Earrings For Women Quotes

...when you put on your shortest dress, please leave some mystery in it. That's the difference between a miniskirt and a ho-skirt. A ho-skirt shows your Frisbee. A miniskirt shows just enough to cause some mystery. What these young women lack is mystery.

Lick your lips, Griet." I licked my lips. "Leave your mouth open." I was so surprised by this request that my mouth remained open of its own will. I blinked back tears. Virtuous women did not open their mouths in paintings.

Women had little security other than jewelry, so even the poorest among us sported gold chains, earrings, and rings as their insurance.

I smoked while they compared booty. Things they took … nail polish, perfume, toilet paper. Things they were given … one-earrings, twenty hangers, torn bras. (Advice to cleaning women: Take everything that your lady gives you and say Thank you. You can leave it on the bus, in the crack.)

Oh, the odious wench. How I wish I were rid of her. I have always loathed women, from clew to earring; hook, line and sinker; root and branch. I always said this would happen, you remember; I was against it from the start. Damn it for a flibbertigibbet, the hussy.

Later on, still looking, she had tried to get involved with the Women's Community Center. She liked what they stood for but secretly wished they would wear just a little lipstick and shave their legs. She had been the only one in the room in full makeup, wearing pantyhose and earrings. She had wanted to belong, but when the woman suggested that next week they bring a mirror so they could all study their vaginas, she never went back.

Women always studied other women, and did so far more critically than men ever did. Men didn’t notice the run in their stocking, the lipstick on their teeth, the dated, outgrown haircut, the skirt that pulled unflattering across the hips, the paste earrings that were a touch too gaudy. Violet registered every flaw and knew every flaw that was being noted about her.

Checking the address, he knocked on the door. The door opened a crack. “We’re closed.” He recognized those violet eyes. His throat went dry. “Oh. You again.” Her eyes narrowed as she chuckled. “You must have women throwing themselves at you with lines like that. What are you doing here?” “I came to see if Flynn Enterprises has made an offer to buy your property.” His gaze wandered against his better judgement. On his ship, she’d been wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Now her curves were covered by a quality replica of a pirate’s frock coat, complete with deck boots, a bandana covering her hair, and a single hoop earring. “Didn’t take you for a pirate earlier today.” “You seriously came over here to talk to a stranger about private financial information, and then you have the balls to comment on her work attire?” She raised a brow. “We’re hardly strangers.” He struggled to hold back a smile and offered his hand. “I don’t think I introduced myself earlier. I’m Colton. Colton Hayes.” She looked at his hand and finally opened the door. “Skye Olson. And apparently I’m a glutton for punishment.

Folding her arms and closing her eyes, Hatsumi sank back into the corner of the seat. Her small gold earrings caught the light as the taxi swayed. Her midnight blue dress seemed to have been made to match the darkness of the cab. Every now and then her thinly daubed, beautifully formed lips would quiver slightly as if she had caught herself on the verge of talking to herself. Watching her, I could see why Nagasawa had chosen her as his special companion. There were any number of women more beautiful than Hatsumi, and Nagasawa could have made any of them his. But Hatsumi had some quality that could send a tremor through your heart. It was nothing forceful. The power she exerted was a subtle thing, but it called forth deep resonances. I watched her all the way to Shibuya, and wondered, without ever finding an answer, what this emotional reverberation that I was feeling could be. It finally hit me some dozen or so years later. I had come to Santa Fe to interview a painter and was sitting in a local pizza parlor, drinking beer and eating pizza and watching a miraculously beautiful sunset. Everything was soaked in brilliant red—my hand, the plate, the table, the world—as if some special kind of fruit juice had splashed down on everything. In the midst of this overwhelming sunset, the image of Hatsumi flashed into my mind, and in that moment I understood what that tremor of the heart had been. It was a kind of childhood longing that had always remained—and would forever remain—unfulfilled. I had forgotten the existence of such innocent, all-but-seared-in longing: forgotten for years to remember what such feelings had ever existed inside of me. What Hatsumi had stirred in me was a part of my very self that had long lain dormant. And when the realization struck me, it aroused such sorrow I almost burst into tears. She had been an absolutely special woman. Someone should have done something—anything—to save her. But neither Nagasawa nor I could have managed that. As so many of those I knew had done, Hatsumi reached a certain stage in her life and decided—almost on the spur of the moment—to end it. Two years after Nagasawa left for Germany, she married, and two years after that she slashed her wrists with a razor blade. It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had happened. His letter from Bonn said this: “Hatsumi’s death has extinguished something. This is unbearably sad and painful, even to me.” I ripped his letter to shreds and threw it away. I never wrote to him again.

