Appearance (not mine)

[mrissa]

In the last month, I have built up the following gripes and observations about superficial physical choices, many of which I never thought I would have to state in so many words:

1. Lots of light fixtures look like giant breasts. I'm sorry to tell you this, because once you know it, you can't un-know it, and I hadn't made that particular association until this most recent fixture shopping expedition. Still, it gets alarming, especially for those of us to whom "giant boob" is not an appealing decorating scheme.

Despite this problem, we managed to find a (non-mammary) light fixture for in the kitchen to replace the one that was a fire hazard, and markgritter did the work yesterday evening, so now we can eat at the kitchen table and not worry about flaming wreckage. (We never actually had flaming wreckage. But y'know. We're the kind of people who think about these things.)

2. I have always hated our master bathroom. It has a harvest gold sink and a harvest gold toilet. There was just no call for that. And it always made me a little uneasy to look at the edges where the sink joined up with the countertop or the toilet hit the tile. I was looking at paint swatches to make the room a pale gold, and now I know why it made me uneasy: the sink and toilet don't actually match the tile and counter. The pale gold that would go with the one is not the pale gold that would go with the other. They are one shade off. markgritter said he couldn't really see the difference, but I can, and it bugs me. It does not, however, bug me enough to go buy a new sink and toilet this afternoon.

3. Teenage boys of the greater Twin Cities metro area: growing sideburns will not make you into Joe Mauer. It will not even make you look like Joe Mauer. Trust me here. If your girlfriend said it would, she is drunk on the power that being the girlfriend of a teenage boy can bring. Also, if you do decide to go with the sideburn things, please recall that sideburns do not extend to your jawline. Those are muttonchops, and they're shaped somewhat differently when done well (which is rare). Also, if you are a fair-skinned blond teenage boy, might I suggest that Morneau is the Twin you should be emulating? There is a reason fair-skinned blonds who have not yet reached prime facial hair growing years are not famous for their sideburns. Really. (This is related to the Dread Rule: if you can't think of anyone of your ethnicity or combination of ethnicities who has appealing dreadlocks, maybe you should think, "There's a lesson in this," rather than, "I will be first! I will be the Norse Dread Pioneer!" I'm not sorry to be Scandosotan, but it has some limitations we all need to be aware of, and one of those is that very, very few people of solely Scandinavian descent have hair that will make non-pathetic dreadlocks. Also the only chance many of us have at "a good tan" is if our freckles join up. Also we make poor prima ballerinas due to having shoulders like musk oxen. I am sorry to crush the rosy girlish dreams of anyone reading this, but the world can be a harsh place; best to be prepared.)

4. Large men: everyone has different patterns of putting on weight. If you are a small-chinned person who essentially gets a bigger and bigger neck until you have a head-sized neck, I'm sorry to hear it. But deliberately and obviously shaving a goatee into your facial hair will not create the illusion of a chin. It will simply point out that the goatee-point is hovering in mid-face. This is not generally a plus.

5. "Just throw a belt over it; it'll look fine" does not solve wardrobe problems involving garments being more than two sizes too large. If you've lost a lot of weight recently, of course you might not be able to afford to buy new clothes right away and in large quantities. Just recognize that what you're doing is a stopgap solution rather than a fabulous sartorial statement.

6. Eyebrows are your friends. Pluck away, but sparingly. You need to have a neutral facial expression at your disposal -- "stunned" should not be the face the teller gets at the bank or the baker at the grocery store. When we talk about going through the world in a state of childlike wonder, we do not mean that you should let your eyebrows lead the way.

Comments

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Eyebrows! Oh, yes! I read somewhere once that bushier eyebrows actually give one a more youthful appearance, as opposed to pencil thin arches way up in the middle of your forehead. Looking around, I realized it was true. I've never been an eyebrow extremist, but it made me feel better about leaving them mostly as-is.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Depends on your genes, I think. I inherited my dad's eyebrows and brow ridge, so it takes serious tweezing just to get my eyebrows to look less Cro-magnon. I think they are currently reasonable but it takes a fair amount of upkeep.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Oh, I still tweeze. I come from hairy people from way back. But it's good to have a reason not to overtweeze.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

The eyebrow thing. Ow. I laugh and laugh.

I've totally seen people like that. 'Stunned' is exactly the right word.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

One of the weird/stupid things I've discovered in this journey I've undertaken, is that if I don't pluck my eyebrows, I get called "sir" a lot. It's stupid. It's weird. It's also true.

I do, however, avoid the 'stunned' look you mention, I think.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, that's why I say, "pluck, but sparingly" rather than "do not pluck": some people do get more of the look they're going for with plucking. I just don't think that "recently goosed" is the look anybody should be going for.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I've observed the mammary light fixture phenomena. You are the first to confirm my suspicions. Everyone else seems mystified by this observation.

[rosefox]

It was absolutely unmissable in my last bedroom. Fortunately, in this apartment the ceiling fixtures are square.

[jebbypal]

*snickers*

[madmanatw.livejournal.com]

Post of the day. Thanks. :)

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

So many truths there -- thank you. The eyebrow one is amazing here in NYC, as is the goatee in mid-face.

