Let's face it, no one is perfect! Every girl makes wardrobe mistakes. So, let's learn from the stumbles of other women that have less than perfect days of looking 100% fabulous.
TIP No. 1: Simpilfy
Who can resist Sienna Miller's fabulous smile? But, who would wants to wear her outfit? The big black mistake in this outfit is the obvious-too much going on! Toss the hat, loose a sweater, or two, and keep the smile. That's the only thing really working in this picture!
TIP No. 2: No More Leggings
It's gone, over, so hide it away! Leggings are best saved for the gym, a home gym that is! This was a fashion trends that has been in decline for more than one season. The blue empire waisted dress is a fabulous choice for Jordin. However, did she forget a strap on her shoe or is that an anklet? Enough said.
TIP No. 3: Don't Super-Size Your Black
The Olsen's are classic bad icons of bad taste and have been since they stopped making videos for kids. What's the message in this outfit? The only thing that might make sense is that she escaped from the barn with a few hens under her arm. On a more practical note, ladies, get rid of pants, tops, dresses, and handbags that don't fit your frame.
TIP No. 4: Inflatable Clothes are a No-No
Katie Price isn't out on a raft, she's shopping in London! So why is she wearing a life vest! Maybe, there is a cooling system inside that overstated jacket that helps her to shop longer hours. What was she thinking?
TIP No. 5: No Bathrobes Allowed
The Olsen Twins make it another round! But, hey, who other than the Olsen Twins can wear a bathrobe out in public and not be called crazy! Wait, is that even an accurate statement?
TIP No. 6: Everyone Notices Hemlines
Janet! You didn't even wear things like this during your uber-cool Rythem Nation, so why do you think this works now? MC Hammer Pants Weren't Even Cool in the 90s! So drop the strange hemline & add height to the length of your legs. Now, that's a trick any woman wants!
What Works: Lucy Lui
Lucy Lui looks radiant right down to he black toes! She is at once contemporary & elegant. She is an absolute image of style & grace.
Get your heart open, hips swinging, & legs moving! Hula Dancing is an amazing way for women to get in touch with their feminine spirit of dance. More importantly, if you can Hula, you'll impress every person you meet! Take a few minutes to get happy & dance!
Want a simple at home hula lesson? Amazon has tons of amazing Hula DVD workouts!
Felicia Sullivan's volatile, beautiful, deceitful, drug-addicted mother
disappeared on the night Sullivan graduated from college, and has not
been seen or heard from in the ten years since. Sullivan, who grew up
on the tough streets of Brooklyn in the 1980s, now looks back on her
childhood—lived among drug dealers, users, and substitute fathers.
Sullivan became her mother's keeper, taking her to the hospital when
she overdosed, withstanding her narcissistic rages, succumbing to the
abuse or indifference of so-called stepfathers, and always wondering
why her mother would never reveal the truth about the father she'd
never met.
Ashamed of her past, Sullivan invented a persona to
show the world. Yet despite her Ivy League education and numerous
accomplishments, she, like her mother, eventually succumbed to alcohol
and drug abuse. She wrote The Sky Isn't Visible from Here, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, when she realized it was time to kill her own creation.
How well do you know yourself? I know it's odd to start a review with a question, but go ahead and take a moment to consider. Have you ever lied at a party about your background? Have you ever polished up your childhood memories in conversations with friends, lovers, co-workers, or even your own family? Well, if you answered no, never, I've never done that, then take a hike because it's safe to say that almost everyone has at one point in their life. But, what about people that lie because their past is filled with shame & abuse? How can anyone ever politely explain at cocktail party that their mother disappeared one night after years of alcohol & drug abuse? Or, like Felicia Sullivan, author of THE SKY ISN'T VISIBLE FROM HERE, how do you find the right words to tell any person, a lover or a best friend, that you were raised among drug dealers or that you helped save your mother from a drug overdose? It's hard to image.
