Leandra Medine's Blog, page 654

The Binge-Watcher’s Manual

It’s amazing what obligations I’ll postpone in the name of good TV: doctor appointments, dinner plans with old friends, deadlines. Once, during an episode of Black Mirror, I held in my pee for 24 minutes. In 2011, I ditched my own birthday dinner to consume The Office instead.

The best way to watch TV, of course, is via a Netflix bender. And the only thing better than a Netflix bender is binge-watching shows with a partner in visual crime.

Today marks a very important moment in Netflix content history: Tina Fey’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was just released. But before you gobble that sitcom down with your roommate or sex partner like Thanksgiving’s last drum stick, I kindly ask you to remember that a binge-watching union is the marriage of our times, except it’s even more precarious. The stakes are higher.

And because of that, there are rules.

There’s No “I” in Team

The first and most important rule of binge-watching stipulates that if you started a show with a partner, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES may you watch an episode of “your series” without said partner. You and your roommate started House of Cards together and now she’s out of town lobbying for ferrets’ rights? Season 3 will have to wait.

Eyes on the Prize

Don’t be the asshole who’s constantly asking the remote-controller to rewind scenes. This person is the worst, and does a grave injustice to himself and everyone around him by ruining televised flow. If you missed something, make it up on your own time. It’s not our fault you spent 10 minutes figuring out which Thai place to order from on Seamless.

Which brings me to our next point:

Be Prepared

All food orders must be placed before an episode begins. In addition, all dishes should be washed, hair should be flat-ironed and Windex-able surfaces should be Windexed either prior to or after the binge. Multi-tasking may be productive, but it’s distracting to others and thus strongly discouraged.

The only acceptable exceptions for a pause: bathroom breaks (within reason, Niagara Falls), and answering the doorbell to accept delivery orders.

iNada

iPhones, iPads and all other iDevices are banned from the Netflix continuum.

Respect the 10 Day Grace Period

A friend of mine recently made it on my shit list when he sent me a particularly juicy-headlined review of House of Cards — ONE DAY AFTER ITS RELEASE.

Yes, our culture looks at yesterday’s news with fatigued eyes. Yes, the very practice in question has numbed our sense of time, but are you really going to tell me that a majority of the viewing population watched 12 dense episodes of House of Cards in 24 hours?

Hence, I’ve mandated that all who binge-watch must refrain from sending out recaps, reviews, or spoiler-infused GIFS for at least ten days after a show’s been released.

We may be lazy and content crazed, but we are not robots.

Make a Game Plan

Both parties involved in the binge-watching pact should share realistic expectations. What’s your max? What’s your safe word? How much Don Draper can you potentially handle in one sitting? Do you prefer to think on an episode for a few minutes before clicking “next,” or are you on to episode two before the credits begin?

It helps to have a strategy in place.

Use this guide to get safely through the weekend, and set your alarm for Monday now. You’re about to embark on one hell of a black hole.

Collage image via W Magazine

Ghost Lashes

Lashes are often portrayed as long and dark and glossy and bold. If our faces are stages and our eyes, the stars, then lashes are supposed to be velvet curtains that hang down with reverence and encourage standing ovations. They’re expected to spread like a stretching cat’s paw and extend upwards like giraffe necks toward the sky. It’s the only time we embrace spiders.

In order to achieve the effect of black lacquered fans, we coat our home-grown strands with mascara — then try not to cry. Or, we pay someone to attach strands of fur — one by one by one — in order to add to the drama, to the length, to the flirt.

The last time we spoke about lashes I had just gotten extensions. I’d joined the Secret Society of Falsies and was a woman with a microphone who’d been transformed. In the comments, a few of you asked if it caused my lashes to fall out. (No more than my usual rubbing fits do.) And a few of you asked if I experienced post-extension withdrawal. (Yes, yes, a thousand times yes and I probably won’t feel like a full babe until I get them again.)

Then a few of you pointed out something interesting: if you’re blonde or fair skinned or have red hair or are Tilda Swinton, your lashes are so far from makeup’s manufactured black that you feel to add falsies or ink appears harsh.

One of you dubbed the look, “Ghost Lashes.”

And that is exactly what we’re here to celebrate today.

Let us bask in the beauty of the lash that prefers snow to mascara. Where some women feel naked without it, ghost lashes challenge makeup-as-clothing and ask, “Since when is nudity a bad thing?” These baby powder blinkers eschew dye in the name going commando. You’d never see a fairy wearing pants, would you?

