Leandra Medine's Blog, page 733

I Wear My Sunglasses at Night

You almost lost all hope in me, huh? Between Friday’s dissertation on wearing hats indoors and the prospect that this here post could have moonlit as a plea to persuade you to start wearing sunglasses at night, I don’t blame you but I do take offense.

JK. We cool.

But there is an elephant in this grand-looking ballroom sometimes referred to as “The Internet” that I do believe deserves to be addressed. After spending an entire eight months and change lamenting rather violently about the meteoric woes of somewhere far above, affecting us severely way down below, why is it that no one has so much as tweeted at Mother Nature to a. restore her name to its natural order (not sure if you remember this, but for the fourth time, we renamed her Cunter Nature earlier last month) and b. thank her.

The sun has been shining and so clearly, the heavens are smiling.

And what does one do when the heavens smile, the sun shines and therefore sets on the badasses that we have accrued by way of organic, gluten free, raw-vegan jelly beans, mixed nuts and spirulina chips?

One buys sunglasses.

Why? Because the sun don’t set on a badass if said badass is appropriately armed.

But also, because they make us look cooler but are not permanent, which means if you want to default back to your natural state of un-cool-ness, you can liberally do that at your discretion. It’s a difficult point to refute and if you want to, I’m widely open to listen (my ears! Not legs!), but I’m also fairly certain that I will not only want to stick to my guns on this one but I’ll also persuade you to buy into my ammo. Or something like that.

In spirit of it being Tuesday, let’s shop!

Meet FOMO’s Cousin, FODO

Last week, I was at dinner and an acquaintance named Mark was lamenting about a trip he was about to embark on to his friend’s cabin upstate, even though all he wanted to do was stay home and spend time with his pet dogs. Plural.

We determined that he was not suffering from a case of FOMO (fear of missing out) or FOMD (fear of missing documentation) because he both wanted to miss the event that lay ahead and well understood that upstate, the wifi is as rare as an eagle seen flying through New York (so how would he document?). He was, however, growing privy to a different phenomenon we have recently identified as FODO.

FODO stands for Fear of Disappointing Others and more often than not gets bracketed within FOMO, when in reality, the social deficiency is loosely, if at all, a cousin of the aforementioned. This is chiefly because FOMO is a much more unilateral ailment whereas FODO pertains to second or third party contribution as well.

We tend to find ourselves programmed for plans involving people we don’t want to see, or going to events we don’t want to attend. But why is that? As a sufferer of FODO, I think sometimes you simply might not want to hurt the courter’s feelings. Other times, you can’t pull the trigger on telling that girl you interned with in college, who has been e-mailing on a weekly basis since you both graduated five years ago asking when you can “do” drinks, that the 35th of Nevuary is when works for you.

In 90% of instances, you can be a victim of FODO because you suffer from another terminal malady called Sympathy.

My own experience has frankly found it too dick-y not to go along with someone who is suggesting we make plans. What am I supposed to say in return to a summoning? “I’d really prefer it if we remained e-mail correspondents”?

Amelia practically spends her nights appeasing her FODO. Sometimes she even does it romantically. Says the afflicted, “I hate generally 99% of the population and yet my dedication to good manners is so crippling that I would literally say yes to Putin if he bugged me enough.”

But is there a cure? Can there be a cure?

Maybe, and it is vaguely tethered to the principles that YOLO is founded upon.

On December 31st of 2013, my friend Sophie made a resolution that in 2014 she would not only do her, but she would also never penalize her friends for doing them. For weeks, she walked around saying, “You do you, and I’ll do me” as she ducked out of social dinner obligations early, or uncharacteristically came out of conversations with chronic cancelers (not to be confused with chancellors but similar to Bailer Swifts), unscathed and with poise.

There is the possibility that there’s a larger motif at play with FODO. It could be that the alleged plague is simply the Millennial, albeit narcissistic, equivalent of politeness. Maybe we’re not afraid to disappoint others so much as we don’t want to — or know how to — because we’ve been trained to react in social settings differently. That, of course, brings up the question of what’s worse: nipping an undesired plan so soon it can’t even be rendered a plan, or going through with the preparations and subsequently lashing out while you bewail agreeing to do something you believe you shouldn’t have to do.