As you may have rightly guessed, it took a warrior-like journey for Felicia Sullivan to truly know herself, which also involved her own fall into alcohol & substance abuse. This memoir is about the words of truth. Every page is a testament to the endurance of the human spirit. Not only that the book is beautifully crafted, but the insight into Felicia's soul also gives insight to every soul. This is a Modern Girl Style must-read, because truth be told-none of us have perfect lives! Don't believe that cocktail party banter!
Felicia also has an awesome blog where you can stay updated: Check it out here!
MEET FELICIA SULLIVAN
Felicia C. Sullivan is a graduate of the Columbia
University MFA program. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a
Best American Essays notable. Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Swink, Post Road, Mississippi Review, and Pindeldyboz and in the anthologies Homewrecker: An Atlas of Illicit Loves and Money Changes Everything,
among others. Sullivan was the recipient of the 2005 Tin House memoir
fellowship, and in 2001, she founded the critically acclaimed literary
journal Small Spiral Notebook. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
THE INTERVIEW
Felicia Sullivan has a knack for words & interviews, too.
1. First off, I loved the style and prose of your book. What writers influenced your writing and what books inspired you to write a memoir?
Thank you so much for your incredibly kind words!!! There are so many great writers I turned to before, during and after I finished this book. Writers who turned their life stories into works of art rather than sensationalistic, narcissitic rants. I devoured Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, Virginia Woolf’s Moments of Being, Paula Fox’s Borrowed Finery, Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments, Nora Eisenberg’s The War at Home, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Lorna Sage’s Bad Blood, Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts, and the list can very well go on! I needed guidance on how to weave my life into a tapestry of words – words that attempt to give you a sense of the life I lived, but words that conveyed all of what I experienced as a child and adult – issues with identity, shame, pain, heartbreak, trauma, disorientation, sorrow, fear and alienation.
2. How did you arrive at the episodic structure of your memoir? Do you think the structure of your book is telling about how people retain memories?
This is a terrific question – one I get quite often because my book doesn’t follow a traditional linear (Chapter 1 is day one, Chapter 10 is the present) structure and it disorients people at first. From the onset, I knew I could never write this book and the events that happened in my life in chronological order. The past is very much the present for me and vice versa. I keep recalling Virgina Woolf in Moments of Being when she says, “If life then is a ‘bowl which one fills and fills and fills’, each new experience added to the existing ones displaces them ever so slightly and alters their previous meaning by forcing them into new combinations. The present moment is enriched by the past but the past is also enriched by the present,” realizing the impact her words had on me as I embarked writing this book.
My mother is still very much a presence in my life, and sometimes I shiver when I look in the mirror because I resemble her more with each day’s passing. I’ll remember a certain word she always used—brazen, a certain tick of hers—smoothing flyaways—while I’m at dinner or on the subway coming home from work.
Additionally, the structure speaks to memory fracture, disorientation, and the constant feeling of unrest—all the things I’ve felt for the great period of my life and feel sometimes still. Since a book is a conversation between author and reader, the author delivering a story, I wanted the reader to feel my confusion, disorientation – all of these frightening things, firsthand. Also, on a pratical level, shifting through time gives the book some breathing room. If you read chapter after chapter of my childhood abuse, you might very well pass out.
The story of my life is a great puzzle and this book was about trying to assemble the pieces in a way that makes sense to me.
3. How did you conquer the emotional challenge of writing this book and did the stories you tell help to heal your old wounds?
I don’t necessarily feel that writing this book was cathartic in the way we think of therapy and catharsis – which should best be left for the proverbial couch (I’m in therapy for life, I always joke) and private journals (which were helpful in recreating certain scenes). I confronted the emotional terrain – the kind of life I had lived with my mother, her drug abuse and neglect, and I needed to sympathize with her in order to create a balanced character in the book and show the audience how my loss of her was that devastating. While my mother was a difficult woman, she wasn’t a monster, and I needed the emotional clarity and distance in order to bring her back to life on the page.
