Week 3
Day 21: Disappearing
Today I woke up at noon. Somehow I ended up not having time to put on makeup or style my hair. It wasn’t like anyone was going to see me that day anyway, it was Superbowl Sunday, and naturally, as a girly girl, I had to disappear.
This made me wonder if that was even true; do girly girls attend sports events? I interviewed a few girls who identified as girly but then hesitated saying that they didn’t fit the stereotype because they liked to get dirty and liked sports. I just decided that they weren’t the kind of girly I was aiming for, at least not to the level I was going to take it.
But I also realized that most girly girls were the popular chicks in high school, and one common thing those girls did was regularly attend football games/cheerlead for said games. These are too many stereotypes piling on one another though, and the theory is too shaky to put to practice.
So I went to my house during the Superbowl, and Noah went to have some beers and watch the game with his brother. While at my house I remembered an article I read called 12 Things Men Really Find Romantic. Thing 3 was “Give Him a Night Out with the Boys — No Strings Attached”. I realized that it was uncommon for a girl to let her man out without considerable guilt tripping/pouting.
I decided I should call him up; this wasn’t going to be one of those romantic times. It was hard to make myself so insecure, in fact I just couldn’t do it. I wonder why these women are like this? It really is sad to know that men are throwing away their friendships when it comes to committing to a woman, or at least that’s how it seems in most cases.
It makes me understand why the dating game is so damn tough for girls. Men don’t want to throw away their lives, and rightfully so. But why then do women do this so often, why don’t women loosen the leash to show that relationships don’t have to result in a ball and chain?
Hmm…
Got a black waistbelt, some colorful earrings, and white tights!
After watching Sex and the City a few more episodes in, I’ve gained a little more respect for it. It has potential to be a really legitimate show if it weren’t for the fact that that Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte are complete stereotypical 2-dimensional characters. It makes for great research though because these stereotypes (besides Miranda’s) fall into the girly girl category. This show empowers women at the same time as categorizing them.
Samantha desperately grasps onto her youth, sleeping with any man that can make her feel like she’s the young little thing she once was.
Miranda is the raging feminist that most men cringe at the sight of. I despise her character the most because she is the reason guys judge so harshly whenever I act angry or passionate about anything. I’ve always hated when men tried to categorize me as “angry bitch” over one incident where I wasn’t letting someone step all over me. I am not a Miranda and usually I can be quite passive.
Charlotte is the average girl. The one that wants marriage with the perfect man, a cute house and essentially wants to be the modern day Cinderella.
Of course, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is “perfect”. Not too desperate, not too aloof, she epitomizes the “perfect girl” or at least what women think the perfect girl would be. For some reason she can get any man she wants without even trying and even stranger yet she doesn’t really reject any of these guys, she just sleeps with them and moves on (with class of course).
I like that these women are allowed to sleep around without dealing with moral repercussions, I just wish the media would portray women as real people, not caricatures.
But caricatures are so fun to dress up!
It’s strange that my girly experiment has pushed me to become more feminist, but I think the reason I started this experiment was that I hated being categorized, and wanted to see what the appeal was for people to happily put themselves in a box like that. Also, maybe I really was one of these people, and I just didn’t know.
But being in a box feels so constricting. I have been craving more than ever to go out and meet new people, to become new people. It feels so cut off and exclusive, as if I can only do and like certain things.
I was craving something different so much today that I almost picked up a hitchhiker. The only reason I didn’t was because it was obviously a terrible idea to pick up a male hitchhiker on a secluded road alone in the car. But still, I was very tempted.
This personality is definitely wearing on me. It’s like a mask that was fun to keep on because life just seemed better but now my face is sweaty under the plastic and I just want to take it off! Of course, this is just one day, other days I love this new, different me. I’m betting tomorrow will be great, especially with my adorable new outfit!
Day 20: Shopping!
I woke up at 10:30 AM. It feels so good to wake up late(r)! Though if it were my choice I would have slept until 3 pm. It was warm outside today so I decided to wear this number:
Today I went shopping with a friend. It’s much more fun to go shopping with a girl; their opinions are more informed, less personally biased (for men they think certain clothes are stupid because their lack of functionality).
I realized that shopping is a lot like writing; sometimes you just find/know what’s cute and other times you’re uninspired and just don’t really know what to get. I’m still not thrilled about shopping, but this time it wasn’t nearly as stressful and turned out to be a lot of fun.
I thought my new fashion savvy might prevail and once I tried it on I would know what the hell this dress was aiming for. Instead I ended up showing my crotch and making my ass look completely unbecoming. Hopefully it will pay off and someone will tell me what the deal with this dress is.
