When self-care is boring
Plus my ride-or-die mascara, gorgeous postcards, and pregnancy "rules" that ask to be broken
Today, after I got out of the shower, dried off my bod, rubbed moisturizer on my face, and removed my super sexy shower cap, I was about to go forth with my day and my life when I remembered something I had yet to do in my arsenal of body care and said (ALOUD) “goddammit.”
Do you ever just feel bogged down by the monotony of like, personal maintenance? Even if you identify as low-maintenance in terms of “doing” hair, applying makeup, or caring more than a little about “outfits,” we all still have to do some level of hygienic upkeep. Toothbrushing, hair detangling, nail clipping, cleansing - sometimes it just feels like a lot. Sure, sometimes a long, thorough shower feels luxurious and nice, but often it feels like a time suck? Maybe there’s something to be said for my relationship with BEING PRESENT in all of this, but if you could just push a button and go from unclothed and unwashed to, you know, clothed and washed, without any of hassle in between, would you? I WOULD.
So I wanna know, what part of your daily self-maintenance routine is the most tedious? SOUND OFF. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours!
5 Pretty/Ugly Things
Absolutely everything about pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum is personal as hell and there is no such thing as universal best practices that will feel good and be effective for all humans! Despite this, of course, many of us enter pregnancy having absorbed someone else’s ideas of how to be, and this includes the decision of when to share one’s pregnancy - with friends, with in-laws, with coworkers. For me, the first trimesters of all three of my pregnancies were hands down the worst, and I love love love Nell Frizzell interrogating the hiding-in-plain-sight misogyny embedded in the recommendation to not disclose pregnancies until after the first trimester in this piece.
During the first trimester of pregnancy, pregnant people need support: physical, emotional, psychological and social. Typically, this is the time when pregnancy sickness is at its worst; you are increasing your volume of blood by 50 per cent which, let me tell you, is a tiring business; you are likely to be getting aversions and cravings when it comes to food; your sense of smell takes on a supernatural strength; your hormones are kicking off; and you are living in a state of constant, genuine uncertainty. If these things were happening for any other medical reason – dare I say it, if these things were happening to a cisgendered man – people would talk about it. They might even ask for certain adaptations to be made at work, to their shift pattern, to their commute, to their social plans. If we don’t feel that pregnancy is a legitimate reason to ask for support, or fear that being pregnant will impact our job prospects, then that tells us something quite damning about workplace culture.
Vanessa Saba is the creative director for Mother Tongue magazine and I adore adore adore everything she makes. Just LOOK at these collaged postcards (and be sure to read the story behind them).
- digs into the allure of Taylor’s publicist and I’m HERE FOR IT.
And sure, she represents arguably the biggest star in the world, but Paine is a force unto herself (Can you name Lady Gaga’s publicist? Brad Pitt’s?). She has her own lore in the Swiftie fandom, there are parody accounts dedicated to impersonating her, and she has fans of her own.
Um guys did you know
has a newsletter in which she does analysis of Carrie Bradshaw’s many pensively posted questions from Sex in the City? IT’S SO GOOD. In this one, she unpacks the power of beauty with and it’s unsurprisingly packed with wisdom.There are a lot of mascaras in the world and many of them cost upwards of $20.00, but I have been using one drugstore mascara for the past 3 or 4 years and have yet to find anything that touches it. DISCLAIMER. If you’re anti-tubing mascara, this might not be for you (OR MAYBE IT WILL CONVERT YOU), but if you’re the type of person (like me) who simply cannot remove regular mascara without it showing up under your eyes for days afterwards, you might want to give tubing mascara a try. It washes off with water and yeah, it’s kinda weird sliding the fibers off your lashes, but it’s also sort of delightfully satisfying in a tactile way? Another huge pro of tubing mascara is that it doesn’t kill the curl (see here for my favorite eyelash curler) - if anything it SETS the curl. Are you shocked to see how many opinions I have about makeup despite the fact that I wear it at most once a week?! Anyway, I’ve tried a couple tubing mascaras, including this one, which everyone on the internet raves about, but I found it to be VASTLY inferior to this one, which is exactly 17 dollars cheaper! Don’t be scared by the “waterproof” descriptor - it rolls right off with water. It lengthens, thickens, keeps the curl, and is richly pigmented. I love it.
Ok, let’s rant. Is it conditioning? Is it shaving? Is it applying dry shampoo? Is it the act of wriggling into a sports bra? If you could incinerate one task in your personal maintenance routine, which one would it be and why?!