In some way or another, I’ve always written about my mother. When I was eight I published a haiku that likened my mother’s voice to thunder. She’s always been my subject – I can’t really recall a time in which my work hasn’t revolved around her – the one person I couldn’t, but desperately wanted to, understand. For years I was working on a novel of lifeless, unlikable characters that did mildly interesting things. I was writing a safe book because I was afraid to commit my memories, this horrific life lived, this very unsafe book, to paper. I was ashamed of my past, of living in poverty, of a mother who loved and terrorized me. I had lived a life of my own invention for so long, I couldn’t imagine otherwise.
At one point the weight of these two lives – the accomplished, in-control professional and the frightened child who never really mourned the loss of her mother – were becoming difficult to bear. Something had to give. One afternoon a friend of mine and I were trading stories about our mothers and we realized that we had both been shamed into secrecy. We were made to feel shame by our mothers, our impoverished upbringing, and a culture where not loving your mother is unthinkable.
In short, I wrote this book as a testament to my strength, as a celebration of my survival and recovery, to demonstrate that alternative families are possible, and that love – the most sacred of emotions – is not unconditional. I also wrote it as a final conversation with my mother – to tell her all the things I had been too frightened to tell her: what kind of parent she was and how her parenting affected me as an adult woman. The action of writing, committing something to paper and sharing it with others is a form of healing, I believe.
4. After the experiences of your impoverished childhood & the difficult adult years that followed, do you believe that love is unconditional?
Yes and no. I do believe love is unconditional, but once someone takes advantage of that love, doesn’t work to sustain and grow that love, abuses that love, then the love becomes conditional. Family doesn’t give you trespass to emotional terrorism. We shouldn’t be consistently cruel and abusive to our loved ones simply because we take comfort that they are our family, our partners, our closest friends and enduring one’s abuse is part of that relationship.
5. What have you learned about the nature of truth and do you believe the truth can be written?
Writing this book was at times frustrating. Because I was trying to render the most accurate portrayal of my life with my mother, I was consistently confused – caught between the memories my mother created and the events that actually happened – and found myself second-guessing events that had happened. In the cases where memory wasn’t reliable, I chose to keep those chapters out of the book. In other cases, such as in the chapter “The Burning I Don’t Remember”, I make a point to highlight how powerless I was against the history my mother invented for me. I have scars on my legs but I don’t remember how they got there. Do I believe my mother’s story that they were burned in a bathtub and a hospital trip that I don’t recall? Do I have any other option?
Regrettably, my mother excised all members of my family so accessing them was difficult because, embarrassingly enough, I don’t remember many of their last names or have any idea where they might live or whether they’re even alive. I did rely heavily on Gus – the man to whom my mother was engaged but never married, the man who I would come to call my father – to fill in the gaps. He was in our lives since I was twelve and he was privy to my mother’s confidence, which lent a great deal of perspective and sympathy to how I rendered her in the book.
Essentially, I wrote this book as honestly as I could, given the limitations. I wrote truth as I knew and remembered it. My mother tended to overuse certain phrases and I was in keeping to how she, and other characters, spoke and what they would say. But memory is a tricky thing, it’s infallible, and in the end, I wrote the book and the events in my life as I remembered them.
BONUS QUESTION: What’s your favorite weekend activity?
BAKING!!! My Kitchen Aid changed my life. I can’t go a weekend without whipping up a batch of chocolate chip pumpkin muffins or coconut macaroons.
Does that wet your appetite for baking?! Modern Girl Style tracked down some similar recipes so that you can read her book & bake!!
This is an amazing reading & interview put together by Jason Boog with Felicia Sullivan at Barnes & Nobles. This is must watch video! Felicia also has a wonderful reading voice that you won't want to miss!
Modern Girl Style loves Sara Bareilles for her deep lyrics & rocking voice.
