it’s show time
II don’t know about you, but today kicks off an anxious week for me, more than any other year. It’s almost Halloween and I always end up doing last minute purchase for my kids’ outfits and forget to take them pumpkin picking until the day before. Just to digress a little, we somehow ended up adopting two chicks (that turned into a huge hen and a rooster) in the beginning of the pandemic. Fast forward to this past weekend, we incubated and hatched 7 eggs in our rarely-used dining room. So…my 1.5 year old will be a (fake) chicken and my 6 year old will be a (fake) farmer with (real) baby chicks trailing them! My 9 year old wants to be Carmen Sandiego. Anyone have a red fedora and a trench coat?
Back to anxiety, in addition to this year’s not-so-Halloween, the election is coming up and I feel super nervous. I try to stay away from all the divisive and doomsday news that’s going around and in doing so I stumbled on a totally unexpected and eye-opening makeup tutorial by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I generally stay away from YouTube tutorials because the artist/influencer usually looks nothing like me and doesn’t look like he or she has to deal with any of my issues. So, it says a lot that I sat through the entire 18 minutes mesmerized by AOC speaking about her foundation choice while casually tossing in political one-liners in between her blending and highlighting. “Just being a woman is quite politicized here in Washington,” she says. And I have to confess, I didn’t know much about AOC as a political or a celebrity figure before I watched the video.
So of course, I dove into the rabbit hole of trying to figure out why I enjoyed watching that video so much and felt like I just became friends with AOC. Actually, it seems that politicians talking about their beauty routine has become somewhat of a thing these days because it helps them relate to their constituents. Watching/reading about someone engaging in an intimate, morning ritual in her bathroom creates a connection and humanizes the person sharing that experience with us. But, beyond bonding over our shared morning routines, what I love is seeing women be unapologetic about wanting to look and feel good and confident about themselves. How we care for ourselves and choose to appear in public is part of our overall storytelling. So ladies, it’s showtime. PLEASE GO VOTE if you haven’t already!!