Valley of the ...

I'm back, with a new zeal for the keyboard, thanks to an iMac which arrived today at around noon... but my instantaneous passionate love for this thing will be explored in great detail another day!

Before the old machine started to sputter out, exhausted after four years and some hard drive damage, I was thinking about costume jewelry designer Tarina Tarantino's new line of flesh tone (fleshtone? flesh-tone?) colored necklaces, hair bows, bracelets and other baubles. It's interesting. I'm fascinated with foundation makeup and I have several types, myself, ranging from lightweight coverage to really heavy-- a thick cream formula that completely covers the texture of your real skin and sort of puts on a whole new "skin". So the idea of extending the constructed skin to the adornments that traditionally offer color or contrast or metallic shine, and making the adornments tone-on-tone interests me, design-wise. Politically, it makes me think about all that "doll" imagery, language and conditioning that women grow up with (and continued to be rather innundated with throughout our daily lives). Like, who wants to be a doll? Like a Stepford wife? What the heck is that even about? I also feel that women celebrities are looking more and more doll-like all the time, and I wonder why that is.

It also made me think about RealDoll.--I've talked about RealDoll before, and RealDoll for some reason is often a point of reference for me!-- I could see a beautiful RealDoll dressed in all this Tarina Tarantino Doll Skin finery and how cool and eerie and so odd-yet-so appropriate that would be.

Is there an essay or a paper or thesis or book about the history of flesh tone? Like who was the first paint manufacturer or writer who used that phrase for that color? Outside of the United States is flesh tone not pinky peachy gray? Do you like clear Bandaids? I do!