Talk about excited that she's going on tour! Tickets go for the Little Voice Tour on Sale February 23! Here is a quick guide to her concert dates:
4/14/08 Pabst Milwaukee, WI (w/Raining Jane) 4/15/08 Fine Line Minneapolis, MN (w/Raining Jane) 4/17/08 House of Blues Chicago, IL (w/Raining Jane) 4/18/08 Bellarmine College Louisville, KY (w/Raining Jane) 4/20/08 Opera House Toronto, ON (w/Raining Jane) 4/22/08 Paradise Boston, MA (w/David Ford) 4/23/08 Irving Plaza New York, NY (w/David Ford) 4/24/08 TLA Philadelphia, PA (w/David Ford) 4/28/08 9:30 Club Washington, DC (w/David Ford) 4/29/08 Neighborhood Theatre Charlotte, NC (w/David Ford) 4/30/08 Variety Atlanta, GA (w/David Ford)
Who's going to win? What will everyone be wearing? Who shows up with whom! All the gossip & sightseeing is part of the fun. Find out who Modern Girl Style will be rooting for this Sunday.
Modern Girl Style Pick for BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth II: Only an actress like as Cate Blanchett can carry this film. She is a golden girl of Hollywood & needs to be awarded for her tremendous acting talent. What else can I say? She's a legend!
Modern Girl Style PickforBEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton: I've been a fan of Tilda Swinton since I saw her in Female Perversions. She is talent that needs to be better tapped by Hollywood.
Modern Girl Style PickforBEST ACTOR
George Clooney in Michael Clayton: Wow! I didn't know that Clooney could act until I saw him in this amazing film. Didn't anyone else get sick of his made for 13 year-old boys movies set in Vegas. I'm so over his cool guy character. He rocked in Michael Clayton!
Modern Girl Style PickforBEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Casey Affleck in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: I just saw Casey Affleck in Gone Baby Gone last night & the only thing that really stuck was how great Casey's acting was. Too bad his brother butchered an amazing book by Dennis Lehame. I honestly couldn't believe what a poor job Ben Affleck did! Read the book & avoid the movie. Anyhow, Casey Affleck has got a future in Hollywood even if he doesn't win Sunday.
Clips for the upcoming Spike Jones film, Where the Wild Things Are, have been pulled from the web faster than you can PB&J. Here is one of the last source, check it out before it vanishes! Of course, this could be a fake clip. It's up to you to be the judge:
How often do you buy bedding? If you're like most, it's maybe once a year or at the most twice. Now is the perfect time of the year to replace worn out sheets, blankets, and comforters. So why not go organic? The benefits are amazing! Wools made from toxic-free dyes, manufactured linens with a small environmental footprint, and COMFORT!
Go Green & Organic!
Beautiful & intelligent women, like Cameron Diaz, are bringing the influence of their healthy and active lifestyles inside the home. Organic bedding is also a great way to remain inspired by nature, when you can't make it outside.
The name LoooLo is a visual representation of
"100%", symbolizing their commitment to every aspect of the design
process – from using organic materials during development, to
consideration of the environmental footprint their products leave.
LoooLo sources the best organic fibers, dyes with the least
environmental footprint and manufacturers who respect the philosophy
behind the products. All looolo textiles products can be safely
composted at the end of their useful life.
LoooLo blankets are made by hand using Climatex Lifecycle yarns
(certified organic wool/ramie and toxin-free dyes) from Switzerland.
Using special knitting techniques to render textures found in nature,
these luxury pieces are quite unique. Wrap yourself up!
Area Mist Charcoal Organic Bedding Most of the modern products we see today strive to
announce their arrival through bold colors and graphic patterns. Area
bedding, however, bucks the trend. Everything about the collection
appeals to our organic, serene modern side. Basic colors that are
always in style. . . whites, blues, greys, tans. . . on fabrics that
feel like a breath of fresh air against your skin.
Area's mission is simple: original designs, natural fibers, and
long-lasting beauty and comfort. Area bedding will make your bedroom
more serene and simple. Classic even. 100% natural fibers make these
sheets very easy to maintain and care for (even the linen lines) -- so
both the appearance and quality will last.
