I never felt pretty as a child. Looking back at pictures, I totally understand why. I was horrific. Overweight (the second fattest girl in the fifth grade!)horrid acne starting at 10/11, and the only girl time I got with my mother is when she would pin me down in her lap and go to work pimple and blackhead hunting. I'd never been liked much at school, but after all that kicked in things just got worse. I wasn't pretty, I didn't feel pretty, and most of my clothes were my cousin's tattered hand-me-downs, or, more pathetically, my mother's sweatshirts and sweaters (she wasn't much for the dress-up.) This, again, was still in the 10/11 age range. I had all the body frame I was gonna get by then, and all of her stuff fit.
Oh, there was also this dress I wore practically every other day in the 5th grade. We'll talk about it later. I'll just say that I loved me some Little House back then.
Something that I didn't figure out until later was that I eventually became something of a pretty girl. There was no swan-like transformation, but by the time I was 16 I'd gotten down into the 160's (this was and is my all time low weight) got better at make-up, and began to buy my own clothes. Also, although I had periodic acne break-outs the monstrous stuff(the vile kind that truly looked volcanic) had gone away.
Once I started feeling pretty with make-up on, I became convinced that I was only ever pretty with it. I never did my hair much - it was the nineties and straight hair was fine - but I always made sure to plaster my face before leaving the house.
And that's the way it stayed until I was around 25. By then I'd had two kids and was juggling school and a job (impossible without the help of their father Mark, of course) but I still wouldn't leave the house without at least applying foundation and pencilling in some eyebrows.
Somewhere in the last few years though, I've lost any and all desire to be get presentable when leaving the house. It doesn't matter if I'm going to work, going to the store - whatever. It's not worth it.
Part of it is that I've gotten this soul-sucking job that eats up 4 hours a day just in commute. I've gotten my mornings down to a shower and pulling on whatever is in the clean clothes pile. This is all I do to get ready. I brush out my hair in the car-ride to the express bus.
The clothes I wear are starting to look a lot like those one's I wore in elementary schoo. Just... "this'll do." A lot like mom's in other words.
The perplexing thing is that I buy girly clothes. I buy hair dealies. I buy make-up. I buy hair product. I color my hair. I like being pretty. It's just that these days, I rarely put it all together. I don't even try. My blog picture? I took that a year ago. In it I'm wearing my nightgown. I'd gotten new lip color and was playing around and decided to get a picture while I was feeling that I looked half decent. I haven't tried that hard to get pretty more than a dozen times in the last 6 months. That might seem like a lot, but I've gone from 28 days a month to 2.
Enough.
This business of not bothering to bother needs to stop. Especially considering that lately, people are surprised if I manage to get some make-up on at work. They get all "oooh, what's the occassion?" at me. Ick.
So: This year I proclaim I will get my girly back and like it.
I have new clothes I've never even worn. I had these cute little hair clips that I had for months before I managed to pin one in for the family Christmas get-together.
Wednesdays I'm all alone at home. The kids are at school until three and it's just me and the Netflix. These are the days I use to tart myself up and document it to the Internet. Let's face it, the Internet is my only real love, I might as well look pretty for it.
I'll do this by taking pictures of new clothes, new make-up styles, new hair-style attempts, and whatever else comes to mind.
Yes, for reals this time. It's going to happen. Update on Wednesday.