Something I love about girl time is the level of honesty I can have regarding relationships. Both of us have free reign to pour our hearts out with the dirtiest, naughtiest tidbits of gossip. I wonder if this type of interaction were to continue would things turn sour? Not that I think Annie and I would start getting catty, but just seeing Real Housewives of Orange County, it makes me a little leery of girl time.
I wonder why it is that girls can turn on each other so readily, yet still claim that their girlfriends are BFF’s and nothing could bring them apart.
When I was in 6th grade a boy I had a crush on asked me out. I was ecstatic, then one of my best friends formulated some lie to bring us apart because she had a crush on him too. It was a long time ago, and I don’t remember the details anymore, but it was the first time I dealt with cattiness.
Perhaps I’m just uninformed, maybe my bad luck along with seeing too many trashy reality shows makes me believe that women are never to be trusted.
Yay! Grey leggings!
Also, my boyfriend and I were watching Sex and the City and he told me that girls were way more vulgar than guys. He said guy time doesn’t ever include divulging vulgar/intimate details because it would be completely unacceptable. Of course, Noah is a very respectful man and doesn’t think it’s right to divulge personal details with other men.
I wouldn’t say that he is like most men in that regard, so it could be a completely different case for the typical “guy”, who knows?
Day 19: Media
Today I woke up at 10:00 AM. I didn’t need to get to school at 8:45am like I usually do, I just needed to be there for a meeting at noon. I think I’ve been forgetting to take my thyroid pills (I have hypothyroidism) because despite the 5 hour nap and the 6 hours of sleep I still was incredibly tired!
I’m getting better at being a huge makeup badass despite my limitations (no fancy eyeshadow brush, just my finger). I’m getting lots of compliments, which a huge plus when it comes to being girly. Fellow girly girls are not scared to say “Love your shoes”, or “Love your eyeshadow!” to a stranger, and I can totally respect that!
I cannot respect the lack of definition in this picture
I’m definitely becoming a girly girl with all the repercussions! I keep getting in really weird petty arguments with Noah that are completely based on my own emotional distress.
I’ll be trying to pick out the outfit for tomorrow and get upset, he tries making it better by telling me to deal with it because its not a big deal, which eventually leads me to break down in tears and demand I be treated like a girl for once, because I’m not a man, and I just want someone to treat me sweet.
I’ve never felt so needy, and what I say I want isn’t always what I want. Everything in my heart just feels all over the place. It’s kind of like I’m PMSing but less of the anger and more of the raging (emotions). Poor Noah has no idea what he got himself into, neither did I! I expected that I should act more high maintenance but I didn’t think in my wildest dreams that it would just come natural.
No wonder the dating game is so complex, being girly, it would be hard to land a man! Who wants to deal with all the emotions? I know I sure as hell don’t! If my boyfriend put anything like that on me I would tell him to go to therapy or grow up, I expect the same for girls too.
Why the double standard? I do appreciate guys that can be my shoulder to cry on when I have valid reasons to be upset. But I don’t expect that when my boyfriend is upset, that he should just go away and throw a chair or something, he has just as much of a right to feeling emotions as I do.
Someone incredibly wonderful let me borrow her eco-friendly makeup remover and I remembered what was like to not feel like I’m rubbing my skin bare! This stuff is amazing!
Hell F****ing yes to carrots!!
My face even looks livelier!
I watched the first episode of “Sex and The City” today. I suggest anyone who wants to know what it feels like to be a film/TV critic should watch this show. First of all, the intro is only Sarah Jessica Parker walking around in some weird creepily age inappropriate ballerina dress while all the other main characters have their names shown with no faces except hers looking oblivious and dazed. It screams “I’m Sarah Jessica Parker!!! I’m the star! No one else is important!” despite the only reason she’s the focus is that everyone is trying to hard to find out why she appears the most desirable compared to her much more attractive and interesting friends.
Why won’t they accept me for who I really am; a vulnerable 12 year old girl?
Then the episode ends with her in the car with some really creepy guy, who’s also the apparent the love interest throughout the show called “Mr. Bigg” (great name!) that talks like a sex offender and makes the show feel like a sleazy porn that just never got to the sex. Ew, this is going to be hard to stomach, but I’m learning a lot about the reeking desperation females accept about themselves and the pungent perversion that men give in to.
Now I know why I was always so scared of men in Junior high despite the fact they avoided me like the plague. Thanks Mother Culture for making me look like a jackass all of my puberty.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Day 18: Music
Today I woke up at 7. It was really hard for me to wake up, and I initially was supposed to wake up at 6:30 to shower but I was so tired!!
I felt really insecure all day. I felt fat and ugly. I’ve never felt so unhappy with my appearance when trying so hard.
