29/30.
Apologies if you have lip fillers, but they make everyone look like a Mrs. Potato Head. One in a long list of trends I do not understand, especially in LA.
As someone who only occasionally has a sense of style, I have figured out a hack for dressing in this city: take what you think is a good idea for an outfit, and swap out one piece of it with a completely random item.
Tonight I wore yoga leggings, a jean jacket and Vans, but instead of a shirt, I wore a sports bra. Ta-da! Fixed it.
One time I was on the MTA in NYC and a lithe girl wearing one of those medium-wide black hats was blocking the doors. An older gentleman got on and asked her, politely, to move.
“Sorry,” she said.
He looked up at her, in her boxy sleeves and purposely under-done makeup and he blinked, asking:
“Are you a rabbi?”
I snorted outwardly so it sounded like a cough, and then it made me cough, and the would-be rabbi glared at me which is not the level of dignity I would expect from a clergy person.
The first time I saw models in real life was in Paris in high school. Someone in our group was shopping for a prom dress in some high-end stores and the rest of us tagged along because we did not have parents who would pay for such things. As Jen tried on her third, black satin number, I ditched off to the Louvre with my friend Chloe to see my favorite sculpture for the second time.
They were staging a fashion show on the floor under the glass pyramids, and two of the models walked by, all legs and hollowed out eyes, moving with the grace of giraffes and the width of paper dolls.
“When they put makeup on they’re stunning,” my friend Chloe said.
“They look dead.”
“Yeah.” But she said it in the wistful way.
My friend Kyla recently did an Instagram story series spoofing beauty routines where she held up normal items and gushed about them and then stiltingly used them on-camera.
“This is the most AMAZING face cleanser,” she said, holding up a Dove bar. “I think it’s like five dollars in select drugstores, but you can get it for cheaper if you buy in bulk on Amazon.”
It was one of my favorite things to happen on social media this year. I have nothing against the construct of social media; anything can be corrupted, subverted, made to be a shallow and divisive thing. There are bad people just as there are corruptible teachers, selfish drivers, and marauding rabbis. Where you fit, who you are, how you put the good in, that’s what crafts your experience just as it shapes the reality of the thing itself. I’m not going to get lip fillers no matter how many beauty bloggers talk about it. I do have an idea for a Mrs. Potato Head IG live though.