Hell no.

Ghost lashes tell beautiful lies of spending days outdoors on surfboards in the sun. They’re tall tales of Nordic princess lineage, of ice queens and moon child cousins. They could be dyed or amplified or have the volume cranked, sure. Everyone likes to play dress up once in a while. But when your lashes have that ethereal edge, why would you ever want to come back to planet earth?

So here’s to all the women with sky-bleached eye fringe. Your lashes are truly out of this world.

MR Round Table: Women and Our Hair

Leandra Medine: I think a good starting question is, what is your relationship with your hair like?

Jessica Dickerson, Associate Black Voices Editor, The Huffington Post: My hair has been a journey. I went from long curly natural hair, to braids, to straighteners, to relaxers. I’ve completely cut it off twice, and now I have an Afro. It probably took about 18 years of my life to get there. I think all of that was completely attached to my identity crisis, which had to do with growing up bi-racial and not understanding where I fit in and what I wanted to look like. My hair evolved with my understanding of myself as that happened.

LM: Where are you now?

JD: Now I’m going to let my hair do whatever it wants to do.

LM: Does that sort of mirror how you feel about your identity?

JD: Yeah. I think that I’m comfortable with how I look, and people are going to see me however they want to. Even if I don’t know exactly who I am, people are going to decide for themselves who I am.

I let my hair do its own thing. I’m proud of it now. I’m proud of the statement it makes. It’s big and kind of unruly, I guess.

LM: Do you feel like when you were straightening it you were trying to sublimate anything?

JD: Definitely. I wanted to fit in. I wanted straight hair because no one else had a giant Afro. It also came down to where I grew up. I did not go to a school with predominantly black women with Afros. I was the only kid with hair like mine and I wanted to fit in. I also danced ballet for seven years – that’s another thing. I was pressured to not have the hair that I did. There’s also pressure outside of school about getting jobs. People sometimes see Afros as unprofessional, which is unfortunate.

Chanel Parks, Associate Style Editor, The Huffington Post: I have a similar story. I grew up in a predominately white neighborhood and went to a predominately white school, and I always wanted to flip my hair, and wondered why my hair wasn’t like the other girls at school.

I’ve had relaxers, I’ve dyed it, it’s fallen out and I’ve shaved it off. I just got it cut again two months ago. I think my “breaking point” came because I was sick of people asking me questions every time I changed my hair. I would have a different hairstyle and people would be like, “How did you do that?” I never asked other woman how they got their haircuts.

I went natural in college, so I’ve been natural for four years now. I think for me, that symbolizes finally being able to take care of myself and my own hair the way I want to take care of it. When I was relaxing it, I wasn’t taking care of it at all; it would fall out all of the time.

I think I’m in a good place with my hair now. It looks pretty cool and I’m into it. People still ask me questions but I just reply with, “Oh you know, I just styled it.”

LM: I was having a conversation with someone recently about how I feel about my hair. Instead of respecting my head and body, I’m favoring a very “normal” version of beautiful by straightening it, instead of letting my hair do what it does naturally. But that still doesn’t negate the fact that when I let my hair dry naturally, I lose 50% of my confidence. That’s a very honest proclamation I don’t think I’ve ever admitted for the purpose of Man Repeller.

CP: I can say that too. I can say that I totally feel better about my hair now, but even within the natural hair community, I look at someone like Solange and I think man, My hair is never going to look like that.

JD: Even when you’re looking at a diverse range of models or actresses, there’s still only a handful of types of beauty represented. It’s hard to not see someone who looks like you, and then still be able to appreciate your own beauty.

LM: And it totally comes down to adjusting your own matter of perception, right? I could’ve looked in the mirror a year ago in a pair of high wasted corduroy pants and thought, Wow, I look ridiculous. But there’s not doubt in my mind that if I put those same pants on today, I’d look in the mirror and say, “Wow, that looks awesome.”

Amelia Diamond: Hair is the only thing that’s ever cooperated with me. I’ve always struggled with my weight, skin, teeth, but hair’s been good to me. However, I’m crazy gray. I have a chunk of gray hair that if I grew out, I’d look like Cruella de Vil. People tell me all the time to grow my gray out, that “it’ll be so cool.” And it’s like, yeah it’s “cool,” but would I feel beautiful? The answer is no, so I spend a lot of money to get my hair frequently dyed so that I look like I don’t do anything at all.

