December 22, 2024

I work from home. I am no stranger to a sweatpants work day. I have heavily relied on Zoom’s blur feature to make my unstyled hair and makeup-free face look somewhat put-together. In fact, a guaranteed mood-ruiner is when a Google Meet lands on my calendar instead, home to a far inferior blur feature (though you can turn yourself into a giant frog — incredibly helpful, thank you Google).

Sometimes, though, I get my little butt up and I blow dry my hair. I put my makeup on with care. I pull on tights and loafers when jeans and sneakers would do. Usually with Jake, I walk to the nearest coffee shop, where we sit with laptops, have coffee, occasionally interact with neighbors, and do our work. Maybe no one is looking at me, maybe someone is, but altogether that feeling — of being a real live human woman — is so self-esteem boosting it’s ridiculous.

This fact is something I struggle with.

I don’t want it to be true. I don’t want, as a woman, doing my hair and makeup to be important. I don’t want to validate the money it takes to buy clothes. I don’t want to validate spending even more money to buy better, cooler clothes.

I think I contemplate this more than the average bear. As someone born in a female body, socialized as a woman, and who does indeed identify as a woman, it feels fraught to participate in the very structures that keep us down. And not just to participate in them — to participate in them and like them.

It leaves me asking questions like: Do looks really matter?

Or rather, arising out of my own personal twisted internal system of hang-ups, shoulds, and moral considerations: Is it okay to care about how I look?

Looking Good at its Worst

The algorithm recently presented me with this quote attributed to Ira Glass. It’s about how early creatives fall short from making great art:

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.”

This didn’t really resonate with me about creative work (most early creatives I’ve known, myself included, are pretty tickled by their own work — it’s only later than you look back and go “oh that was trash”).

But this quote did resonate with me about fashion. In fact, I think fashion is exactly like that.

I think we all have taste, because I just don’t think it’s that hard. We all know that outstanding feeling of wearing something that makes you look and feel great, and we all know that feeling of showing up to the party/event/baseball game wearing the wrong thing. And I don’t think we’re wearing the wrong thing because we’re convinced it’s the right thing — it’s probably because it was the best option in your closet.

The problem isn’t taste. The problem, as Ira Glass put it, is the gap. It’s the lack of resources helping you achieve your vision.

Because style is 2% taste … and 98% money.

Many an influencer exists on the interweb nowadays showing us what and what not to wear. And while I like many of them, sometimes their whole thing just makes me laugh. The advice is always “Don’t wear this; wear that.” Aka, “Go spend money you silly goose.”

Because fashion is literally buuuyyyyyinnnggg thinggggggggssss.

It is impossible to opt out of consumerism, though I wish I could, at this particular moment in time, dial down the beauty standard like turning the dimmer switch on a lightbulb. We’ve just got too many bills to pay.

It doesn’t feel like looking good is fun, optional, and celebrated; it feels bastardized and abused, distorted and compulsory, where the most well-off among us win and get to parade their privilege as taste, and women are somehow more caught up than ever in achieving a non-human perfection.

Looking Good at its Best

A spiritual guide once told me that what’s correct for us in our lifetime — the yes’s we say to our lives — are much narrower than the no’s. There are a thousand ways to mislive your life, but the yes’s live on a thin balance beam — a handful of things that truly give you bliss and that really feel like you.

At their best, outward appearances are like that.

When you feel like you really look like you — wow do you know it. It lifts you up and empowers you.

For me, a brown corduroy pair of overalls make me feel like that. Or my favorite lipstick. Or curtain bangs, preferably that I’ve cut myself (extra empowering).

Recently, I asked my hair stylist to go redder in my usual glaze. The profound effect this had on me — a practically indecipherable nudge towards auburn — was ridiculous. Something about it made me feel sexy and fun and powerful.

A former boss of mine once gave me some too-honest feedback. “You have such admirable inner strength,” she said. “But you need to work on your outer confidence.” (Looking back, this was maybe a little much. Like, it was an administrative job.)

But she was right — it is the rule that I always forget, that I wish wasn’t true. That channeling your inner person into an external manifestation does matter. At its best, looks can do this for us — empower us to share who we are with the world, and to feel really, really good about ourselves.

And it can actually, magically, change the way you feel about yourself inside.

