Editions of Me

Dear Thu, This is a letter to the future you. There will come a time... and we're not sure when that time will be - it could be in two weeks or even merely two days from your starting date... when you will feel like you can't do this. There will come a time when you've had a particularly bad day or you didn't get enough sleep or you forgot to prep your vegetables ahead of time, and you will feel like throwing up a YOLO sign and buying a dollar cheeseburger. Before you do that, come back and read this letter. Read this letter and REMEMBER. Remember the horrific stomach pains. Remember the heaviness in your limbs, the feeling like you can't even make it to the end of the hallway. Remember waking up dizzy and nauseous from whatever junk you ate the night before. Remember eating too much gluten and having really annoying allergy symptoms hours later. Remember the disappointment you feel every time you get tired after running at a really slow pace for o...

I was reading an article about the Jem & the Holograms movie, because I'm curious about it (I liked the tv show when I was a kid), and there were some complaints about the choice of actress for Shana because on the show, she was dark-skinned with natural hair (in style/texture, not the dyed-purple part), and the actress they cast is mixed race and quite light skinned. Here, see for yourself: Shana is on the far left Lower left, Aurora Perrineau will play Shana in the movie So, there were people who expressed their dismay in the comments to the article. And then I saw this: *headdesk* First of all, you didn't hear anyone complaining ? Second of all, I'm sure that Perrineau truly earned the role and that she will do a great job (I've never actually seen her act before, so I don't really know), but as I like to tell people, context matters . This one instance of casting a lighter-skinned actress instead of a darker-skinned actress may not be...

Sephora recently had their big springtime Beauty Insider/VIB/VIB Rouge sale, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to pick up KVD's new summer mega-palettes, Monarch and Chrysalis, and her spring palette, Esperanza. Here's a quick look and some swatches (done with fingers, on bare skin). They are all sturdy, magnetized cardboard (like Sugarpill's palettes), with generous mirrors and KVD's signature artwork on the packaging (which I love!) First, the Esperanza palette: It's funny to me that it was a springtime release, considering how the colors are so summery to me. It's absolutely beautiful though - with two mattes, two shimmers, three sparklies, and one iridescent/duochrome transformer shade. All pigmented and butter soft. I'm pretty much in love with the entire palette, and can't wait to mess around with Dayglo. The Monarch palette is a total winner, if you like warmer palettes. Like its counterpart, the Chrysalis palette, it h...

I had LOTS and LOTS of running tattoo ideas, some very large and convoluted. In the end, this is what I went with - the elevation profile for the Morgan Hill Marathon, which was my first marathon. (I'm now working on preparing for my third.) The whole experience of training for and then running my first marathon was a really huge deal for me (as you may know, since I posted about it on my blog), and I think there is a lot of metaphorical resonance in these hills and in marathoning in general - the grueling difficulty, the ups and downs, the importance of being mentally strong in addition to physically strong. Those miles took a lot out of me, but they gave me back something too - the knowledge that I COULD finish a marathon. (And I've even finished another one since then.) This experience is something that will be forever inked in my brain, and now it's inked on my arm too, where I can see it every day, and when I have moments of self-doubt, moments when I think to m...

Does my gender make my muscles look fat? *twirls hair* As a female, I am constantly inundated with messages both subtle and overt about how my body is supposed to look. All the voices fighting for space inside my head become exhausting and even toxic. Don't be fat, be thin; no, don't be thin, be strong; strong is the new skinny. Be strong, but don't be muscular. Work out like a man, but don't look like one; be feminine and pretty instead. Be a real woman. Real women have curves, but they should be boob-and-hip curves; they can't be curves of fat. Don't be fat. And these expectations start early, right? As a girl, I was expected to be mild-mannered and well-behaved. I had a lot of dolls and art sets, but never any sports equipment (aside from a bike or skates). It's ingrained pretty early on that females are supposed to look a certain way and behave a certain way, and that deviating from the norm is baaaaad. And unfortunately for me, I was never ...

In case you already own a bunch of Sugarpill and are trying to decide about the UD Electric palette (or the reverse), here are some swatches I did. I tried to find the closest Sugarpill shades I could for each UD shade (and I do own the entire line except for one, which I know for a fact doesn't match anything in the palette). Since Sugarpill obviously has more shades, assume that if I didn't swatch it, then it didn't even come close. Swatched using my fingers on bare skin. Verdict: Pretty similar. Well, with a shimmery, sparkly bright silver, there are only so many ways you can go Verdict: PRETTY close. Afterparty is a bit more blue than Gonzo, but just a smidge. Probably not a big enough difference to matter to the average person. Verdict: Nothing similar. You could probably create a Slowburn-like shade by mixing Love+ and Flamepoint, but you may or may not be into that. Verdict: REALLY REALLY similar. Love Buzz, one of the ElektroCutes, has sparkle to i...