Not My Type
Neko Case, David Kibbe, aesthetic services and back to that old workhorse--hair recommendations
Sad
The most disappointing show I’ve ever been to was a Neko Case show in 2009. This was the first chance I’d had to see her live on tour, for her 5th album Middle Cyclone. On stage she was distracted, quiet, giggly. I wondered if she had issues with stage fright? One of her back-up singers did the majority of crowd work and a video playing behind the band throughout the show seemed designed to take the remainder of our focus off Case. Once, when singing the acapella climax of an extremely sad song, she burst out laughing and ran off stage for awhile, only to come back and quickly finish it. It was weird and I was bummed. I left before the encore. I figured everyone has a bad night sometimes and it just sucked that it happened to be the night I went to see her.
When I heard she had a memoir coming out, I thought maybe I’d find out the tea on what was happening for her in 2009— if it had been more than just a bad night. I’ve been a Case fan so long, I remember her first website back in like 2001— a single page where she’d confidently stated she had no use for the internet and all she wanted to say publicly was that women should get over themselves and sit on public toilet seats to pee and not try to hover above, getting pee everywhere. This was about all I knew about her, aside from she was from the Pacific Northwest and used to make band posters according to a guy I knew who’d lived there. And that she’d gone on to have a pretty funny Twitter account. From listening to her music I expected the writing in the memoir to be pretty exceptional. In fact the only person I can think of to compare lyrically to Case is Tori Amos, in the sense that each song feels like entering some kind of totally mysterious, yet completely fleshed out, world in miniature. Like Amos, Case writes well beyond the standard subject of love— Case writes about that too, but incorporates perspectives and narratives one would never expect, such as a tornado in love with a boy. Every song of hers is astonishingly lyrically rich (It was so clear to me/ That it was almost invisible/ I lie across the path waiting/ Just for a chance to be/ A spider web trapped in your lashes/ For that/ I would trade you my empire for ashes/ from ‘Middle Cyclone’) and that’s before you even hit the power of her voice.
The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You is indeed beautifully written, Case in childhood watching birds dip down to a river, the smells and textures of fairgrounds, the brutal numbness of neglect, the thrill of horses, of song. However, it is not a typical musician blow-by-blow of her big break and success, with the attendant recounting of tours and SNL appearances and befriending of famous people. Case wisely spends the majority of the book talking about her childhood and coming of age (which, having its own natural narrative arc, is always the most effective part of a memoir anyway). I would not find out what was going on for her in 2009 when I saw her perform, but the memoir was so engrossing and moving, I didn’t care. The back of this book says that Case was raised by “two dogs and a space heater” and that is not a joke. The subject of staggering neglect, abuse and poverty, Case carves a life for herself out of the brittle and razor-edged material she was given. No one writes loneliness like Case does (listen here at your own risk). I’ve been listening to her albums again since reading this memoir and when they play I can taste every $200 a month room I rented in my youth where I smoked cigarettes instead of eating dinner, wondering when the grey fog would lift on my life.
A punk by trade, she decides one day she wants to be a country singer, feeling that the singers she listened to in childhood— like Loretta Lynn— were more hardcore than anyone in the wash of alternative 90s music. Case’s voice is so singular (and imo one of the greatest voices in music) that I kept waiting for the scene where someone says to her—this scrappy artist and drummer in many bands just trying to get by—wow, your voice is one in a million. But if comments like this were ever made to her, Case eschews them, lamenting instead that her voice is nasal and she can’t harmonise easily. Barbra Streisand’s memoir, this ain’t, where Babs, bless her, would read at length from glowing reviews praising her voice. Case has more interest in discussing her inspirations instead—which range from a deep kinship with animals, to musicians of every stripe and cultural background, to the folk tales of Eastern Europe and Ukraine, where her family immigrated to America from. This helped me to understand, in part, why her songs have so much depth and sense of place to them. I also appreciated Case’s realism about her life, she’s one of the few who has made it truly without any financial support or family connections and she doesn’t try to paint a romantic picture of what that was like. When her second album, Furnace Room Lullabies, came out she was almost thirty years old and washing dishes in a restaurant for work.
