AppleDoll was born in the year of melting. I was seventeen and quarantined in my childhood bedroom. In my Los Angeles snow globe, nothing set the days apart except the dates I penned in the corner of my diary’s pages.
July 20th, 2020
The days are all the same, and life passes without meaning. I have no clue who I am. I almost feel like I don’t exist. So much of my life happens inside of my own home, inside of my own bedroom, inside of my own phone, inside of my own skull. There is nothing to observe other than myself, such that I’m starting to feel like I’ve made this all up. I wish I could see myself the way one sees an unfamiliar stranger. At least then my eyes could confirm my existence.
So I set about making a stranger of myself. Every night I sat at my vanity, surrounded by candles. My shadow loomed behind my illuminated body as I painted a new face. In the warm light, my lipstick looked like blood glowing from within. Every day I did my eyeliner differently, until I didn’t recognize my myself in the mirror.
October 1st, 2020
I wear red lipstick every day. I don’t believe I did this before quarantine, but I do it now. Metamorphosis is a natural progression, but it is up to me to decide the direction.
Trapped in my reflection, the art of becoming felt like transcendence. Beauty was synonymous with meaning.
January 28th, 2021
What is a person but the creator of their body? They swallow beauty with their eyes and allow it to seep from their mind, out of their fingertips, and into their skin. It is a confession. The red on her lips was there the moment she believed it to be, and just like that, a girl becomes a reflection of her desire. After all, her beauty is her’s, isn’t it?
She called herself AppleDoll.