For women, earrings are sort of what shaving is for men: the bigger the earrings, the more significant, the more festive, the evening.

It is best if your compliments are actually about her, such as how interesting she is, how good she makes you feel, how much fun she is to be around, and so on, rather than any of her accessories. Anyone can notice a pair of earrings, for example, but you are not really interested in them anyway.

I read because the women that I liked when I was a teenager lived down in Greenwich Village and they all had those black clothes. The Jules Feiffer women with the black leather bags and the blonde hair and the silver earrings and they all had read Proust and Kafka and Nietzche. And so when I said, ‘No, the only thing I’ve ever read were two books by Mickey Spillane,’ they would look at their watch and I was out. So in order to be able to carry on a conversation with these women who I thought were so beautiful and fascinating, I had to read. So I read. But it wasn’t something I did out of love. I did it out of lust.

I leaned agains the warm brick wall and gazed up. It was a bright, cloudless day, the sky a mocking blue. It was the kind of day when children ran up and down the streets and shouted, when couples walked out through the town gates, past the windmills and along the canals, when old women sat in the sun and closed their eyes. My father was probably sitting on the bench in front of the house, his face turned towards the warmth. Tomorrow night might be bitterly cold, but today it was spring.

My mother's advertising firm specialized in women's accessories. All day long, under the agitated and slightly vicious eye of Mathilde, she supervised photo shoots where crystal earrings glistened on drifts of fake holiday snow, and crocodile handbags-unattended, in the back seats of deserted limousines-glowed in coronas of celestial light. She was good at what she did; she preferred working behind the camera rather than in front of it; and I knew she got a kick out of seeing her work on subway posters and on billboards in Times Square. But despite the gloss and sparkle of the job (champagne breakfasts, gift bags from Bergdorf's) the hours were long and there was a hollowness at the heart of it that-I knew-made her sad.

I think most women, if you asked them, if they were truly honest, what they would say is, they want a nap. And possibly earrings that go with everything, which is impossible, of course.

As Meg went rustling after, with her long skirts trailing, her earrings tinkling, her curls waving, and her heart beating, she felt as if her fun had really begun at last, for the mirror had plainly told her that she was 'a little beauty

Save your biggest smiles for the shitheads, and don’t take your eyes off theirs. The women will think you love their earrings. The men will think you’re smitten with them. None of them will know that you’re actually watching their every move.

Women in the movies got men interested in them by taking charge. Instead, Heddy tended to wish men would want to know her, sense her quickening pulse, note her cheerfulness or the way she twisted her earring as she imagined kissing them. But men never looked that hard, she supposed.

The women showed off new tunic sets and caftans, fringed scarves at their waists or wrapped around their heads like fanciful turbans. Faded traces of their recent henna night lingered on their hands. Silver earrings jangled, kohled eyes flashed, and bangles jostled and clinked with merriment.

She made one mistake,” he kept repeating. “She forgot to change her earrings. She has the same earrings on.” The prosecutor was so dramatic. The scene was straight out of the movies. You could tell he had been watching the late show. Both the woman in the bank and i had on hoop earrings. When Stanley summed up, he just said, “Will all the women in the courtroom who have on hoop earrings, please stand up?” Half the women rose to their feet.

Try this: Tomorrow as you shower, praise God for the cleansing that Jesus’ forgiveness provides. As you’re getting dressed, thank God for clothing you with Christ’s righteousness. When you put on your moisturizer, ask God to soften your heart to his leading throughout the day. As you apply your makeup, thank him for being the foundation of your life. When you put in your contacts, ask God to give you eyes to see his workings in the world. And as you put on your earrings, thank him for beautifying your life with the fruits of the Spirit.