My interest in what I look like has waxed and waned (the peak: middle and high school where you literally couldn’t pay me to leave the house without makeup; the biggest dip, 2020 when none of us went outside). I am grateful I graduated from a knee-jerk, fear-based practice of compulsory beauty; I don’t think some women ever do. Right now, I’m at a bit of a question mark — comfortable in my own skin, but curious about what a little bit of conscious care can do for me.

There’s no perfect answer — only our own approaches. If you have your own way of navigating beauty and fashion standards, let me know. I’d love to hear.

Me, contemplating beauty and fashion standards, in tights, socks, and loafers.

7 Anne of Green Gables Quotes I Highlighted in Spite of Myself

I’ve taken an accidental dive into children’s classic literature this year — Little Women, Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, and Anne of Green Gables. I’m currently on book three of the Anne of Green Gables series, and I’m waiting for it to get good again. I have a lot of gripes.

These books should probably just be rebranded to magical realism, because the characters’ good luck — and honestly their entire personalities — are that far from reality. Or maybe it’s just really that good in Canada?

For example: Anne falls in love with a house in a million-dollar neighborhood in her college town. Shortly after, she sees that it’s for lease, meets the ladies who own it, and they like her so much, they lower the rental price to fit her budget.

Another time, Anne travels to the home she was born in, where she lived with her parents as a baby before they died and she became an orphan. The woman who lives there magically reveals a stack of letters belonging to Anne’s parents that she never threw away when she bought the house twenty years ago.

Non-magical people/American homeowners would never.

But the author sprinkled some absolutely lovely thoughts into this story, and — in spite of myself — I found myself reaching for the “highlight” button on my Kindle.

Here they are, quite worthy of reading:

“...that the sorrows God sent us brought comfort and strength with them, while the sorrow we brought on ourselves, through folly or wickedness, were by far the hardest to bear.” (I think that’s beautiful and the only rational explanation of suffering.)

“Her literary dreams were as yet untainted by mercenary considerations.”

“The woods were God’s first temples.”

“Diana, who possessed, at least, the striking merit of an unselfish admiration of the gifts and graces of her friends.” (Dianas of this world, we do not deserve you.)

“For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to mood, in her literary pursuits.”

“...you’re too young to write a story that would be worthwhile. Wait ten years.” (Okay a lot of these are about writing. But there’s something beautiful about talent only accessible through time. Imagine the luxury of waiting ten years to do something important to you.)

“Deep womanhood joys” (One of Anne’s schoolhouse friends dies. She reflects that the corpse has taken on a pure and virtuous beauty she didn’t have while alive, “doing what life and love and great sorrow and deep womanhood joys might have done for Ruby.” I love the idea of deep joys waiting around the corner in life, arising only from womanly things and womanly milestones).

A Sheet Pan Dinner + Breakfast Enchiladas

My daily question remains the same: How can I get as many vegetables as possible into my body?

I present to you two household favorite recipes, unique for a very special reason — the recipes are my own. (Me making up my own recipes does not happen much. I find recipe designing incredibly intimidating and am forever impressed by people with this skill.)

One is a great option for a low-effort, craveable protein + veg dinner; one is perfect for an entire week’s worth of protein + veg breakfasts.

Pork + Sweet Potato Sheet Pan

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground pork (I shop Wild Pastures, but it’s also available at Trader Joe’s).

2 medium sweet potatoes

1 tbsp avocado oil

Salt

Pepper

Chili powder

Garlic powder

Paprika

Cumin

Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper.
Cut sweet potatoes into half-fry shapes (like you were cutting them up into steak fries, but then halved each fry length-wise).
Toss on sheet pans with a tiny bit of avocado oil, about a tbsp worth. You don’t need a lot because the pork releases fat when it cooks.
Scatter ground pork onto sheet pans — some medium and larger pieces are nice.
Go wash your hands ‘cause you just handled raw pork!
Season to your discretion with salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic powder, paprika, and cumin. I prefer a lot of seasoning. Toss.
Cook for 20 minutes; toss, and cook for another 5-10. Dinner is ready when the sweet potatoes are soft when pierced through with a fork and the pork registers at least 160°F.