I’m also hyper-aware of the fact that I rely on my hair as a security blanket, and the second it’s off of my face I feel naked and uncomfortable. I use my hair as a shield. I like to think that my hair is me, so I’m not hiding anything, but I definitely hide behind this part of me.

LM: That’s an interesting point because Zendaya, in response to Giuliana Rancic’s comments at the Oscars, referenced Indie Arie’s, “I’m not my hair.”

AD: I feel very much that if I got rid of my hair, I would not know what to do.

Kate Barnett: Last year, for a story, I cut off my elbow-length hair within an inch of my scalp. The people that did it were amazing, and when I was in New York I felt incredible. But I spend half my time in rural New Mexico, and when I went home I thought, I don’t know what I’ve done. I’m not cool enough to pull this hair cut off.

I never figured out how to style it, or learned how to have fun with it. I’m growing it out now and at that similar stage where I want to treat my hair well and use beautiful products that don’t have chemicals and see what my actual curly hair looks like for the first time in my life. But I still haven’t figured out what I want my hair to be. I’m in this in-between stage of trying to be really confident, and finding a way to make my natural hair look beautiful while also making me feel beautiful, and I’m not there yet.

JD: Hair is such an intimate thing. You can change it as much as you change your clothes or makeup, but because it’s attached to your body it’s so much more personal when people react to it, whether they think it’s strange or bizarre. Because we take it personally, it’s so much easier to focus on all of the money and pain we go through to make it something that it’s not, instead of embracing the healthy ways to naturally change and manipulate the style. That’s never the route we choose to go down though, because when we’re insecure about something, no one chooses to embrace it. We just want to run the other way.

CP: Part of that is because we’re really hard on ourselves about hair. We think it should be so easy: “I’m a grown woman. I should know how to do my own hair.” But it’s a constant learning experience. I think people need to be at peace with the notion that you can learn and take steps; you don’t need to know it all right away. I judge myself harshly for not knowing what to put on my hair. I don’t know how to style it, but I can always learn.

Charlotte Fassler: I have such an emotional attachment to my hair. Every time I’d get a hair cut when I was younger – big or small – I would cry. I decided to cut my hair for Locks of Love in high school. I cut off 11 inches, then immediately felt devastated despite how happy I was to support the cause. I beat myself up for feeling that way about a hair cut — something so petty and insignificant. But I spent the next year and a half growing it back.

Esther Levy: Your hair is an extension of your personality and yourself. Right now, since long hippie hair is trendy, I really want extensions. It feels like such an embarrassing thing to admit because it sounds vain. Extensions have this connotation of being girly and kind of high maintenance.

On a totally different note, I was taught that Orthodox Jewish women wear wigs to cover their natural hair to divert the male gaze. It’s interesting to me that hair has this dual nature: it can be seen as sensual, which, in some communities, is something that should be kept private within a relationship, or it’s viewed as an expression of independence — like a pixie cut, or an Afro.

LM: Right, just like anything else, it can either be a prison or a fortress.

Esther: [To JD] Your Afro is so cool, by the way.

JD: It’s funny you say, “Your Afro is so cool.” I finally cut my hair off in high school because it was literally breaking apart. I was in Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair, and I was sitting with these other high school girls who all had weaves and braids, and I figured, Oh, some other young black girls. We’re all on the same page. And we were not.

The entire time, they just insulted me. The only part of the documentary I’m in is when this girl sitting next to me turned to me and said, “No offense, but I’d never hire you for a real job with hair like that.” It was right then that I realized, Wow, we’re not on the same page. I also decided that I wanted to grow my hair out in defiance of that. I realized that I got a fair amount of pushback from adults and people who felt my hair should be pulled back or straightened, so I grew it out to piss people off. Now it’s become an extension of my personality, and it says, “I don’t care what you think.” But it stemmed from me feeling cool about rejecting other people’s opinions about me.

AD: Didn’t Chris Rock make make that movie because–

JD: His daughter asked him, “Daddy, why don’t I have good hair?”

CP: Which doesn’t really exist. You brought up fake hair earlier. That’s such a huge thing. When I was younger I had braids and fake hair, but I still judged other people who wore wigs or had weaves. Wigs are such a stigma. My mom wears super blonde wigs now, and I think we just need to change the way we think about these things.

