AMEN! AMEN!

this is a picture from her dorm room. Just kill me now, please.  

This is so wonderful I had to paste it here.  I read Rookie obsessively, so I don't see how I missed this - but this article by the wonderful Gabby Noon hits so many points I've been thinking about lately that it's almost scary.

I’ve always been apprehensive about milestones. When I got my period for the first time, I did not burst out in Judy Blume-worthy tears of joy; I cried in horror. Bye, childhood, I thought. FOREVER. It’s been fun, but now I have to go do adult things, like my taxes and laundry. Also, wow, I’m really articulate for a 12-year-old. The truth is that getting your period doesn’t make you a woman. Neither does having a bat mitzvah or a quinceañera or a sweet 16. There is no definitive moment after which you wake up and trade in your novelty-print romper for a beige pantsuit and feel ready for every conceivable responsibility, because maturing is a lifelong process.

I’m 19, which means I am no longer legally a child, but I’m still a teenager, and I personally can’t abide the thought of myself as a full-fledged adult. It’s not that I’m afraid of growing up—I’m just not exactly skipping down the path to maturity. I consider part of me grown-up—the part that works multiple jobs, goes to college, takes care of sick family members, and successfully orders a pizza over the phone without anxiety (FINALLY). The other part of me is a total kid. I likeHey Arnold! and clothing emblazoned with baby animals. Sometimes I feel like I should cover my own eyes during sex scenes in movies. I have a desk drawer devoted to glitter and food-shaped erasers, and I can’t seem to ask a stranger for help without raising my voice a few octaves higher. Yes, I wear adorable vintage glasses and enjoy baking, but I also hold down jobs and vote in elections. Like my fellow Rookie Danielle said, just because I’m childlike doesn’t mean I am childish. I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.

When I started college this year, I made some new friends, and what started out as good-natured teasing about my quirkiness (a word I’ll come back to later) began to feel like a dig after a while. Quirky seemed to apply to anything I wanted to do, from baking a pie to trimming my bangs. A couple months ago my (admittedly delightful) dorm room was featured in Teen Vogue. My campus blog wrote what I’m sure was meant to be a flattering nod to the piece, but when they said I was “majoring in adorable,” I worried that I was being defined by a frivolous interest in style. Around that same time I told a friend about my plan to at a bakery so I could wear cute aprons, and she didn’t take it as the joke I intended it to be. “Don’t manic-pixie yourself,” she warned.

She was referring, of course, to the trope of the the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG), a recurring character in film and television. The MPDG is an adult woman who embodies a youthful free-spiritedness that many find grating. The term was coined by film critic Nathan Rabin, who describes her as “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” He cites Kirsten Dunst’s character inElizabethtown and Natalie Portman’s in Garden State as two prime examples. Other common traits of MPDGs: a tendency to wear vintage clothing, a playful personality, an interest in minor disturbances of the peace, and, oh yeah, no inner life or ambitions of her own. Also, they’re usually white and thin and big-eyed andadorable. (This video breaks the trope down perfectly.) I’d read about MPDGs in a few articles and on a few blogs, and then started seeing it in interent comments and Instagram bios. And now it had become a real-life thing, and was being applied to me.

On a purely superficial level, I guess you could say I match the description. My haircut is very similar to that of Zooey Deschanel, an actress who is often blasted as the MPDG poster girl. And to be honest, before I really thought about what the MPDG archetype means in terms of women and agency and all that, I was as obsessed with them as their love-struck suitors tend to be. They dress whimsically, like to have fun, live in adorable apartments, go on dates, and did I mention FUN? In middle school, when I watched Stranger Than Fiction, in which Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Ana Pascal, a kooky baker who runs a “weekly evil-conspiracy and needlepoint group,” I wanted to be just like her. And I’ll admit that I coveted Zooey’s perfect bangs and her wardrobe of retro cotton dresses in(500) Days of Summer. (SIDE NOTE: If we’re going to play Six Degrees of Manic Pixie Dream Girl, I believe Elf subverts the phenomenon: Will Ferrell plays a totally whimsical man-child who shows the jaded, deadpan Zooey Deschanel (!) how to loosen up and enjoy life. But it was released several years before the MPDG was identified and analyzed to death.)