Another aspect worth noting of The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You is Case’s relationship to gender. Case, age 54, doesn’t get into anything explicitly but often refers to herself in terms like ‘a feral girl shaped animal’ (I can’t quote exactly from the book, I listened to it on audiobook). She’s very angry at the way women are treated but you get a sense that she’s subjected to this because she looks like a woman, not because she is one. She has an interesting section toward the end of the book where she talks about why women love horses and her exploration of history to see if she could find women she could relate to who love horses who are outside the “horse girl” stereotype. Looking at some interviews with her, I found her talking more directly about gender. “I don't really think of myself specifically as a woman, you know? I'm kind of a critter,” she says to NPR in 2013 (I love this so much).
I think anyone could read this memoir, you don’t need to be a fan of her music— rare for a musician’s memoir! The writing is unique and moving, Case’s story one of survival and self understanding, of being an unseen creature in this world who was able to hold compassion for other unseen creatures in their bruised heart. CW for child abuse and rape, which are discussed but never described in detail.
Famous
Please excuse this niche ‘Famous’, but IYKYK. In the world of personal styling, Kibbe’s a big deal. I first stumbled across Kibbe body typing on YouTube in the early days of pandemic lockdown and found his system of body typing impenetrable and fascinating. I watched about ten thousand videos on it. I thought body typing was limited to the depressing “are you an apple/pear/etc” body-as-fruit quizzes from fashion mags in my youth, based on how to hide your ‘flaws’ and look thinner, depending on what kind of produce you were. I had long ago made a barf face at this and moved on. However, despite fashion in its many forms being one of my oldest and most passionate hobbies, I was in a long fashion dry spell when I came across Kibbe. I had gone through a number of physical changes due to illness and had lost fashion as a way to express or access myself and had basically given up on it.
David Kibbe published a book in 1987 called David Kibbe's Metamorphosis: Discover Your Image Identity and Dazzle As Only You Can. Building on the previous body typing work of Harriet McJimsey in the 1960’s and John Kitchener’s Essence system. Kibbe wrote about looking at your body from a design perspective, which he divided into thirteen different body types based on five Old Hollywood archetypes and a balance between yin and yang (are you confused yet?). The essential thing to know is that in Kibbe there is no hierarchy— no type that is better than other types, and there is no emphasis on hiding flaws or looking thinner, only in understanding your body from a design perspective. For me, this really clicked. If I looked at myself as a frame or a blueprint, I could see why certain looks I’d been drawn to never worked on me while other’s did, nothing was wrong with me, I was just in the wrong lines. Even more of a relief, it had nothing to do with weight— your Kibbe type remains the same no matter weight fluctuations, as it’s based on your bone structure. It’s a non-shame based system that is accessible to everyone.
I don’t know what random visionary YouTuber/TikToker pulled a copy of Metamorphosis from a $1 bin at their local ARC in 2017 and launched a total resurgence of this man’s obscure styling concepts, but copies of Metamorphosis are now considered collectables and sell for hundreds of pounds. I’ve got one pulled up right now on Amazon UK and it is going for £693. During most of this, Kibbe himself remained elusive. I kept wondering why he didn’t write a new book or launch a Kibbe stylist certification program and cash in on all this interest. Instead he created a small private Facebook kingdom called ‘Strictly Kibbe’ where he holed up as various stylists and enthusiasts knelt to petition him for his opinion on the body types of celebrities, reminding everyone that only he could type people. Meanwhile, online Kibbe groups and YouTube channels became increasingly insane, with various people declaring they truly and uniquely understood Kibbe’s vision—as though they were his apostles, other people screaming at each other about height limits, disagreeing vehemently about any image posted anywhere of anyone’s body, and many stylists deciding to bail and create their own less contentious systems using basic principals learned from Kibbe.
Then lo and behold! Kibbe decides to release a new book in the year of our Lord 2025! David Kibbe's Power of Style: A Guided Journey to Help You Discover Your Authentic Style. I was thrilled, ready for a deep dive into updated concepts of the various body types (or ‘image identities’ as he prefers to call them), hoping he’d answer some of the questions people are ripping each other to shreds over in comment sections, and clear up misconceptions. I imagined a book filled with intricate line drawings and silhouettes and model examples. However, the same afternoon I read it, I quickly understood why there had been almost radio silence on it from any stylist or Kibbe enthusiast I follow. The next day I put the book back in its package from the book seller and returned it. It wasn’t even going to be useful as a reference.
