Because you wonder why it takes me “so long” to get ready…

I’d like to address this post to males, everywhere.

While I was brushing my teeth this morning, the first thought that came into my head was, “I’ve got to go get my eyebrows done… again.” For those of you who are fortunate enough to not have massive caterpillar eyebrows, I’m sure you’re wondering, “How can a spool of cotton thread hurt you?” If you twist it enough and then run it against your skin to pluck out each individual hair, trust me, it’s painful. But it’s not just eyebrows and upperlips, there’s so much more. Try getting every imaginable part of your body waxed. It’s fabulous. Really. There isn’t any other word for it. Because there’s nothing like a beautician covering you in hot wax, followed by laying down a piece of fabric and not-so-gently ripping it off, which in turn pulls each hair out of its follicle. Dear men, if you’re particularly hirsute and want to experience the hair removal experience, I suggest sticking some duct tape to your arm or leg and getting one of your friends to rip it off like a band-aid. Wait, what do you mean, “will it hurt?” Of course it won’t! And there we have it, reason number one why it takes me forever to get ready: hair removal. 

The next thing I noticed was that my stomach was sticking out a little bit. My next thought was, “Fuck. What did I eat for dinner last night?” Fat arms, fat calves, fat thighs - no one ever seems to notice them on men. What I’ve observed when it comes to men is that as long as they’re not especially rotund in the midriff area, they’d be considered regular sized and wouldn’t have much of an issue getting girls. But women have other issues. Either they’re too small in the bust department or their thighs are too flabby, their calves are too big, their stomachs aren’t flat enough, their skin isn’t perfect, their knees are weird, their butts aren’t round enough… Okay, you got me, I was talking about myself. But honestly, the list goes on and on.

Then there’s the clothing issue. Is this dress too long? Is it too short? Am I too dark/pale to wear this colour? Does it make me look fat? (<— That, in fact, is a real thing) What shoes would match this outfit? Is this outfit too dressy to wear to someone’s house? Is this too frumpy to wear to the mall? Is this shirt too transparent? Are these jeans too skinny? Does what I’m wearing emphasize the fact that I have love handles? How do I co-ordinate this outfit with the right jewelry? Should I wear golden coloured jewelry or silver jewelry? Is the neckline too bare? Should I compensate by wearing long, ostentatious earrings? Should my shoes match my purse or should they be in sync with the rest of my colour scheme? Are these shoes too flat? Are these shoes too high? Would wearing boots be appropriate? Do I look like I’m trying too hard?

Then there’s make-up. I’d love to see a guy apply eye-liner without stabbing himself in the eye and scratching his cornea. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to draw a line across your top eyelids with an eye pencil? The lines are almost never the same thickness, they never are straight across, they look jagged and it takes anywhere between 30 seconds to 10 minutes to get it right. No matter how often you apply eye-liner, there are days you just can’t get it right. And usually these days occur when you’re rushing to get dressed because you’re running late and extremely flustered.

Read more...

What do I stand for? Most nights, I’m not sure anymore.

We’re now at the end of April and it’s been two months since I’ve posted anything worthwhile here. I’m not going to pretend like it never happened or make excuses but my mother taught me that: “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. Given my Aditi 2.0 status, I’ve found that it’s a statement that may not always be an easy piece of advice to follow but in the long run, it’s probably one of the better things one can do.

I started Love, yours truly or as you may know it, bozotheteddybear in March last year. Call it my personal diary, call it a compilation of the random workings of my mind; I’ll stick to calling it a creative outlet – but it’s the first thing I haven’t given up on. I’ve tried writing a diary/journal at various different points in my life and have always given up within a time period of a couple of weeks to three months. My relationship with this blog has outlasted any relationship I’ve ever been in. No matter how you choose to interpret that last statement, it’s saying something.

The last two months have been dark, to say the least. Outwardly, I’ve attempted to keep up with the happy Aditi 2.0 image with my family and friends but on the inside it’s not that easy to keep everything glued together when you feel like a complete failure. Since I can feel the tears building up, and I really don’t want to start weeping, I’m going to attempt to make this as short as possible.

If you’re a frequent reader of my blog, you would know that on January 1st this year, I applied to five graduate schools: Michigan, Duke, Columbia, UCSB and SciencesPo (in Paris). As of mid-March, I received rejection letters from four of them. Maybe I aimed too high for someone with a GPA that was barely B standard, but after the third rejection letter, I lost all hope. All I wanted was for graduate schools to realise that my grades had improved by leaps and bounds following my third semester and that I was serious about studying. For some reason, they didn’t see that. The letter from Michigan told me I wasn’t good enough in what I deem to be the meanest way possible and obviously I took it personally (and I’m still bitter about it). I contemplated running away from home - I don’t mean that statement in the vediaz way where she ran away from home in the second grade and made it a block away before she came back home and got walloped, I mean it in the most dropped-off-the-grid way you can imagine.

I distinctly remember my mother sitting down with me after my fourth rejection letter arrived and told me it wasn’t the end of the world. She took my hand, turned it over to show me my wrist and pointed at the three words tattooed on my wrist, let it be, and asked me to do exactly that. She reminded me that there were more schools and encouraged me to look at graduate schools in the UK, and I’m so glad I did.

A week and a half later, I had applied to four schools in the UK: Edinburgh, Lancaster, Nottingham and Leeds. That makes 9 universities in total. So far, I’ve been rejected by six and a half (half because the university I was accepted to wasn’t for the program I wanted) and I’m still waiting to hear back from two. The second rejection letter I received from the UK was from a school that encouraged me to apply when I emailed them inquiring whether or not I would potentially make the cut; the response I got, and I quote, was: “You have a good chance. Please apply.” Statements like those tend to give hopeless people like myself a lot of hope. Rejections from universities that make statements like the aforementioned one have the ability to shatter a person into a million little pieces.

Read more...

"Someone pinch me. I am in love with your blog."

Dear whiskeyandmayer,

That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a while! It really brought a smile to my face! :) Thank you, thank you, thank you! x

- Aditi

"Hii. How do you change your blog to have two columns?"

Dear Anonymous,

I’m assuming you’re using the same theme as I am because I’m not sure how to achieve the same look with a different theme. When customising my blog, I picked the option for wider quote posts, text posts, chat posts, answer posts, photo posts and link posts. Like so:

I also chose the option for a four column layout, because (if I remember correctly) the entire page was justified to the left rather than centred. Opting for a four column layout after choosing the options for wider posts, centred the content on the page and allowed me to achieve the two column look.

I hope this helps! :)

Sincerely,
Aditi