chandrarueff1961-yasmb

Can you say, “Nightmare?”

Today’s special occasion was a bridal shower. More often than not, it’s not the bridal shower that’s so bad, unless there’s some kind of game where I’m going to get called out and people are going to pay attention to me and how I look.

It’s the preparation. Hello, Body Dysmorphia (Truly, Body Dysmorphia is about any aspect of your body that you are morbidly ashamed of, not just weight). Since I don’t do makeup, that’s pretty simple from the neck up. Hair? Another thing entirely. My hair is naturally curly – just beyond wavy. Humidity means frizz. Rain, however, means more curls. Rain is actually a great thing for my hair. But it’s August in Tennessee, and for a mid-day occasion, that means humidity – No rain until after 4:00 PM. I can’t plaster it down without looking ridiculous, and hair spray is a futile effort at control of frizz. I’m convinced that the primary purpose of humidity is to overcome hairspray. So I can’t control my hair when it’s long. And I can’t wear it short unless I’m skinny. Which I do get, sometimes.

Today, the worst was my ankles. Solution: Loose cotton pants when a sundress would have been more appropriate. Call me Southern, not in a good way because there’s a certain OCD etiquette to these things. I had the good fortune of my mother having been invited to the same bridal shower (it was for my daughter, which just made matters worse). Mom was absolutely mortified at the idea of wearing a dress (I come by my Body Dysmorphia honestly). So I suggested linen pants (hard to go wrong there in the South, unless you don’t iron them, and my mother irons everything), which gave me my out.

Then came my breasts. Does a perfect bra really exist? I mean, if it takes care of one problem, it creates another. I have a friend who simply insists that sports bras are it for her. She doesn’t care about uniboob, and I envy her. I pick the whole thing apart. Remember the old commercial, “lift and separate?” Yeah, those bras do that, but they come with a seam vertically across the middle of everything. That seam shows. Not doin’ it. Oh, let’s not even get into underwires – I’ll be uncomfortable enough, thank you. Then there’s back fat and “chicken cutlets” under your armpits. Is there a bra that really, truly takes care of all of this without showing? The only woman who doesn’t have to worry about how her bra fits is the woman who doesn’t need to wear one to start with.

Gentlemen, don’t even try to tell me that you don’t worry about the undershirt not hiding something or another. I had a father once, and I know. Hormones wreak havoc with men, too. Once again, I come by my Body Dysmorphia honestly.

I could pick myself apart to death, honestly, but I’ve made too many superlong posts already.

Just one more thing – kind of. I know deadly serious mental illness. Not that Bipolar Depression can’t be deadly serious. I had a great-aunt who was diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia. I didn’t know all of the ins and outs of it until she was long gone. But I always knew that she just wasn’t quite “right.” My grandmother took us to the state mental institution where she lived for a while (I didn’t know it was a psychiatric hospital at the time), and nobody there was quite “right.” She tried, she really tried. But her eyebrows gave her away, as far as I was concerned.

You know how British gentlemen seem to let their eyebrows get away from them? I know that’s a stereotype, but I kind of refuse to feel bad about it, because these men seem to come disproportionately from the upper class -well, maybe that’s just the ones that I see – I don’t see many British men in Tennessee. Just on TV or in movies.

My Great-aunt’s eyebrows were out of control. A total absence of tweezing was readily apparent, and they were more grey than brown. She drew a single, dark brown eyebrow pencil line through the middle of them. I never knew how she couldn’t see it in the mirror. She wore glasses, and she wore other makeup fairly decently, but the eyebrows. That defined the look of “crazy” for me.

No “real” makeup here, but I “make up” (pun intended) for that with my eyebrows. I study the latest trends in eyebrows. I notice other women’s eyebrows. I can’t stand a grey eyebrow hair – that puppy is a goner as soon as I see it. Tweezers are my beauty hardware. Stray eyebrow hair is not to be tolerated. Especially before a special occasion. IF, and only if, I decide my eyebrows are less than perfect, I might pull out the eyebrow pencil. But defined pencil lines are unacceptable. I blend. I color within the lines. I obsess over whether or not I’ve used too much or if I’ve left a spot out.

People are going to have to look beyond my eyebrows to determine whether or not I have any kind of mental illness.

Really, I mean it.