Fetch or Wretch? Met Gala 2018

I know, I know, I haven’t posted in forever and also this is gonna be a drive-by commentary of both speed and hatefulness BUT I couldn’t let last night co un-remarked on. The event? The annual Met Ball. The theme? “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.” The looks? Well, we’ll decide, won’t we?  

HIT IT! 

 FETCH: 

Blake Lively

I almost never like what Blake Lively wears. She famously doesn’t employ a stylist and curates all her own red carpet looks, which means that she also famously whiffs it like 75% of the time with fit, choice, all of the above. But this? I’m here for it. Remember that the Met Ball is a hot bed of WTF-ery, so we’re gonna give extra kudos to the people who both step out on a limb AND manage to be on-theme and fashionable. And I think homegirl has done all three. 

 Janelle Monae

I feel like this year’s theme was made with Janelle in mind. Always in black and white, she is serving us a sartorial black and white cookie with some medieval chain-mail-and-halo-themed headgear. Fit is impeccable, face is so gorgeous, and even her nails match. GO ON. 

 Lena Waithe 

Initially, one might look at this major departure from the theme and think, “....what??” But if you take a second to process that Lena Waithe, an openly gay actor, writer, and producer, is giving an intentional middle finger to the theme, it’s pretty darn killer. It seems like this is Waithe’s way of acknowledging that the Catholic Church doesn’t have favorable views on the LGBT community, and instead of jumping in with a theme that doesn’t celebrate her, she had a fashion MOMENT with a not-so-subtle message. What I love about it is that she chose to make her statement beautiful and high-fashion, when she could’ve just blown it off and made it ugly. Love, love, love. 

 Kate Bosworth

This was one of my favorite looks of the night. I think this is STUNNING. So gorgeous, so ethereal. Lots of people did a spin on the “heavenly” part of of the theme, but I think Kate Bosworth did it best. And she even managed to incorporate the Catholic part of the theme by wearing what’s essentially a really freakin’ fabulous habit. How do you solve a problem like Maria? 

 Jennifer Lopez

I mean, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! WHEN IS SHE EVER GOING TO AGE?! Do we think she 

a) sold her soul to the devil
b) injects the blood of baby goats into her face, or
c) is pulled/waxed/lubed/squeezed to perfection by a team of highly trained gays? 

I don’t even care what it is. I don’t even care if she’s a robot wearing a person suit. I love her. Forever.  

Chadwick Boseman 

Wakanda for-MFing-ever. 

Zoe Kravitz 

TBH, when I saw this last night, I thought, “Meh. Boring.” But then I realized she’s doing the “bodies” part of “Heavenly Bodies.” And I was like, “Oh.” And then I was like, “If I had a body like Zoe Kravitz, I think I’d wear a dress held together by a couple’a limp ribbons all of the time.” Because DAMN. 

Ariana Grande 

Call me crazy, but I loved this. The bow is a little nod to Madonna (who was the entertainment this year because #ofcourseshewas), and the dress is kooky and well-fitted and just the generally pretty. 

 Rihanna

The Pope is probably jealous of this. 

Frances McDormand 

This is just some straight-up crazy shit and I’m here for it. I have no idea how it has anything to do with the theme and I just couldn’t care any less. I once met Frances McDormand in a J Crew and she is a lovely person. I’m here for it. Go get ‘em, Franny. 

Madonna 

I mean, she kind of invented this, no? So yeah. She’s “fetch” no matter what she’s wearing. Which, in this case, at least covers her body. Remember ass-gate a few years ago? No? Google it. Or, better yet, don’t. Love the crown because she really is royalty when it comes to religion and pop culture.

Migos 

DEAD. WHO ARE THESE GUYS?! I am so wildly out of the pop culture loop when it comes to new music/cool music so I don’t have a clue who these people are (outside of last weekend’s SNL parody), but I am so obsessed with every single thing. Rings Jackets Shoes Sunglasses Hair Tailoring Shoes Jewelry EVERYTHING. 

 Lilly Collins

White girl weird-ass-ness. Nun gone wrong. And is she carrying prayer beads?? Either way. Yes all around.  

 Priyanka Chopra

That color makes me want to jump into a pool of blood red velvet and just wallow around in it. The headpiece is also beyond. There has to be a name for the chain mail thing knights wore under their helmets that all these girls are doing a riff on, but I’m too lazy to look it up. Lemme know if you know. Any medieval studies majors out there? Is that a thing? 

 Zendaya

There were several attempts at a Joan of Arc  (one of which we’ll get to in a second in our Wretch coverage), but this was easily the best. Every stitch of this is mesmerizing. Such a cool take on actual armor (rather than a nod to armor) while still being glamorous and high-fashion. I want to wear this. This made my top 3. 

 Cardi B, I guess? 

