Life is brutal, but it can also be beautiful

👋🏼 ASK ANNA

Dear Biddies,

I hated Baby Bop as a kid. In case you didn’t grow up watching Barney & Friends in the nineties, allow me to enlighten you: Baby Bop was a three-year-old green dinosaur who dragged a yellow emotional support blanket with her almost everywhere she went. She spoke in a saccharine sing-song voice, referring to herself in the third person, and could usually be found bitching about minor annoyances like not be able to find someone to play with her and her pink ballon (Exhibit A). In essence, Baby Bop was the OG damsel-in-distress, the toddler-aged triceratops teaching the toddlers of the nineties that if you just acted helpless enough, someone would come save you, or at least come play with you and your pink balloon.

More than a year after my last blog post on my now-retired Wordpress, I certainly didn’t expect to be writing to you all about my irrational rage towards a fictional children’s TV character in my inaugural newsletter, but then again, I have learned to stop expecting the expected and to start embracing not just the unexpected, but the chaos - of my life, and perhaps, my brain.

I still hate Baby Bop, some thirty-odd years later, and watching that two-minute clip in Exhibit A reminded me of why. Baby Bop was the ultimate victim, and as the only female dinosaur in the series, she taught a generation of young girls that moving through life scared shitless and waiting to be saved was an option. I felt this at the tender age of five, and I feel it now at the leathery age of thirty-four.

I’m no longer in talk therapy (thanks Zoloft), but if I was, I imagine my therapist would tell me that my unfounded rage towards Baby Bop probably comes from an unmet need as a child to feel safe in my surroundings. That, if I couldn’t blow a whistle and cry for help and assume everyone would come save me, why should this tiny green fucker on my TV screen have the privilege of it? Her assumptions would probably be true, but what would also be true is this: that when you fall down and cry out for help, but no one comes, you eventually learn that you can get back up by yourself. That not having someone to wipe away your tears, or play with you at recess, or make you feel better about all the questionable choices you made in your twenties means that one day, you learn that you can not only buy yourself flowers, but you can also buy yourself Kleenex, that having people around you doesn’t equate to having fun, and that most of your life’s biggest mistakes will also become your greatest accomplishments.

If there’s one thing Baby Bop did get right, it’s that you can move through life scared shitless - I know I have. But where we differ lies in the fact that I have spent the last thirty-four years living and now, preaching, to you all the fact that you can be scared without succumbing to inertia, you can be scared without waiting to be saved, and you can be scared and lonely and play with the damn balloon anyways, because who ever said you needed a friend to enjoy the spoils of your pretty pink balloon?

My dearest biddies, no one is coming to save you and that will one day be the greatest gift anyone could have ever given you.

Stay brutal,
— anna

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💄 BEAUTY BANTER

• Skin Banter: 

  

  I don’t always have time (or patience) for a full face of makeup, but I also don’t need people asking if I’m sick when I’m just existing. Enter this Erborian’s CC Creme —the perfect middle ground between “I woke up like this” and “I actually tried.” It comes out looking like nothing special, then somehow adjusts to my skin tone like it was custom-made. Pores? Blurred. Redness? Gone. My face? Looking suspiciously fresh for someone who survives on caffeine and chaos. And with SPF 25, I can pretend I’m on top of my skincare game. No cakiness, no effort—just good skin, faster than my morning coffee kicks in.

• Make-Up Banter: 

  

  I went to LA to escape the gloom of Connecticut. What I didn’t realize? LA is a LIE. It’s not a city. It’s a Sahara-level dehydration chamber disguised as a wellness paradise. The air? Drier than a grandma’s Thanksgiving turkey left in the oven since 1998. My skin? Flaking off like a crescent roll in a wind tunnel. My makeup? Evaporating into the void like my patience in an Uber stuck on Sunset. Enter Clarins Fix’ Make-Up, my misty little life support system. One spritz and—BOOM—my face went from shriveled lizard cosplay to glowy, dewy, borderline celestial. My foundation? Locked down like Area 51. My skin? Hydrated like it just drank eight emotional-support Stanley cups of water. This miracle mist smells like roses and, more importantly, defeat-proofed my entire existence. LA tried to mummify me. Clarins said, “NOT ON MY WATCH.”

• Hair Banter

  

  My hair was fine—until I tried Nexxus’ Repair & Nourish Hair Oil and realized it could be so much better. One pump and suddenly, it looked shinier, smoother, and way more expensive, like I had a standing salon appointment instead of just hoping for the best. It’s lightweight, non-greasy, and absorbs so fast that I don’t have to plan my day around it. No weird residue, no heavy buildup—just hair that looks effortlessly healthy, like I was born with it (I was not). Honestly, this oil is the final step between “meh” and “main character hair.” 10/10, will never gatekeep.

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