"AH! Enough With The Singing Already!"

My new hero thanks to my friend, Kimmie, is Slappy the Squirrel. We need more bitter people like her in the world. And, she plays the accordion.




- Crys.

"The pain passes

. . .But the Beauty Remains." -Renoir

So I got my first tattoo at the end of last month. My tattoo represents where I am in life. It expresses how I am learning to accept who I am. It is a reminder of how far I have come. For most of my life, I had this sick habit of looking down on myself. I would magnify my flaws. I could not look in the mirror because all I saw was ugly. I became so fixated on being pretty that I believed I could never be beautiful. Recently, I just became sick of crying over my self-pity. I could see how much I was suffering from my own doing.

I have a serious bone to pick with the how beauty is perceived these days. We are consistently bombarded with images of the "perfect" woman. She is advertised as thin and slender . These advertisements make us believe that we NEED to be thin in order to be beautiful.



As Marilyn Monroe was, women were meant to be voluptuous. I remember when i first saw Marilyn and she was breath taking. Here was a women with meat on her body. She had this immaculate curves and I was completely shocked that her body was accepted in those days. These days we would define her as "overweight". Some studies say that a woman of my height 5'2" should weigh 110 lbs and some say my weight of 123lbs is fine.
I used to be overly self-conscious of my thick thighs because they were bigger than most. Now, I realize that they are beautiful because they are one of my best natural features. My curves define me as beautiful.

As women, we were meant to have Natural curves, none of these implants! It is so disappointing to see women waste millions of dollars to become this artificial "goddess" , or obsessively counting calories from their Starbucks Latté to just look like those cadaverous models. As my friend has said, "Thick women should not compare themselves to skinny women; Skinny women should compare themselves to thick women."

You did not see Renoir, Diego Rivera, and many other artists painting skinny women. They had no form. Artists wanted a challenge so they chose women with different body shapes. Anyone could paint a stick figure.
Here are artists that have helped open my eyes to realize that all body shapes are beautiful.


Herakut. [depicts a girl with thick thighs and small bosoms, "pear-shaped".]





Mode 2.




Fafi. [I can relate to more of her characters because of their tinyness]




Mike Giant. [ He depicts more of this chola style, but i can relate to the curves and the love for punk rock.]

A lot of the contemporary art i see makes me more comfortable in my skin. It gives me confidence that I am beautiful. Confidence is key in making others see how beautiful you truly are.

A Quiet New Year's Eve

Here i sit with my love on my right. My eyes swollen from fresh tears. I feel exhausted and weary. I am exhausted with feeling that i cannot better myself. I purposely seclude myself from others for the fear that they may hurt me as others have done. I have always felt alone, different, and misunderstood. When i was younger, lonliness played a huge part in my life. I hardly had any friends, and i still feel that way today. As my love has informed, "You're not like any girl I have ever met," and it is true. I march to the beat of my own drum. I only stand by what i believe in. I take a risk in wanting to be an artist. My interests do not concur with other girls. I do not follow trends. I do not conform. I do not want to be like everyone else. I do not need approval to be the person I want to be. I want to be my own person.
Hope is having the strength to persist during times of hardships believing that there is no end; to believe that you will overcome; striving to see past all the negative bullshit that pulls one down. I have always wanted to believe that Hope would take me away from my despair. I have striven to give myself hope, but there has been obstructions testing my faith. The faith I have within myself has been damaged long ago, but it continues to deplete. I have torn myself down numerous times. I need to rebuild myself. I need to believe in me.

"The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it."
-Harvey Milk.

Harvey Milk believed in bringing justice, truth, and establishing dignity for the gay community. Milk sustained that "All Men Were Created Equal." He is a true patriot.

Another photo from my Intro Photography class. Once again this photo was printed through the traditional Black and White Photography process.

Los Angeles...

is a dwelling for the unknown.
Los Angeles is Home.

The following Photos were taken for a Portrait Project for my Intro Photography Class.
They are taken on a 35mm SLR Manual. They have not been tampered with by Adobe Photoshop.

“Los Angeles makes the rest of California seem authentic”
- Jonathan Culler.