The Power of Style is essentially a workbook for someone wants a total revamp of their whole life to include “love and positivity” and personal style and colour seasons and makeup and home decor according to Kibbe’s ideas, tastes and personal philosophies. Of a 255 page book, only ten pages (10!) are spent on discovering your lines and “image identity” and the explanations therein are very stripped down. It’s truly bizarre. He does, however, include a scolding chapter deriding people on the internet that use his system to type others—another strange move considering those people are why he’s had a resurgence in popularity out of nowhere thirty years after his original book came out? He is insistent that the one way to discover your type is to use the method he laid out in his book on yourself only or to hire a certified Kibbe consultant (he has no certification program). Additionally, The Power of Style is quite difficult to read as it is full of flowery pseudo-spiritual language that I had trouble extracting any meaning from, such as, “we come to earth as little bundles of pure love...we just exist in a state of love,” and “Love-Based Beauty combined with the power of focus sends your dreams right out to those of like minds...this cannot fail to materialize, because love begets love when your style is inclusive.” What?
The most egregious and disappointing element, however, were the photoshoots with models to show them dressed in their lines and the sketches of outfit ideas for each of body types. They were all incredibly dated and it was hard to imagine translating it to anyone in the twenty-first century. It was clear to me this book was constructed in a vacuum and/or that Kibbe’s irl clients are other baby boomers such as himself. After texting the following images to friends, the consensus was that no one has dressed this way since the early 90s (and not in a cool gen Z retro way either). “Fresh Prince of Bel Air chic,” they said and, “It's giving Joann fabrics”. I feel confident saying the interesting and functional core of the Kibbe system can be found online. I think many of the YouTubers who discuss him have much more modern and relevant interpretations of his ideas, which Kibbe himself also refined from other stylists who came before him. I don’t think there’s a need to look to him specifically anymore.
Hire me
As my interest in Kibbe grew over the last five years, I got an eye for it and started body typing friends for fun. This grew into an interest in colour seasons, which I began doing for friends as well, and then helping people with organising and dealing with difficult spaces in their homes— something I’ve always loved doing and have a bit of a background in as I used to do retail merchandising. Eventually, I developed my own preferred methods for colour and body typing, and for assessing composition of space. This is my very soft launch of my aesthetic services! If you’re interested in getting body typed, your colour season done or need some help with your home or office space, hit me up. I’m affordable and low key. I’m not trying to give you a prescription to change your life but offering tools you can use if and when you want to. I’m a friend you can talk fashion and decor with who will never find it boring, or I’m the friend you can pass off tasks to if you find fashion and decor boring.
Hair
I have written about my hair many, many, many, many times in this newsletter. It’s an ongoing source agony, pride, misery, glory. I watch advice about hair routines, I read recommendations, I see a hairdresser who specialises in my hair type and have tried her various suggestions. I am always pretty much struggling with the same issues regarding it tho—the main one being it’s very dry and the second being I hate it when it’s tangled and frizzy, both of which happen easily. I have coarse, thick, curly hair. In a dream world, honestly, where I’m a celebrity or something, I’d get it blown out every week. I recently watched a very sobering YouTube video called “Why you will never get ‘That Hair’. (I tried for 10 years, brutally honest)” which kind of made me rethink my whole life. Maybe I have dry, frizzy hair because I just HAVE dry, frizzy hair? And there’s nothing The Blowout Professor can do about it??? (sob!).
Someone I follow on Bluesky (this is me on Bsky btw) who has very beautiful hair that is not dissimilar to mine in length and curl type posted a pic and I asked her for her hair routine. She recommended an oil that I didn’t like and a leave-in conditioner that I did! SheaMoisture Jamaican Black Castor Oil Strengthen & Restore Leave-In Conditioner. It’s affordable and gave me great, defined loose curls for about 48h. Nothing but heat tools seems to stop my hair from entering full witch territory after that point, but these curls were nice while they lasted. I shampooed and conditioned as normal and then brushed the SheaMoisture through my hair before leaving it to air dry in a bun and silk bonnet overnight. I am not wearing gel or anything like that.
I enjoyed this deep dive into J.Lo’s recent trilogy of passion projects that accidentally demonstrate how deeply unknown she is to herself. If you enjoyed what I wrote about it last year, check this out, it’s funny and smart