Some say the blogosphere is like high school. I don’t think it is anything like high school. In high school, the geeks and the beauty queens do not hang out with each other EVERY DAY, making jokes and flirting with each other. The internet is really the ultimate “Beauty and the Geek” social experiment. Have you seen some of the beautiful female bloggers out there?
Whoorl has the best hair on the internet.
Do you really think she would be talking with a geek like ME in high school?!
If the blogosphere is like high school, it is like one of those Hollywood high schools that Alicia Silverstone went to in Clueless. The blogosphere is an institution of unlikely friendships, where the dorks and the fashion plates become the best of friends because there is so much to LEARN from each other. I read the blog of the glamorous La Coquette all the time, trying to learn something about fashion. Some other fashion blogger might read a computer geek who wears broken glasses, hoping to learn some code for her blog template. The final result: all sorts of bizarre online friendships.
On Saturday night, Sophia and I had dinner with Tamar and Danny. This was an exciting event, because it was the first time I’ve met Tamar since she “won” me in a charity auction. I really loved meeting her. She has a wild sense humor, not at all like the stereotypical brainy professor you see in movies.
Danny, Tamar, and I have something else in common: we are all dorky when it comes to fashion. Unlike Sophia, who always has a certain je ne sais quoi about her, and has her own sense of style, the three of us see “style” as a low priority in our lives.
Danny is a writer and editor who buttons his shirt incorrectly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wearing a tie or non-khaki pants.
Tamar is a writer and educator, with little interest in “girlish” things. She admits that she doesn’t like to go shopping or spend time picking out clothes.
I’m completely fashion-hopeless, worse than both of them, usually wearing two different style socks. My only saving grace is that I have Sophia to force me to dress nicer on occasion.
But luckily, the three of us dorkier bloggers are blessed to have bloggers like YOU — the more socialized and fashion-conscious bloggers of the world, the ones who actually know how to match your purse with your shoes, those who use blogging less as a way to escape from the real world, but to talk about the latest dress style for Fall or how you bought some new avocado-scented hair conditioner online.
On Saturday, we finally listened to you — our dear stylish blogging friends, you Alicia Silverstones of the blogosphere — and we each took a giant step in joining the world of glamour.
A few weeks ago, I received an IM from Charming, but Single, with an important message: she had grown tired of my hairstyle. She had seen a photo of me on Flickr and was downright disgusted.
“Don’t you realize that long hair is out of fashion?” she said.
I mentioned this to Sophia, who absolutely agreed.
“You should get your hair cut short.” said Sophia. “Short… and pointed at the top… like Jonathan on “All My Children.””
former psychotic killer, now nice-guy Jonathan from “All My Children”
I spent a week doing my own research. Almost every male character had short hair on All My Children, some with even a buzzcut. Most of the men in my local Starbucks also wore their hair very short. My longish, graying, hair made me look like an aging rock star on VH1.
I was fearful of change. I’ve always asked for my hair to be cut so it is “over my ears.” As some may have noticed from my childhood photo, there was a good reason I wanted my ears covered.
Even when my head grew into my ears, I feared showing my “Dumbo”-sized ears to the world, even when Scandinavian research revealed a direct correlation between ear size and the size of other male body parts.
Two days ago, Sophia sat me on the toilet seat and said, “That’s it. I’m cutting your hair short… like Jonathan in “All My Children.”
“Do you know how to cut hair?” I asked.
“No,” she replied, and then went ahead and started cutting it anyway.
Did I lose all my powers, like Samson? Not really.
Thank you, blogosphere, for giving me enough nerve to cut my hair short.
I like Danny a lot. Even though he is from Chicago and I’m from New York, we are both nebbishy Jewish men who walk around with sneakers like Jerry Seinfeld ALL THE TIME. Of course, I’ve been lucky to have a lot of female readers, which means one thing — I’ve already been shamed into wearing shoes. As I’ve heard over and over from my female readers, women care less about a man’s wallet or “package” than what type of SHOES he is wearing. I told this to Danny, but being stubborn, he refused to accept this as a universal truth, thinking it was brains or literary skills that made a man successful in life. Thousands of dollars he spent on therapy, when the answers were right at his feet… literally.
Two weeks ago, after the LA Bloggers reading, Sophia and I went out for dinner with Danny and Deezee. When I saw that Danny was wearing sneakers, I decided to create some trouble for him. I brought up this issue to Sophia and Deezee, and the two women immediately lectured Danny on the evils of grown-up men wearing sneakers, trying to convince him that he would improve his sexiness quotient 500% if he wore a nice pair of shoes. I just sat there and laughed, glad to see women attacking some other hopeless man other than me for a change.
On Saturday night, as I showed up with my new short haircut, Danny showed up wearing shoes. Was it the first time he had ever worn shoes since his wedding?
Thank you, blogosphere, for making Danny become a man who wears shoes.
Tamar is a beautiful and sexy woman, but she is a bit of a throw-back to the 1960s. She still believes in hippy-ish ideals like peace, love, socialism, and caring for one another. She does important research on educational matters. All these “Age of Aquarius” beliefs are wonderful, but I was shocked to learn that Tamar had never EVER worn MAKEUP! Is that a collective gasp I just heard from every mommyblogger on my blogroll? Not mascara, not blush, not lipstick — NOTHING! This is a woman who originally moved from Rhodesia to Israel and actually enjoyed working in the mud on a kibbutz! Sophia also moved to Israel from Odessa, but when she saw that her job was to pile crap on the field, and eat dinner at an appointed time, she said bye-bye socialists, shalom Tel Aviv. But Tamar loved the simple life of a socialist kibbutz babe. Today, Tamar is a woman in her 50’s — and is still stuck in her kibbutz, natural-look, bra-less days.
But Tamar is not afraid of taking risks. After all, this is a woman who bid good money to go on out on a date with ME, a blogger 3000 miles away (she lives in Philadelphia). And frankly, the blogosphere has opened her up to new experiences. She is on Twitter and Facebook, sending gifts and acting as silly as the rest of us. She has read your blogs and been intrigued by your discussions about Sephora and MAC and all these exotic lotions that you “girlie-girls” talk about. And really — is it SO BAD for a socialist to wear a bit of hot pink lipstick when she goes out with her husband?
To the rescue was — Danny’s twelve year old daughter, Leah. Like most Los Angeles teenagers, Leah learned about make-up in the womb. She gave Tamar the full treatment — makeup, lipstick, etc., in the way that only a twelve year old girl can!
Tamar showed up to dinner wearing lipstick for the first time in her life.
Thank you, blogosphere, for teaching Tamar to become a fashion model!
The four of us had a great meal downtown. After dinner, we went to an art gallery to see Ellen Bloom‘s fabulous artwork. None of us had ever met her before. It was an exciting moment as we walked into the gallery. We all looked fabulous. I had my new haircut, Danny had his new shoes, and Tamar had her new make-up.
Ellen Bloom looked our way and immediately ran over to us — well, to be honest: she ran over to Sophia.
“Sophia! Sophia is here!” she yelled. “I’d recognize you anywhere!”
Well, I guess the three of us still have some work to do on that glamour part. (the hair looks better when Sophia puts some gel in it to make it “spiky.” I think it is a little TOO short.)
photo at the gallery by Larry Underhill
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