trying to convince my phone of things…
life is weird. wear lipstick.
Here’s a weird, embarrassing secret: Sometimes when I’m feeling down about myself, I put prompts into the Instagram AI (not even like a legit better AI) to depict me as the successful person I want to be. A writer. A filmmaker. A red-carpet walker. A fashion icon. A wealthy person.
I dunno. It weirdly helps me to feel hopeful about wanting something. You know the old adage, “You can’t be it, if you can’t see it.” It’s embarrassing to want things sometimes and it’s almost always embarrassing to use AI to make images of yourself. Trying to convince my phone I’m something, someone. But somehow this silliness is okay with me. At a point this winter, having a tiny computer in my pocket tell me what it saw when I asked it to see thinks like, “me as an author at a book signing” or “me super fit as a gym rat” really helped me get unstuck from a mentally dark space.
But before there was AI, there were these funny apps that we had on our first-, second-, and third-gen iPhones. It was like we had Instagram where we would post gems like this…
(y’all know I love those chips.) …and then apps that told you which celebrity you looked like. And the app I downloaded to “show you what celebrity you looked like” (truly a stretch) was called My Celebrity Look-Alike or PicFace Celebrity Match Up or something like that. This was 2012. We were barely doing more than Instagram, Twitter (RIP), and email with the tiny computers in our pockets. But one night, at my friend Ted and Jen’s home, a group of friends just went wild with this Celebrity Look-Alike App. The thing was not great at guessing look-alikes and we just laughed our asses off at the results it would spit out after we took a blurry, horrid photo of ourselves. I remember laughing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath.
Evan would get Zac Efron (um?), my friend Ted would get Christian Bale (okayyyy?), my friend Richard would get Jason Statham (sure?), my friend Jen would get Zooey Deschanel (not my first guess, but okay), and I would get… Bill Murray. And then Justin Bieber. And then Tom Hardy. We could not stop laughing. TO BE FAIR… I had a pixie cut at the time…
So we thought, okay, maybe the phone thinks I’m a man, because of my haircut. So Jen had an idea to go get a wig. Brilliant! I put it on, took a picture, waited for the app… no dice: Vin Diesel. I kid you not. THE MAN HAS NO HAIR. I thought the phone might be fucking with me, but I tried once more by fixing the wig a bit more and putting on some lipstick Jen had. The result? The phone said my celebrity look-alike was his guy…
We all just died laughing. MORGAN FREEMAN?????!? WE’RE DONE HERE. That was obviously the end—the finale.
It was a hard story to relay to anyone else when our friends referred to me as “Vin” or “Morgan Freeman,” but it remained so funny that sometimes I would just think about it and start laughing out loud.
A few months later, I went to get my hair cut (public service announcement: growing out a pixie cut is not for the faint of heart) at my go-to hairdresser’s place. The woman who cut my hair was wearing this orange-ish red lipstick that was SO COOL. I told her I loved it and she told me that they sold little sample-sized versions of the color she was wearing at the salon. I decided, Fuck it… I’m getting a haircut and a new lip-color! New me!
This was when I barely wore any make-up. No one in the Intermountain West wore lipstick! The only person we knew who wore lipstick was Love Taza/Rockstar Diaries—the Mormon lifestyle/mommy blogger in NYC who fell off the face of the internet in 2020. (okay, but seriously if any of y’all know what happened to Naomi Davis, please slide into my DMs… I have a Google alert set up on her… the need-to-know is unhealthy.)
But I was feeling myself. I was feeling this lipstick. I got my fresh-cut and bought this lipstick and put it on in the mirror as all the hairdressers told me how amazing I looked. I walked back into my office and waltzed up to the desk of my friend Richard (aka Jason Statham, according to Celeb Look-Alike App). I was trying not to be self-conscious and being confident, but as Rich looked up at me from his desk, he hesitated not a second as he said, “Oh, hey. You trying to convince your phone you’re a woman again?”
After my initial shock and Rich let the joke land well enough, we both couldn’t stop laughing. This was one of Rich’s best burns.
Are you trying to convince your phone you’re a woman, again??
13 years later, I wear lipstick almost every day. This one, to be specific. And I feel like it makes me stronger. I feel like it makes me look brighter—not smarter, but you know… my face looks brighter. I feel like it’s my best accessory. Am I trying to convince my phone I’m a woman? A writer? A fun mom? A stylish Wyomingite? Probably. Sure. But is that why I wear lipstick these days?
Definitely not. I wear lipstick these days because it looks fucking awesome and because I love it. So suck it, iPhone and AI. The lipstick is for me.
Quick Hits:
Jam Of The Week: Ty Segall – Possession.
(this new Ty Segall has a Blitzen Trapper-y feel and I’m INTO it. also, cannot WAIT for him to open up for Primus in Jackson. wHaT iS hApPeNiNg.)
I Cannot Wait To Play.
(should I get these bloomers to match this skirt to match my lipstick?)I Keep Seeing This Trend EVERYWHERE.
(should I get this pair? there’s gotta be a better budget option out there.)This Place Keeps Drawing Me Back.
(you would think such a small place would be a one-time visit… but no!)Added This Doc To My Watchlist.
(after a friend sent me this perfection.)
Thanks for being here, friends. Spring is coming and it’s GLORIOUS. The newness. The flowers. The SUN. LFG.
xxo,
rachel.