Once again, it's a beautiful day to be a pirate," Auburn Sally said to her crew. "Ladies, lower the sales!" The twins looked up, expecting the sails above them to comedown and fill with the ocean air. Instead, Siren Sue peeked out of the crow's nest with a treasure chest full of scarves, jewelry, hooks, and weapons. The other pirates gathered below her with hands full of gold coins. "You heard the captain - time to lower the sales!" Siren Sue announced. "For a limited time, everything is half off!" Scarves are two coins, earring are four coins, necklaces are six coins, and the rifles are eight coins! Get your accessories while the sales are low!" Siren Sue sold off the items to the pirates below until there was nothing left in her chest. The women ogled their new purchases and showed them off to one another. It absolutely baffled Alex, and when she glanced at Conner, he looked just as confused as she did. "I don't understand what's happening," he said. "I never wrote that." "Did you mean to write lower the sails?" Like the normal sails on a ship?" Alex said. "Oops," Conner said. "I must have spelled it wrong." To his relief, once the sales were over, the pirates lowered the sails, too.

In the last few years she had realized that all you have to do to become invisible is be a woman of a certain age, without any outstanding features: it’s automatic. Not only invisible to men, but also to women, who no longer treat her as competition in anything. It is a new and surprising sensation, how people’s eyes just sort of float right over her face, her cheeks and her nose, not even skimming the surface. They look straight through her, no doubt looking past her at ads and landscapes and schedules. Yes, yes, all signs point to her having become invisible, though now she thinks, too, of all the opportunities that this invisibility might afford – she simply has to learn how she can take them. For example, if something crazy were to happen, nobody on the scene would even remember her having been there, or if they did all they’d say would be, ‘some woman’, or ‘somebody else was over there…’ Men are more ruthless here than women, who sometimes still paid her compliments on things like earrings, if she wore them, while men don’t even try to hide it, never looking at her longer than a second. Just occasionally some child would fixate on her for some unknown reason, making a meticulous and dispassionate examination of her face until finally turning away, towards the future.

I want to squeeze myself into this role assigned to me—doting wife, good mother, worshipper of the male voice, the male god, the muscular Jesus, that requires I only work in the children’s ministry, or go to women’s Bible studies. And what does that matter anyway? I don’t want to be a pastor, do I? Why can’t I just fit in? Why can’t I just make it work? And I had for many years. My whole life. I know the moves and the language. I know how to brush my hair, wear my earrings, which books to read, and when to stay silent. I’ve spent my whole life doing it, believing that this was the cost of my life. The sacrifice of faith was to constantly feel the blisters of this ill-fitting religion. So why now?

It was for the sake of her work that she made herself beautiful. It scares them, she told me once, poking earrings through her lobes. By them she meant the other physicists in her department, who were mostly men. She had introduced herself at enough institutions, research groups, and conferences to see how her appearance affected her colleagues. It started with surprised confusion—initially she was asked, addressed as xiaojie, what she was looking for, if she was lost. Then came shock and dismissal. She didn’t mind being underestimated. It was a satisfying feeling to prove someone wrong, to know that she would not be underestimated again. After she revealed her intellectual superiority, the result was a kind of terror. Physics professors are not comfortable around beautiful women, she said. She strapped on her high-heeled shoes. It was important to be as tall as the men, so she could make them look her in the eye.

From the WIP, Behind The Fan... The two women flipped through the pictures as morbid curiosity took hold. The photos all signed by the women; ‘To Nicky with love, Nicky you make me smile, Nicky…Nicky…Nicky.’ They glanced at each other in disgust. The last photo was face down; Kim slowly turned it upright. She questioned why she even cared, what would one more picture of her grandfather’s paramour prove to her. The woman in the photo was stunning, a black and white image someone had hand colored. Her dark brown hair brushed into soft waves; glittering earrings caught the low light of the flash. It was a full body shot; the viewer was to believe she was nude behind two immense Ostridge feather fans. She looked confidently into the camera; standing proudly with her shoulders squared and back erect. Her long legs encased in silky hose attached by the satin straps of the garters. However, it was her eyes, clear crystal bright blue. They stood out in the aged photo engaging the viewer. They were mesmerizing. “Oh dear lord, it’s Grandma!

