seemed to turn brown because of the redness of her angry skin underneath her ineffectual Maybelline tweezers. This was a time before Tweezerman and Shu Uemera before we could really pluck those tiny hairs in microscopic earnest. I believed her and ruthlessly tried to avoid beauty for much of my young and then adult life. I am not a masochist. I don’t want pain. And therefore, beauty and I are incompatible. I no longer believe this to be true. To be beautiful is actually to be aware of yourself as art, and to frame your art in a way that is unique to yourself and easy to yourself and fun to yourself. We are just masterpieces waiting to be framed and mounted and lighted then worshipped. We are worth this, as we are more priceless than anything.

In the last few months I have been practicing this “myself as art” theory, and I have seen a marked improvement in areas that needed a boost, and it hasn’t cost me any more money really. It’s an investment in time, but not a lot, and it’s helped me feel good about myself, which is all we really need on earth, to feel good. To not have dread when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror – which I would do – I would actually feel horror at my own reflection, wishing myself a vampire, wishing myself undead so I would have to endure the image of my ugliness. I don’t feel ugly anymore, and no one has called me that in a very long time (believe me I used to hear it often, maybe more than once a day – seriously!). I am editing my closet and makeup drawers. I am wearing what is attractive on me on my face and body and really only that. Everything I have – its sole purpose is to flatter me, and if it doesn’t, it’s gone. Into a pile that might hopefully flatter someone else, out of my life to welcome another jacket/boot/shirt/scarf/lipstick/eyelash that will realize my beauty further. Make everything work in concert to bring out the beauty in you. Old dogs are the best at learning new tricks because we have been through it all, we know who we are, we know all about it.

Some youtube videos are excellent tutors and teachers. My favorite - Catalina is a genius. She’s Korean and probably could be my daughter. She’s lovely and so smart and also has great tips for skincare. We have similar skin. I have learned a lot from her especially regarding sensitive skin and how to do my eye makeup.

Catalina - Natural Flawless Look

I love these girls – Korean too! park and cube - gorgeous style, photographs – and also Shini is very funny. She’s amazing. She looks like she could be in my family also – there’s a striking familial familiarity. I love her posts.

park & cube

This blog – Luxirare - is also exceptional – in so many ways. I am obsessed with Ji Kim’s design and her cooking and I want everything she posts – either to eat or to wear. I am constantly floored by the creativity of people, and the art which they choose to make from their lives. This blog is really a lesson in how we can live, how we should live – what is possible. We should live every moment like this. I plan to.