Girl With A Pearl Earring

Ladylike, but make it millennial. 

Wearing: Paloma Wool Leandra shirt, Lili Claspe The Statement Molly hoops

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been enamored with the female body. With my own, the fascination began as a heightened awareness: underlying was social conditioning (inevitable), built over it was circumstance. As girls we’re taught that prettiness is our best quality, but vanity, the ugliest. (Pride is looked down upon, but taken advantage of.) Later as women, we’re shown that youth and sexuality become value and currency.

If other girls were aware, I was especially so. Being visibly different (“foreign”) changes the way you see the world. This is because of my mother, who fervently believed in the arts as a necessary yin in a world with too much yang.

I saw these things as they were and yet in spite of it—or because of it—I have the utmost admiration for it, her. Ballet taught grace, strength, a deep understanding of your body. How to command it, how to refine it so it appears effortless—but also so it mimics the other women in the room. Piano drilled posture: lengthen your spine, relax the hips. Salsa showed the art of illusion: how to bend, stretch, or twist to exaggerate curves. Art bred an attention to detail—lines, shapes, shadows—but also allowed the freedom to interpret. The human eye instinctively blurs any imperfections to ameliorate dissonance, after all, which is why art exists as it does. Who else but a woman—the physical embodiment of creation, beauty, hope—could inspire centuries of poetry, paintings, scores of symphonies? Only art could capture the feminine.

The divine.

Which is why now more than ever it’s important to fight for it, her, us. Here’s how you can make a difference.

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xx