What the world needs now…a little more grace and poise and a little less…what’s the word…

Why I’m still proud to promote grace and poise.

I could not have said it better myself. Thanks, Clare, for putting into words what I’ve been feeling for a long time. Ladies young, old, and in-between, don’t be afraid to swim against the tide!

And while I’m on an opinion-expressing roll, here’s an insightful post on deliberate self-uglification from one of my favorite bloggers, grerp at The Lost Art of Self-Preservation. A delicate tattoo or piercing, tastefully placed, is one thing. But at no time in history, to my knowledge, have ladies deliberately sought to make themselves frightening-looking, except at Halloween.

Here’s another perspective on The Cult of Ugly, from the thoughtful blog Under the Gables.

Obviously, being overly appearance-conscious is a bad thing, twisted up with gnarly sins like pride and vanity. But isn’t deliberate uglification another form of being appearance-conscious, just in a reverse way?  Dressing to shock and repel, rather than attract?