Pop-Culture | Posted by A. on 09/2/2010
Hemp Necklaces Can Be Hot Too
A hempless Leighton Meester: Comfortable?
I was perusing the September issue of Teen Vogue and came across an article about hair, featuring Leighton Meester, one of the stars of Gossip Girl. The piece seemed inoffensive…until the second sentence:
“But ask [Meester] about her own high school days, and she readily admits she wasn’t exactly an upper-East side sophisticate. ‘I had glasses, unplucked eyebrows, and I wore hemp necklaces!’ she confesses. ‘It’s only recently that I’ve gotten comfortable in my own skin.’”
Does this make anyone else a little bit mad?
What was the most aggravating to me was that the author implied strongly that Meester dressed like that BECAUSE she had no self-confidence. She wore glasses, hemp necklaces, and didn’t pluck her eyebrows because she wasn’t confident. Apparently, everyone who wears glasses hasn’t “gotten comfortable in [their] own skin” yet… such as totally amazing women like Tina Fey or Lisa Loeb? Also conversely to her statement, people who are particularly confident might wear hemp necklaces because it’s an unpopular style, as opposed to less self-assured people being afraid to take a fashion risk. And the eyebrows… it’s a person’s choice, to pluck or not to pluck. There are people out there blessed with natural, no-pluck-needed eyebrows. Maybe Meester is one of the lucky few.
You can be as unconfident as anything and wear the hottest, most popular clothes, contacts, pluck (or even wax!) your eyebrows, and wear, uh, un-hemp necklaces and you STILL won’t be comfortable in your own skin. Or, you can wear all of those things and feel great about yourself!
I rarely look through Teen Vogue, but I know girls who revere it as a Bible of sorts. Will they stop wearing their glasses because Leighton Meester thinks that it makes them seem unconfident? I really hope not.
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Read other posts about: beauty and media, beauty magazines, beauty standards, Feminism, gender and confidence, Leighton Meester, media and body image, self confidence, Teen Vogue
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Hannah @ at 12:31 pm, September 2nd, 2010
I don’t see any reason to think that Leighton Meester is trying to say that all girls who have unplucked eyebrows and glasses aren’t comfortable with themselves. In fact, taking her words about herself and pretending that she’s purposefully applying them to all girls is a complete fallacy. It’s just that, for her, those characteristics that she described serve as such a contrast to her demeanor and style now. If we take at face value that who she is now is who she was “meant to be,” an assertion that she seems to be implying, then it’s funny (in an endearing, I-did-that-too! kind of way) that she ever tried so hard to be something she was not.
Many women would have it the other way around: “I tried wearing high heels and tons of makeup every day! Isn’t that funny? Clearly I didn’t know who I was yet.” Or, “in high school, I went cheerleader-cutesy for about three years. I just wasn’t comfortable with myself yet!” Mine is, “I tried artsy-fartsy indie-chic for a couple years before realizing that it was only partially true to me, and that I was selling myself short!” This is, I hope, not seen as a condemnation of anyone with muted band T-shirts and thick-rimmed glasses. I’ve just realized that bright colors and twirly skirts are more my style.
There’s any number of possible permutations. Most women (and most men, though it’s often less obvious) have a period of trying too hard, and they are allowed to end up at pretty-and-plucked if they want to. It doesn’t make them wrong.
Zahira S @ at 2:21 pm, September 2nd, 2010
I don’t think she was saying Leighton herself, I think she meant the person writing the article.
A @ at 3:04 pm, September 2nd, 2010
Zahira- thanks. I did mean the author more than Meester herself. Hannah- I agree that any style can be the one people feel comfortable with; I just thought that this author provided a very closed-minded version of that.
GlenCoco @ at 4:53 pm, September 2nd, 2010
As someone who wears glasses, has unplucked eyebrows, loves hemp necklaces, and is confident in her own skin, I’m pretty offended by this. I think people who have their own sense of style and don’t necessarily conform to fashion norms seem more comfortable with themselves than people who are concerned with constantly being stylish.
Emily @ at 8:23 pm, September 4th, 2010
I think she’s saying the opposite – that the reason she didn’t feel comfortable then is that she had glasses and eyebrows and hemp necklaces, and that she’s only been self-confident since she started conforming to our society’s beauty standards.
Although that would mean something mildly different, it’s equally problematic in that she sees self-confidence as a result of being stereotypically beautiful.
Sid @ at 9:52 pm, September 15th, 2010
Going to a new school, I ditched my tomboy clothes for more femme looking attire, make up and plucked eyebrows.
I was still shy, awkward, and the social outcast. The clothes do not make the person.
I have since gone mostly back to my tomboy ways and I feel SOOO MUCH better.
wrinkles @ at 7:12 am, September 16th, 2010
I admire the dedication you put into your weblog. I wish I’d the same drive