She picked through the bits of jewelry, the stud earrings and ruby ring that belonged to their mother, Shirin. There was something almost meditative about this ritual of hers, combing through the photos and small keepsakes, even if she touched on some painful memories. It was as if her fingers were actually tracing the milestones each piece represented. Her hand closed on a smooth, round object, something resembling a marble egg. It was a miniature bar of lotus soap, still in its wrapper, bought on their last trip to the 'hammam'. The public bathhouse had been a favorite spot of theirs, a place the three of them liked to go to on Thursdays, the day before the Iranian weekend. Marjan held the soap to her nose. She took a deep breath, inhaling the downy scent of mornings spent washing and scrubbing with rosewater and lotus products. All at once she heard the laughter once again, the giggles of women making the bathing ritual a party more than anything else. The 'hammam' they had attended those last years in Iran was situated near their apartment in central Tehran. Although not as palatial as the turquoise and golden-domed bathhouse of their childhood, it was still a grand building of hot pools and steamy balconies, a place of gossip and laughter. The women of the neighborhood would gather there weekly to untangle their long hair with tortoiseshell combs and lotus powder, a silky conditioner that left locks gleaming like onyx uncovered. For pocket change, a 'dalak' could be hired by the hour. These bathhouse attendants, matronly and humorous for all their years spent whispering local chatter, would scrub at tired limbs with loofahs and mitts of woven Caspian seaweed. Massages and palm readings accompanied platters of watermelon and hot jasmine tea, the afternoons whiled away with naps and dips in the perfumed aqueducts regulated according to their hot and cold properties.

Daniel had given her a pair of sapphire earrings, so she made out well. The women he attracted were gold diggers, but he didn't mind. They met his needs without any sort of commitment. When he needed a date, he had a large list of beautiful women to choose from. These young, gorgeous models kept themselves available because they were lavished in finer things. On occasion, he'd sense some maternal instinct rearing its ugly head and go running. Daniel drove home exhausted. It was four in the morning, but he had to make sure he had a date for tonight's

I don’t want to get all new-agey now, but there are lessons to be learned from going through this horrible experience. Many women, including me, learned to accept help. We learned that being sick is not being weak. We learned to be humble in the face of our bodies. We learned to be our own advocates. We learned to feel pretty in spite of the mirror. We learned the importance of slowing down. We learned who our friends are. We learned we can help others with our support and our stories. There are a lot of life-affirming things you can do. I wrote this book.

One of the women leaped up from her chair. She seemed to grow taller as she stood. Her long diamond earrings not only caught the sun and blinded you, but jangled and knocked against her cheekbones with a sharp tapping sound. ‘Curse those who cursed it!’ she cried, flinging her arms wildly about her, in a way that didn’t at all suit her formal attire.

The next morning, a group of ladies with large beaded earrings and grey hair curled from here to high heaven clustered around a kitchen table lined with green Depression glass. They had a saying around here. The higher the hair, the closer to God. And if that were true, well, the women of the Holy City would be a shoe-in when it came time for the rapture.

