a princess of now

I may never wear again wear plain beige bras.

( the arabella among others )

Source: essence/braexperience.com/curvesandlace

Being thin may get you noticed, but it will not get you seen, and it will never get you truly, fiercely loved. Only all four dimensions of your beauty--spirit, soul, mind, and yes body--will get you that. Both men and women are trapped in this maze of self-scrutiny, weight or shape preoccupation, preening and primping searching and spending. But love doesn't dwell at the the end of this maze, even if you do find your way through. Love can't be won like the lottery or hunted down like an animal. Love is much more elusive and complex. In fact, it is not something outside of us, waiting for us to find it. It is already inside, sometimes taking long, languid naps, sometimes watching, all the time waiting to be woken up by a resonant voice.

There is no one size fits all beauty, no perfect girl, no ideal guy. There is only a fit, plain and simple and miraculous. Courtney Martin in Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters

( 38 )

Want: take/have. Modify: link/show.

Please don't be drinking/eating anything when you click on this image heavy link. Your monitor thanks you! And bless rhomea for bringing this to my attention. I am so lucky that I'd put down the cup of hot tea.

To quote cognative, "I'm so glad you told me to put my coffee down. I would have fucked up my computer."

What happened was, I tired of having a super short list of black actors/models I knew who could play a credible-looking Storm/Ororo Munroe. I hit the modeling sites, and would right-click pictures of photogenic black women. And occasionally, I'd see an Asian (usually East Asian) model and I'd take a photo of her. And then, I saw Kajol in KKHH and thought, "Wow, a brown-skinned beauty that reminds me of me!" Dreamy eyes, heavy thighs, slightly haphazard grooming, and all. It was nice to see women that were beautiful in the way I'm beautiful rather than beautiful while being stick-like/starved-looking who were richly dressed and physically active. So I started right-clicking those. And also, I figured that the subcontinent was crawling with dark-skinned women who know their way around a makeup tray, so maybe I should study the variety of looks employed on making them up so I could better work what I had going for me in the looks department. Because, let's face it, American media wasn't helping me develop a repertoire of looks because even while I've got a cute figure and a great face, I'm full figured and dark. As a friend sometimes says, "Let's face it, if you're a white woman and you're not blonde, that's problematic. So what are the rest of us supposed to do? Let it be understood that nobody, except for a very few, are allowed to have natural hair."

Rather than bitch about it, I elected to give my attention to pretty poc. Eventually, I made The Dailies as an index of pictures of poc I found gorgeous.

I found that it did my inner eye, and the two physical ones, a world of good to look on pictures of poc. It could very well help people who claim, "I'm just not attracted to them" figure out what beauty really means to them apart from their ingrained prejudices. Go look, join up, open your eyes. There are many different ways to be beautiful.

crantz hosts my picture sites (yay Crantz!) and I <3 him for it.

Anyway, link to the site, do not hotlink, and advise people to go there and look, really look and try and see what's pictured and feel whatever feelings they have about that. Many many many people are afflicted with the, "If you're white, you're alright; if you're brown stick around; and if you're black get back" disease. Heal yourself. Find the sore spot on your chest (3 inches down from the u in your clavicle and 3 inches over from that) and while rubbing it say "I am so grateful that I can see the beauty in what's in front of me" or "I am so grateful that I can really see what's in front of me".

Pass this on. Maybe it'll help with the darkside of being colorblind.