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2011년 4월 15일 금요일

Mind your own dressing!

While I was reading about the fashion bloggers in Enlgish I confront many cultural differences  in them To day I want to talk avout the size and and body image.
I rea this via Already Pretty's lovely links. (She sure does find many lovely links every week while writing about her own daily attire an other thoughtful subject as a full time worker other than blogging. By the way Ido believe that she can do all these, of course she is a charmingly thoughtful person and has talents to write her stories and other sensitive topics with humour and clear message, I have wanted to believe that she, unlike me who has three children, sure has more time AND she has very helpful husband who takes gorgeous pictures, again unlike my husband who does not even know how to charge the batteries of  a fully automatic digital camera. )
Well, as a Korean, I lived most of my life in Korea but with tangible experiences in other countries as a resident (I mean I was not just a traveler. I shopped and lived in other countries sometiems as a student and sometimes as a visiting scholar.) Yes, Korea is fanatic with sizes, snall sizes and long length and more small sizes. Medically approvable lowest weight is the beginning point of the being fat. I do not think your aunt wanted to embarrass you but her comment is the general view point of Koreans as a whole.


Let me tell you what are the rightful sizes for Korean womanm especially young women. Many young and beautiful girle take all the risks to get thin. Aside being thin there are other tendencies if the definition of "fitness" in clothes.  As a Korean I usually think that the North Americans wear jeans, pants, and tops too tightly, though I do not mind their choice of fitness. Skinnies for the mothers of young girls in South Korea are in many cases snuggly fit pants. You may surprise but the real skinny fitting is at most allowable to the fashion stars of other show business people not for your daughter or your niece: because that kind of skinny vaguely synonymous with the too much revealing. So what you think fit seems like too tight to your aunt; traslate; "Hey, niece, those are too reaveling." The cases are same not just with the traditionally too much sexual parts of your body, like the clevages and your butts. This also goes with your arms when you wear sleeveless  shirts or dresses. However, if you are thin as a skeletons those revealing are regarded as less sexual, less unladylike, more allowable and more fashionable.

And one thing more which is the most disturbing me. It is like this. We are almost full blossom of Spring wiht beautiful flowers and nice breezes. I want to keep myself warm so I like coats and sweaters and do wear them in May or in June if they are not too wintery like fur jacket or thick cashmrere. I wear to the wather, not to the seaon you seems to be in. I have gone through all this comments; "Your cardigan make me  ungreathable just lookijng at it," ;"Wow , how long are you foing to be in that coat? Coats are fo winter.
One winter day I went out in arran sweater and scarf. I was asked whether I have winter coats.

I am wearing winter jacket now.

2011년 4월 5일 화요일

So, are you sure this GRACE is me, Grace me, Sal?

I commented on one of the marvelous give-aways in Already Pretty and have almost forgot. I am not a super lucky person at all, asa far as lottery things are concerned. At least so far. I read thisin her blog this afternoon.

I found the name of the winner is Grace and thought that Grace is one of the most common names so I just wanted to know who the lucky Grace was. I clicked the name and it led into myself! Can you believe it?


By the way I have been a long time silent reader and admirer of your blog (therefore, of you philosophy, styling tips and viewpoints!) and felt like you are my close neighbor in the first name base. I hope it is OK.

Now, I am charging my camera battery to take a good(hopefully) photo with my lucky pair of shoes. 


ps. But there is a slightly tricky problem about contacting me with my email. The company which has hosted my email bankupted a couple of days ago and my account is not working at this moment. Sal,  I will email you with the original email and my working e-mail. I hope this should be OK. Thanks

2010년 9월 24일 금요일

Already Pretty: Naked Face

Naked Face:


I and my daughter at home. We look serious but it is becuase of the too bight sun light. The reds around my lips are birth marks I have had since I was born. recently I removed them and am having clear lines around the lips.

I found the naked faces are also beautiful in their way in the list of people adventuring into not wearing make-up week.


I do not often wear make-up in its usual sense; like foundation, shadows, concealers and lipstics. When I stated my permanent full time job in my 30s, people would ask me "Why don't you wear make-up?" (By the way, I am surprised that so many fashion bloggers are from the academic or at least highly educated than high school diploma, and fashion for the academis world seems to be one of the popular subjects around the fashion bloggers. Am I too narrow sighted? Or I happened to jump into the highly educated fashion bloggers and trapped in their circles.) Anyway I am in the academic environment as well.


I want to broaden the definitin of make-up into choosing not to have make-up as a part of make-up world. I wear sun protect cream everyday even during the less sunny seasons. I choose not to get tanned as a part of make-up.

My students are wearing make-ups in their own way and I enjoy looking at them advanced into more mature and sophosticated and flattering ways in many cases not to say all.