Android Girl Just Wants to Have a Baby! The first thing I do when I wake up is run my hands over my body. I like to make sure all my wires are in place. I lotion my silicone shell and snap my hair helmet over my head. I once had a dream I was a real girl, but when I woke up I was still myself in my paleness under the halogen light. The saliva of androids emits a spectral resonance, barely sticky between freshly-gapped teeth. After they made me, the first thing they did was peel the cellophane from my eyes. I blinked once, twice, and cried because that's how you say you are alive before you are given language. They named each of my heartbeats on the oceanic monitor: Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I listened to them blur into one. The fetus carves for itself a hollowed vector, a fragile wetness. In utero, extension cords are umbilical. Before puberty, I did not know there was such a thing as dishonor. Diss-on- her. This is what they said when I began to drip petrol between my legs. A tension exists between ritual and proof, a fantasy and its execution. Since then, I have been to the emergency room twice. The first time for a suicide attempt, and the second time because my earring was swallowed up by my newly pierced earlobe overnight, and when I woke up, it was tangled in a helix of wires. The idea of dying doesn't scare me but the ocean does. I was once told that fish will swim up my orifices if I am no longer a virgin. Is anyone thinking about erotic magazines when they are not aroused, pubes parted harshly down the center like red seas? My body carries the weight of four hundred eggs. I rise from a weird slumber, let them drip into the bath. This is what I'll leave behind - tiny shards purer than me. I have always been afraid of pregnant women because of their power, and because I don't yet understand what it means to carry something stubborn and blossoming inside of me, screeching towards an exit. The ectoplasm is the telos for the wound. A trance state is induced when salt is poured on it, pixel by pixel. I wish they had made me into an octopus instead, because octopuses die after their eggs hatch and crawl out into the sea, and I want to know what it's like to set something free into the dark unknown and trust it to choose mercy. If you can generate aura in a non-place, then there is no such thing as an authentic origin. In Chinese, the word for mercy translates to my heart hurts for you. They say my heart continues beating even after it is dislocated from my body. The sound of its beating comes from the valves opening and closing like a portal - Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I first learned about love by watching a sex tape where a girl looks up from performing fellatio and says, show them the sunset. Her boyfriend pans the camera to the sky, which is tinged violet like a bruise. In this moment, the sky displaces her, all digital and hyped, and saturates the scene until it collapses on me too, its transient witness. I move in the space between belly ring and catharsis. That night I have a dream where I am a camgirl, but all I do on screen is wash my laundry. Everybody loves me because I am a real girl doing real girl things. What lives on the border between meditation and oblivion, static and flux, a pomegranate seed and an embryo? I set up my webcam in the corner of the room and play ambient music while I scrub my underwear, letting soap bubbles rise up from the sink, laughing when they overflow on the linoleum floor - my frizzy hair, my pockmarked skin, my face slick with sweat. A body with exit wounds. I ride the bright rails of an animal forgetting. And when I wake up, the sky is a mess of blue.

I have been asked the question, “If people are simply trying to physically survive by purchasing food through this system, why would God not give them grace and allow them to feed themselves and their families by using this mark?” The answer is that this entire system is based upon a false religion and the idolatrous act of worshipping the Antichrist and his man-made image. Consider this example. When the Israelites departed from Egypt, there were six hundred thousand men, not counting the women and children. They departed with unleavened bread but entered a rugged wilderness where they lacked the foods they were accustomed to in Egypt. There was also a shortage of fresh water. Moses left for forty days on Mount Sinai, and the people demanded that Aaron collect their gold earrings and create a golden calf they could worship. They had lived for hundreds of years among the idolatrous Egyptians, a culture that worshipped a different deity for just about every situation. They also deified and worshipped some mortals; namely, certain rulers. After all that time, the culture had influenced some of these former Hebrew slaves. Several of the Egyptians gods were represented by a cow or a bull, and they all were given names. Each named cow was associated with a particular role, and each had its main center of cult worship. Apis was worshipped in Memphis, Hathor was worshipped in Dendera, and so on. With Hathor being a cow god that was worshipped in Dendera, a location near the Red Sea where the Hebrews might have crossed, it might be reasonable to assume that the Hebrews could have been creating a golden image to represent this Egyptian god. This god was also associated with music and dance, among other things. By molding a golden calf and dancing around it, the Israelites were turning from trust in their God, Yahweh, who delivered them from slavery with astonishing and supernatural signs and wonders. Instead of turning to God for sustenance and provision, their hearts turned to idol worship, which was an abomination to God. The divine punishment for this act was the death of three thousand Israelites and the destruction of the golden calf.