JD: When people say a “weave,” a lot of time it has a negative connotation. But when people say “extensions,” it’s ok.

CP: I think the problem with weaves is that you can see the tracks. And people are automatically like, “Oh, you are so fake.”

CF: But then you think about all of those girls who bleach their hair and it’s so obviously fake.

CP: I want a pastel lob but that’s not happening; I’ll just buy a wig.

LM: Why do you think we’re so precious about hair? Why is this conversation happening, why are we all capable of expounding upon our relationship with our hair?

AD: We take it personally because it’s attached to us, and yet, we can instantly control it. I can put my hair in a ponytail and look like I’m headed to the gym, or I can blow it out and feel fancy.

CF: It’s so tethered to identity, too. I have a friend who had really dark straight hair, and she never felt like it suited her personality. She bleached her hair and now she feels so much more comfortable in her own skin. She thinks it fits her personality better.

JD: I think that hair’s precious because there’s a lot of historical power and tradition behind the idea of it. Doesn’t Samson lose all of his power when Delilah cuts his hair?

There’s a ton of religious and cultural connotations when it comes to hair. I think a part of the Giuliana/Zendaya dreadlocks controversy arose because, when you say something like “patchouli oil,” it’s making fun of the hair style that’s part of the Rastafarian religious culture. It’s belittling the tradition and the hair representative of it. That’s where it becomes problematic.

AD: Do you think the problem is that most people are not educated or aware of what different hairstyles can mean in certain cultures?

JD: Yeah. And I think that some things that are important to some people are not important to others. I’m not actively trying to make a statement with my hair, it is what it is – I am proud of it being a symbol of black natural hair. People see it and they think “black power” — I’m super aware of that, even though I’m just trying to grow my hair out and this is its shape. It’s very specific to personal experience. I’m sure Giuliana didn’t mean for her comments to sound racist, but I think because people felt targeted on behalf of their Rastafarian culture or history, they were immediately offended by it.

No one’s on the same page when it comes to “black hair,” which isn’t a bad thing. It’s just that times are changing and people are evolving and living their own lives, changing locations. It’s complicated.

EL: Wasn’t there also a bunch of controversy over Blue Ivy’s hair?

JD: They started a petition that got thousands of signatures on it to “comb her hair.”  And that’s just another standard: to have your hair really combed out. I had my hair combed out today so it’s curly, but I can go two weeks without combing my hair.

CP: People just apply one overall thing to hair, which I think makes different communities so angry. It’s disregarding all of the different steps each individual goes through with their hair.

AD: It goes back to assuming that there’s a “normal” — “good hair” — and everything that doesn’t adhere to the strict guideline of “normal” is “weird.”

CP: And that never ends, because even in the natural hair community there’s still this norm that curls should be luscious, etc.

KB: Leandra asked earlier why we’re so precious about hair — I feel like both literally and figuratively, your hair frames your face. It’s what people see when they talk to you and how they think of you, and it’s therefore such an integral part of your identity. It kind of frames the lens in which people are interacting with you.

LM: I think part of the reason I’ve been down the past couple of weeks is because ever since I got this fringe cut around my face — which looked wonderful the day I got it — now just makes me look like DJ Tanner had at it with a stir fry pan. I have not felt beautiful since!

EL: There is some weird solace in that though. At least this is pressure that we put on ourselves because we want to feel beautiful, as opposed to wanting to look beautiful for someone else.

CF: I think about that when I consider getting a tattoo or a piercing. There’s this sense of control, of being able to alter your appearance, but it’s for yourself. It’s your own body and you can immediately change it, that is an empowering feeling. 

AD: I’m always really jealous of my hairdresser who changes her hair once a week; one week it’s pink, purple, long, short. I’m fascinated by her ability to change her hair in same the way some experiment with different clothing styles. I always have the same hair. I always wear the same type of clothes. How can it feel so non-permanent to her?

KB: When I cut all of my hair off, it was hugely empowering. I had no idea how much was tied up with my hair.

LM: When I cut my hair off a few years ago — I cut it off myself because it’s cheap and I have control issues — I was going to Scotland that evening for a Chanel show and I just wanted to look more French. That was literally the impetus of that haircut. I cut most of it off and felt so cool. And instead of just basking in the coolness I continued to cut it because I was so excited by that high.

