This month, Juliana Horner, known on Instagram for her vibrant makeup art, brings us the personality she calls Lucy. She says, “I want to be someone else, so I am Lucy. I wear my feelings outside, because if I kept them in I would have to cry and scream them out otherwise . . . .”
As a young adult, I craved the consistency of adopting some sort particular style for myself. For instance: I wished that I would only dress in all black, silver and red, and call myself punk. Or, alternatively, that I would always wear heeled slingbacks and coif my hair to look like Bettie Page. Instead, much to my dismay, I have always been a changeling.
I feel that I am not alone in this disoriented sense of self. Millennials (I just had to google how to spell that) have an incredibly powerful and growing access to styles, eras, culture, and information. How does one identify as themselves after all that they have seen? My personal response is to embody many different characters. It puts me at ease and I feel I am not tied down to any look in particular. Here, I am Lucy. I like the name Lucy, and the look I made brings to mind a Brian Eno song I like, “Some of Them Are Old:” “Lucy you’re my girl, Lucy you’re a star / Lucy please be still and put your madness in a jar / But do beware, it will follow you, it will follow you.”