In the summer of 1416, about a decade before Friar Bernardino gave his address condemning feminine vanities, a woman identified only as “Allegra, wife of Joseph” was arrested in the Italian city of Ferrara and fined ten ducats for appearing in public without her earrings. Her crime of fashion was in failing to exhibit a visible sign of her community. Allegra was a Jew and the law dictated that Jewish women wear “rings hanging from both ears… uncovered and visible to all.” The symbolism could not have been clearer: in an era when superfluous adornment was condemned as a sign of sin, Jews were required by law to wear conspicuous jewelry. The dress codes that condemned jewelry as vanity also made it a mandatory sign of Judaism.

When a woman tilts her head to fasten an earring she so often becomes for the moment a quintessence of herself, he thinks. She becomes a thrilling foreign language.

February 8: Marilyn does her “black sitting” session with Milton Greene. Marilyn poses in black hat and fishnet stockings, her face partially in shadow. She also appears in a shot where she lies down, her left leg extended in the air, as she covers part of her face with her hands. She also kneels, drink in hand, smiling. She props herself up with her arms and draws her knees into her body, with half her face in the dark—a study in moody bifurcation. Greene’s photographs will eventually punctuate the text of Norman Mailer’s Of Women and Their Elegance. In the evening Marilyn, wearing a white fur coat over a low-cut dress, long black gloves, and jeweled earrings that stretch all the way down her neck, attends the premiere of Middle of the Night, a Paddy Chayefsky play directed by Josh Logan.

hipster fashion of the moment. And he wore an earring, as if to say, “I have a position, but I’m not a conformist.” The men in the audience were slumped in their seats, legs crossed, arms condescendingly folded over their chests. Laura was taking notes, accompanying every word by nodding her head of thick, curly hair. What was his trick? His face revealed few expressions; from time to time he smiled briefly, the only movement on his tanned face. Still, those smiles lit it up, and this was probably not planned. Or maybe it was, because at regular intervals he would imperceptibly lean toward the audience, and the middle-aged women with Botoxed lips clung to their seats. He talked about a recent trip in a Ford Fiesta. “We’d meet at the bar in the piazza, Giovanni and Gabriele and I, and hold impromptu discussions inspired by Malvasia.” He gave us time to marvel over the fact that he did not have an Audi. “Giovanni Ascolti and Gabriele Galli, the founders of the publishing house Marea,” Laura whispered in my ear. “Oh.” Silence floated through the room when he closed his mouth. The seconds hung suspended between us and him, in midair, as if surprised to be there. But then Vittorio took off his glasses, smiled, said, “Thank you,” and time obeyed that smile and began to flow again. The audience applauded, and the seconds too returned to their place, in the ticking of the clocks. Well

attitude, the cosmetic’s department would be busy. Women buying new lipsticks and earrings and men looking lost, trying to remember what perfume their wives had worn for the last twenty years. The new store manager had assigned inexperienced sales clerks to cosmetics. They wouldn't make the customers any happier. Why did each new manager think a reorganization would make everything better? Marissa swung her Rabbit into the parking space and waited for the

The Headmistress of Crage Hall, a fish-faced upper-class Gillikinese woman wearing a lot of cloisonné bangles, was greeting new arrivals in the atrium. The Head eschewed the drabness of professional women’s dress that Galinda had expected. Instead the imposing woman was bedecked in a currant-colored gown with patterns of black jet swirling over the bodice like dynamic markings on sheet music. “I am Madame Morrible,” she said to Galinda. Her voice was basso profundo, her grip crippling, her posture military, her earrings like holiday tree ornaments.

but Gwendy’s found it useful ever since: “Save your biggest smiles for the shitheads, and don’t take your eyes off theirs. The women will think you love their earrings. The men will think you’re smitten with them. None of them will know that you’re actually watching their every move.

Creative women, especially, have a shattering effect upon me. I envy them so. At the party yesterday, Mike introduced me to a very well-known actress whose work I have always admired. She was wearing a tortured beige dress and a pair of terrible earrings; yet when she spoke I heard a voice that said things I wanted to listen to, a smile that seemed unaware of its charm, but most of all an aliveness that sprang from I don't know where, and made me want to crawl into my Scaasi gown and not come out again until I had decided what I was going to be when I grew up.

