My Attempt at Being A "MySpace Girl"

If you have big boobs, you know what a pain in the ass they can truly be.  However, you will spend a lifetime hearing from B-cupped women how lucky you are to have cleavage up to your chin, while you're thinking, "It'd be sweet to be able to wear tunic style shirts without looking like Mama Cass."

The grass is always greener on the other side, right?

Well, this thought process is exactly why when I was 19 years old I decided I had had enough of being the busty, blonde, sweet, girl-next-door and decided it was time to take a walk on the wild side.

It was time to become a MySpace Girl.

Yes, that's a naval piercing poking out between my AWESOME Hollister pants and HILARIOUS T-shirt about New Jersey!

"What's a MySpace Girl?"  

Oh you silly little person from the future who is reading this blog, let me tell you about these women of yester-year:

See, long before there was Instagram making it as easy as 123 to look like a professional photographer, we had a different breed of social media mavens; the Myspace Girls.  These girls took photos of themselves that would even make David LaChapelle say, "Let's be 'Friends'!"  

Here's a short list of things that made MySpace Girls so cool:

AMAZING makeup.  
These bitches could wing out their liquid liner in ways I didn't know was possible.  They'd wear faux eyelashes to the gas station.  They knew how to wear purple, green and blue eye shadow all at once and WERK IT OUT.

FABULOUS hair.  
Either cut pixie short, or rocked with loooooong extensions.  Bonus points for chunky blonde highlights in black hair.

BADASS tattoos.
Chest pieces of guns on 125 pound girls from the suburbs.  Enough said.

ROCKSTAR wardrobe.
Somehow they managed to pair huge acetate Chanel earrings with bandannas draped around their necks.  How??  How did they make this work??

They also all had cool names like Niki[Nadar] and deedee^DYNAmite

Tell me this girl isn't the awesomest.

Amazing.  Fabulous.  Badass.  Rockstars.  Why WOULDN'T you want to be just like them?  And on top of everything, it seemed like all the hot guys in bands ate out of their hands.  These girls fascinated and intimidated me all at the same time.

I really wanted one of these boys to love me.

So I went ahead and tried on a new persona.  I cut my hair pixie short and sampled a gamut of hair colors from BLEACHED blonde all the way to jet black, I wore faux eyelashes everyday (even in dance class.  WTF was I thinking?), I buckled my belt to the side on low-slung skinny jeans, I tried to self-gauge my ears (don't do this), and I even got my very own nape-of-the-neck tattoo.

Oh, hello!  I didn't see you there!  I was just hangin' in my room with a full face of makeup on at 11:00 pm.

I tried my damnedest to fit in with that crowd.
But it never worked.  I never got the attention I so badly wanted.  Or the hundreds of comments on my pictures on MySpace that the other girls had.  What was I doing wrong??   MAN was I annoyed... And more intimidated of these girls than ever.  If they could pull this off and I couldn't, that must mean they were better than me.  This "less-than" feeling I inflicted on myself transformed quickly into judgement.  I started looking at their pictures differently- making bitchy comments about them.  

"Why do you need to take so many pictures of yourself in the first place?  How VAIN are you??"

It took me a long time to realize that my venture into "the other side" wasn't as "green" as it looked from where I used to be.  With time, my hair went back to my natural dirty blonde, my Hot Topic jewelry was thrown away, the small amount of gauging in my ears closed up, and I stopped pretending I loved thrash-core metal so much.

Just in case you were ever wondering what my pores looked like in 2005.  Cause I know you were.

I still have the tattoo, though.  And I'm glad I do.  That tattoo is a reminder of the risk I took trying something new and scary.  That I made huge changes in my life to see if I'd like it better than what I had been comfortable with for years.  I'm so happy for those couple of years.  And I have a lot of amazing memories to look back on because of those changes!

I still stalk those rock star, bad ass girls on Instagram who are so damn good at taking gorgeous, tired-eyed, lips-open sexy photos of themselves.  However, I don't feel the jealousy or the judgment anymore, but more a strange level of respect for them... now knowing how TRULY DIFFICULT it is to succeed at taking those dang pictures and living that look.