I should mention that Mark had a wonderful time upstate.

YOLO Dressing

Life for the YOLO dressers must be so much fun. There are plenty of them in New York, those brave individuals who look like they opened their closets and just went for it, you know? A pink marabou headband. A full red leather look donned mid-day. Where my go-to fabric is denim, theirs is like, velvet, and 9 times out of 10, they’re in heels. They wear outfits in the true definition of word, as if each styling choice is purposeful, necessary, eager. It’s the opposite of effortless. They truly get dressed.

I walk past two YOLO dressers on my way to work every morning. Let’s call it 9:00 by the time our paths cross if I’m running on time and choose the park-route. Picture me in my uniform of white jeans and a sweater, footwear dependent on weather. Now picture them, on the other hand, a boy and a girl, looking as if they’ve raided the closet of Lady Gaga and then swapped clothes with Boy George. They’re in full looks, the both of them: sunglasses covering their faces, wild hats, side-laced pants. It’s not my style at all. In fact at 9:00 AM I’m not sure I even have a style, which is why I’m so enamored with theirs.

For many YOLO Dressers, a snooze-worthy Wednesday is as good a time as any to get done up to the much-forgotten-nines. Weather isn’t an excuse. Cramp-pants aren’t an option. They treat the streets as a daily runway and their world is a fashion editorial — I’m just living in it. While talking to Leandra about my fascination with their daily sartorial balls-to-the-walls-ness, we pin-pointed another type of YOLO Dressing: that which tends to come in the wake of specific occasions, which inspired a bit of imaginary YOLO window-shopping…

For, say, a breakup:

Or perhaps to celebrate a raise:

For a milestone-of-a-birthday party:

For the sake of nothing more than an erratic, vacation-bound shopping spree :

And if I were to ever join forces with that that rare city breed who look as though they’ve gotten dressed in the dark, bolstered by  bachelorette happy hour and a bottle of liquid confidence yet, still look strangely fabulous?

You know what they say: Carpe Diem, it’s Latin for YOLO.

And you know what we say? Happy Monday.

The Adventures of a Lost iPhone

It was reported in the news last month that a man, upon dropping his cell phone into the depths of the L train’s tracks at the East 105th stop in Canarsie, leapt after his digital appendage into the vermin-filled darkness. I’ll insert an editorialized if not fictionalized gasp from the crowd here: (though really, if we New Yorkers have become so jaded that a free-jump into the MTA canyon doesn’t elicit some sort of audible horror then we really are all fucked), because what came next was a series of subway cars barreling through the station on their routinely scheduled stop. Miraculously — witnesses, are you un-jaded yet? Or are you tourists? — the man emerged with his cell phone in hand.

But had our hero not been slightly insane, the communication device would have been left at the mercy of NYC’s mysterious underground life, perhaps carried along by sewage water or maybe picked up at the hand of a rather enterprising rat. All of which is the world’s longest wind up to ask the very question I’ve wondered each time I have watched a cab drive away with my phone, battery languishing quietly in the back seat, presumably to never meet my cheek or ear again: where on earth did it actually go?

One can only imagine.  And that — no thanks to Apple’s “Find My iPhone” App — is precisely what we did in the storybook above.

Happy Friday!

Illustrations by Charlotte Fassler

What’s So Bad About Wearing a Hat Indoors?

Satya Twena hat, Paula Mendoza choker, Atea jacket, Steven Alan blouse, Blk Dnm ‘Tomboy’ jeans, Saint Laurent boots

Mark Twain once said that clothes make the man. I’m starting to believe that if that’s true, hats must make the woman. Twain continued by noting that naked people have little to no affect on society, and though I don’t believe that’s true about women who don’t wear hats, there is certainly an irrefutably admirable sense of hubris (untrammeled confidence must come with wearing a hat and wearing it well) and openness (to wear a hat is to make a statement and reveal private, nuanced elements about your demeanor) that comes with embracing the recreational form of headgear.