At one point I looked exactly like Fran Lebowitz because I wear so much menswear and my hair was kind of frizzy and it was winter…I look back at pictures now and I think it looked kind of obscene, but at the time I really appreciated it.

It definitely bookmarks a time in my life. I also handed in the final draft of my book the day I was leaving for Scotland, so I’m always going to associate cutting my hair with cutting that responsibility from me.

CP: I like that idea. The reason why I went natural is because my second year of college, I dyed my hair this really awful shade of burgundy and it just all fell out. I did it myself, on my 20th birthday, and thought I was so cool. A month later I went to get it relaxed, and I put my hand through my hair and a chunk just fell out. It was really bad. I cried for a week. At first I was like, “What am I going to do to salvage this?” Finally, once I got all my hair shaved off I felt great. I’d cut off all the bad stuff — all of the bad emotions.

AD: Did you feel like you had to then change things about your appearance to go with your hair?

CP: Not at the time, but now I think it aligns with my style.

LM: I was actually just thinking that my relationship with my hair is contingent on where I am stylistically, byt I don’t necessarily think I’m very precious about my hair. I definitely think I’m hard on myself when it comes to my hair, I wish that I could get over this, “I’m not beautiful unless my hair is straight thing.” I don’t know where that leaves me.

JD: It’s easy to project your feelings onto your hair. You’d never wake up and say, “Oh, I feel so fat, but it’s definitely the sweater, it’s not me.”

AD: At some point, every woman has come to the realization of, “Here’s what I physically have. Here’s what I am working with. So how am I going to make myself feel best with these ingredients?”

KB: Being comfortable with — not just celebrating — the things we don’t consider perfect about ourselves is really tough.

AD: Maybe it only exists in an ideal world. But do you feel like once you reach a certain point where you’re comfortable with yourself, then you can experiment again without guilt?

JD: Personally, I would never straighten my hair ever again, because I feel like it was a huge part of me trying to change myself in order fit in. I felt weird about it. I didn’t realize what I was trying to do at the time but I realize it now. I’d never go down that road again.

LM: I feel like what you went though with your hair is what I went through with my face five years ago. I finally looked in the mirror and said, “I’m never going to look like a Scandinavian model, I don’t want to look like a Scandinavian model; this is me. The bags under my eyes are genetic. My mom has them; I see a reflection of my mother — that’s something I’m going to be able to carry with me through her mortality. And I just don’t care. If this isn’t beautiful to someone I don’t care, because it is to me.” It’s the same with hair.

CP: It’s like a teacher of mine once said: it’s just dead protein.

Today’s guests were Chanel Parks, Associate Style Editor at The Huffington Post — follow her on Twitter here, and Jessica Dickerson, Associate Black Voices Editor at The Huffington Post — follow her on Twitter here.  

And for more MR Round Tables, click here.

MR Writers Club Prompt: Celebrate Your Most Hated Flaw

I

Hate

The

Space

Between

My

Armpits

And

Chest.

They look like potato noses and detract from the personality I hope my upper body projects. And they are in it for the long haul, friends.

For about a week last month, I had been working out pretty regularly and momentarily believed the malleable cushions were becoming clay that would form into immobile ceramic vases but alas, I was wrong. That hardness I felt was just my period coming in.

I don’t know why I hate them so much and I am 100% sure that no one else has so much as noticed them. That might be because I am so infrequently topless, but even if I did boast public nipples more often, there’s only a small chance you’d realize what I’m working with here.

There is a bright side, though. I spend a lot of time playing with them. Much the same way Molly Shannon was an expert at extolling the virtues of nervousness by smelling her armpits in Superstar, I can convincingly extoll the virtue of procrastination by pretending my problem areas are actually a nice helping of Play-Doh. So, I’ll sit and play until the cows come home and then forget what I had to do in the first place only to realize I probably didn’t even actually have to do it and by the time this happens, as I mentioned, the cows have already come home so I’m busy dealing with that.

You know, if I’m being really honest, when I thought they were disappearing during that fateful month of exercise, I was vaguely disappointed and feeling a little bit dejected in the same way you might miss an annoying younger brother who has gone to camp for the summer, or who has helped “yippity-you-you” to that hazelnut coffee, “hold the hazel, extra nuts!” every morning for the last six months, which brings me to the prompt.