Y’all, confession: I have never been more confused by a celebrity than I am by this person. I have no idea what she sings. I have no idea what her primary language is. I have no concept of how old or young she is. I could Google it, but I don’t want to. I kind of like being in the dark. This is something that would only work at the Met Ball, and while it’s definitely a fashion moment, I’m also feeling bad for the pregnant girl wearing ankle straps so tight she’ll have marks later. So she kind of got a pity Fetch. 

 Mindy Kaling

Maybe it is more “royal wedding” than Catholic-inspired, and maybe the bodice is squeezing her shoulder and underarms in an unflattering way, but I thought she slayed in this. 

Sarah Jessica Parker 

Because I said so, okay? That’s why. Let’s just put out thumbs over her face because the makeup is...not great...and focus on the fact that she is a full-on nativity scene on her head.  

And now let’s get to the real reason we’re all gathered today... 

WRETCH.  

*cracks knuckles*  

 Hailee Steinfeld

I’m not even checking as to whether I spelled her name correctly. I should’ve called her sexy pouty overly-contoured Blair Waldorf Kardashian and been done with it. This is SO BASSSSSICCCCCCCC IT HURTS.

Katy Perry 

I know that I’m in a super small minority in hating this, but I do. Obviously the wings are everything, but the dress and boots combo look like a tacky karaoke night outfit at some 22 year old’s bachelorette party in Dallas. I want an empire waisted gown in a pastel with some kind of subtle-yet-fabulous head-wear. She just always seems to be one degree from perfect. 

Greta Gerwig 

I kind of love/hate this, but hate it just a little bit more than I love it. It’s ballsy and it’s obviously on-theme, but it’s SO voluminous that she just gets lost in there. Could’ve done with more tailoring and could’ve done with more face. She looks like the nun version of Violet Beauregard post-blueberry. 

 Claire Danes

HATE. 

IT. 

What even IS this??? Valentine’s Day in 1999?? This looks like something someone got kicked off Project Runway for making. Was there a time limit? Did her original dress fall apart and a seamstress had to cook something up using three bolts of different-colored satin while blindfolded? And what the hell is up with that “bracelet??” I’m using quotations because it’s generous to call a bangle from Michael’s with a peacock feather and a long tassel strapped to it a “bracelet.” Claire, go look in the mirror and make your crying face. FAIL. 

 Didn’t Bother to Look Up Who This Is

This dress looks like a Catholic mom gave her 4-year-old a sticker book on a road trip and this is what she came up with. Also the full-bloom roses on her head are giving me Phadra Parks at her boughetto baby shower in RHOA Season 3. Please tell me you get that reference. Bye, wig. 

 Ashley Graham, I Think? 

Oh were you looking for prom? It’s down the hall to the left. Sorry, this is the Met Gala red carpet. You must be confused. Bad news, though. Even at prom, this is gonna be a snooze. 

Amal Clooney

I know, I know, I’m going to hell for daring to critique Amal. But y’all, I just CAN’T anymore with the pants and giant ball gown half-skirts. It’s PLAYED OUT. The giant seam on the train is just too hotel bedspread for me and I really don’t get how this is on theme. She’s also one of the hosts for the evening, so I extra don’t like it. It’s dramatic, but it’s bad. Don’t look at it under a black light. 

And now, for the wretchest of them all... 

 SHAILENE WOODLEY OR HOWEVER YOU SPELL IT!

TRUE STORY: When I was trying to save this photo, it crashed my computer. Also a true story: The camera wouldn’t even focus on this bad bad badness. Seriously, look. It focused on BackTat McFlashcrotch instead. This is TERRIBLY fitted through the shoulders and bust and looks like she’s left room for storage in there if necessary. The high pony and bangs are painful. It legit looks like the villain in Pocahontas. What was that guy’s name? You know, with the pug who was friends with Meeko? ...anyway the point is she looks like a British man and not even a well-dressed one. You know she walked in, saw Zendaya doing the same thing but so much better, and wanted to flee immediately. Poor Shailene or However You Spell It. Your wretchness wounds me. Now gimme one’a them cheeseburgers you’re hiding in that top.  

Okay, folks! That does it for me! I’ll see myself out and hope that the Lord continues to smile on me after I’ve been really mean to these strangers. Feeling guilty, a little. But hey - the them was Catholicism-based, right? So I guess a little lingering guilt is perfectly appropriate. 

Life Lately

Mac has woken up again from his 2:30 nap (and, as such, has also woken me up from a rare nap time of my own), so I’m sitting in his nursery writing. Maybe this was a gift. 

This post is inspired by the husband of a friend of mine. Charlie Peters is chronicling the life of a stay-at-home-dad, and reading the loveliness he’s been writing has made me itch to sit down and write my own account.  