For as beautiful as it often is, sleeping outdoors can also be quite a
pain. Maybe you enjoy trying to decipher your tent-pitching
instructions by your headlights, and making sure your sleeping bag
doesn't touch the tent wall (in case of rain), and waking up much more
aware of that rock under your back than you were the night before, and
burrowing into all your clothes before hopping outside the tent to
shower. But you could stay home, with all the comforts and conveniences
you're used to, and use Amenity bedding instead. Mother Nature will
never know the difference.
In addition to talking about organic bedding, all the products featured
in this post are items Modern Girl Style has found at Design Public. If
you haven't stopped over to the Design Public website,
then check it out now! They also have a great blog covering furniture
shows, interior design trends, & more! Click here to check out the Design Public Blog.
Design Public has got an amazing website filled beautiful inspired
goods. It's kind of like Dwell & Domino Magazines mixed into one
source. Modern Girl Style doesn't often get excited about something,
but when it happens---It's time to share.
Jack Thompson is an amazing photographer I discovered from Dwell Magazine. Here's the link to the article, Houston, We've Solved a Problem. These are some of the amazing photos from that article & many others. This guy knows how to capture mood, texture, & light. Now, I need to buy a LEED friendly house, filled it with eco-friendly products, & invite him over for coffee! Don't forgot your camera!
Here are images from his Interior Portfolio:
These are great images from his Environment Portfolio:
If Alice could have an unbirthday, then we can have an unValentine's day. Take today to enjoy family & friends, spread the love, & enjoy the city that you live. If yesterday was lousy, don't fret! It's Friday! Get out and kick up your heels!
Spare yourself the wrapping paper, the cards, & the empty candy boxes on Valentine's Day. Instead, bring out the animal in your sweetheart by adopting a wild animal! Adoption starts at only $30 in most cases & you'll receive photos and/or newsletters updating you on the condition of your animal. Now, that is love!
I've grown up along the Pacific Coast, playing in the ocean, wading in tidepools, or watching National Geographic expeditions 20,000 leagues under the sea that flipped my mind. I don't think I've ever gotten over Jacques Cousteau or his fight to save our oceans. This clip of Cousteau dancing with a Grouper is classic! This film actually won an Oscar & the Cannes Film Festival Here's a taste:
Adopt Sea Turtle Babies or Release adoptions start at only $30 & Adopt a Sea Turtle.com has got a beautiful website!
Watamu Turtle Watch is a Kenyan marine conservation organisation committed to the protection of sea turtles and the marine
environment, through hands-on conservation, research, education, campaigning and community development. The involvement of local communities is an essential part of the project with the aim of making it sustainable for the future. Applied Research & Conservation Ltd. in Leeds, United Kingdom, handles adoptions requested through this website.
ADOPT A SHARK
Shark Trust will enable you to adopt a Great White Shark known as Cut-Tail.
“Cut-tail"
is a male White shark, like Bruce in Finding Nemo. He is roughly 16ft
long and returns every autumn to the Farallon Islands off the coast of
California. As his name suggests, the tip of his caudal fin has been
accidentally cut off, which makes him easy to identify. He is a curious
and feisty shark and is often seen sticking his head out of the water.
Great White sharks are legally protected in Californian waters.
ADOPT A WHALE OR DOLPHIN
Pacific Whale Foundation specializes in, yep, the Pacific! Adopt a whale or dolphin and
learn about the life one very special whale or dolphin -- and support
efforts to protect all whales and dolphins in the Pacific. Your Adopt a
Whale or Adopt a Dolphin donation will help support Pacific Whale
Foundation's ongoing research, education and conservation programs.
ADOPT A SEAHORSE
World Animal Foundation is a one stop shop sort of place. You can adopt seahorses, sharks, whales, dolphins, and other animals. I love seahorses! They fascinate me with their grace & beauty. And their being overfished due to Chinese herbal practices & tourist shops. Avoid buying dried & dead seahorses on your next vacation to the beach, please! Instead, WAF on purchase of a "adopt-a-seahorse" will send you a three ring binder loaded with information & photos of your living seahorse. Got to love that!
1. First off, I loved the style and prose of your book. What writers influenced your writing and what books inspired you to write a memoir? 