But see, wearing a hat in transit is one thing. Engaging with it outside the public domain is another. A girl in a fedora walking down the street might simply be wearing her hat because it’s raining. A girl in a fedora seated at her desk indoors is committed. To what? Who cares!

Recently, I became very interested in emanating this sense of commitment by way of a boater hat. I think my interest in the style of hat is seeded in a combination of one photo of Georgia O’Keeffe wearing a delightful felt version, and another of a model shot for Vogue Australia wearing a more traditional straw iteration.

Something about the way both women appear in these photos — delectably confident, vaguely quirky and frankly, personally styled in spite of their decided differences (one is an artist who is known for her sense of intent while the other is a model, wearing what’s been put on her as opposed to what she’s put on herself) — really stuck with me.

In my attempt to hyper-approximate the same sensation they’ve generated, I got my boater from Satya Twena and said I’d wear it indoors for at least one day. The result was a whole lot of Charlotte and Amelia not making eye contact with me because I looked like an asshole.

I thought about how judgmental I become in the wake of men in baseball caps and fedoras on either gender indoors and felt kind of bad about it. Sure, I was uncomfortable at first (I needed no shade from internal sunshine and straw is a weird fabric to sympathize with in the throes of April) but after two bathroom visits, which were decidedly comical (the stalls in our office building are Marcel the Shell-sized), that feeling subsided. So I kind of want to ask that initial question one more time — what’s so bad about a hat indoors?

Think about that while you think about these:

Street Style from Down Under

It’s about time that we give it up for the Australians. They’ve mastered the art of looking cool. Parisians tend to assume all the glory in this category, what with their tousled hair and artfully drop-crotched denim, but Australians do laid-back differently. Theirs is style for the low-tide; beach-aware if not somehow permanently beach-ready.

But it’s possible I’m projecting. I spent a semester overseas in college, and at age 25 I’m still referencing, “one time in Australia.” It was undoubtedly one of the best experiences of my life. The ocean was my only extra-curricular, I spent more time on sand than I did in class and everyone was nice.

In fact they were more than nice — they were genuinely kind, and oddly enough their mode of dress seemed to reflect their personalities just as easily as their tans absorbed the sun. Good style seemed inherent. It wasn’t calculated, just ingrained. My roommate, for example, had established a uniform of singlets and white tennis shoes with hip-slung denim shorts. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about the combination other than the fact that I’d never before seen someone whose own easiness translated an otherwise blasé outfit into a look. 

If you could wear the adjective “mellow,” she did.

And so too do the women of current Sydney, obviously, as captured by photographers during Fashion Week Australia. I imagine their choices reflect the weather — humid and warm, but they’ve adapted — and I picture their process of getting dressed more a matter of what feels good rather than what is reportedly “in fashion” — which isn’t to say that trends are avoided, nor does it mean that statements aren’t being made.

Take the woman whose coat says “Sexsi” in a signage similar to Pepsi’s, or the one whose pink-fringed cape seems ready for takeoff to Outer space. They’re certainly saying something, it’s just that when I look at them knowing the context is Australia, I can’t help but imagine their accents connoting a very natural sense of “Oh this old thing?” And where trends are considered — check out the slideshow, they are — it’s as though Australians have figured out the very thing my roommate of Aussie yonder did: how to wear the attitude of mellow.

But like I said…for them, it must be inherent.

Consider the White T-Shirt

I recently imparted the bread theory on you in relation to jeans. The theory goes as follows: bread, like jeans, is a form of nourishment universally accepted and appreciated.

And just because my father eats his bread with salami, while I am vegetarian and as a result would never deign to do such a thing, does not mean that bread has been ruined for me. I still go on eating my bread with peanut butter or almond butter and jelly or neither.

See, and that’s the other thing. Bread, like jeans, isn’t gender exclusive.

I’ve been speaking a lot with my friend Rosie (who you may know as the poplin-whisperer) about the notion of what ruins clothes. And typically, it’s not so much what as it is who. Say you’re to buy a beautiful embroidered mini dress and you can’t wait to wear it in an approximation you’ve spent hours conjuring up. You’ll pair it with open toe, lace-up linen buckle boots that reach your calf. You’ll put a green utility jacket over it. It is the best outfit you’ve ever come up with, then suddenly, there it is.

