It's Not You, It's You Pretending to Be Me

One thing I truly abhor is people who don't know how to be themselves. I empathize, but I truly detest it. It's hard to know who you are in this big, bad, buttfucking world of judgment and contempt for other human life. I get that. It's hard to accept judgment based on what is true in your heart. I get that.

As a child, I had friends who were popular at other schools. My best friend growing up (20 years now) was very popular at the school she attended. I, on the other hand, was not at all popular at my school. The popular girls and their parents looked at me like I was born with thirty six heads and asked everyone to draw a little picture on each one of them. And to tell you the truth, I liked that. I knew, even at a young age, that these girls were vapid because their parents taught them to be. I, on the other hand, was funny and strange and had friends who were funny and strange. This somehow melded nicely with friends in other schools who were popular. My ability to not give any fucks gave them the ability to give a few less fucks than they did, I think. Not to toot my own fuckless horn, but that seems like a thing.

Now, I don't want to say I've never had one of those mini identity crises where I question myself, because I absolutely have. I've wondered if I should wear my hair a certain way or do my makeup differently in order to be more this or that. Definitely. That's normal. And I definitely hit some weird phases in terms of what I liked and what I listened to and wore. But I just like to try on different hats and learn about different things. I never wanted to be anyone else. I don't know how to be anyone else. That's not to say I think I'm perfect or better than anyone else, but I can't fake being something I'm not. I just can't. Unless I'm getting paid to do it.

If you feel like you're constantly hiding behind some facade of trying to be something or someone that you're not, just remember that it's going to take you ten times longer to get to who you actually are if you keep doing this. It's okay to let other people and other styles and ideas influence what you like and who you are, but don't make that wholly who you are. Bring 90% of you and 10% of the influence to the table.

And if you never figure you out, that's okay too. Nothing really matters if you think about it hard enough.

That's all the brainleak you get for today.

Fear.

Today, after four years, I am cutting my hair. I am terrified. I've never been afraid of cutting my hair. The last time I did it, the hairdresser did a really shit job and I swore I'd never cut it again. And I haven't... until now.

It's just fucking hair. It grows the fuck back.

These are things that I'm telling myself.

Five years ago, I would have made fun of me for this.


I just keep reminding myself that my long hair is a burden. It falls out in fistfuls. I always lean on it when I sit up in bed. It tangles constantly. When I wanna box dye it it takes 2-3 boxes. It's time for it to GO.


I will miss you, many inches. But only a little.

Wish me luck.
I may barf.

beingsocial.edu

Since I lost my job back in October, I've gotten very good at staying home. Most of the time it's because I can't afford to go anywhere and because I've developed very special relationships with Carrie Bradshaw and Danny Tanner, among other very important people. My couch officially has an imprint of my ass in it and I am fully willing to admit that. Okay, the last one was a bit of an exaggeration.

However, the urge to go out does eventually strike my brain piece. When it does, I get excited. Like... too excited. Like... kid-in-a-candy-store too excited. But then after about an hour, I realize that my show is on that night. This turns me into kid-with-diabetes-in-a-candy-store conflicted.

I love to see my friends and I love to be social, but sometimes it takes a little extra oomph to actually get me to take off the sweatpants and apply that makeup nonsense to my face. So to give myself that urge to go out, I do the following things:

- I drink a ton of coffee. More than three cups of coffee should do it. After three cups, I'm impossibly hyper and I have to do something to get rid of all that excess energy.
- I drink a ton of booze. The beaut part of living in the city is not having to drive. Plus I don't have a car. So, I get myself a little liquored up before an outing, which puts me in the spirit of the evening.
- I doll up to party anthems. Give me a beat, Ke$ha. This place about to blow, you all.
- I change clothes like forty different times. My life is a constant belief that I'm having PMS. I'm not sure if it's an excuse or a hormonal problem. Because of whatever that is, I feel gross in almost all of my clothes. So I try to pick the one that makes me feel the least gross, but I'll eventually give up on looking at myself and leave.

Great. You're ready. Now here's what I do when I go out:
- I feel out my friends. Sometimes you have to figure out if your friends are out to get balls-out drunk or just have a few social cocktails. Most of my friends are alcoholics, so the former usually applies to me.
- I talk to strangers. In an attempt to feign interest in the outside world, I try to talk to strangers. This not only makes me seem social, it also gives me an opportunity to make strangers feel uncomfortable, which is only in my top ten favorite things to do ever.
- I get bored easily and turn into a pile of pity. I can only handle 2-4 hours of socialization in the world of nightlife. Frankly, by the time 1am rolls around, I'd rather be making out with a bag of Doritos than some douchebag with a flat-brim hat and extensive collection of Affliction t-shirts.
- I go home. Turns out I just like being at home. Plus, as I said, home has Doritos.