We’ve hit a new phase of sleep training this week: the cry it out phase. Mac is officially old enough, according to the nurses who wrote our sleep training books, Moms On Call, to sleep through the night without a middle-of-the-night feeding. He’s getting all the calories he needs during his waking hours, just like we do. He can also see as far and as clearly as we can, which has blown my mind. I’ve been testing this theory by making faces at him from a distance, across a room. It holds up. He thinks I’m just as funny from 7 feet away as he does from 7 inches away. 

This new crying it out thing has meant we’ve had to listen to Mac crying and not do anything about it. Hard for me, but harder for Jordan, who is the most sweet-hearted and wants to rush to Mac’s aid at any opportunity. I love that about him. But it also means that he has had to be in a separate room from me during the crying, because his sweetness would’ve made me cave. I’m so glad we didn’t. Mac slept through the night - from 7:30 PM to 7 AM - last night without incident, tantrum, not even a squeak. I am so proud of him, and this means I get to finally move back into my bedroom.

I’ve been sleeping in the guest bedroom since he moved to his crib. Initially, it was because I couldn’t climb up and down the stairs in the middle of the night with the incision, but now it’s been out of sheer laziness. Walking across the hall is much better than traversing the stairs at 4:30 AM, and Jordan is a champ who falls asleep with me, then goes downstairs when I get up to feed Mac. 

Now, though, that’ll be different. I think it’ll be weird to actually sleep in my bed again. I wonder if it will make me feel a little lonely to leave my pal upstairs alone! But he’s not alone. Not really.  

I wonder if he’ll totally blow the whole “sleeping through the night” thing to bits tonight and just explode with fury, just to show he’s still in charge.  

Before I got pregnant, I worried that I would get the post-partum blues because I’d be in the house with Mac all the time. I’ve been delighted to discover that I adore this phase of life, so much so that when we do go out, I find myself overly protective of him and eager to get back home. I’m also finding myself increasingly judgmental of other parents. I saw a young mother actually slap the arm of her 4-year-old daughter in Target yesterday when the little girl reached for something. With Mac sleeping in the buggie I was pushing, I stood at the end of an aisle and craned my neck, hoping she’d see me so I could give her a disapproving look. (I could hear Jordan in my head saying, “Girl, don’t you get yourself into trouble by starting something you can’t finish!”) She never looked up, which is probably good, because she ended up in the checkout line directly behind me. It looked like she’d been crying. I guess we’re all doing our best. 

Getting showered and dressed is a new series of self-care tasks - making sure my breasts are cared for so I can continue to feed my soon, putting ointment on my incision and massaging it so that I don’t get toughened scar tissue hanging over the top of it like a bad beer belly. The massage hurts a little still, but I reward myself with the prenatals I’m still taking. Gummies, obviously. Because I am 8. 

Mac is obsessed with music and percussive sounds. The “motorboat” sound, the bass in a pop song, drums - he is totally soothed by all of that. The night of his 2-month shots, he threw a MAJOR fit and was only consoled by the song Makeba by the artist Jain. It was in a Nike commercial and a friend of mine sent it to me. What would we do without Makeba?! We find a reason to play it nearly every day. That particulars night, we played it 70 times in a row. Conservatively. I can still picture Jordan, shirtless  from having jumped out of the shower upon Mac’s screaming a story away, hair wet and towel slung around his waist, maniacally dancing for Mac in our guest bathroom where we tried to bathe him to soothe him. He said his dad danced for him when he was a baby, and that that’s how his dad threw his back out for the first time. Laughing with him in the midst of Mac screaming has made for some of the sweetest memories. Especially when, as he was rocking Mac in a small moment of relief, his towel dropped. And he couldn’t stop to adjust it. Best. 

I keep wondering when the Mamaroo is going to just heave a sigh and give up. I can’t imagine it’s easy swinging a 15-pound 3.5 month old for 45 minutes in a row. (I actually don’t have to imagine, I know.) I think it might actually start swearing at me before long. 

Mac has started to really enjoy being rocked while vertical instead of in the “normal” baby hold with his head in the crook of one arm and his feet in the other. I find this particularly delicious because I get to hear his nighttime sounds - the little coos and tired whines that are just his way of winding down. It makes me wonder what we as adults would do if it hadn’t been beaten out of us by propriety. What sounds would we make and reactions would we have? Would we blow spit bubbles at people we like? Okay maybe that’s too far. That’d probably be a reason to suspect brain damage. But you get my point. The sweet sounds and the unhappy sounds - they really are so natural. He reminds me of everything pure, as he’s the purest form of person. His face rests against my cheek so that when I put him down in the crib, carefully, slowly, he has a red circle on near his eye from the warmth of our connection. I can’t imagine him ever being older and bigger than this. 

He doesn’t care about toys. At all. He cares about talking, music, eye contact, and human touch. He likes being read to, dancing, splashing in his bath. I’m afraid he’s his mother’s son. 