And I still try!  I take pictures of myself every so often and post them to Instagram.  Let's be real here, it's fun and it gives you a little confidence boost with every *like* you receive.

But I know who I am now, and who I am is someone who will always be too shaky in the hands to wing out her eyeliner properly.  And someone who feels far more beautiful and confident wearing a Forever 21 sundress than a ripped up vintage sweatshirt.

Good for those girls.  They've honed a very fun skill.  And they're beautiful and creative.

I guess the point of all this is- if you really believe the grass is always greener on the other side, take a trip over there and see if you still feel the same way!  You'll still be welcome back onto your own grass if you change your mind.  It's a good thing to switch up your "given circumstances" and see where life leads you.  Maybe you'll make discoveries about yourself and other people that you wouldn't have made otherwise.  You'll see how the "other half" live.  You'll gain new perspective.  I highly recommend it.

Still, don't try to gauge your own ears.

@lindsaylieu

Me!

LEARN FROM ME,

Lindsay

Things Lindsay Sucks At:

 I was on Danielle LaPorte's website the other day and found an entry of her's about owning up to the things you suck at.  How it can be empowering to declare, "Hello Universe, this is something I struggle with and I am not going to pretend like I don't notice it anymore!" If we can own those icky little habits of ours, it will be easier to "OWN" them, ya know?  To hold ourselves accountable.

 Danielle LaPorte is amazing.  I just got into her recently and I recommend her page highly.  

That being said, I would like to take this chance to publicly proclaim an abbreviated list of things Lindsay Sucks At.

PICKING UP MY MAIL

I will walk past my mailbox every single day and glace at it while I wait for the elevator.  I know there's things in there that I need to read.  I also know I will probably see a bunch of bills that will put me in a sour mood.  So, instead of just opening the dang box and taking the mail upstairs with me I go on my merry way and ignore it.  I tell myself I'll get it tomorrow.  Then I repeat exactly what I had done that day.

MEETING NEW PEOPLE AT PARTIES

I am 100% completely capable of doing this.  I am not rude to new people, I don't shut down... I just tend to only give 50% of myself when meeting new people at events.  Why?  Because I am SO BLESSED with an abundance of UNBELIEVABLE friends in my life as it is.  My brain pretty much just puts up a "NO VACANCY" sign in the friend department when meeting new people at parties.  Not at work, not in shows, not in school... just at parties.

DOING MY LAUNDRY REGULARLY

I own a lot of underwear.  Enough said.

GETTING "ON THE BANDWAGON"

Harry Potter, Avatar, XBox, Happy Endings, In The Heights, ... these are all things that the ENTIRE WORLD has told me I am SURE to fall in love with and I refuse to let myself get involved with.  I honestly have no idea why I do this.  It's like some dark side of my brain thinks it's being rebellious by not allowing myself to enjoy things that other people enjoy.  What is that?  Also, not having read Harry Potter has gotten me in actual fights with people before.  That's been kinda funny, I'm not gonna lie.

GIVING UP CONTROL

This is a new, fun sucky thing for me since I began living on my own!  I have a hard time believing that someone else is going to be able to follow through with what needs to be done if something is at risk.  I won't let them just take the reins and go with it- I have to be on their booty every step of the way like a drill sergeant checking off a to-do list.  Attractive, right??

MONEY

Money scares me.  This is one of the saddest sentances a 27 year old adult has ever written, but it's true.  It makes me nervous and makes me feel like I'm not good enough because I don't have more of it.  I want to do that thing Joey did in "Friends" with books that scared him- I just want to put all of my bills in the freezer so that they go away forever.  Totally an adult decision, I know!!

PAYING ATTENTION TO ONE THING AT A TIME

....While I type this, I am watching Law and Order SVU and also texting.

There's plenty of things I'm GREAT at (90s TV theme songs... sticking to my goals... etc...) and I haven't forgotton those at all, don't worry... I'm not hating on myself or anything LiveJournal-y like that...

