No, I won’t be going to bed with remnants of highlight and blush on my face. How else will people be prompted to approach me and say, “how do you have such great skin?” It’ll give me a chance to smile sweetly and say something intoxicatingly annoying like, “oh I don’t know, just drink water, I suppose,” because we’ve reached a stalemate where being imperfectly perfect and flawlessly flawed is unhinged but desirable. It’s some kind of happy medium that allows even the most severe cases of commitment issues to commit to an aesthetic.
Relatability has become a checklist of whether or not you consume media and adopt trends like the rest of us. It’s all “but have you read My Year of Rest and Relaxation” and “do you not emotionally identify with Taylor Swift?” and “well, if you’re going to have a depressive episode at least make sure you have a bite of dark chocolate before you take your first shower this week.” Drink your fourth iced white mocha with sweet cream foam and extra caramel drizzle. Talk to your adoring fans behind the mirror as you walk through your no-makeup makeup look. Find your only sense of individuality in a Tiktok that stole its punchline from a stan account on Twitter. For me, personally and aesthetically, and ideally, those things are simply not sexy enough to make it into my memoir.
What defines sexiness as something worth writing about? Sexy as an attitude. Sexy in association with alluring thoughts and comedic timing. Sexy is a state of mind rather than a matter of being. It’s dressing inappropriately for the weather and not showing an ounce of regret because my emotional attachment to cardigans is more pressing than feeling faint from the beginnings of heat exhaustion. It’s pulling the sleeves over my wrist and hiking my teddy bear tote higher on my shoulder. Wearing two pairs of lettuce socks, so my Mary Jane platforms don’t slip off while I walk around my quaint college town. It’s buying books with pretty covers even though I prefer to read digitally because their weight in my bag is nothing more than decoration. It’s having a rotation of Mitski, Odette, and Mysie playing through my earbuds just low enough in case someone (anyone) takes the three seconds to compliment “the whole Pinterest academia peasant-core thing I have going on.”
I’m biding my time for the day “best-selling author” makes its permanent home in my Instagram bio. I have more years to travel, and with that, more opportunities to browse the curated collections of bookstores deep in the heart of cultural centers where the only thing lost, and beautiful is translation. As for the present? I have all the elements necessary for someone who was once active—who still maybe, but will fervently deny it. Mind you—on Tumblr with an account dedicated to prose and analysis. An appreciation for literature, a novel in the works, access to R.F. Kuang’s unreleased book in exchange for an honest review, a preference for typing in all lowercase, and a creative writing minor. Sexiness in theory. Isn’t that lovely?
My memoir won’t detail my early childhood. There are no records of my birth. Photographic evidence of my relaxed hair, leggings under booty shorts, and eight-year braces sentence do not exist. I find that the most compelling coming-of-age stories are not documented during the moment interesting things occur. Life—and I mean memoir-worthy living—begins and belongs to the most unhinged thing you can be: twenty-something. Take Alexa Demie, for example, somehow witnessing history with such eternal nonchalance and silent youthfulness. What did she do in her twenties? I don’t know; probably picked through a platter of pastries while Marie Antoinette said, “let them eat cake,” with a single selfie to commemorate the event. Every action I take is curated to later guide a storyboard for an A24 film where I am simultaneously nothing and exactly like a character fleshed out by the likes of Salley Rooney and Raven Leilani. I go to an art school and write for a fashion column. That setting alone is free real estate for a six-episode limited series. But as is true for any great adaptation, the book comes first.
Words by Bri Shufford @briavvna
Graphic by Aarushi Menon @aarushimenon2205