This project has been incedibly hard for me but I found a glimmer of hope! I talked with my English teacher, who has been a great help with this whole experiment, and he told me I can get independent study credits for this! I won’t have to feel so guilty for working so hard on this over homework!
Every time I feel discouraged or hopeless about doing this and want to give up, something happens to push me forward. Now I feel like I don’t even have a choice, and that’s actually really great!
I feel almost flawlessly girly now, so I think I need to take some aspects to the next step. I compiled a playlist of girly songs and I’ll be watching Sex in The City/Gilmore Girls.
I even wrote in girly handwriting!
Writing girly is kinda fun. I used to doodle but I got so insecure, girly handwriting feels like doodling but not as embarrassing. I know exactly how to make everything look pretty, where with doodling random people/flowers etc can look like crap. I compiled the playlist on Grooveshark.com and when “Toxic” by Britney Spears came on I literally got a little nauseous. I didn’t know I was so pretentious!
I’m excited to rip some CD’s, though poor Noah will have to sit through it in the car with me. I need to talk to some girls who have the music.
Yay! pink!
Tonight I passed out at 5:30 and woke up at around 10pm! It was amazing!! I felt refreshed, relaxed, revitalized! I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep later but I was incredibly tired by 1am. This is such hard work, I think it takes more of an emotional toll than I could ever have imagined.
Day 17: Second Nature
Today I woke up at 7. It was an average morning. I went the extra mile with the makeup to make up for the days before.
Naturally I don’t look nearly as awesome here as I did all day
I decided to be a little bold and add some purple under the eye as well. It seemed to transform my look because I got compliments left and right! Even my boyfriend noticed (at the end of the day)!
I’ve noticed that my blog posts have contained less self reflective content and more mundane details regarding the experiment. I think this has partly to do with me being busy and partly because I’m becoming much more interested in material things instead of intangible theories.
Speaking of material things, I really need some gray leggings! well, I actually just need different colored leggings in general!
I have been incredibly girly pretty much the whole day, its been wonderful! There’s this light, on a cloud kind of feeling I get from being girly. But there is still a hole in my facade; I don’t have enough girly friends!!
I’m no longer insecure about the clackety noises my shoes make. I don’t really care anymore if people think I’m some kind of idiot, shallow, poser, or girly. I am who I am, and no one can bring that down. Ever since the boat party I’ve had an “I’m awesome” attitude, and it’s been great.
I’ve developed the habit of talking myself up whenever I do something remotely good. I can’t say that its a bad habit at all, though its completely uncharacteristic of me! When I initially started becoming girly I emulated the personality of my stepsister from when I remembered her in high school.
She was incredibly negative, the attitude placed her above her peers because she could bring them down and make herself seem too good for a lot of activities. Not to say that was her underlying motivation to be so negative, she had her own personal issues, but it did make me look up to her unflinchingly as a child.
I emulated that personality in high school, but it didn’t suit me and it took a lot for me to make myself act less pouty all the time. I’ve done a complete 180 since then and I love it!
I wore the new shoes today! They were great! I showed them off whenever I could and whenever I talked about them I either ended up squealing or jumping up and down. They are my magic confidence boots; they empower me to act girly!
When I got home and took them off I realized though that there were hidden consequences. My jeans had curled up and were pressing against my ankle the whole day. I didn’t feel a thing until I took them off! Unlike my other shoes which practically screamed at me to stop wearing them these were silent killers.
Not pictured: Pain
All of a sudden when I got back the energy was sapped out of me. I was filled with a wrenching need for attention and gratification. I wanted to go to a club or a party and feel loved by everyone. I felt empty without people around me. This experiment has made me crave attention to a level I could have never been able to comprehend!
Maybe it’s not attention, but approval? and maybe it’s not the experiment, but the fact I could have made some great friends on the boat party but I didn’t get to, and now I feel like I missed an opportunity of a lifetime. I don’t know, all I know is all of a sudden I feel incredibly cut off from the world where before this experiment I felt like girly girls were the ones cut off (the internet was my avenue).
Before I hated the idea of having lots of friends, lots of people to keep track of, to keep up with. Now I’m open to that idea, I just need to make the friends, which is the hard part. It’s slow progress, but I’m working my way up!
By the way, this outfit was all my original clothes(except the boots)! Noah got me the vintage 70’s coat for our anniversary and I got the turtleneck from Macy’s since I got a gift card there. Don’t remember where the scarf came from but pretty awesome eh?
My skin is finally starting to suffer from the frequent makeup use and constant stress. Today when I applied it my skin felt less workable, rougher, drier, and lifeless. Before, my skin was radiant, smooth, and sometimes flawless. I’m beginning to get zits, though I won’t go so far as to say I’m breaking out.
Guess which side has makeup!