You see your perfect embroidered mini dress prostituting itself across the pages of a tabloid magazine. It is being demonized by a celebrity you’ve never heard of, whose hair is tousled in all the ways you hate and whose shoes point up toward the sky instead of out toward ambition. There is a jacket involved and it seems as though she’s tried to re-appropriate the very look you’d put together but now the dress is ruined and there is no turning back.

Don’t you wish you’d just purchased the bread equivalent of clothing?

But what is the bread equivalent of clothing?

Unfortunately and independent of the jeans, the only other garment that can’t be ruined no matter how it’s approximated is a plain white t-shirt. As Rosie put it, “No one can steal the way you wear a t-shirt. It is so plain and naive that it can’t be co-opted by another person.” Like in the case of your bread, you can smear whatever the hell you want over it without having to worry that someone will make a sandwich so repulsive, you will never look at bread again.

In the spirit of that, let’s make our Thursday resolution to consider the white t-shirt — an investment piece that transcends the boundaries of truly investing and big name brands — with a little more respect and scrutiny, shall we?

Etiquette for the Modern Human, Round 2

Perhaps one of the greatest stories ever told is the one about my friend who got spat on. She was driving down a major street in San Francisco, soaking up the sun with her left arm hanging out the window, right hand on the wheel, when a big, fat, wet something came flying at her bare appendage. It was spit. A wad of it. And it came from the one-man Tour-de-France-band next to her, wiping his his mouth with the back of a glove, staring intently at the red light as though he were a Thoroughbred horse at the starting gate.

“Excuse me,” she said, turning down the radio while pointing to the slimy evidence. “YOU JUST SPIT ON ME.”

He pretended not to hear.

“EXCUSE ME,” she repeated again, willing the light to stay stagnant. “YOU. JUST. SPIT. ON. ME.”

“Do you cycle?” Lance responded.

“I’m sorry, what?” (The appropriate reaction.)

“Do you CYCLE?” he asked louder, over the hum of the city’s traffic.

“No I don’t fucking cycle,” replied my friend. “I drive a CAR, and you just SPIT ON ME.”

“Well if you cycled…” (here it comes…) “You’d know that you have to spit a lot.”

The light changed green and the camel-man took off, whizzing between cars like a stupid pedaling bee. My friend flew after him until they both came to another red light, and guess what?

She spit on him.

All of which is to say, it’s time for another round of Etiquette Lessons with me, your host, Amelia Post.

“You’re Welcome” Always Follows “Thank You”

One of you brought this up in the comments of last month’s post. Thank you for that, because “thank you” is so rarely heard these days that reciprocal protocol has been lost completely. A refresher course: “you’re welcome” always follows “thank you.” It not only completes a polite social transaction, it immediately eliminates any potential for awkwardness and alleviates the thanker of anxiety.

For example, let’s say I saved you from getting hit by a car. You thanked me. Now pretend that I didn’t respond; I just stared blankly or walked away. You’d forever be wondering, Did that person mean to save me? Did they want me to get hit? Did she know I said “thank you” instead of “wank glue”?! She totally thinks I said “wank glue!” But what is wank glue? That sounds sexual, like…you know. She must think I’m a pervert. Amelia Diamond saved me from getting hit by a car and she thinks I’m a pervert.

Whereas, if I just said “you’re welcome,” we’d all be on our merry way.

Rogue Responses in Lieu of “You’re Welcome.”

To that, it is rarely okay to get creative with your responses to “thank you” despite the best intentions. “No worries,” “No problem,” “It’s fine,” and “It’s all good” insinuate that something was wrong in the first place, or that your opening a jar of peanut butter for someone was like, the most strenuous and bravest thing ever.

Your Fingers Are Not Knives 

A very fast quiz:

1) Are you Edward Scissorhands? (Yes) (No)

Assuming that the majority of humanity will select no, it should be noted that fingers are not utensils and actually, things have been created for your convenience called forks, knives, and spoons. In certain establishments you may even come across sporks, which is the skort equivalent of the culinary world. Either way, all have been designed to help you scoop up the last bit quinoa without using your index finger. It’s cool and I highly suggest you try it.

