In retrospect, I know why I did it. It was because subconsciously, I had this burning desire to look like I did when I was Diamond Jessie. I spent much of my life being fixated on changing my appearance. For example, I wanted to change my jawline, height and butt. And all of these obsessions were alive and well long before I ever saw a picture of my old self, or read how Curt Gentry described Diamond Jessie in his book, The Madams of San Francisco.
“Her bottom was something to watch,” he wrote.
I already had my BBL by the time I found that quote. And sometime later, I found a picture which looked like it was the inspiration behind Gentry’s words. Of course, I can’t show it to you here. See, one of my memories as Jessie, is participating in the making of metaphorical corn within the Tenderloin. So when I inadvertently discovered that vintage corn was still around, I spent a great deal of time looking through the kernels to see if I could find mine.
Of course, corn was born long before 1969, as this plaque in the Tenderloin Museum suggests. It was just underground.
I took this photo at the Tenderloin Museum on 11/11/2023. Obviously, I added the corn emojis.
I find the historians’ description of Diamond Jessie to be fascinating. “She was tall and elegant, a shapely redhead…” Of course, as Jessie, I wasn’t as tall then as I am now. For so long, in this life, I fantasized about being just a bit shorter. However, It’s now been many years since I’ve wished that, because at some point, I realized I need all 72 inches in this life. Jessie, whom I often refer to in the third person, had the below photo taken by the passport agent at the customs house of San Francisco.
She did her best to conceal her real identity.
She dyed her hair brown and wore an extravagantly distracting hat. She shrunk-slouched as much as she could, and said 5’4” was her height. She went back and forth with the clerk, who realized he couldn’t accept this measurement. Seeing that she looked to be 5’8“ at least, he compromised and marked out the 4 as evidenced in the photo below. 5’5” was the minimum number he would accept though, and only because Jessie had stood her ground, arguing that it was her footwear which added the extra inches.
I found Jessie’s passport application through ancestry.com.
Jessie’s face was shaped more like her name, a diamond, rather than an oval.
And it’s the jawlines that are different in the side by side photos below. The philtrum though, and the tightly pressed lips, are the same. In this life, I was sure I was supposed to have a more angular jawline like in the picture on the left. I spent countless hours practicing and watching mewing instructional videos. I wore orthodontic braces twice. And I even ordered the Jawzrcize. At the time of the photo on the right, I had no idea that the photo on the left, or any other photo of me from my past life, even existed. But in my head, I saw how I thought I was supposed to look.
I took the above photo on the right on 9/17/2011, in the parking lot of Marshall’s in Hendersonville, NC. I was there to find something to wear on a date. Nostalgia must have taken over when I saw this hat and scarf, because I came out looking like I’d stepped right out of the 1920’s, which is when the photo of me on the left was taken. I don’t remember for sure, but I think they had other colors from which to choose besides red. Of course, as I discussed previously, my Venus is in Aries might be the reason that even as a little girl, I was drawn to wearing red.
From my research, I learned that the red hat was probably a reproduction of a 1920’s cloche. On the left is an ornate version of this hat style. It is said that the cloche was designed to fit over a bob, which was a trending hairstyle at the time. Ironically, in the picture from this lifetime, I was sporting a bob. Also, I was probably supposed to have been wearing the red hat with the brim pulled down lower towards my eyebrows.
I posted that red hat photo on Facebook from the store’s parking lot. And as you can see from the comments in the screenshots below, there was a strong focus on my missing smile. Interestingly, I had the same facial expression as I did in the photo on the left. Now, notice what Google AI says about the look that goes with wearing this hat style. “The cloche’s deep fit created a mysterious, alluring look, and the need to lift the head to see clearly down the nose, created a snooty or haughty demeanor often associated with the era’s style.” So here is my question.
Was it muscle memory that took over when I put on that reproduction cloche hat?
P.S. There’s a lot more I could say about the misinformation in that passport application, such as the age and date of birth I gave as Jessie. However, I’ll save that for another time.