It's been quite an adventurous five months! I've moved across the planet with kids in tow and started a new marriage, new life! Now the kids are all in school, we're in our house, work is flowing and all is 'normal' in the universe. Spending plenty of time at Topshop on Oxford Circus, Smythson on Bond Street, and Junky Styling in Brick Lane!
What's in my beauty reading radar lately? I've been on the Tube A LOT lately and reading voraciously. Loving "Cinderella Ate My Daughter" by Peggy Orenstein and just finished "I Think I Love You" by Allison Pearson. Makes me strangely happy that I have given birth to three sons instead of daughters... When I found out that each of my boys was, indeed, male, I was shattered. With each pregnancy I had visions of pink nurseries, hairbows, Barbies, Mary Janes with white anklet socks, and on and on.
Reading these books, though, is a flashback to my own perceptions of beauty and understanding just how deep those roots go... When Pearson writes about wearing brown (a shade that makes her skin look decidedly yellow!) because she read in a fanzine that David Cassidy liked it, you realize just how early we are conditioned to conform to someone else's vision of beauty.
For me, I remember experimenting with pin curls because I thought boys liked curly hair. I was about six and one Saturday night I painstakingly crafted the curls. At church the next day, I flushed with embarrassment when I was convinced that two older teenaged boys were laughing at me. Even now I can recall that feeling of just wanting to hide - even though the Grown Up Coni knows the boys probably hadn't even noticed me and wouldn't have thought twice about a little girl's hair.
Beauty Workout: What incidents do you remember from early childhood that defined your image of how you perceived yourself? How do you feel when you think back?
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