Too matchy matchy?
Question: What makes blue lips all right for a fashion magazine or Halloween but usually questionable for, say, the office, church or shopping? How do cultures define the prevailing boundaries of style decorum and why are people who don't conform often shunned or ridiculed? What causes the anxiety created by difference? Are slips of conformity in aesthetics evidence of dangerous slips of conformity in thought? And why would that be bad, especially when humankind's greatest inventions and works of art usually result from non-conformist thought?
In this shoot, I simply wanted to wear blues in places you don't often see them, in non-conformist ways, on my eyebrows and lips (MAC blue cake makeup and blue pencil) and on my head. I exaggerated the blue cosmetics with drawn-on white eyelashes and white lipliner (Sephora pure white eye pencil) around blue lips drawn double their real size. I was curious to see how the blues changed how I felt about myself and how that change would be reflected in my photos. The silver sequins around my neck are a man's tie clamped at the back with a metal clothespin, and I'm wearing a thrifted blue slip.
Results
In the first photo above, clearly, that's not me. I get a Deborah Harry or Jean Harlow vibe from that one. This photo was not edited; yes, those are blue blues. I like how my eyes grey-down.
The next photo has been edited, obviously. I was just having fun.
This next shot reminds me of an anime space traveller, a doll-like creature that does not compute.
And there I am without the wig at the end of the shoot. Yay! I was getting hot.
And then one final photo below in black and white. My hair has never been shinier - too bad it's because I'm wearing a petroleum-based product on my head. I am reminded of a Sophia Loren-type movie, a tempestuous woman with a penchant for flowers.
And I wrote the following to go with the mood I felt in this photo.
"Pah!" she sneered. She savagely pulled a green onion from the flower box. "This, THIS is what I think of you!" Giuseppe, her paramour and a top vegetarian chef, watched in horror from the bar as she savagely bit off the bulbous hairy root. He could hear the soil grinding between her magnificent white molars. The chewing was interminable, like fingernails on a blackboard.
"Bwa-ha-ha," she laughed after an audible gulp. She flung the remaining stalk onto the floor with vehemence and ground it under her shocking stilettos, careful not to skewer the stalk as she did so; everyone knows kebab heels are only good for walking across hot coals. "If THIS is what I can do as a vegetarian, just imagine my wrath as an omnivore, you virus-sucking worm." Saliva dripping down her chin, she grinned a horrible movie-star grin that revealed tiny furrows of black dirt between her teeth. "I shall never come here no more. Farewell, venal brute. We are FINISHED!"This shoot was fun but it made me question even more why certain ways of personal presentation are acceptable only on defined occasions and in art, but not for every day. Imagine if Picasso couldn't paint women in blue. Now I want to wear this look out shopping and I hope it's only a matter of time until we see blue lips everywhere, remembering when black or blue nail polish was shocking and when dying your hair was only for "bad" women. Heh, heh.
Of course some of the bloggers I admire have no qualms about dressing in and making themselves up in what they want exactly when they want. I cheer!!! I am trying to do the same but sometimes I still feel constrained. Even today it's frightening how often ridicule can stem from as little as wearing a dress too short or cutting one's hair, or, as we learnt recently from a post by fabulous Desiree of Pull Your Socks Up, from wanting to wear a vintage dress for graduation. I'm wondering if we've all felt like outsiders at one time or another because of our styling.
Thoughts?
And...
Shoe Shine
Finally, these are my shoes for Bella's Shoe Shine. Camouflage legs. I wore that maxi dress (backdrop) and those socks today with shoes almost identical to these ones, but these are the shoes I wanted to show you for Shoe Shine. They're not red but there is red in what I wore with them. Does that count?
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Maybe tomorrow I'll go shopping for a pink wig. That blue baby only cost $8.
I hope you all have a happy weekend. Signing off. See you at Patti's later. This weekend I'll be catching up on my commenting. You're all schtars!!
