strength « ann rosenquist fee

Isolation really magnifies any ideological conflicts you’ve got going on, because you can’t put them on the back burner any more, just there you are with your conflicts. Because you can step back from the mirror and quit looking at your pores but you cannot step back from your brain right now and I can’t go one more day without speaking up about my recent embracing of shimmer powder. Here is an infographic to school you the same way Ejay at Nova Academy of Beauty schooled me.

I’d booked an hour with Ejay because I wanted to support my young friend’s pursuit of a profession I consider absofuckinglutely essential. I was ready for a dramatic update, like maybe a matte lip or a metallic eye. However. Nothing in my extensive makeup-wearing curriculum vitae prepared me for the application of shimmer to places not considered, by women of my generation, to be places you make up.

Inner conflict arose immediately, because I knew it looked great but didn’t know why. It was equal parts “mermaid” and “power.” It made me feel like a boss but also like a suggestively frosted cupcake.

I’m like, this is so bizarre and specific, it has to be one of those things like how white people in the 16th Century made their faces even whiter to signal that they were upper-class I-do-not-labor-in-the-sun people. Or how the blushy lips and cheeks of the 1950s suggested the physiology of arousal. A quick search yielded zero dissertations on the topic, presumably because this is all too new and analyses are still underway. To fill that void, I suggest that whereas the red-lippy pink-cheeky faces of the 1950s essentially signaled readiness for penetration, the shimmer-powder-wearing ladyfaces of today signal afterglow. Allll done. Good to go so you might as well get up and make me a sandwich.

My conflict at this point isn’t about whether or not we should be conveying that, because for sure, it’s progress. My conflict is that since eye corners/nose bridge/top-of-lip don’t feel like normal places for makeup, I’m afraid I’ll forget the rules and put it somewhere arbitrary, signaling something weird. Like my earlobes which under no healthy circumstances are supposed to glow. Chaotic situations are best navigated by noting and following the rules, at first, until the proper steps are committed to muscle memory. So I guess that’s my plan in these times when we need illumination wherever we can get it.

The Strength card says, if it feels right, wear it.

The Strength card is about wearing your deep dark heart on your sleeve or on your neck or in your hair, wherever, just as long as it’s visible so you can see a little flash of the fact that you’ve got some depth and some balls and you will get through this. That’s all.

My mom used to have this friend who told her about a convent where they would take casket roses and roll the crushed petals until they looked like garnets, and then set them in a silver flower pin. So my mom did that with the petals off my dad’s casket and gave one to each of my sisters and me. That was a long time ago, and I honestly don’t know where the pin is right now, but I do remember that it’s quite a thing to wear that on your lapel. Nobody says a word about it, because why would they, who would remark on a dime-sized flower pin? Who would even notice it? They wouldn’t. They don’t, but you do, because every time you look down you see a little glimmer of casket. You feel a lot of things when you wear that, including strong.

This is what you’re going for today.

If you don’t have any casket roses, just find a couple of things that remind of you of your dark and light parts, and roll them together and see how it works to wear them at the same time. It might not feel easy but by the end of the day it should feel good.

Strength is sponsored by The St. Peter Food Co-Op & Deli, for obvious reasons, including that they sell the Vega Maca bar which is “renowned for its ability to balance, invigorate and energize…ancient native Peruvians used maca for thousands of years as both a food and a tonic, believing maca increased energy and stamina, improved fertility and enhanced libido.”

“I am eating one right now and I think it’s working,” says the Co-Op’s Emperess of Marketing Kris Higginbotham. Goodness.