Walk-and-Stoppers

Walking is like driving: stay to the right and keep moving. Walk-and-stoppers are the worst kind of pedestrians as they are not only rude, they’re dangerous. The second someone abruptly slams on his human breaks in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, a pile-up of bodies is created that forces a group of strangers to touch each other. There is nothing more fowl than finding someone’s scalp on my nose or khaki’d balls on my back, all because the teenager three feet ahead had to stop for a VERY URGENT TEXT MESSAGE.

Don’t Spit in Public 

I’m aware that spitting in public is socially acceptable in certain cultures, but in Game of Thrones it’s an insult and everywhere else it’s bodily TMI. If you have to spit — maybe you CYCLE — you’ll find that your remarkable human body is designed to swallow (!!!) and therefore, the act of expelling your saliva is superfluous.

Revenge-spiting, however, is at your own discretion.

Why I Don’t Wear Makeup

Three months ago, the founder of a website, who I had recently met, cc’ed me on an e-mail correspondence with his assistant. He was trying to introduce us and in doing so, made the mistake of not deleting their previous conversation thread. I scrolled down and noticed that he’d confirmed to her that I was “verrrrrrrry funny. Smart, too.” This made me feel wonderful. But as I kept reading, there it was.

“She is ugly as fuck tho. Truly a man repeller.”

My initial reaction was to laugh — chiefly because it seemed incredibly unusual if not highly offensive that he would describe a fellow woman to his female assistant as “ugly as fuck.”

But then I grew emotional. Ugly as fuck? Really? And that was the chaser for a descriptive clause that pegged me not just smart but funny, which had to mean looking at my face for the course of our 30 minute conversation was as painful as say, getting a colonoscopy without the preliminary anesthesia.

As recently as two months ago, I noticed that the details of my makeup regiment (or lack thereof) have become something of a hot topic on the Man Repeller Instagram feed. I’ve chalked up the cause of conversation to either people taking notice of the fact that I don’t wear very much makeup or to my taking notice of their having taken notice.

The comments sometimes appear as compound questions like, “you could be cute but why don’t you wear makeup?” Other times they’re just plain insulting. As recently as last week, I’ve been called an ugly whore (not so far off from “as fuck”) which seems really inconsistent with the Man Repeller ethos seeing as we don’t typically sell bodies — we sell ideas.

That and clothes.

But have I started to notice the criticism because of that website founder? And what has that awareness elicited intrinsically?

It occurred to me last month when I was laying in bed beside my mother in a hotel room in Milan, trolling my own comment feed and half lamenting, half giggling about the abundance of distraught comments over the state of my face that maybe I should wear makeup. Something so simple that my mother said, so benign and innocent, so obvious, released a trigger in me.

“Makeup is meant to enhance the natural beauty of a woman, Leandra, so, really, why wouldn’t you use it?”

I contemplated her question for a moment but frankly, the answer is simple.

I’m not making a statement. I’m not trying to act like the most extreme, hyper-literal and violent version of a man repeller. If you read this site you know by now that Man Repelling is an attitude. It is a state of existence. It is not whether you do your hair or curl your lashes, or even what you wear. It is how approach doing those things. Why you do those things, and perhaps most importantly, it is a love letter to individuality, which is something that manifests itself in enumerably different ways.

So the reason I don’t wear makeup is because I am lazy. And don’t get wrong  – I am as much a sucker for the newest “anti-aging miracle cream” as the next guy. Just because I don’t wear much makeup doesn’t mean I don’t believe in good skin. I want to know that if I don’t wash my face, I won’t tarnish my pillow. I don’t want to see the ingredients that constructed my previous night’s visage wiped off into a towel. I also read somewhere that if you sleep with mascara on your lashes they are 70% more likely to fall out so as far as I’m concerned, maintaining real lashes that aren’t quite as plump as they can be is ten times more compelling than having none at all.