But just because I like cute stuff doesn’t mean I’m shallow, or that I live to make guys feel more adventurous and deep. For example, I would never ask a guy to lie down in the street with me and look at the stars, because I don’t want to get hit by a car. I’m way too cynical to ever fall in love with a boy over a mixtape. And to be honest I find cupcakes kind of stupid. (I get the convenience factor, but prefer cake slices, which give you an even distribution of frosting and cake in every bite.)

My point is, likening real-life women to MPDGs is offensive. It implies that our habits and interests are affectations designed to attract dudes and change theirlives. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl does not actually exist—she is by definition a fantasy. We should only be using the phrase to criticize one-dimensional characters in fiction. Otherwise, it’s just another way to put women down. Calling an actual living girl a MPDG because she likes traditionally domestic things like baking is akin to calling a girl a bitch because she’s confident or a slut because she enjoys sex. It’s just a derisive, limiting label, often applied as the Q-word. “Oh, what’s that? You crochet small replicas of fruit? How quirky!” (Never mind that crochet is an interest you’ve had since you were little and that brought you closer to your grandmother.) “You’re wearing that polka-dot dress again? Your style issooo quirky.” “Whoa! You’re eating yogurt? Quirky! I have no idea why, but you have pink streaks in your hair so, I’m just assuming.”

There are many things I do that no one would describe as cute, including: interrupting people mid-sentence to share my opinion, being judgmental, and writing furiously on the feminist themes of Sei Shōnagon’s The Pillow Book. But there are other tendencies that I don’t know if I want to let go of, like figuring out how many ways I can incorporate Funfetti cake mix into my diet or embroidering portraits of my favorite pop stars.

Maybe one day you’ll find nothing but black turtlenecks in my closet and green juice in my fridge, who knows? In the meantime, though, I’m not bad at being a woman (or a feminist) if I’m not embodying the refined courage of Eleanor Roosevelt combined with the fierce independence of Beyoncé combined with the physical strength of Xena: Warrior Princess. My tastes are not designed to attract disaffected men whose lives lack zing. They’re definitely partly an attempt to cling to my childhood—or, to be more precise, to hold on to my enthusiasm for life. But honestly, who cares? If I want to be curious and goofy and make crafts, who’m I hurting? I’m not “manic-pixie-ing myself,” so please don’t manic-pixie me. ♦

I'm imagining some kind of exercise video of people in 80's suits waving business cards around while the leader shouts, "Network! Network!"

I'm trying to figure lots of serious life things out right now.  Success has been moderate. I have a hard time ever coming to solid conclusions about anything.  But there is one thing I know for certain: Self-promotion is kind of awful. 

As a person who wants to have an "arts" career, it's an unfortunate necessity.  You have to be known to a certain degree to get work.  But there's an interesting balance between doing self-promotion for work and doing it for pleasure and doing it just to be self-centered.  And since I'm beginning to truly understand the value of my time, it seemed like a thing worth considering.

I have always blogged (and blogged and blogged and blogged)  purely for my own pleasure.  Really, I started doing it because my dad said it would improve my writing. I never expect followers or anything to come of it.  My intentions have always been, I think, about as pure as intentions can ever really be in this area. 

Self promotion for work is another thing.  It's necessary, yes - but it also seems somewhat insincere.  I don't think people are fooled by 100% commercially motivated "sharing."  I don't want to do it anyways.  It sounds boring.

Totally self-centered social media stuff makes me tired.  There's a girl I'm friends with on Facebook who posts an ENDLESS stream of selfies.  Selfies from vacation, selfies with friends, on and on and on. I've never unfriended anyone before, but there's a first for everything. 

However, I think I know how I can self-promote - heck, how I can do work in general! - that isn't pointless drivel. 

Things for a cause.  There are so many things that I care about, so many people I want to help - yet I am perpetually stumped as to how to do so. But about five minutes ago I thought, "DUH! Use the skills you're learning in school! Instead of just drawing pictures for practice, draw pictures of people you want the world to know more about!  Make posters for great causes! Send drawings to people who you think are doing great things for the world, to let them know you're thankful!"

I'm all excited and happy now! Yay!

Beam me up PLEASE

Okay, so my family went and saw the new Star Trek movie the other day. And it was great in the way all J.J. Abrams movies are - I walked out going, "I didn't actually notice if that movie had any substance because it was a MOVIE!"  You know what I mean?  Super 8 was the same way.  I get overwhelmed by the movie-ness of it all.  

