APW Happy Hour

Happy Hour Brought to you by Monogamy Wine | APW

HEY, APW!

IT’S OSCAR WEEKEND. Oh, I’m sorry, is that not the holiday of the year in every household? In our house it’s serious business. Even with a one year old, we’ve still seen six of the nine nominees (and we’ll see at least one more before the red carpet starts). While we wait on the bubbly here is every best actress winner’s dress. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go place my bets.

In non-Oscar related news, this week was awesome in both work and mothering (though perhaps not so good in sleep). It can be hard to convince yourself that you’ll be the kind of parent you want to be when there are so few models out there that make sense to you. But then you drag your eight month old to an art opening, and that helps. Or, like this week, you have your one year old “help” on a photo shoot. Our tiny art director ruled with a tiny fist (and footie pajamas) before daycare. After school, he rolls around in the middle of the set, kicking his feet in the air in pure joy. We’re going to keep him.

In the meantime, it’s your open thread. Make it rain (comments).

XO
MEG

Highlights of APW This Week

Weddings are not about regret. Do you hear us wedding industry?

So you’re a friend officiating a wedding. Congrats! We’re here to help.

A cancer patient’s guide to wedding planning. It’s really for everyone (but you knew that).

A gorgeous Episcopalian wedding, with a potluck reception. This made me cry, so be warned.

How to pick your wedding playlist. Especially helpful if one of you just wants to play Ke$ha on a loop, MADDIE.

Our first What The Staff Said. They said, “Tell your partner to get lost.”

Evaluating your relationship from the lens of a camera, once a month.

Oh, your ring is so… unique. Perfect for your… small hands.

Stillbirth. “I will be here to carry some of the weight like I carried your train on your wedding day.”

Link Roundup

The piece that worked my brain hardest this week: is getting rich worth it? (Spoiler: it changes your relationships forever.)

But whatever. THIS is the most important thing you’ll see on the Internet this week. (I am in no way joking.)

Speaking of fashion, our girl with the purple hair will be asking questions on the red carpet. Two out of two of your lead APW editors love Kelly Osbourne—survivor, risk taker, hilarious lady, unfailingly polite.

Just in time for the Oscars, Oscar nominee Actors received 150% more screen time than Oscar nominee Actresses.

Olivia Wilde’s supersmart commentary on women in Hollywood and supply and demand.

Once the Oscars are over, you’ll have time to watch Twenty Feet From Stardom, on (diva) backup singers. This is just the trailer, but you can find it on iTunes, and Rachel highly recommends it.

Abortions in TV and film, and how the statistics differ from reality. In case anyone was curious, TV in the seventies was pretty much a thousand times more boundary pushing than TV today.

Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook, killing it. No, you don’t need to marry a rich man to have a successful creative career, ladies.

Speaking of, women entrepreneurs on sexism (God the sexism) when you’re doin’ it on your own.

Beauty bloggers are using their social media platforms to break into new entrepreneurship ventures.

Amtrak is now starting to offer writer residencies aboard their trains. (Sound familiar? Wedding writers apparently don’t count, even if they did it first.)

Selfies: the uglier, the better.

Martha Stewart paint color, or Macklemore song title?

The pseudoscience of Whole Foods.

Longest ever APW reader Sera dove into APW Selfie month by doing 28 days of selfies on Instagram, as a way to work on self appreciation. The project itself is beautiful, the essay she wrote about it, maybe more so.

MUPPET SELFIES. Selfie month is now complete.

APW’s 2014 Happy Hour’s are sponsored by Monogamy Wine. Thank you Monogamy for helping make the APW mission possible! if you want to learn more about monogamy (and possibly win birthday treats), head over here and sign up for their newsletter.

My Selfie Years

Can I tell you guys something embarrassing? I have over a thousand photos of myself on my computer. I like to think of them as self-portraits, but the parties in the Great Selfie Debate of Aught-Fourteen would probably prefer the diminutive form.

My interest in self-portraiture makes me feel the same as when I eat Nutella out of the jar with a spoon. I’m not supposed to be doing this, I think. This is bad. I think these things despite the fact that I enjoy doing it, despite the fact that I know other people are doing it as well, and despite the fact that it fulfills me creatively. (The photos that is, not the Nutella.)

Considering the innocuity of the act of aiming a camera at oneself, there is a surprising amount of negativity aimed at the people—let’s be honest, at the women—who dare to take, much less post, self-portraits.

So why do I have so many? Well, after struggling to complete Project 365, a yearlong project where you take a photo everyday, I was intrigued by a similar project, 365 Days, which focused on self-portraits. I made an anonymous account using a phrase from Walt Whitman, I joined a Flickr group, I put on a dress, lay down on my bathroom floor and snapped a photo of myself, and that’s how, starting in June of 2007, I ended up photographing myself almost every day, give or take some lulls, until September of 2009.

I know how self-involved that sounds, believe me. In fact, although I uploaded the photos as I took them, I’ve never really connected the project to my name, save for two self-portraits that were published, one online, and one in print.

Aside from adorable baby photos, I had never really liked a picture of myself, and I’d never been entirely comfortable in my own body when a camera was pointed at me. I froze when someone said, “Cheese,” with a horrible plastered-on smile and unconsciously tense shoulders.

So here was my chance to control the lens myself. I had a say in the way I looked. I could take hundreds of unflattering photos of myself, delete every single one, and no one ever had to know. I had the freedom to discover my image, the ability to play with it, and push it in directions that interested me. Doing these things on a regular basis ultimately made me more comfortable in my own skin.

We live in a society that is entirely content to judge us on our appearances, yet doesn’t want us to be participants in the way we’re portrayed. When you take a self-portrait, you don’t have to smile. You don’t have to brush your hair. You don’t have to wear clothes. You don’t have to look like yourself. In fact, sometimes it’s more fun when you don’t. As Anjelica Huston says in her new autobiography: “People often think that looking in the mirror is about narcissism. Children look at their reflection to see who they are.” You don’t have to wait for someone else to show you who you are. You can pick up a camera any time you’d like.