Beauty Tips for Ministers

I’d Ask What In Fresh Hell This Is, But I Think It’s Just… Fresh Hell

Princess Caroline of Monaco. Daughter, I believe, of Grace Kelly. The mind reels. What can we learn from this? First: tailored and elegant is always a much better bet than crazy and flouncy. Save the crazy and flouncy for senior prom. Second, this is also an issue of scale: if the body is swathed all in one dark color, and then one carries a tiny, bright bag, one looks absolutely enormous by comparison, as if one is carrying a Barbie accessory.

P.S. I swear I saw that exact bag at Filene’s Basement a few weeks ago.

Suddenly Snow White: Going Grey With Style

In an earlier conversation, Charlotte contributed,

“As for Suddenly Snow White: make sure you hydrate, hydrate, hydrate - hair, face, lips! My grandmother had beautiful, shockingly white hair which she always wore short. She had lovely soft skin and always wore a berry-colored lipstick. I think she was more beautiful with white hair than ebony!

Perhaps the look is a little dated, but she also always wore a bright scarf tied around her neck.”

Charlotte, I am JEALOUS of your grandmama’s shockingly white hair (and believe me, the bright scarf thing may be dated, but it’s classic). The way women go gray in my family tends to be gun-metal gray, lank and just ugly. The hair loses its body, the color just looks Blas-ville and permanently greasy. To quote the famous Dreamgirls’ song, AND I AM TELLING YOU… I’M NOT GOING …that route with my hair, God as my witness and Revlon as my redeemer. How wonderful to go gray in such a way that flatters, that makes one say, “Oh, look what a new head of distinguished older person hair I have!” or even just, “I’m a silver foxy babe, man!”

I ran into a friend the other day who has let her hair go gray and although she’s very young (she’s also a gym rat and is in enviably trim shape) she just looks fabulous!!! I complimented her white-gray hair and she told me that it’s natural, “with a little help.” Now isn’t that an interesting idea… she highlights her gray hair, I think, to make it shinier and to keep the white-gray strands bright looking. I should have gotten the name of her colorist. Maybe there’s hope for my inevitably gun-metal blah, greasy strands of the future.

Roberta was wearing WONDERFUL tortoise-rim rectangular specs that made her look modern and sharp and added a great pop to her face. Her hair was cut in a mid-length curly style and she just looked adorable. I think she was maybe wearing mascara but I didn’t get the impression that she was wearing make-up at all. She has great skin.

The best description of her look was that her hair had energy to it. Her glasses and classic, simple work clothes (she works in a shoe store), contributed to that feeling of energy. She was a woman who had gone grey and looked very cool. I wish I had had a camera to snap her photo. That girl is doing Snow White Right.

Personal Jewelry Does Not Belong On Vestments

Darlings?

May we talk for just a wee moment? I know it’s the Monday after Easter and you’re weary. I, too. And yet I feel the urgent need to say this before someone else gets it into his or her head to adorn his or her cassock with a big butterfly pin or something: WE DO NOT WEAR PERSONAL JEWELRY ON OUR VESTMENTS. EVER.

I will now pick my jaw up off the floor where it fell last night when I heard that a lovely seminarian adorned her robe with a large broach on Easter Sunday, and wish you all a beautiful and blessed day.

In Your Easter Bonnet

PeaceBang’s grandmother was a milliner, and so she is genetically fond of hats. If you’re not a minister and plan to attend Easter services somewhere, won’t you consider wearing an Easter bonnet?

I mean, wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all rocked the Easter church hats like the ladies of the African-American church?

Big hats at Easter should never, ever be worn with a sense of irony or mockery. Don’t do it unless you can do it in style and with flair and confidence.

You Can Get Your Own Commitment Ring

They say this happens but I’ve never experienced it before: as soon as you meet someone and get seriously involved, the men/womenfolk come out of the woodwork to flirt and hit on you.

I am a friendly, extroverted gal. I talk to everyone. I am not going to stop talking to everyone, taking an interest in what they say, and smiling at them. Flirting is a beautiful thing that, when done appropriately and not in a sleazy manner, is a way of communicating “Hey, you’re a beautiful human.” Cats flirt. Babies flirt. God flirts with us all the time, trying to make us fall in love with creation, or at least enter into a more committed, devoted relationship with it.

So I’m not going to stop shining on people, but lately that shining has turned into direct requests for my number, coffee dates, etc. WHAT??? Since when in my life does this EVER happen? I find it profoundly uncomfortable to go into a blushing stammer and to say thanks, but I’m in a relationship, isn’t that nice of you, as my heart pounds and I try to sensitively extricate myself from the conversation and wonder what I did wrong, or if I’m supposed to change my personality now, or something.

Yesterday I went on a little spring stroll after class to my favorite jewelry store in Newton Centre, Silver Woman, and fell in love with this little blue topaz ring:

(What’s that you say? I’m never going to have a future as a hand model?)

The price tag was less than you’d pay for a sushi dinner, and as I put it on the fourth finger of my left hand I realized exactly what I was doing. I had just purchased a “this isn’t a diamond but it is a stone I’m wearing on that finger, and it might communicate something to someone who assumes I’m single and available. Then again, it might not. Either way, I love the ring and the blue of the stone reminds me of someone’s eyes in the sunlight. So hang it all, I’m going to wear it for me.”

All this STUFF around rings and their meanings and all the protocol around when and who buys them and how much you spend and what things should look like strikes me as mostly uptight, old-fashioned hooey. But however much that may be true, a ring on the fourth finger of the left hand is a powerful symbol in our culture, and I’ve stuck one on there by way of saying, “My heart belongs to the whole world, but my romantic and relational energies are, at this time, invested in one significant other.”

Interesting.

The Crazy Hat In Question

Back on Jan. 15th I wrote about wearing a crazy hat to a graveside service by request of the family. The entry is here. Some of you wrote in asking for a visual, and today I remembered to snap a photo. Here is the Crazy Hat, for your amusement or horror. Remember that I wore it with a sombre, long, black wool coat and gloves: