raisons d’être

The “what,” “how,” and “why” of this blog; a complement to credo & caveats.

BLOG DESCRIPTION

A tragicomic moral tale of one woman’s valiant struggles with first-world problems and her moves towards minimalism, environmentalism, and liberation from consumerism. In other words: hippy-dippy tree-hugging granolarama sh*t, occasional arty-farty vapid airy-fairy nonsense musings, sanctimonious pontificating rants, may contain nuts and other irritants, but but BUT: regular chocolate…

PURPOSE

Against faddishness, fashions, & the fashionista mentality – for stylishness & going recessionista – favouring ethical shopping & sustainable consumption. More specifically:

  • a simplification of ingredients and formulations;
  • a decrease in the the number of items used; and
  • a decline in expenditure accompanied by a rise in happiness.

Offering a small-scale model for 21st-century life that’s a viable alternative to the Viagra Paradigm: that is,

✻ Viagra = (all things, ahem, rampant), consumption, unregulated growth, increase, expansion, accumulation, conquest, empire-building, greed, perpetual dissatisfaction and desire for more, all in a continuing progression towards a Grand High Point, Zenith, and Apogee
→ see also: GDP

vs.

✻ stability, balance, harmony, (self-)control, peace, contentment, and continuity
→ see also: Beyond GDP (EU), GPI, GNH, and HPI

But but but: this blog is still indeed—at least superficially—about beauty: the superficial beauty of appearances. The quest for Ginger beautification is an exemplum thereof. It’s not Just Yet Another Beauty Blog All About Me: it’s a sceptical, anarcha-feminist, anti-consumerist blog about beauty, superficiality, and appearances in general and their broader implications. Those implications including, of course, the abovementioned Viagra business and its OTT extension into “me”-pseudoculture and disposable culture, grotesque over-consumption, macho reckless destruction, and other gratuitous wantonness and waste.

CONTENTS

Mostly harmless; some excess; features plenty of links to elsewhere, for good measure.
→ For criteria used to select and buy products: see credo post
→ Skip the introductory descriptive prefatory rambling stuff and nonsense and go straight to the CHOCOLATE and the other topically-applied beautificatory products I’m currently using and abusing

And you thought what you just read was rambling rantings and ravings? LOL. Welcome to Folly-praising.

On which subject:

Further “what” and a “why”:
My dream home, Scotland’s finest folly, the Pineapple, Dunmore.
Availabe to rent (sleeps 4) from around £120-200 per night. Which is bargainaceously cheaper than many a British 3-star hotel of the shitty bland corporate chain variety.
Why?
What is wrong with the world, I ask you?

WHY?

Why did I bother writing this stuff down in the first place? Well, being of an allergicky disposition, I’d been keeping notes for years of what I’d used on my skin, tried and tested, ingredients and products that worked/didn’t work/points between. I realised that the MUA notepad or anything similarly online and updateable was a great idea, for keeping track of these things, and separating out

  1. stuff currently being used
  2. stuff that’s been used and worked out OK
  3. stuff in experimental / testing stages
  4. stuff to be tried out next, or otherwise being lemminged-after
  5. stuff that didn’t work, and should therefore NOT under any circumstances be accidentally contemplated again or allowed to sneak its way into 4. let alone 3. above.

So: entirely selfish and self-protective, so I didn’t end up repeating past errors / failed experiments. Also, I’m not always that good at remembering what I use, nor what I put into a bottle of oil, especially once my nice hand-written label falls off. Which it inevitably does. I could claim this here page (and indeed the rest of ye blogge) is also in 21st-century hommage to the quotation below, but that would be exhibiting grand delusions of self-love; albeit tempered with self-deprecation, pastiche, and parody. Then again, this is a morosophical blog so it wouldn’t be entirely inappropriate. Lady Folly would approve. So b***er it all, epigraphical quotation here we go:

C’est icy un livre de bonne foy, lecteur. Il t’advertit dès l’entrée, que je ne m’y suis proposé aucune fin, que domestique et privée. Je n’y ay eu nulle consideration de ton service, ny de ma gloire. Mes forces ne sont pas capables d’un tel dessein. Je l’ay voué à la commodité particuliere de mes parens et amis: à ce que m’ayant perdu (ce qu’ils ont à faire bien tost) ils y puissent retrouver aucuns traits de mes conditions et humeurs, et que par ce moyen ils nourrissent plus entiere et plus vifve, la connoissance qu’ils ont eu de moy. Si c’eust esté pour rechercher la faveur du monde, je me fusse mieux paré et me presanterois en une marche estudiée. Je veus qu’on m’y voie en ma façon simple, naturelle et ordinaire, sans contention et artifice: car c’est moy que je peins. Mes defauts s’y liront au vif, et ma forme naïfve, autant que la reverence publique me l’a permis. Que si j’eusse esté entre ces nations qu’on dict vivre encore sous la douce liberté des premieres loix de nature, je t’asseure que je m’y fusse tres-volontiers peint tout entier, et tout nud. Ainsi, lecteur, je suis moy-mesmes la matiere de mon livre: ce n’est pas raison que tu employes ton loisir en un subject si frivole et si vain. A Dieu donq, de Montaigne, ce premier de Mars mille cinq cens quatre vingts.

(Montaigne, Les Essais: “Au Lecteur”; c/o The Montaigne Project)

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