facial cosmetics, gender myths, gender rigidity, venezuela, what i believe
yesterday i was grateful for football with my brother...
today i am looking forward to yoga with anne...
i have, as readers of this blog will know, been contemplating upping my makeup game... but i find the world of facial cosmetics daunting... i have resolved to begin experimenting, first with concealers and foundations and go from there... yesterday i read an article on skin tints...
Golden Hour 24HR Lightweight Skin Tint with Hyaluronic Acid - Armani Beauty | Sephora
What it is: A skin tint that immediately plumps, smooths, and illuminates skin, delivering buildable coverage with a weightless texture and glowing finish.
i thought this might be a place to start... and then i realized that i have a tinting sunscreen from La Roche Possey... i decided to use it and watch in the mirror as i applied it... i currently hav a blemish above my lip... when i applied the sunscreen it became almost invisible... what joy, light touch makeup solutions might actually work for me... in today's selfie you will barely notice the blemish on the right, half way between the bottom of my nostril and the top of my lip... new journey beginning...
reading another few pages in gender trash from hell this morning thoughts were provoked by gender myth #1...
Although male-to-female transsexuals have surgery to change their anatomy and take female hormones, they still act like men.
this of, of course, is not rigidly true... the answer to this myth is...
Fact: Some male-to-female transsexuals act in ways many consider masculine; some don't. the same can be said of non-transsexual women. In fact, some types of "masculine" behavior in non-transsexual women are applauded in the lesbian and women's communities, while the same behavior in a strnssexual woman is taken as proof that she is "really" a man. Labeling behaviors as masculine and feminine is of little practical value and only reinforces gender stereotypes>
in my limited trans-feminine experience i find this largely to be true... i have not personally experienced being thought a man because of my masculine like behaviors, but i am also not, in my own mind, a woman... i think of myself as femman, or a womanly man... i am perhaps more cross dresser than trans-woman... i love wearing lipstick and skirts and dresses and prefer what i consider to be a more feminine attitude towards the world...
i don't find labeling behaviors as masculine or feminine to be as much the issue as rigidly applied behavior labeling... all men behave and look this way... all women behave and look that way... all transgender people behave and look this or that way... if i have learned anything in my experience, i am a fluid creature and i think that is true of most of us... western civilization, especially as expressed in the united states, and especially as expressed by the current horrific administration, gives rise to all kinds of rigidities... gender rigidity is one of them... as a united states citizen, i think of our culture as having a marilyn monroe - marlboro man complex... too many of us believe in uber femininity and uber masculinity as the template of how men and women should be...
i prefer to think of the continuum that is masculine-feminine in the way of yinyang... which is an ever changing gendered configuration which sometimes emphasizes masculine or feminine and other times blurs the distinction between the two... in fact, it is generally held in the philosophy of yinyang that society is out of balance if the masculine or the feminine dominates too completely for too long...
the venezuelan shit show... coming to a tv near you...
[heather cox richardson](https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-4-2026?selection=15a3a201-baeb-4ebd-8422-a6c0a9d021a6&r=3lmw0&utm_medium=ios0
When Stephanopoulos asked why the administration thought it didn’t need congressional authorization for the strikes, Rubio said they didn’t need congressional approval because the U.S. did not invade or occupy another country. The attack, he said, was simply a law enforcement operation to arrest Maduro. Rubio said something similar yesterday, but Trump immediately undercut that argument by saying the U.S. intended to take over Venezuela’s oil fields and run the country.
i won't dwell on what a horrible development this is... we are at a critical moment... 47's administration is loosing its grip... they are showing every sign of being desperate and trying to move the authoritarian project forward as quickly as possible... before the midterm elections... i count myself among those who believe that...
the administration will move to consolidate hemispheric dominance and is already threatening greenland and mexico... unless republicans in congress grow a spine, this will continue...
the administration will, sooner or later, return to the project of deploying the military within our borders...
the next 3-9 months are critical to the survival of democracy...
some photos from this morning...
![20260105-IMG_1131]%28https://bear-images.sfo2.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/dailyme/20260105-img_1131.webp "fishkill creek rapids and falls before sunrise"%29
![20260105-IMG_1128]%28https://bear-images.sfo2.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/dailyme/20260105-img_1128.webp "man with back turned under a gas pump canopy... the loneliness of modernity?")