In ~500 words, I want to know what you hate most about yourself, but only if you promise to find and articulate the good in it. Because at the end of the day, you’re stuck with you until the other set of cows come home (or is it finally vanish?) and as George Saunders once astutely pointed out, “resistance is futile.” We’re not here long enough to hate ourselves, so celebrate the fuck out of your flaws (by next Thursday, March 12th at 12 p.m. EST), eh?

Read the past submissions of your contemporary wiz-kids here.

Is Jacquemus the New Margiela?

Simon Porte Jacquemus is under a lot of pressure in the aftermath of an art installation that he masqueraded as a fashion show yesterday. The 25-year-old designer is up for the LVMH fashion prize and the collection — displaying no shoes but several exposed sets of breasts that could have been interpreted as far too easy a cry for attention and layers of paint drawn onto a handful of his models’ faces — seemingly alluded to how little (or is it how much?) he cares.

One might argue that those double faces, countered by a group entirely concealed by rounded sheets of beige construction paper, indicate that not all of what you see is precisely what is to be seen. That underneath the brouhaha and one shoulder nipple-boasters, there are some pieces that do read determinedly wearable. And sellable.

I appreciate the conceptual bone with which Jacquemus designs. He’s similar to Margiela-pre-Galliano in that he can commit to a spectacle without necessarily compromising what he’s there to do: dress women who probably just want to feel understood.

What’s interesting is all the furor with which reviewers have approached the show. What’s happening in fashion right now seems to very closely follow the idiom of “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

When a show is too pared down, when it’s scaled back too far, and when its most exciting feature is actually what happens around it and independent of the clothes, you’re not arousing the kind of spectacle and curiosity that is expected of you as a designer. But then again, when you’re painting lines onto a woman’s chest in the shape of a tank top and then allowing her breasts to flutter as they will above a pair of pants that completely destruct the notion of a woman’s waistline and so obviously harken back to a subversive silhouette mastered by the aforementioned Margiela, you’re making a joke of fashion.

So what is it, exactly, that we’re looking for? I know for me it’s the excited fashion-pit-in-belly but I also know that this feeling can be achieved in several different permutations. In the case of Dries Van Noten, that pit reflected my having felt understood. In the case of Carven, the pit mirrored confidence that I will like how I look next fall, and in the case of Jacquemus, I’m just glad that I have something to say.

So maybe I should say it, right? Could it be that Jacquemus is the new Margiela? Or are the clothes simply not revolutionary enough to follow in those unsigned steps?

It Pays to Be an Adult

I was ten years old the first time I realized that being a grown-up could cost you. The year was 2002. (I know, I know.)

A local mom had decided to whisk my friends and me off to the movies on a frigid winter afternoon. We stood behind her as she held out her credit card to pay for four “child” tickets and one “adult” stub. Zeroing in on my best friend, the man behind the counter shook his head. He didn’t believe she was a kid, he explained. She looked too old. Unlike my stunted siblings and me, Davida had been a very early bloomer. By the time we were in fourth grade, she towered over both the boys in our class and several of our teachers.

“Do you have ID?” he asked her. She shook her head.

We laugh about it now — a lot. But the fact is none of us had ever before considered the price of adulthood until that critical moment. Why would we? Even now, I forget the lesson sometimes. Next week, I’ll turn 23 — an age that would have seemed geriatric to me a decade ago. And yet I often wish I looked older, seemed older, felt older. I wish I knew more and understood more about myself and other people.

But then I remember that exchange at the AMC Loews Theater on 68th Street, and I read this week that Tinder expects people over 30 to shell out more for its premium service, and I think about how much it pays to be young.

Citing Spotify as an example, Tinder contended that tons of products “offer differentiated price tiers by age.” Tinder is no exception. According to USAToday.com, the new service sets younger customers back $9.99 and charges users over 30 a cool $19.99. This means company executives have calculated that being an adult is worth exactly ten bucks per month.

“[D]uring our testing we’ve learned…that younger users are just as excited about TinderPlus,” the statement continued. But these consumers “are more budget constrained and need a lower price to pull the trigger.”

It’s true, sort of. We twentysomethings make meager incomes and spend too much on takeout. At some point during this wonderful and terrifying decade, we’ll have to find our own health insurance and buy real furniture and rent our own cars. Some of us (ahem) will have to learn how to drive first.