I simply forgive myself for being so damn sucky at these things, and I make the promise to myself and to the universe that in this upcoming year I will try my hardest to get better at them.  

...That felt good.  ;-)

LEARN FROM ME,

Lindsay

Oh Dad, You Were Right All Along... (dammit)

When I was little and my awesome dad would be attempting to give his brassy daughter some much needed, wise advice he would often say to me, "LEARN FROM ME, Lindsay..."  
I can still hear his voice saying it in the kitchen while I slathered my Thomas' English Muffin with butter before leaving for High School.  I was sooooo much smarter than him.

I was 17!

I knew about heartbreak- My online boyfriend and I had broken up only four years ago!
I knew about money- I had a part time job at a sandwich shop (which my father got for me)!


I was an ADULT, dammit and I wanted to make sure he knew it!
Advice from someone who loved me and basically lived just to make sure my life would turn out spledidly?  Pfffffft!  I'll listen to my giggly 17 year old girlfriends, thankyouverymuchDAD!

Lookit that man.  That is a man who knows a thing or two about the right way to get to the mall.

As I've aged - 10 years since then - I feel like one of the GREATEST lessons that life (and Dad) has taught me is that it's OKAY to ask for help.  And it's OKAY to take and use someone's advice.

It doesn't mean your initial, gut decision was wrong- simply that the people who love you are giving you advice because they want what's BEST for you- THEY'RE loved one.

It doesn't mean you are immature and stupid- to the contrary, I've delightfully found many people to be quite impressed when I'm able to go to them and ask their opinion.

It doesn't mean you're weak and unable to fend for yourself- big fat, stinking nope all over that one.  That feeling of "weakness"?  I personally think that's PRIDE trying to make a sneaky getaway out of your body.  And you know what?  Let it go.  PRIDE is like that crappy college boy who always made us feel insecure and "less-than".  Oh we kept that boy around- we thought we NEEDED that boy.  We cried and felt uncomfortable when he left us for another unknowing Freshman girl.  But in the end, you were BETTER OFF WITHOUT HIM.  That's PRIDE.
Let pride go, drink some Franzia with your girlfriends and feel GREAT the next day.


I now make it a point to always ask people for advice- much to Dad's excitement.  Because everyone's life has taken them on different journeys- so by asking someone else for their thoughts on the situation you can LEARN FROM THEM.  Learn things you would have never known otherwise...

It's kinda like the first time you ever played The Oregon Trail with your cool babysitter- they were seasoned pioneers who knew to NEVER caulk and float your wagon.  If they weren't there beside you to offer such sage advice you would have CLEARLY lost that deck of cards you bought back in Town.  And WHAT would Bob, Phyllis, Alexander and Rochelle do without that deck of cards?

"Avoid all these dramatics and just take the damn ferry!" Is what Dad woulda said.

Now I know whoever is reading this might be like, "Okay #1 this Blogger template is pretty crappy, Lindsay.  And #2 But what about making your OWN decisions and taking CHANCES and getting your OWN hands dirty in the process???"

And to that I say- Yup!  You can do that too!  I've gotten my hands dirty all across this US of A.  I've heard the advice and laughed it off.  And sometimes it's paid off to do my own thang and not play by the rules.  And sometimes I've fallen flat on my ass.  I don't think either way is the wrong way.  I just believe you have nothing to lose by asking advice, or listening to others' stories.

Each person you meet in your life is like a full set of Encyclopedia Britannica- so why not just soak up as much of that knowledge as you can?

Ohmigod remember this guy?  See HE is someone who should have taken his friends' advice and not worn that denim button up.

That's why I started this little Blogger.  Because maybe one of my friends or some random person who accidentally typed in this domain name will read one of my harrowing life tales and be able to relate- or be able to take something away from what I've lived and learned.

Well, that and the boredom.  The boredom is part of the reason I'm doing this, too.

(See?  If I was taking people's advice right now I'd be reading The Hunger Games instead of writing this blog.  Fools!  Mwahahaha!)

So yeah, anyway...


LEARN FROM ME,
Lindsay