My not wearing make-up possibly stemmed from my childhood environment. I grew up in a Christian family where the inner being is supposed to be more important than just looking good in outside. And when I went to collge I could not afford to buy other than really important for living and modesty. My husband somtimes criticizes(yes criticize. We do not share the sense of beauty in everythingf frm makeup, furiture, book arrangements, and dress code.) my lack of fashion sense and wants to advise my sophoomore in university daughter his 'sop-his-cated' tips for make-ups and fashion which usually drive my daughter to bursting into tears for they are too oudated and pungent for a still highteen girl..

I think make-up is choices and not to wear make-up is in the list. I choose no make-up as my make-up choice, not an adventure. I do wear make-up when not wearing make-up is regarded highly criminal activity: weddings(mine and others), year book photo takings, very important meetings like me as a chief interviewer or things like that.

Why don't you free yourself from wearing colorful chemicals on your face into broader choices of not wearing them. Naked face is socially acceptable unlik the naked body to me.

2010년 9월 13일 월요일

"Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel." Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)

I like this quote very, very much. \
Only the Marvel is not always the case with me. It maybe replaced with the s little bit sinister synonyms like surprise, amazement, astonishment and then incredulity, wonder, bombshell, eye-opener and revelation and then shock and panic. Not very nice touch of Katherine Mansfield's way but stilll they keep the meaning of not habitual.

Yesterday, I had terrible body-ache all over me caused from the fibromyalgia accompanied with the terrible enervation. I started early work leaving my youngest under the care of her big sister. I received countless calls from both of my daughters for various reasons; like missing her favorite cap, refusing to wear trouser for her endless love for dresses and skirts, and all different amazingly new reasons for whining. I am still tired after ten hours in bed and two hot strong coffees and two dosages of alprazolam(Xanax) and several puffs of asthma spray.

I have never expected these even in my dream. Life is not habit to me. What about you?

2010년 6월 16일 수요일

I have never said that, honey.

This is what my husband told me when i trie to remind him how he made me at a certain time. I do not think he lies but his tough and scarring words of from out of no where in his head.

I was with my husband for the theraric session with my psychiatrist last Friday. My psychiatrist said the my husband did very well to me(his wife) as he watced him and me when I had extremely terrible asthma untratable for 6 hour in the ER. My uncurabel asthma turned out to be psychogenic rather than the problem in pulmonory area. My coughing stopped with 10ml of valium shot, which means the asthma probably was from the psyvhological reason.

My husband is a good person. He is a good Christian and he is one of the best man I have met n my life. But he is not my kind of husband just as I am not his kind of wife, even though I did my best till I get unsaturated.
He is using perjorative language when he is notin his mood, whic drives me on the verge of craxiness or syncope with blackout.

What makes me more unendurable is that he, when he gets bdk to rather normal range, sais that he did not say that or at best that is not what I really meant.

My health. concerns

I am a midaged woman with lota and lota of health problems.

1. I had meningioma surgery two and an half years ago.
2. I have been on medication for depression for4 years by this June.
3. I am on medication for Behcet disease and Fibromyalgia.
4. I was walking through causeless epileptic seizures.
5. I have been fighting against the weight fluctuation problems for several years already from about 47kg to 75kg, my normal range is supposed to be 53-58, which I have kept since my hight teen years.
5. I have migraine, insomnia, GAD, OCD.

I have not been in the strong side but confronted PhD course works and disseertation with raising two kids and a husband who is always in need of my hands for virtually everything from daily chores to his computer problems and my mother in law who has health problems called getting old and mental problem of asking for endless attention for her daily life(she lives with us). It is not really a Korean tradition becuase my husband is the second son. In Korea in the past parents live with their first son and their family and the first daughter in law is supposed to take care of the in-laws.)

I am healthy enough to count down the poblems I am facing.

2010년 5월 31일 월요일

Me!

Welcome to my Journal keeping blog!

It is going to be part of my histories and every small things that I do not want to forget about. I do no covet for the expensive women-like-luxurious-thing, that man would think that they pridely offer to their wife, girl friends. W ewomen's mind are with small bits and pieces like stained letters of my girls' mispelled love notes. And even the old university days, my mother made things like clothings for me just for me and would be glad to wear the to make her happy.

After all my direct and incirect experience in human relasionship, family matters, health issues, whid is still deveolping in the side of Doctor's point,I come to realize that life is very important and everybody and everything with life is important.

Unofrtunately this is so much a common sense that this does not tend to be taken seriously. I get to feel it only after several difficult and near death experience in these few years.

This is a chronicle of the things to live through all the difffuculties I am confronting everyday: as a mother, wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, patient for the several specialists in the hopital, a woman on heavy medication, and a woman with a full time time job and living in a very conservative area of South Korea where girls are mentioned as a family memeber in future in-lasws.

But I am not in primistic tribal society. It is normal Korean society if the degree is a bit harder than the place I was born and raised(Seoul) and I am getting more and more uncompfortable with the situation around me becuase I am a mother of one son and and two precious dauhgters and teacher of many future mothers in a ccollege level.

Things here are my struggling to make this life worth for me and for my loving ones. I am not a native Engish speaker but I feel free to wrtie in English because it is the one way to get myself away from rhe people who know me do not like to read Engish blogs at all.