He and Tom Hanks are starting to discover each other and it’s fantastic.  

I’m sitting in the rocker now typing all this, looking at the bottle on the bookshelf that needs washing, thinking about how I need to go chop off another 2 oz of breast milk from a 6 oz storage bag. Mac likes what Jordan calls a “topper” each night - both boobs and 2 more ounces. Works like a charm. Sleeps like a...well, baby. Although he hasn’t napped well today. But he does, for the most part, keep himself on a schedule. Why anyone doesn’t sleep train their kid I’ll never understand. I am so comforted by the schedule. But here’s where I’ll remind myself of the Target lesson. 

Today marks 15 weeks of knowing and loving this little person. Unlike many, I can remember life without him. It’s like an old song I still know all the words to.  But I sure like singing this new one. 

Pin Curls that Last for 5 Days

Hey, friends!

So one of the big resolutions I made to myself when I started this blog a few years ago was that I didn’t want to be a fashion/beauty/lifestyle blogger. Today, I’m breaking that promise to bring you something that I believe is pretty freakin’ worthwhile: the 5-day hairstyle.  

You heard right: style once, wear for 5 days. Don’t believe me? Check it out. 

This little trick has helped me enormously since I had a baby, though I figured it out long before Mac was born. I was always a person who said, “My hair won’t hold curl.” It turns out that’s a bunch of hooey. ANYONE’S hair can hold curl - even the most limp, flat, fine, straight hair. Trust.  

So this process is called “pin curling,” and it’s a really old technique. The science behind it is that if you allow your hair to cool while it’s still in the shape of a curl, it retains the shape for a lot longer. Think about it: if you curl your hair with a curling iron, then immediately let it drop back down as it cools, the curl will be a lot looser because it’s cooling in a more open, wider shape, instead of in a tightly-wound curl.  

It’s a little bit of work on the front end, but it takes no more than twenty minutes. And when you’re through, you have 5-day hair - 20 minutes for 5 days? Worth it.  

You’ll need: 

- Clean hair
- Duck clips (the long, silver clips you see at the salon) 
- A 1’’ curling iron (if yours is a little larger or smaller, that’s fine - we’ll get to how you can make that work) 
- L'Oreal TXT It Tousle Wave Spray (optional, but great)
- 20 minutes

Step One:  

Wash, dry, and blow your hair out. A “blowout” doesn’t need to be salon-quality - it just needs to straighten your hair and get it completely dry. I divide my hair into two sections with a large clip, dry the bottom half with a paddle brush, then dry the top half with a round brush, pulling the brush up and through my hair as I dry it to give it some volume around the crown. Whatever method works for you is fine - just needs to get the job done.  

Step Two:  

Grab a two-inch section of hair and use your curling iron to curl it under, all the way toward your scalp. The direction you curl it is up to you - if you want to have a salon blowout look, curl it under. If you’re going for more of a Victoria’s Secret wave, curl the hair around the closed barrel of your curling iron. That’ll make more sense in the video below. 

Step Three:  

Release the hair from the curling iron. Then, using two fingers on your non-dominant hand, curl the section of hair around your fingers back up in the same direction as before, and secure it with a duck clip. Make sure the curve of the clip is facing toward your scalp, not away. If it sounds confusing, use the video tutorial below as a guide. 

Step Four:  

Repeat the process until your whole head is covered in pins.

Step Five:  

Give your hair some time to set. Do some housework, make some phone calls, or if you’re doing it in the morning before work, make this the first step in your routine. Do your makeup and have your coffee while your hair cools!  

Step Six:  

Take your hair down and comb through it with a wide-toothed comb. Don’t worry - this step isn’t going to destroy your curls. It’s just going to calm them down. Make sure you complete this step with at least ten minutes before you need to be anywhere so that your hair has time to settle and you don’t look like you shoved your finger in a light socket, like so:

To maintain your curls all week long:  

Before bed each night, wrap your hair into a twisted bun and secure it with a rubber band. I usually loop one loop all the way around the hair, and take the other loop halfway over the bun to make sure it stays in place all night (watch the video below for a detailed walk-through).

In the morning, take your hair down and you’ll discover that you’ve still got an “out in public” ready head of hair. Hooray!  

Just to show you that this works, I documented 5 days’ worth of hair for you. I curled it on a Thursday, and the last photo was taken on a Monday.  

Thursday:  

Friday (yes, I’m wearing the same shirt, I have a newborn, don’t judge me):  

Saturday (featuring my goofy husband):   

 Sunday: 

Monday (the messiest and yuckiest day):   

As they say in My Big Fat Greek Wedding: "So there you go!" 

I hope this has been helpful and will save you some time in the mornings that you could use snuggling your babies, sleeping in, or getting extra work done. 

Thus endeth my stint as a fashion blogger.  

*Bows*