I am so exhausted by the end of the day, I’ve decided to only shower ever other day as my skin has become dry and itchy and it’s bad for my hair. Also, I get some days where I can finally sleep when I want to!
My body’s perfect balance has been ruined! I used to have smooth skin all over my body, now I’ve developed strange bumps throughout. On my chest, my wrist, my face, my legs, it just never ends!
I am so tired; I don’t have the emotional or physical energy to pull this thing off. But I have to push through; a girly girl wouldn’t give up on her appearance just because of an exhausting day!
Day 16: Chugging Along
Today I woke up at 6:49!! I was panicky, I thought we had to leave ASAP, and Noah always ended up late to his class because of my high maintenance experiment in the past. He informed me that we still had 45 minutes to get ready, but that still was not enough for me!
I woke up with kinda curlyish hair and though that it might look alright if I just hairsprayed it up. I tried it and asked my mom, she said “Good, but a little messy” Sorry mom, but coming from you that means it looks completely unpresentable.
I brushed out the hairspray and tried to curl my hair with a straightener. Hey, I’ve seen it done and it looks fantastic!! But I realized then I have no idea what the hell to do when it comes to curling my hair with a straightener.
Long story short, my hair has never been treated so cruelly, and after trying over and over again I finally just straightened it. My hair was furious with me though and refused to straighten properly.
The chunks of stiffly limp hair say it all
I didn’t even have time to do eye makeup, and I left a vital portion of eyeshadows at Lacey’s, which I have yet to get back.
We finally went back to Noah’s house, I realized that at my house I tend to be a huge lazy ass, which contributes to the feeling that it’s something of a vacation from the stressors of life, but once I got back to Noah’s, I felt the passion override the stress and once I did some studying went back to writing furiously.
Not that I’m saying being at my place makes me this no good slacker, I just look at it as my haven where I can finally kick off my shoes and do nothing for a good 8 hours straight. It’s nice, I love it!
I also brought to his house a bunch of clothes that would prove useful for this. You thought packing for my hosue was bad, look at what I just brought up alone(not including the clothes from Noah’s)!
I didn’t know I had so much clothes!!
I have a lot more overcoats of many types now, so this winter won’t be quite as harsh. Oh, and geuss what I got A DAY EARLY?!?! when I found out, I literally squealed, jumped around the room for a few minutes, and maintained an ear to ear grin for even longer.
YES!!
They fit, they don’t hurt, and most importantly, they are SO CUTE! Now I need to figure out how to maintain their immaculate perfection. And considering my light brown boots, that’s going to be an enormous challenge. I have to congratulate myself though; I really know how to save money on shoes. I’ve gotten tons of compliments on my light brown boots and they were only $20, these hot mamas (probably incredibly inappropriate slang for nice shoes) were only $38!
These shoes have revived my inner girly; I began this day in a terrible mood and wanted to either quit school, work, or this experiment and ended feeling so excited to show off my new shoes to everyone. That’s the true girly way! I need to let these kind of things bring me up, make me peppy, and make me carefree.
the flats I wore today on the other hand revived my inner man. Those things HURT! I wish I had my Walmart Men’s Dept. shoes again 😦
At least these new boots will hurt somewhere else
Bet you can’t wait to see me in those boots!
I can’t believe I’m more than halfway through! I feel like I haven’t really learned that much. I hope that I will be able to to spend some more girly time with girls and really be socialized. Right now, I still feel my true self tugging at me, and I miss her terribly.
Something I have learned from this is that I’m freaking awesome the way I am, and no one could tell me otherwise! I won’t go into details of just why I’m so great, but seeing myself come out at certain times reminds me that who I am is someone real and kind. People were scared that I would change for the worse, but this could only change me for the better.
Day 15: Miserably Busy
I woke up at 6:30 today. I got 3 hours of sleep because of a presentation today. There isn’t much to say besides the fact that I hate Mondays more than I have ever hated anything time related EVER. Even aging.
At least I didn’t end up wearing the 80’s outfit
I went to a Mary Kay thing today. I have no idea what exactly it was, but spent an hour and a half learning about how to apply makeup to different face types and how to create certain facial illusions. The video that taught me this was 10 or 15 minutes, the rest of it was something between recruiting consultants and advertising products.
If I had time to have an extra job I might consider being a consultant that is if I was the kind of person that can be super excited all day about something, which I’m not. Maybe I should try to be one of these people for my experiment; it seems to take a lot of energy and acting skills.
Anyway, I passed out while studying at 11:30. Sorry about the short post, but the day was consumed with a lot unrelated stuff. Honestly, it felt like a waste regarding this experiment, though my feet were suitably uncomfortable!
Monthly Makeovers 