old and long meme
1. Reply to this meme by yelling "I FUCKED YOUR MOM SHE LIKED IT", and I will give you five words that remind me of you.
2. Then post them in your journal and explain what they mean to you.
3. Keep in mind that if I don't know you that well, your words might end up kind of odd or weird.
1. Art
I've been drawing as long as I can remember, but it's only in the last few years that I've gotten at all confident in myself. My mom was always really good at drawing--she'd draw sunflowers all over the brown paper bags covering my books--so I always had a bit of an inferiority complex about it. I actually stopped drawing for an entire year once the movie Napoleon Dynamite came out because I feared that I was just as unaware of my lack of talent.
Today, I was helping a friend frame his artwork, which required us to take out of a frame art left behind by a student who graduated. It was all possibly-traced pictures of InuYasha, and I was reminded of my weeaboo-anime-style phase. I had all the how-to-draw books and copied all the best styles into little journals when I was in middle school. I think that was the lowest time for my creativity, as I rarely tried to develop my own style (this is the main reason why art teachers hate anime style, if you were wondering--it typically means that a style is being copied rather than developed on one's own). I threw all those journals away a year ago, and I still feel a bit relieved by it--I'm not very good at learning from my mistakes, I guess.
For me, art is the one class where I don't feel like I'm working. I've stayed up until 4 in the morning watercoloring before, and yet it's something that I'll still go to when I'm tired and stressed out. There's still a lot I need to learn, though--as I lack models other than myself, I can really only draw women's faces (and women with big lips and flat noses at that) and abstract bodies for fashion croquis.
2. Disney
As the first-born, having 6 years of being the only child, my parents found it very important that I had all the Disney films on VHS. According to my mom, my favorite was Dumbo when I was really little, and I would always sit in her lap and demand rocking in the scene where Dumbo reunites with his caged mom (which, according to my mom, was really troublesome as she would put the movie in so that I would be distracted and she could get work done). I also really remember loving WInnie the Pooh--there's some scene that I can't remember but I know that my cousin and I thought was the funniest thing ever--and Mulan (though, by then I was probably too old to really enjoy the movie). My brother was really into Toy Story, so I also remember that a lot.
I don't remember being really big into the princesses. I thought the stories were flat and the characters vapid and dull. It wasn't until my little sister (who is currently 4) got into disney princesses that I started looking at them again. I love the art style of the movies like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, and I really enjoy listening to Cinderella's voice (it's really deep and full). I have fun playing spot-the-religious-intonation as well (I could write oh-so-many papers on it). I also have begun looking again at the characterizations, and perhaps filling them out in my mind a wee bit more. Possibly because I have watched the movie way too many times for my own good, but I can sort of relate to Ariel. I used to really dislike her (well, in my late-elementary-to-middle-school years) because I thought the whole "part of your world" thing just sounded really spoiled. Now, as someone who has had to seriously think about my future in terms of college majors and career choices, I can understand a person who looks at how hard her family has worked for what she has and then realizes that she wants absolutely nothing to do with it.
So, with this rekindled love for Disney, I was really excited for The Princess and the Frog, like a lot of people, and I think it fulfilled my hopes while catering to something else I really like--ambiguously brown men people defined by flaws rather than by perfection.
3. Barbies
Another nostalgic thing I've revisited because of my sister. I loved playing with them when I was little, but, when I was six, we moved. Then I made friends with a girl named Stacy who, as only the tip of the iceberg that was her attack on my self-esteem, informed me that I was much too old for Barbies. Then, as I got older, I really resented Barbies and their plastic perfection (as they so resembled the girls who terrorized me so much in my awkward phases). Now, with my face chemically-stabilized to remain somewhat clear, and a knowledge of makeup for when it doesn't, and a bra that does more than provide another layer to push down my strangely pointy nipples (why do those grow first anyway?) I can once again appreciate the magical, can-do-anything-if-she-believes-in-it power of Barbie.
4. ANTM
For some reason, I can only watch this show in marathon form--I always forget if it comes on weekly.
I saw this show in one of its many MTV marathons. It was the most hilarious form of fail that I had ever seen, especially since everyone took it completely seriously. I feel bad because none of the girls realize that the title is a lie--there hasn't been an American top model in decades--so I'm still really excited whenever I recognize them in something outside the reality tv show.
5. Fashion
Oh you, where do I begin?
I did not dress very well in my youth. I knew what I liked, but that wasn't what I wore. We didn't have a lot of money (ha! as if we do now) so it wasn't as if I could dress however I felt like it. My mom always tried to help me fit in (especially when we moved to a rich neighborhood in the 6th grade) by getting me clothes that had Roxy and Aeropostale plastered all over them, buying them at 1/4 of the price at TJ Maxx. Unfortunately, thin, poorly constructed tshirts didn't save me from my required pubescent ridicule, so I began to reject fashion altogether. I wasn't allowed to be goth in my household (my mom always said "you can be a goth, but don't be so redundant"), but I got as close as I could. I also ran around in camo pants my stepfather had originally bought his nephew for hunting. It was bad.
It wasn't until freshmen year of high school that fashion was part of my life. My mom went to Target and bought me a white shirt with a lace overlay--it reminded me of Shikamaru. Soon afterwards, I got my first pair of real heels--a pair of $6 wedges from Old Navy (they were about 4 or 5 inches!). I realized that I could participate in fashion without poorly trying to copy schoolmates with their brand names. I could dress in my own way. It took me a while to figure out my own style, but I think I have my own blend of crazy. I could be into fashion without being victimized by it.
As for design, I have to admit that my dream came from Naruto. Specifically, the terrible costume designs and the even more dreadful cosplayers I saw for them. From my first Shikamaru shirt, I began to insert various aspects of their clothes into my style as a sort of inside joke to my friends. In my head, whenever I watched a new anime, I always pictured how I would translate that into my clothes. This was almost entirely internal. However, I began to have a lot of my classmates ask me if I were going to study fashion, to which I'd always say "of course not!" and keep my fashion ideas to myself--this was around the time when I realized that journalism probably was not the best thing for me (this meme would be a good example as to why I came to that conclusion). Then, my art teacher began telling me all of these things that I needed to study--fibers and color schemes and figure drawing--all under the assumption that that was my intended career. Then I got to thinking.
In the summer before my junior year I had to do 20 sketchbook pages as an assignment. I decided that was a good time to try it out for myself. I haven't stopped since.
Rambling is fun, no?