More important than that though, I am comfortable with how I look. I don’t hate what I see when I look in the mirror. Even if legions of others don’t agree. I have accepted the reflection that reliably bounces back at me for its perks and its flaws. I understand that there are thick, dark circles under my eyes. I have grown to appreciate them. I have noticed that my nose grows a little hookier on a near-monthly basis. That’s fine. I know there are wrinkles ready to stake their claim as full time residents on my forehead any moment now. My dad has those, too, and I find that endearing.

My eyes will never be blue, my bone structure will never allow for you to mistake me for a Scandinavian model. I am who I am and even if that infers “ugly as fuck,” I think it’s, I don’t know, beautiful.

The Alarming Similarities of Lena Dunham and Kim Kardashian

Written by Sophie Milrom

The end of March marked two pop culture milestones: Vogue released its April cover featuring Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, and the season 3 finale of GIRLS aired on HBO. Reading the coverage of these events led me to the realization that Kim and Lena have a lot in common. Just like the opposite of love isn’t hate (it’s indifference), the opposite of perfectly manicured glamour is apparently not unfiltered realism.

I also found myself wanting to defend them. Here are some of their similarities and why I think we should cut them a break:

1) They deal with a lot of criticism.

My mom always said that if I had nothing nice to say, I should keep my mouth shut. From time to time everyone finds themselves being judgmental, but being mean for the sake of being mean is really mean. Criticizing someone’s body falls into that category of unkind, especially if that person is pregnant.

As far as I’m aware, neither Kim nor Lena has done anything illegal, unethical or immoral. These are two people just being themselves and doing their jobs. If they’re not your cup of tea, tune them out. If either of them shows up at your door screaming “WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME?” then go ahead and give a little constructive criticism.

2) They were controversially on the cover of Vogue.

I’m more of a Vanity Fair girl myself, but a highly regarded publication embracing women who don’t fit the mold to a T is probably a good thing. From Lena’s body type to Kim’s interracial relationship, there are some positive messages here. I like the idea of children not having to give up their dreams because of who they love or what they look like.

3) They are dating musicians.

I am a huge fan of Kanye West. Don’t know much about Lena Dunham’s boyfriend, but he’s probably awesome too.

4) They are self-made.

Kim Kardashian and Lena Dunham represent, at least to a degree, the American Dream: wanting to become something and then achieving it to a level of astronomical success.

What they chose to become or how they were able to achieve it is not my problem. Chris Rock said about gay men in the military: “if they want to fight, let ‘em fight, cause I ain’t fightin!” If Kim Kardashian wants to spend her time filming commercials for weight-loss pills, and Lena Dunham is willing to portray awkward sex scenes, let them… Because I’m not gonna.

5) They star in TV shows.

I know, I know, “it’s not TV, its HBO,” but just go with me here for argument’s sake.

6) They’ve both shared the spotlight with their clique.

I’ve always suspected that Kim Kardashian is a nice person. This was based on very few data points, the most salient being that she shared the spotlight with her family and didn’t seem to resent them rising to fame alongside her.

Lena’s own family starred in her film Tiny Furniture, and she cast her childhood friend Jemima Kirke in GIRLS. She seems like a real cheerleader for her friends and castmates.

7) They are just doing their jobs.

Aren’t we all? Being mad at Lena Dunham for writing something potentially controversial or Kim Kardashian for overexposing herself is like being mad at the Panera salesman that your sandwich costs seven dollars more than it should.

8) They are provocative.

Well, duh.

9) They represent truths about society and ourselves, whether we like it or not.

Kim Kardashian’s fame is a symptom, not the cause, of the rise of consumerism and self-promotion in society. She may be capitalizing on it, but that’s her prerogative.

In contrast, Lena Dunham is criticized for her lack of fabrication. Instead of being glossy and aspirational, GIRLS portrays things that are real and uncomfortable in our own lives (imperfect bodies, dysfunctional relationships, romantic and professional missteps). She certainly didn’t invent humans being human.

Kim and Lena represent things that make some people uncomfortable and upset, but exist whether you like it or not. If a market exists, someone is going to address it.

10) They are both huge fans of Man Repeller.

Speculative, but possible.

For the record: I watch GIRLS but not Keeping Up with the Kardashians; however, I proudly follow Scott Disick on Instagram.