But! Because my dad is, apparently, a big nerd, we immediately went home and watched The Wrath of Kahn. (Which incidentally was like watching paint dry after the BANG EXPLOSION BIG SHIP WOW! of Star Trek: Into Darkness.) And then after that we had to watch the first Star Trek episode where Khan was introduced.  And it was...

Well, you know, cheesy as heck - but also AMAZING and MAGICAL.  LOOK AT THAT COLOR!!!!  Every color palette I do for a good while is going to be based on this.  I'm dead serious. I hope I can figure out a way to replicate that Technicolor gloriousness. Thank you thank you thank you dad.

I do have some questions though.
Why do the shields of the ship never seem to do much? And why do they always fail? Someone's always yelling, "Shields at 14 percent, captain!"  WHY on ships that big do things like the engine room or the bridge seem so ludicrously vulnerable??  The first hit from enemy guns always takes out like half of the incidental people in the bridge.  And guys who work in the engine room must have a life expectancy of like 25 years. And WHY are things like life support for the bridge so easy for the bad guys to hit with their guns? What is taking up all this extra space in these ships? Mini golf ranges for when they get bored? Or, like, tons of red shirted engine workers all in suspended animation to be awoken when they need to be replenished?  I don't understand.

But, in closing - a story.
Once my uncle Craig was chatting with a mexican compadre about Star Trek, and he said to the guy, "Have you noticed something about Star Trek, man?  There are no Mexicans.  YOUR RACE IS DOOMED!!!"

Sweet, sweet moolah.

Yesterday, I won art school.

Or, at least that's what I am told.  The long and short of it is (get ready for some completely unsubtle boasting):

•  I won a lot of money for that pair of drawings.  
• And I also sold those drawings.  
• And my mom bragged about it all to a manager-like woman at Olive Garden when we were having celebratory dinner, and I got a $20 gift card out of it. It was amazing. 

So yesterday, also, was apparently Give Kelsey Money day.

I'm not the sort that wins things, so it's all very weird.  Even my family, each member of which thinks, unaccountably, that I'm great was shocked. 

The truly marvelous thing about this is that I won't have to fret so much about MONEY for the next year. School will be paid for, or nearly so.  You can't imagine what a relief this is. I'm infinitely more happy about the stress it will remove from my life than any of the supposed glory of it. 

  I'm taking it all not as a sign that I'm brilliant at this (because I know I'm not) but as a sign that I am, at least, on the right path. I feel like more doors would be closing if I wasn't supposed to be doing this.

The Music Man

Arg... this one could have been done in 20, but I kept fiddling.  But I'm actually pretty pleased with it! In the name of speed, I took a picture of my hand with Photo Booth, tossed it into Illustrator and did a rough outline thing. Good fun.
I'm kind of a sap for the Music Man.  I know it's the most hodge-podgy, dreadful musical on earth, but I don't care.

Some Shakes.

Nowhere near as good as the last one, but! They exist.

Hamlet is, weirdly, one of my favorite Shakespeare plays.  I think it's easier to understand than Macbeth or some of the other more commonly read tragedies. Though, call me shallow, but I'll nearly always see a comedy over a tragedy.  Back when I lived in San Diego, my dad and I saw a production of Twelfth Night at the Old Globe, and it was by far the best piece of theatre I've ever seen. It made me nearly cry from  laughing.  It was set on the Italian Riviera in the 1950's.  So you can imagine.

Not going to lie, the Midsummer Night's Dream one took longer than 20 minutes.  (Which, incidentally, is the amount of time I'm thinking of making this design-or-draw-something-super-fast thing allow.  We'll see what happens.)

So THERE!

Admittedly, I am not a fan of this musical - and whether you like it or not, you have to admit it will never be right without Carol Burnett.  But! I went and saw a quite decent production of it at my school last year.  Sadly, however, like most of the printed material at my school, the poster sucked.  I wanted to prove to myself that in twenty minutes I could come up with and execute a better concept.
This is by no means perfect - but, sadly, I did prove myself right.

I may have to make this a Thing.  15 minute posters.  Think of a play or story and see what's the best idea I can come up with and execute in 15 minutes or less.  That might be very fun indeed.  And good for the creative muscles, what?