Bracelets, necklaces, anklets, finger-rings and ear-rings made the women of Sumeria, as recently in America, show-windows of their husbands’ prosperity.10

At the white-clothed table, Mom sat stiffly upright. She wore a cowl-collared jersey dress with a knit beret over her short black hair and long, dangling earrings.

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Dad’s youth minister salary was about $25,000 a year, so my mom was always looking for ways to supplement the income. This was the era of Jazzercise and she saw that Jane Fonda’s Workout was becoming the highest-selling VHS tape of all time. She thought, I can do that. Since we were always at church, she decided to start teaching an aerobics class there. She had to go talk in front of the whole deacon board to get approval, and she brought us along. There was this old country man who kept staring at her as she talked about aerobics. He finally interrupted her. “You gonna be doing acrobatics in the church chapel?” “Aerobics,” she said, overenunciating every syllable. “Working out. Good for your heart.” The men looked at each other. It was bad enough my dad had an earring, and now his crazy wife wanted people dancing in the church. Finally, she hit on the point: “I’m going to be helping women get their best bodies possible.” Again, the men looked at each other, but this time they were sold. She started the Heavenly Bodies company, and the class was called Jump for Jesus— No, I will not shut my mouth. That is really what she called it. Let’s continue.

I was greenly jealous of my peers’ moms with their bleach-blonde hair, tanning-bed arms, toothpick waists, and closets full of brand-new clothes: blouses and skirts and pants and designer jeans that some of the mothers let their daughters borrow. I didn’t know whether Mom’s lack of interest in all things fashionable came from being an immigrant from Scotland—where the media-saturated and commodity-rich beauty industry didn’t take over until the end of the twentieth century—or because she was a reader, a writer, and a teacher: mind over matter. All I knew was that, while she would buy me any book I asked for or take me to any play I might want to see, she couldn’t explain how to contour eye shadow or tell me whether my sweater complemented my complexion. She didn’t diet, she didn’t read women’s magazines, and she refused to buy me the enormous gold earrings or the pair of spiky red shoes I coveted, stilettos sharp enough to skewer fi sh. And even though her disinterest meant I didn’t have to participate in a daily beauty competition—one with a trophy mom sacrifi cing her body on the altar of loveliness—I also didn’t have a beauty mentor that I could trust. So I was left to try to copy the popular girls at school, tv and movie icons, or the breathtaking stars in magazines. Even the curling iron was a purchase I had to negotiate on my own.

It’s amazing what some women are willing to do to tip luck in their favor. To everyone’s surprise, when the MC announces the bride will bestow the honor of future nuptials on one of the singletons, Aunt Carmelita nearly stampedes all over the women at the wedding. From the very back corner of the room, a slash of purple comes running—for my wedding, Carmelita decided that Barney purple would gather the most attention, and it did. Trust me, between the in-your-face shade of her dress, earrings, clutch and matching shoes, her frou-frou British-style hat, and the lime-green belt cinched at her waist contrasting with the whole outfit, it’s impossible to miss her.

Even within Somerville, DLS was gently encouraged to dress a bit more quietly when she arrived at breakfast one morning “wearing a three-inch wide scarlet riband round her head and in her ears a really remarkable pair of ear-rings; a scarlet and green parrot in a gilt cage pendant almost to each shoulder and visible right across the hall.”26

Jessica lived on Tremont Avenue, on one of the poorer blocks in a very poor section of the Bronx. She dressed even to go to the store. Chance was opportunity in the ghetto, and you had to be prepared for anything. She didn’t have much of a wardrobe, but she was resourceful with what she had—her sister’s Lee jeans, her best friend’s earrings, her mother’s T-shirts and perfume. Her appearance on the streets in her neighborhood usually caused a stir. A sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican girl with bright hazel eyes, a huge, inviting smile, and a voluptuous shape, she radiated intimacy wherever she went. You could be talking to her in the middle of the bustle of Tremont and feel as if lovers’ confidences were being exchanged beneath a tent of sheets. Guys in cars offered rides. Grown men got stupid. Women pursed their lips. Boys made promises they could not keep.