Like our mothers and our teenage-selves, Tinder claims that those of us who have celebrated 30 years on earth should have it together by now. We should be able to afford to pay more for our gym memberships and our right swipes. We should probably forgo the student discount at J.Crew. But the question is, do companies expect more from this “older” demographic or have they dismissed it entirely? Is the higher price tag some sort of warped compliment or is it a subtle dig at more accomplished singles? How much should adulthood cost? And who the hell wants to pay for Tinder, anyway?

That’s So Me

Without having an existential panic attack, I believe we can all identify who we are at a very baseline level. To contextualize this, imagine what you’d put in a dating profile if you weren’t concerned that your friends would eventually find the profile and make fun of you.

You’d list hobbies and books and likes and dislikes, maybe one or two sentences about your job or career and something about your background that you’ve carried with you to the present.

And don’t worry about clichés. Walk along that damn beach, girl. Go barefoot.

Next, think about the picture you’d use. It would have to be one that already existed, so you’d be wearing an outfit that lived in your closet and your hair would probably be similar to your current reality so as not to surprise a date who was expecting a red head as opposed to purple pigtails. (Or vice-versa.)

This is you. Or at least, it’s you right now. And it’s probably the best version of you. But does it explain the same “self” that we proclaim to be when we hold up a sweater (or shoes, pants, scarf, etc.) and declare it to be “me”?

What does “me” even mean?

“This shirt is so me.” Does it mean that we like it — bottom line?

Or does it mean we think we’re supposed to like it based on the above profile constructed to reflect the lives we live in our heads until some sort of seminal life event happens that causes a change? (Age 21: moves cities, updates wardrobe accordingly. Age 24: switches job, updates identity. Age 26: begins working out, updates health priorities, etc.)

Or, does it reflect an even more aspirational idea — she of the “me” we’d like to be?

I’m inclined to think of it as combination of all three: personal taste, the profiles we’ve created, and the aspirational person we’d like to become.

What complicates things is when someone else identifies something as very you. If they’ve assessed you just as you see yourself (or who you try to project) then it’s a compliment. “That Dries Van Noten sweater is so me!”

But if they’ve got it wrong — if you hate that sweater and everything it represents — then is it not “you” because of taste? Or because it doesn’t fit into your profile or add anything to the picture? What the hell do they know anyway?

…But actually, I’m asking. You guys tell me.

Image via Chloe Sevigny for Opening Ceremony

Designers in Paris

Paris is an interesting case study in getting dressed. I tend to struggle with finding a balance that permits two levels of comfort — the physical kind to support long days mostly spent on foot and metro to move between shows, which are never thoughtfully located near each other, and the emotional kind, because outside of the shows faithfully and unflinchingly stand at least one mob of photographers, there by vocation to freeze you in a memory that will, no doubt, burgeon among the pages of the Internet and Instagram.

So you want — maybe need — to look cool, right? You want to look like the best version of yourself but you also can’t sacrifice the literal feeling of your toes inside your shoes because if you do, you will not make it. And the only thing worse than showing up to a show looking like you’ve just rolled around in hay is not showing up to a show at all because your feet gave up on your legs, or your skirt gave up on your waist line and there you are: dejected.

Dries Van Noten understands this. He consistently delivers exactly what the balance-strikers among us seek, eschewing pre-season collections in the name of a twice-yearly celebration of offbeat glamour punctuated by this relentless quest to keep a diverse and wide bracket of women in mind and rapture. For next fall, that largely means a khaki base, floral neck pieces, a number of backward apron skirts that read more like extravagantly quotidian tails and the offbeat, muted prints that have come to emblematize his democratic house-for-the-women.

Alessandro Dell’Acqua’s third take at Rochas, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, was set in shades of brown and green that graduated to orange and black and grey that become blue. The collection of tea-length skirts, dresses and coats highlighted the new designer’s understanding of the house’s identity. It made me wonder whether, when the time comes, another designer could successfully take over at Dries Van Noten when such an opinionated voice commands it now. That’s not to sublimate the dexterity of Dell’Acqua, who also designs No. 21, though. Embedded in his DNA is precisely what makes his presence at Rochas work: those whimsical details (embellished shoes, fur pockets, quiet-though-impressionable prints, lamé stitching) and silhouettes that command the sort of feminine allure (there stand not a single pair of pants on the runway) that auspiciously preach, with conspicuous undergarments and a stoic attitude, a kind of unorthodox power.