[splash-the-cat.livejournal.com]

The toilet in our upstairs bathroom is avacado green. And the walls are a sort of sickly pale yellow. And I still haven't taken down the bright blue curtains the previous people put up. It is not a pretty combination, and it is fortunate I have mastered mentally editing it all out.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The mental edit is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you don't have to think, "Aughhhh, my bathroom is a sickly Ziploc seal!" every time you go in there. On the other hand, sometimes you put up with the sickly Ziploc seal or whatever else for much longer than you might want to because of it.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Our downstairs bathroom matched. But in the way that really, you'd prefer that they didn't. The (very patriotic) theme was based off of the wallpaper, a turquoise rendition of the seal of the united states. And then turquoise fixtures (sink, toilet, bathtub) and woodwork (window, door, running board, closet with slatted door). There may have been matching linoleaum, but if so I have blocked it from memory completely. And turquoise, like harvest gold, is one of those colors where it's really really easy to not *quite* match, so the bathroom was ultimately several different shades of turquoise. Needless to say, we made the necessary replacements as quickly as possible.

This wasn't the worst room in the house--that honor, I feel, belonged to the guest room with lavender walls and mustard woodwork and carpeting. There had been (ugly but at least coordinating) curtains of white with an abstract black/lavender/mustard design on them, which tied the place together, but once those curtains came down, it had no saving graces.

We think the woman who'd redecorated before we moved in had been depressed. I just think maybe art therapy is more successful when it doesn't involve repainting the house into scariness.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Taking down an abstract black/lavender/mustard designed curtain made a room worse.

*boggleboggleboggle*

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I know. It's hard to believe, but at least while they were up, the logic was apparent. It was still ugly, but it was ugly for a reason.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

I am way guilty of 4. But I'm trying to lose the weight. With it will go the chin bristle.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

First lose the bristle, then the weight will follow....

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

I'm losing the weight just fine without losing the bristle. Fifteen pounds, and I'm as hairy as ever.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I don't see this as a good thing. I mean, the weight loss, good. But surely it would go faster without the facial hair slowing you down.

(swimmers' theory of weight loss)

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

My theory is that the longer the hair is, the more calories my body takes to push more hair out, so keeping lots of it is increasing my weight loss.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do you shave the bottom of your goatee into a point, though? Because having a rather longer chin at higher weights is not a faux pas, it's a genetic reality.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Trust me here. If your girlfriend said it would, she is drunk on the power that being the girlfriend of a teenage boy can bring.

I love you. :D

[bafleyanne.livejournal.com]

The house I grew up in was decorated by my mother, who loves red. In the 70s, you could get red appliances, and she had them. A red dishwasher, stove, refrigerator, washer, and dryer, and red floor tiles in the kitchen, and wallpaper with red teapots and spices on it in the kitchen, and in the den, red SHAG CARPET.

Needless to say, all that did was instill in me an intense dislike for the color red with regard to decorating schemes. But the wallpaper was probably the worst--and it was the part that I was pretty much able to tune out mentally unless someone came over to my house for the first time and was like "What is up with that wallpaper?" :)

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Our kitchen wallpaper was brick red (not offensive by itself, actually) with small illustrations of random things from either patent drawings or an old sears roebuck catalog. It was strangly interesting. but not really attractive.

The brown fake beams in the dropped ceiling (in the only room in the house that *wasn't* only 7.5 feet high to begin with, and they lowered the ceiling and made it dark brown) and the fake bricks along the rear wall, those were the highly scary portions of the room.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid any future spawn of mine are doomed to hate blue. Not everything in the house is blue, but...every year a bit more. And I think any color when overdone produces a gag reflex in offspring.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Our bathroom in our last place had four different shades of blue, all of which clashed with each other.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

The people who owned our house prior to us (and for 47 years, I might add) painted over everything--to the extent that we can't open any of the downstairs windows. Light fixtures, doorknobs, you name it--it's got layers of paint on it.

Plus there's nails in the walls everywhere except where they're needed. And lots of scotch tape as sort of a stopgap for any problems. It's . . . interesting.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Err...interesting. Yes, that's a word.

Our porch doors are painted in as well. Sigh.

[careswen.livejournal.com]

But... they're... doors.

How very odd.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Those are muttonchops, and they're shaped somewhat differently when done well (which is rare).

Mmmmm... rare lamb chops.

[garote]

Heh. I was just going to point that out. Couldn't help thinking about food after reading a sentence with "muttonchops", "done well" and "rare".

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

I have laughed so much while reading this post! Thank you for helping me start my day in a good mood; it looked to be a dreadful day (I'm going to the dentist) but you've made it lots better already! :)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

When we moved in we had a powderroom that appeared to be transplanted from another house. It had different baseboards than the entire rest of the place. It had a black toilet seat, a black undersink cabinet and hanging-over-toilet cabinet, both painted with gold marbling, a yellow plastic shower enclosure, and as the crowning touch, the borken pieces of 3/4 of a mirror *glued* to the wall, with gold marbling painted on them (not intrinsic to the mirror, actual paint on top of the glass).

My husband tore out everything down to the studs, put in a pedestal sink, put in a rough reddish saltillo-ish tile on the floor, and tiled the shower all the way up and the rest of it 4' high in a coordinating beige tile. I painted the walls in a soft marbling of blue with a dah of gold and put in a new light fixture. Actually it still looks like it was transplanted from anoth4r4 house, but now it's from one nicer than the rest of ours.

[garote]

1. Boob fixtures:

There's always ... track lighting! And flickery eye-itching florescent tubes!

4. Large men and goatees:

I agree but for different reasons: When I see a goatee, I immediately apply the stereotype, "Sports-and-beer obsessed male who wants to look like a badass." So not only does the goatee fail to create a chin, it also inspires an immediate bad impression.

IMNSHO the best way to deal with a weak chin is to grow a beard and shave it under the jawline, like so

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am not as opposed to people who are fond of beer, sports, or both as many geeks are, and I think the current "I want to look like a badass" mistake is to shave one's head bald. (Some people do it for other reasons, of course, not solely notably the "Help! I'm going bald and don't want a combover!" reason, which last I find laudable even if the result is sometimes unfortunate.)