Chicken + Kale Breakfast Enchiladas

This recipe is also great for dinner; I just like prepping hot breakfasts for the week ahead. I always feel good eating protein for breakfast and love that this gets a serving of greens in, too.

Ingredients:

1-1.5 lbs chicken breast

1-2 cups chicken broth

1 large bunch kale

2 jars salsa verde (I like Trader Joe’s)

1 container Credo cashew queso (It’s worth it I swear — I get mine at Whole Foods)

~12 almond flour tortillas

Optional: Can of green chiles, onions.

You will also need: One saucepan and one cast iron skillet (or ovenproof skillet).

Cook chicken breast by heating up 1 inch of chicken broth in a covered saucepan. Once boiling, add chicken and cook, covered, until chicken reaches 165°F, replenishing with more broth or water as needed (your pan will burn if it gets dry).
Remove chicken from pan.
Preheat oven to 375°F.
Tear or chop up kale (don’t use the stems), and cook until just wilted in your saucepan. If you want to add onions and/or chiles to the dish for extra flavor, you would first sautee them in the sauce pan, then add kale. I am usually too lazy to do this.
In a medium bowl, mix together one jar of the salsa verde + all of the cashew queso.
Shred your chicken.
Return shredded chicken to pan with the kale. Add the salsa + queso mixture, and stir to combine.
In a cast iron or oven-proof skillet, and a light layer of salsa verde from your second jar. Then, like you’re making a lasagna, add a layer of tortillas (totally fine if they overlap, and also fine if there’s a little space). Top with more salsa verde, then a generous portion of your chicken-kale mixture. Repeat until you’ve used all your chicken-kale mixture — I usually end up with two large layers of chicken-kale mixture sandwiched between three layers of tortillas.
Top your last layer of tortillas with salsa verde.
Bake for 20 minutes, or until heated through.
Yay! Enchiladas for breakfast!

A Brief Lesson in Mental Health From Pokémon TCG Pocket

I never realized how bad being on my phone made me feel until I downloaded Pokémon TCG Pocket … and going on my phone made me feel good.

I got into the game by watching Jake first. Every day on the app he would open a new pack of cards, and sometimes he would let me choose which one. The special, sparkly cards seemed to excite him, and choosing a pack for him that had those in it made me feel really good. It became a daily ritual, and finally I asked Jake The Video Game Question: Would I like this?

He said maybe. Three weeks later, here I am, with a Gyarados-led deck I’m far too attached to, opening Mythical Island packs like a fiend.

This is a brief essay all to say: it turns out having something on your phone that is not social media is very, very good.

Completely accidentally, I began to realize the difference in my mental state when I went on my phone and scrolled social media versus when I went on my phone and played Pokémon TCG Pocket. One brought me to a hellscape of conflicting opinions, celebrity gossip, and questionable nutrition advice; the other to delightful imaginary animals and a wholesome good time.

I felt very, very different when I put down my phone after a long Pokémon sesh. Fulfilled, because the game challenges your brain; accomplished, because you feel proud when a deck you put together wins; and happy, because everything else falls away and for a while you’re just having fun. Pokémon TCG Pocket might be our modern century version of inner peace, a trigger-free space where voices aren’t allowed to penetrate and you can lose yourself in something good, happy, and safe.

Compare that to time spent on social media. “Fulfilled, accomplished, and happy” would not be words I would use to describe how I feel putting down my phone after scrolling Instagram.

I am famously offline, but not completely, and online spaces have a way of trickling in over time. Sometimes I wake up and before I know what I’m doing, I’ve reached for my phone and I’m scrolling; sometimes I’m bored and desperate for content and I turn to the apps for no better reason.

Pokémon TCG Pocket has put exactly what I get out of doing that into perspective. Usually, I leave social media with a vague sense of inner discomfort, not sure exactly which post did the damage. It’s lovely to have a different choice these days: I’m bored and killing time, I reach for my phone, and I remember I have a different option — it’s time to open a pack on Pokémon TCG Pocket.

It’s the same feeling as a really good dinner with friends, or a holiday spent laughing over games with family. There are still things that make the world melt away. Why don’t we choose them more?

Volume 2, Issue 2

Table of Contents

Volume 2, Issue 2

Table of Contents

Volume 2, Issue 1