The first instance of this season’s episode of musical chairs revealed itself at Carven this morning with Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud, who have taken over from Guillaume Henry (now of Nina Ricci), and in their approximation of the youthful French house, A-line mini skirts and high waist pants reign definitively. The girls looked cool if not entirely transported from the decade that shall remain nameless but there was a level of ease tethered to this collection. It boasted — similarly to though entirely differently from Dries Van Noten — the kind of clothes that get you excited for no reason other than your wanting to wear them. And at its core, under the bells and whistles and exclusive enigmas, isn’t that exactly what fashion week is all about?

All Images via Style.com

Learn to Do a Black Tie Ponytail in a Jiffy with GIFS

Before we begin the old step-by-step on How to Do a Black Tie Ponytail, there are a few elephants in the room that I would like to address:

The first elephant is named Thomas. He joins us today from the San Francisco zoo, he does not like the weather New York is having, but is excited to explore the city regardless. Can we all give a warm welcome to Thomas?

[Pause for warm welcome.]

The second elephant is that this post will likely not apply to every reader. I have long, straight hair. This makes for a different type of ponytail than if I had curly hair, or short hair, or gigantic ears where human hair might be, like Thomas. (I do have mildly gigantic ears though.)

Tomorrow on Man Repeller, we’ll be running a Round Table that explores various Women-And-Their-Hair topics, from society’s understanding of “normal” to the reality that actually, hair is diverse, and while we all have a very personal relationship with our hair, it’s just that: personal. And diverse.

Which is more or less my way of saying: this is what I, Amelia, am working with. It is but a plant upon my head that I grew. Roll with me through these GIFS, ignore my broken-out skin (or don’t, YOLO), and then in the comments, show me what you are working with; it’s almost the weekend, and we all need inspiration for the Saturday night hair party nation.

Step 1: Play Twister

The first step in making your ponytail look “fancy” is the ends. This is great news if you hate showers, own dry shampoo, and can handle a maximum of 5 minutes under the blowdryer. Get the bottom half of your hair wet, twist it like a rag, then hold tight while you blow that cinnamon stick dry.

Something weird I do: keep my hair back in a headband until the last minute for volume. You can ignore this if you hate Blair Waldorf or foreheads or extra steps.

I usually try to avoid making these faces when I seduce people, but not today!

Step Two: Go Halvsies

Splitting your hair into two sections to make a formal high pony is a game changer. My friend Jess taught me this trick in college. It allows you to control the volume up top without the bottom half of your hair weighing everything down, and it makes your overall tail look fuller. (Tip: use a strong, thick hair tie for that genie in a bottle swing. Do not use a scrunchie.)

Step Three: The Whole Enchilada

Grab the underbelly of your hair and scoop it up to meet your top pony. If you hate bottom bumps, here’s your chance to smooth the lower half while keeping volume up top. (Use another thick tie.)

Step Four: Seal the Deal

Adding a thick, black satin(ish) ribbon (or one of these things) will cover your hair ties and provide that ~*bit of polish*~ to really tell the room and its subsequent elephants that, Yea man, this shit is officially fancy now.

Knot the ribbon but keep the bow under the tail to avoid anything too cutesy.

And with that, you’re black tie ready. Now if only you had a dress.

Buy Your Belts Two Sizes Too Big and Do This

Whether or not you’re ready to concede that our parents’ golden years have now co-opted ours, you cannot deny that the pants of the 1970s are back. Please believe me when I tell you that trousers and their denim renderings simply will not feel right unless they are coming just within a blip of your belly button.

Skirts will develop the same complex.

In fact, dresses will likely nip in at the waist too, because as Leandra pointed out, this was a time period that celebrated and flattered the female form.

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But similar to the same phenomenon wherein if you give a mouse a spray tan he’s going to want to go on vacation and if you give a dude a kale chip he’s going to send you an article about it from The New Yorker, if you give your body a tapered shape it’s going to want an accessory that emphases it.

Which brings us to this: in what has to be the easiest styling tip since rolled sleeves, Milan street-stylers reminded us that a belt can do more than just hold up pants.

I suppose it does that too, but by buying a belt that is two sizes too big (if not more) and then looping the excess so that its tail hangs down, you’re creating one more thing to draw the eye in.

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And if you can’t buy, you can always politely steal — but not borrow, because you’re not gonna give it back — a belt from your father’s closet.