girl talk thursday friday: wearing awesome stuff

I haven't written an entry for Girl Talk Thursday in… 29 weeks. That's more than two, which is a lot. I'm chiming in on this one 'cause it's a thing that buzzes around in my brain a lot but rarely comes to the forefront of my thoughts, and I'm trying to change that. 'Cause feeling sexy/powerful/awesome is, well, awesome, and what I'm wearing hella crazy affects whether I feel those ways. (This is something I possibly only became aware of in the past 3 years. Guys, it's an excellent thing to be aware of. Even if it leads me to arrive late to every social event I'm nervous about [aka most of them] 'cause I feel that if I can just find the perfect outfit, everything else will fall into place.) So, what makes me feel sexy/powerful/awesome?


Dresses + heels. This one occasionally makes the feminist in me want to punch the Universe in the face, but for serious, strangers treat me differently -- more respectfully and graciously -- when I bother to put on a well-fitting dress and a pair of heels. This leads to my feeling like some kind of adult human being, which is an elusive thing for me so I sorta bask in it when it happens.

Cute bras that fit really well. Okay, so I'm busty. You might think this is auto-awesome. But with the wrong bra, it's less sexy and more saggy/slouchy. For years I thought that my only two choices were to a) wear a cute, padded, boob-wrangling bra that fits poorly and makes me uncomfortable or b) wear a huge, full-coverage, unpadded bra that technically fits but makes me feel like an old lady. And then I spent two hours trying on everything in Macy's lingerie department that seemed vaguely cute and me-sized, regardless of price. I tried a few different band and cup sizes with each brand and model, 'cause even with sizes that are ostensibly measured in something so concrete as inches, there was noticeable variance. And I found a couple bras that are cute and fit me, both, and I splurged on them and brought my lunch to work a few extra times over the next few weeks. They make my clothes fit better. Seriously, best time & money ever spent.

Weird jewelry. My day-to-day jewelry collection is a conglomeration of odd things I've made wearable (like old keys, transistors, and bits of ribbon), geeky handmade things (like my glass squid pendant or typewriter key earrings), and artsy things I inherited from my mother (think deco nouveau). I love feeling creative, supporting independent artists, and wearing things that have stories and memories behind them. And I suppose this is a little postmodern of me, but I love featuring the beauty of everyday objects. Things don't have to be new or expensive to be pretty! And when I wear weird jewelry as ornaments to classy work outfits, I feel less like The Man.

Chunky boots. I know, this is so 1995 of me, but I heart my Docs and riding boots. Steel toes and one-inch heels make me feel like I can take on the world.


So what do you wear that makes you feel sexy/powerful/awesome?

consumerism wow: underpants

If you, like me, enjoy wearing ladies' underpants, perhaps you will be interested in these fine-looking products that I've been coveting.


I think that a lot of slogany t-shirts are silly. I don't really want people stopping what they're doing to read my chest! And what if they, having stopped to read my chest, think that my sense of humor is dumb and then have negative feelings about my me and my chest? Yeah, I'll take some graphical images on my t-shirts. But by the time someone has gotten to the point where they're going to see my underpants, man, it's a brave new world! They can take all the time they want to read any hilarious slogans they find there. And chances are that if they've gotten my pants into the "off" position, either they share my sense of humor or kindly tolerate it. I will take all of the slogany underpants. I like these "I'm blogging this." slogany underpants in particular because they are so blatantly untrue. Yes, I want my underpants to lie to you. By ThinkGeek (who are good people), these cost $7.99 apiece and ship via UPS, and come in a few other slogans.


Right now I really, really want this silly thong with lace and cupcakes by Honeydew. I have a pair of pineapple ruffly underpants from them, and they're not what I'd call strictly practical, but they. are. so. cute. (Like these strawberry ruffly underpants, but with pineapples instead [hungry model girl not included].) Any underpants that make me wanna shake my butt whenever I apply them are, according to me, Ultimate Underpants. The waistbands in that ruffly rumba style of theirs run a little tight, but their mesh boy short style is crazy stretchy and flattering. I'm betting that this thong is nice & stretchy, too. It'll set you back $14.00, and ships via your choice of UPS or USPS. (A Note of Warning: Honeydew's website is the worst site I've attempted to deal with since possibly Geocities. Maybe you want to do like I did and find these in your local Nordstrom, Dillard's, or Bloomies.)


Now, unlike the abovementioned companies, Lucy B is one I've had no experience with -- I heard about them through PinupGirlClothing.com, which I sometimes love for Internet window shopping. But Lucy B works with hugely crushable & perpetually cheery cheesecake model Bernie Dexter, and they make underpants with pulp comics on them, so I figure they've gotta be rad. (These also come in a style with fuller coverage and leopard-print side panels, but the only photograph of them is teensy, so I can't properly covet them. The photograph has made me covet adorable pinup models in laundry carts, however.) They run $32.00 (eesh) apiece, and ship via USPS Priority for a flat rate of $7.00.


