Whatever Happened to Baby Starre?

This is a post about nostalgia more than it is about one person. I would just like to make that clear off the bat. One person was the catalyst that allowed me to think of this post, but this post isn't about her, not really.

Anyway.

This blog has been running for a little over half a year, but this is far from my first blog attempt. I have been blogging since 2004. Back then it was on xanga (does anyone remember xanga?) but once I found blogger/blogspot, I never turned back. (Okay I did flirt briefly with wordpress but we weren't compatible.) And one of my first successful blogger blogs (seriously, it got way more popular than I dreamed) was... a fashion blog! Shock and horror! Moreover, it was a pastel fashion blog! (I won't link to it here but it is still online for those who care to look for it.)

I know that must come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, since I tend to favour either casual goth or tomboyish outfits now, but back when I first became a legal adult I experimented in wearing all the frothy little girlish hyper feminine looks that my mother didn't let me wear as a kid. (She tried to dress me more ~sophisticated~ than my peers, which was really frustrating when all the other girls got to come to school in Disney princess pink concoctions.) I don't really regret it even if I would never dress like that now. I wore sweet lolita. I wore fairy kei. I wore hime lolita. And, though I couldn't ever afford it, I admired hime gyaru from afar.

And there was one blog that epitomised the idea of this hime fantasy brought to America. The enigmatic Starre Princess.

I followed this blog religiously. Its owner, who went by the pseudonym Mana Starre, was a fashion icon for me. She seemed so sweet and ethereal, and yet much more approachable and real than the Japanese hime gyaru icons such as Himena Osaki.

And she wasn't just some blog I followed. She really was sweet and kind. I wrote a blog entry listing her as one of my fashion idols and she sent me the most encouraging e-mail. We actually e-mailed back and forth a few times. Among other things, one of the things she told me was, "I really think you should try to wear either himegyaru or hime lolita, I'm sure you would look lovely in both... Just take baby steps and don't feel pressured because of what others might think!" and "you are inspirational to me too!" I don't think I can articulate how much it meant to me that someone I considered such a big name blogger would respond so kindly to my e-mails.

She encouraged me to follow my fashion dreams, and because of her I eventually tried hime lolita, a fusion of sweet lolita and hime gyaru:

I was so proud of this outfit. I had worked so hard on the fake nails and the gyaru make up, and I had purchased actual hime gyaru heels from Japan, and I had styled my hair like Princess Diana, and I had worked worked worked on it. This was the closest I came to my hime gyaru dreams and I don't know if I would have had the courage to do it if not for Mana Starre.

But nothing is permanent. She stopped updating her blog in early 2013. And the rest of 2013 was really rough on me. Not because of that, of course, but there were myriad personal problems that year. My father had a stroke. Someone who I had been very close with for years betrayed me and we're still not friends. I wanted to kill myself. I didn't want to put on fancy pink dresses and play princess, it all suddenly didn't fit my life anymore! My life was horrible, it had no place for looking like a Marie Antoinette cupcake fairy princess!

Even when I got back on my feet, I never got back into those pastel fashions. While I still attended lolita meetups for awhile, I wanted to wear more classic and gothic styles. The sweeter pastel looks just weren't for me anymore. They belonged to a different part of my life. The me I was back then didn't exist anymore.

And so I forgot all about her. For awhile.

It was very recently - about a month ago - when I was archive-binging another old favourite blog of mine, F*** Yeah Lolita (even though I'm not really in the lolita scene anymore because of work, I still admire it from afar, and this blog has some good craft tutorials in the archives) when one of the posts there linked to a Starre Princess post. I clicked it for old time's sake and the memories came flooding back. The hime gyaru fashion didn't do it for me anymore. I looked at the photos with kind of a fond 'what might have been' nostalgia rather than a 'I wanna look like that!' thirst. But the magic wasn't entirely gone. And I began to wonder what happened to Mana Starre? Her tumblr was gone, her twitter cleaned out, and her blog completely stops in 2013, though I am glad she chose to leave it up.

I actually began to worry at first. One of the reasons she was so inspiring to me is that she had always been open about her struggles with depression - something I knew about all too well - and so my first thought was a fearful 'what if she killed herself?' Though I had never met her personally, I was genuinely afraid of that possibility. I would have been upset if it had been true.

It wasn't true. It actually turned out that she and I have one facebook friend in common, so I actually was able to find her on facebook. (I considered friend requesting her, but I didn't think she'd remember me.) And while I was glad to see she was alive and had gone to college apparently, I was shocked to see what she looked like now.

I could hardly believe my eyes. That was Mana Starre? What had happened to the hime gyaru pin-up princess? I admit I actually facebook-stalked her for like an hour. I'm not proud of it. Her hair had gone through multiple colours since I last saw her. In her profile picture it's pink but in many others it was various shades of green and blue. Her eyeliner was thick and black, her lipstick often dark, and in more than one photo she wore a black snapback cap with an upside-down cross on it. Very nu-goth, actually.

At first, I felt betrayed. Part of me wanted her to stay hime gyaru forever. She had been such an inspiration to me back then! How could she trade in her pastels and big hair and jewels for a black snapback?! But then I realised... I've changed, too. I wasn't being fair. I've hung up my pastels for black, as well.

Why do humans do this? Why do we expect things we liked in our youth to stay the same while we continue to change and grow? (All the manbabies crying over the new "Ghostbusters" are probably the most visible example of this.) All things change. The world doesn't stay the same and we would get bored if it did. As I get older, I am learning how to accept that. Yes, it's scary, but it's a good kind of scary. Dealing with it fosters growth, and that's part of growing up, isn't it?

And as for Mana Starre... upon reflection, I'm happy for her. No, she's not the same person she was a few years ago, but neither am I. I'd be willing to bet neither are any of the other Starre Princess fans from back then. She seems happy now. She's living her dream. And she's still doing what I admired about her in the first place - she's still authentically, unapologetically who she wants to be.

And if I do ever get nostalgic for her old ways... well, her old blog is still online! I, unlike the "Ghostbusters" manbabies, can appreciate the new while still fondly remembering the old. One does not cancel out the other.

Besides, like I said, I'm a completely different person now too:

Honestly, I don't expect her to even think of me anymore, and I kind of hope she doesn't find this entry (because then she'll know I looked at her facebook for an hour! how embarrassing!) but... Mana Starre, if you ever do read this, thank you. Thank you for inspiring me back when I was a teenager, and I wish you nothing but the best now that we're both adults.

Love always,
Nym