This where I leave you to shower... because I'm going out tonight.

I'll miss you, Doritos.

The National Post vs. Me vs. Kim Novak... and Something About Donald Trump

Age gracefully. What does that mean to you? To me, it means to not feel ashamed of getting older. It means loving yourself the way you are naturally. It means no plastic surgery of any kind, except the absolute necessary kind. And by "absolutely necessary", I don't mean "to cover those wrinkles on your face". I mean "to cover the skin missing from your face after that horrible car accident".

I happen to find the naturally aging female more attractive than most youthful, photoshopped female. I'm sorry, have you missed my 9,000 posts about Marcia Gay Harden? They're the best sort of women. Classy and sexy and with a poise that a girl in her 30s wouldn't even know how to fake. And that's coming from a heterosexual female.

Nevertheless, I was horrified to find myself ranked in a list of people who criticized Kim Novak for her plastic surgeries in an article on The National Post.

If you're too lazy to click the article, my tweet was this:

"Kim Novak's plastic surgeon gave her a procedure called 'Taste This Lemon Forever' #Oscars".

Now, this was meant as a light jibe toward a very obvious procedure or two (or twelve).

Above most things, I am a feminist of sorts. I love a facetious "get back in the kitchen" joke as much as the next guy and I do fancy myself a hard-to-offend comedienne, but I really am a pretty staunch feminist. That being said, I'm also very against plastic surgery. Again, the unnecessary kind.

Women are certainly held to a high standard of looks, especially as they age. In a so-called man's world, it's easy for a man to say a woman has to look a certain way in order to be perceived as attractive. Personally, I've never given a damn about vanity or its related nonsense. Do I wear makeup? Yes. Do I have to wear makeup in order to leave my house? NO. I am comfortable in my own skin. And not just because I'm 28. Because I value myself as more than my face or my breasts or my waistline. I am a human being with thoughts and feelings and ideas and something to say and that's way more important than the inevitable crow's feet that will make themselves at home on my face.

However, I can empathize with the pressure of being held to an unrealistic aesthetic standard. All women are held to that standard, whether they play into it or not. And I'm sure with Hollywood being an intensely vain environment where one can either Botox that forehead or never work again, it's probably really easy to say "One more injection, doc!"... at least until the procedure is over. Then, I imagine, it's difficult to say anything. Rimshot.

But I want to be very clear when I say that I was in no way tearing Kim Novak a new asshole for her choices. Would I have rather have seen her take the high road and age gracefully like June Squibb, who is three years her senior at the age of 84? Definitely. But I certainly don't want to be mistaken for clawing at my own gender. In fact, I'd like to do the opposite. I'd like to tell women to stop while they're ahead. To leave your faces alone. You're worth more than your face. More than that waistline. More than that haircut. More than any value placed upon you by a man or any other woman.

Ultimately, we all make choices for ourselves and only we know what's best for ourselves. So it's not my place to tell any woman she can't have any face she wants. It is my place to say that Donald Trump is a moron and I don't ever want to be publicly associated as agreeing with him on anything. EVER.

It's Totally Cool to Love Yourself -- Just Don't Force Your Love For You On Others

I'm here to complain near you today. Hope you're ready.

I've seen a pattern with some of my friends and acquaintances recently. It's something I like to call "Forced Confidence".

Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.

con·fi·dence. noun \ˈkän-fə-dən(t)s, -ˌden(t)s\. : a feeling or belief that you can do something well or succeed at something

Thanks, Julie Andrews.

Confidence by definition is a belief that you can do something. To inherently feel comfortable doing something because you know you will succeed is what forms it into Self-Confidence. To have the belief that you are capable of and worthy of success. Both are great things to have.

Here's the rub; if you're truly a confident person, you don't need to announce the fact that you're confident. Again, by definition, having confidence would lead one to believe that you already firmly have faith in yourself and your abilities. When you declare these abilities to, say, your entire Facebook audience, this is saying something else entirely. This is what is commonly known as "fishing for compliments".

For example..

To say "I feel good about how I look today" (probably in a less generic way) is confidence.
To say "I feel good about how I look today and you should too" (again, in a less generic way) is fishing for compliments.

Unless of course you really are self-confident and saying those things, in which case you're just narcissistic and should probably get that in check as well.

You are professing a false sense of self-confidence, thereby actually making you look self-conscious. These are easily read throughable lines. I understand "read throughable" isn't really a phrase, but roll with me, won't you?

Rather than trying to fool the world, or at least your immediate acquaintances, into thinking you're a self-confident person with your shit together who gives absolutely zero fucks about what the world thinks of you, why don't you instead work on becoming that self-confident person with your shit together who gives absolutely zero fucks about what the world thinks of you.

Just telling people that you're confident doesn't make you confident, in the same way posting photos of your dinner on Instagram doesn't make you a fucking chef.