And hey, a note to readers: If you own anything that I've featured on Consumerism Wow, let me know how it's working out for you! (Y'know, how's the quality? Do you get comments about it?) If you send me a picture of yourself with/wearing the product, I'll post it! Unless the product is underpants. I am sure you are a lovely person with many good qualities, but I do not want to receive any pictures of you in your underpants, no matter how completely rad those underpants happen to be. (Exceptions made ONLY for underpants being worn superhero-style. I'm talking superhero-style like Batman circa The Animated Series, not like Emma Frost circa her entire existence. One of these characters is a triflin' ho, and the other is a triflin' ho who dresses like she's proud of it. Moral of the story: Emulate Batman, kids; he's a classy ho.)

Also, if you're a person who makes something that, according to an educated hunch, you think I'd dig, tell me about it! After all, I cannot be everywhere on the Internet all the time. I'm not Warren Ellis. Doesn't matter if you're an independent crafter rather than a big ol' store -- I'd love to feature some homemade products!

consumerism wow: smelly stuff

At some point in my early 20s, I decided that some girly things -- such as the color pink (especially on Xbox controllers), glitter (especially on stickers that you put on Xbox controllers), and froofy bath products (entirely unrelated to Xbox controllers) -- actually are awesome. This decision extended to perfume once I discovered that some perfumes don't smell like old ladies and won't ever be forcibly applied to my eyeballs by helpful saleswomen in department stores. Soon after, I discovered that some perfumes are made by geeks, for geeks, and I was done for. Guys, I have a perfume stash. And I want more. Right now, specifically:


The limited edition perfume oil Smut 2010 by Elizabeth Barrial at the goth/dork-chic Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (BPAL). Beth puts out several sets of limited edition scents every year, in addition to the several hundred general catalog scents she sells at BPAL (and Twilight Alchemy Lab, Dark Delicacies, the CBLDF, and etc.). Smut is from her Lupercalia line, which will be available until March 31st this year. She does a Lupercalia line every year, but hasn't put out a version of Smut for the past two or three, and I was starting to panic that she'd gotten bored with it and wasn't going to bring it back. Because it smells like sugar & musk and everything nice naughty, and I need it for life. Though it's way too powerful for day wear, it's my favorite scent to wear at night with something slinky if I'm heading to a bar or out dancing. A 5 ml bottle runs $17.50 and should be used so, so sparingly that it'll last for years. (Though BPAL does offer samples -- imp's ears -- of its general catalog for $3.50 apiece or 6 for $19.50, no such thing is available for limited edition scents. But you can find fan-decanted samples on ebay & etc., and if you're in the Atlanta or LA/Burbank areas, you can sniff & sample everything at monthly Will Calls, on or near the full moon, of course. [Hint: The next full moon is this weekend, folks.]) Ordering from the website will garner a couple random imp's ears per bottle purchased, and shipping (via USPS) will run you a flat $6.50 and may take a few weeks, as they hand-blend everything fresh and always have orders in queue.


Okay, I sorta cheated the concept of Consumerism Wow with that last one 'cause I've sampled previous versions of Smut, but here's a thing I've been properly admiring from afar: the entire line of Brooke's Villainess scents, though perhaps particularly Blood, Villainess, Shanghaied, Ginger Snapped, Dulces en Fuego, Jai Mahal, Pearl Diver, and Silk & Cyanide. Also falling under the category of goth/dork-chic, the inspirations for the Villainess line are a wee bit less esoteric than BPAL's tend to be, but, y'know, I'm not always looking for my perfumes to challenge my vocabulary and reading level. And they offer a good bit of their general catalog not only as $16-a-pop perfume oils in holy-whoa-kickass apothecary bottles, but also as bars of soap (hiIhaveasoapfetish), and jars of soft soap, body scrub, lotion, and masque. They also do limited edition thingies, and offer samples of their scents in soap format for a buck apiece (and two come free with every order). Shipping (via USPS) should run you the actual cost of shipping an item of the weight of your order to the address where you want to receive it.


My third, incongruously ungothy scent desire is a great deal of what Christopher Brosius creates for his CB I Hate Perfume line (mostly Russian Caravan Tea, Memory of Kindness, and November, but really I want to sniff them all). Brosius is also the dude responsible for my-favorite-person-ever-Alan Cumming's tongue-so-much-in-cheek-it-looks-like-a-rude-gesture scent line, Cumming [video link to hilarious adorable commercial], which is how I heard of CB I Hate Perfume a couple years back. (Cumming seems to be out of scent-print now, though is still available if you poke around for it.) And THAT is how I came to spend perhaps a few hours obsessively clicking through every scent note on the CB site. If I had a time-traveling pogo stick and whole moneypile sitting around that I had nothing in particular planned for, I'd so totally pogo up to New York and buy myself a custom-blended scent as of a couple years ago, and it'd smell like cookies baking + scotch + earl grey tea + sexylady. But lacking such a moneypile (and the skills necessary to pogo 878 miles and through time), I'll merely consider ordering one each (over the course of, say, the next 50 years) of his 2-ml "travel size" perfume samples, which run $12-$21 and ship via UPS.