Featured on academichic blog!!!!

A link to my recent blog post plus one of my photos was featured on academichic because of my participation in their Dress Your Best Week! Hehe, I feel a little famous, and I'm thankful that the academichic bloggers noticed how many of us wrote about learning to love our bodies in ways that don't fit the norms of what society tells us is beautiful.

Dressing my best - Tuesday, May 11th - Legs! Fair skin!

I have a love/hate relationship with my legs, but this week has encouraged me to try to show more love to my legs. Sadly, I have spent much of my life feeling ashamed of the perpetual paleness of my legs, often feeling uncomfortable wearing shorts or skirts the showed too much skin, exposing the blinding whiteness of my legs. From my friends, I alternately receive comments that I shouldn't be so shy about showing off my legs or comments that my legs are so pale, and "Gosh, can you even tan?" making my pale legs a great source of embarrassment.

When I first saw this picture from Tuesday, I was embarrassed at how pale my legs look compared to my olive-skinned, Italian-descended friend. However, thinking about it more, we're both gorgeous women, we just have different looks and body types and skin tones.

It's time for an attitude change. Though not radiantly tan, I have great legs. My legs are long, lean, and muscular enough. My legs are beautiful, functional, strong, and sexy! And I'm also coming to appreciate the alabaster shade of my skin. I often observe pale beauties, such as this model from www.modcloth.com with envy that they can look so strikingly beautiful with their paleness.

I've decided to stop envying these models, and enjoy the fact that I can also look strikingly gorgeous as a pale-skinned, red-haired, blue-eyed, thin woman! A big reason why I can pull of the henna-dyed red hair is because of my fair complexion, so I'm thankful that I have a look that is so versatile. I think that redheads are absolutely gorgeous, anytime a redheaded man or woman walks by, I'm always checking them out. It's been exciting for me to embrace the look in the past several months. So, I decided this week to show off my great legs, with this dress from H&M -


Trying to show off my dress at the bar where I sang "Bohemian Rhapsody" at karaoke night with a few friends -

A pretty "leggy" shot from this angle -

Lovin' on my ivory legs -

So, I'm thankful for this exercise to love my body for all that it is. I hope that in the future that I will feel less shame about my fair skin when I'm surrounded by tan friends, but instead feel thankful and blessed that I have a such a unique, beautiful look. I hope that my friends reading this post can also be challenged to love the parts of themselves that they may not always see as beautiful.

Dressing my best - Monday, May 10th - Eyes & Hair

Monday, May 10th I gave a pre-proposal presentation before faculty and students about what I intend to study for my dissertation - a perfect opportunity to dress my best! I decided to highlight my blue eyes and henna-dyed red hair.
To do this, I chose to wear vivid colors that make a nice contrast to my colorful features. I'm glad I did too because a couple of the other young women presenting wore all black dresses, so I enjoyed standing out and showing my personality with color while I presented!

• Green lace top - New York & Co.
• Black skirt - H&M
• Gold shoes - Cato
• Pearl necklace - Gift from mom
• Coral scarf - Bazaar in Cappadocia, Turkey

Thanks to the travels of myself and friends, I now have a growing collection of international scarves, which I decided to try out with this outfit . . .

Inspired my Academichic's recent post highlighting "tight" color combinations, I've been playing around with pairing colors that are close together, such as pairing this forest and lime green scarf (also from Turkey) with my lighter green top -
Staying with the cool colors, I paired it with this turquoise scarf from Bangladesh, a gift from a dear friend. I like that there are some green threads that mingle with my green top. I also think this color of great for highlighting my eyes, something I played with later this week.

Another contrast with this orange and yellow striped scarf my friend gave me from Spain -

But I'm quite happy with the coral scarf I chose to wear that day, and I'm also quite happy with how my presentation turned out and the gracious comments and suggestions that my colleagues offered me.


Which is your favorite scarf color combination with this outfit?

Dressing my best!

I'm participating in Dress Your Best Week with with Academichic. Stayed tuned as I add fashion posts about how I'm dressing my best to highlight the aspects of my body that I love the best - my eyes, hair, legs, butt, and feet!

happy hat

Inspired by a couple of fashionable friends and Samantha from the Sex and the City movie (which I recommend to my girlfriends, but I would never want any of my guy friends to see), I bought a floppy, wide-brimmed straw summer hat yesterday!


I feel pretty fabulous wearing it! Seriously, even though I'm working, and writing papers, and only the miserable heat reminds me that it's actually summertime, I put on this hat, and felt carefree. I felt like it was truly summertime, and I could be at a pool or beach and I could just relax and smile confidently and be myself! I think everyone should have a happy hat, or sunglasses, or scarf, or necklace, or something that they can put on and instantly feel what they need to feel.