Mixed Baby REBORN! (soon)

A little bit about me and why I started this blog:

I'm 25 years old and I'm multiracial. I'm black, white (usual suspects: Irish, Scottish, German), and Italian. As a child in a predominantly white community, I was picked on and wanted nothing more than to have white skin and blonde hair. As a teenager (and after moving to the south, the best place to thrive as a minority, in my opinion) I grew to appreciate my easily-tanned skin and dark green eyes. But oh, I came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Super straight hair was in. Before I learned what a flat iron was, I would brush out my curly hair, let it air dry, and then roll it in a bun in the hopes it'd flatten out. Sometimes I'd try to "straighten" it with a curling iron. Flat irons were IN, and so was hair like this:

With this goal in mind, I present to you My First Nightmare Hair Experience. My mom, who is white, took me to a salon to get my hair straightened--let's be frank, it was a relaxer, but it was a caucasian hair salon, so they called it a straightener--at this little salon. The stuff smelled awful and burned terribly. When they were through, my hair was more pliant then it'd ever been. The only problem was that it began to break off at the crown of my head. I wore a ponytail on the top of my head for months until the breakage could grow back.

I've since learned that I absolutely do not need relaxers on my hair. I've learned that I can properly straighten my hair by blow drying it and flat ironing it. But it's taken some serious trial-and-error.

Which brings me to you: I hope that I can impart you, dear reader, with unique and healthy ways to style your hair, apply your makeup, dress your body, and enjoy what you're working with generally. As for my hair, it's neither "white" nor "black"; it is a baffling mixture of both. It is very dry, curly, and prone to awful poofy frizz (especially in humidity). At the same time, it gets greasy within a day or two, is very thin, and goes flat easily. What a combination. What I love about it? I can wear it curly or straight and, if I work it correctly, I can have excellent body. My skin is a medium olive: finding blush that's dark enough but not a dirty dull color is difficult, finding bronzer is not always easy, and finding a neutral eyeshadow palette is sometimes a challenge. My body is a pear. Pear, pear, pear. It's like dressing a Picasso painting, but I've learned to work with what I've got.

It has been a very, very long last few months. I graduated from graduate school in May and, since then, I have been studying for a licensing exam. Let me tell you what happens when I spend the summer months indoors studying:

• My tan skin turns cigarette ash-meets-consumptive gray;
• My hair loses all if its much-fought-for luster;
• The skin around my eyes thins and turns purple;
• My skin sags and dulls;
• and I generally age about ten years.

In a couple of days I'll have my life back and I'll begin the slow rebuilding process. Come back soon to see how I plan to breathe life into these wilted greens.