I've recently gotten married and started a new job and haven't been posting some of the stuff that's been in my head. So there's a bit of a backlog here and you will all have to bear with me. The first thing I'd like to write about is the fun and cage-rattling experience I had courtesy of a friend of mine. One of the things I like best about my friends is that they challenge me to examine my thoughts on both larger and more personal things. The project I recently helped my friend with is a perfect example of this. My friend is a photographer and wants to expand her repetoire to include boudior photography. She needed guinea pigs for an experimental shoot to test this new direction and enlisted the help of several friends. I initially volunteered for the experiment out of a desire to help and support my friend but ended up having a great time and gaining whacked upside the head with some unexpected insights.
My friend asked everyone taking part in the shoot to bring some pin-up type gear. As I've already mentioned, I'm not particularly girly, but make an exception for jewelry and shoes. Naughty undergarments, not so much because I've never really seen the purpose. I bought some of those at H&M a week before the shoot which was a lot more fun than I expected. The three guinea pigs then met at a salon owned by a friend of my photographer friend on the morning of the shoot. I take basic care of my hair and try to ignore it in the hope that it will go away. After my friend's friend was done, my unruly Cousin It hair was harnassed into a riot of curls that wouldn't look out of place on a 1940s/50s pin-up girl. The three of us then went to a very posh hotel nearby where my friend had gotten a room with an attatched sitting room for the shoot. We met a fourth guinea pig there and proceeded to have a great time.
Both the photo shoot and the preparations forced me to think about my body in an aesthetic sense which was a completely new experience. I had always thought that any attempt at looking good, aside from what's necessary to not look like a freak and/or dirty hippie was impractical. Consequently, my version of caring for myself has been to eat right and work out with the hopes of leading a long and healthy life. The fact that I'm not going to win any beauty contests and growing up in a very looks-oriented environment (more on that some other time) has also tipped the scales in favor of going to the gym and wearing boots over primping. To my great surprise, I found that I really enjoyed being girly and thinking about my appearence during this whole experience. Giving my boots to Goodwill or running screaming from the weight room would require a frontal lobotomy. This experience taught me that it's fun and nurturing to myself to have some fun with more girly things and that doing so won't turn me into one of the pod people.
