Day 346
"Pink Lipstick"
(A flash back to my 365 project done in 2010/2011)
That's where this whole thing started- with pink lipstick. As I was getting ready I grabbed the tube full of waxy beautification and thought once I applied it, "Does this make me look cheap?" Which lead me to my next thought of what my mom always use to tell me, "It's all in how you present yourself."
As I grew up I understood this and really tried to live by it. I tried to present myself as what I really was. I didn't act like a stupid blonde girl, bc I wasn't stupid. I didn't drink to fit in, because maybe I didn't want to fit in there. Then as I got older that phrase started to slightly bother me, bc I started to look at it a different way.
If I tried to act classy, did that automatically make me a 'better' person? Or what if one day I decided to take everything completely unserious? Would that make people think I was immature and unfocused? Bc if that's what they thought- it wasn't true. So if they thought that, too bad for them, which, in my moms defense, was another thing she also lived by, "It doesn't matter what people think."
Some days I think, who cares how I present myself!? I am who I am inside. I know who I am! "It's all in how I present myself." What- am I like a package? A Christmas gift? Do you pick the one with the beautiful flowing ribbon, or do you settle for the one shoved in the plastic grocery bag? You have no idea what's inside!
Yet- other days, I do realize, my packaging does count. At quick glance people get a sense of me, who I am, and where I fit into in this life. I express myself through my clothes, my hair, the music I listen to, and the art I create.
I think there's a fine line between caring what people think of you and caring what people assume of you- and that's probably what my mom meant all along.
So, at the end of the day, if they assume I'm cheap bc of my pink lipstick, let them, bc they are of no use to me then. And if they think I'm weird for packaging myself up in green tape to prove a point, then even better, bc I would never want to be labeled as normal anyways!
Port Huron, Michigan Artistic Body Photographer