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^
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 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
