I am not a blogger, a fashion writer, a TV producer, a creative director for a fashioncentric creative services agency. I am not defined by my occupation. This is not a declaration of truth, it is a statement of intent.

This past weekend, I spent over four hours catching up on Tavi’s blog. And while nearly everything that precocious girl writes is compelling, one post in particular lingered with me long after I had finished reading. In it, she describes her struggle with beauty image, her rebellion against the au courant standards indirectly imposed on her by the industry of which she is fascinated.  She realized that, despite her best efforts at bucking the conventional constructs, she may be growing into a position among those considered ‘attractive’. And it frightened her. Made her worry at what pieces of her she would leave behind, whether she would end up being known as the once-opinionated-ugly-ducking-who-is-now-’just-another-pretty-girl-in-Fashion.’

The piece struck me because I face a similar struggle: the marginalizing effect of being defined by my looks and by my occupation, and forever wondering at the true extent to which people think of me as  just another two-dimensional iteration of the ‘fashionfolk’ archetype. Am I really drowning in the shallow end? Am I simply obsessed with pretty things? Have I lost my curiosity for the world and for art and replaced it with something less… substantial? These are very real questions.

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