Badass Women (010): Baily Rossi

I think inspiration runs in a circular motion so here’s to hoping I can inspire all the incredible gals as much as they all inspire me. Badass Women is a series about capturing that positive energy and spreading it. Wanna help? Read about these cool girls and share their features with the women that inspire you!!
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​What is your relationship with beauty?

Beauty is defined within the Self. I don’t think one’s relationship with beauty should be decided by another person’s critique or preference. Of course, we are all living in a world with one another; others will inevitably influence our feelings on beauty. However, this influence is often too prevalent in the ways we view ourselves. I find that I feel most beautiful when I’m naked: no makeup, no clothing, wet hair. I feel most like myself when I’m in my most natural state of being. But I also feel beautiful when I have some hip ass clothes on and can hear my heels clicking on the ground as I walk. Beauty is your varying shades of individuality. I find myself, and others, most beautiful when they can be themselves.

Also, colors. Colors are beautiful. Try to wear shades of every color every week. I think variety remains true to the individual, considering the ways in which we vary everyday.

​Coffee or tea?

Tea.
Always tea.

​What’s the best book you have ever read?

This is hard for me. I study literature and its many forms everyday as an English major. I have a couple of recommendations for different reasons:

Middlemarch by George Eliot: this has become my bible, especially as a young woman deciding what life means to me. I don’t want to give anything away, but remember that age 21 is the age where you can do everything. Not anything—everything. This knowledge is imperative, especially in the age we live in.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: you probably read it in high school English class, and if you didn’t shame on our failing education system! Justice is never promised in this life, even when it should be. We need more people that recognize not just justice, but the harm that is done when it fails… As well as the good that is done when it prevails. Don’t lead your life shooting down mockingbirds, or you’ll never hear their beautiful music.

Ulysses by James Joyce: there is not much I can say, accept don’t undervalue the everyday. There is so much happening around us, within us, on the average day—things that will never leave us, even if we leave them.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems by W.B. Yeats: his poetry changed my life, and this collection of poems remains the most valuable to me. Beyond life, Yeats is aware of the infinite moment of Self. I’ll admit he’s fucked up sometimes, but so were many great authors; we can learn from those filled with passion, even when we don’t agree with them.

​If you could give advice to yourself as a ten-year-old, what would you say?

Don’t be afraid of the monsters under your bed. They are apart of who you are. We cannot change the miserable things that happen to us, but we can decide whether we will make ourselves and others miserable because of them.

​What is your favorite quote of all time, how do you relate to it?

Oh boy, another tough one… I suppose this is my favorite one as of late:

“I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.”

Other than loving Raymond Carver, I think there is such reverence in understanding our presence in the world. When the world does go quiet, when all those things that stop us from feeling with one another subside, you truly understand how human we all are. We must forgive ourselves for the pain and honor ourselves for the joy. We must listen more closely to each other’s words, but even more so listen to each other’s pule—everyone has a separate life. By acknowledging our affect on others, we recognize our importance to others. We can hurt and heal each other, we can correct and conceal each other. In many ways, we live against the pulse of one another. I believe in existing against the pulse of life, and I hope the people in my life wish to hear my heart beat as much as I love hearing theirs.

​Talk about one of your happiest memories of all time:

The first time I ever saw a firefly was magical. I was 12 years old, visiting Williamsburg, Virginia with my grandparents. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one, but god they are beautiful. I don’t know, there is something happy about being in the presence of something mesmerizing. It’s suddenly not about you or what’s going on in your head, but about this exquisite thing in front of you. I want to move to the East Coast because of this moment.

The other memory that sticks out to me is the first time I wrote a poem. There is too much to say about that, other than the entire course of my life was irreversibly shifted.
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​Where did you grow up?

Camarillo, CA: the tiniest nooks of all the nooks! But I’m sure many people say this about their hometowns.

​How old are you?

20. 21 in 2 months. Oi, numbers scare me when they are so close together. Doesn’t it look a bit frightening? “On the eve of everything,” I tell myself.

​What are you passionate about?

This is something you shouldn’t ask me, because my answer is everything—every high and low. I am passionate about every person. I am arguably an overly passionate person. I don’t know how well I can answer this question, but I can offer some advice: let things settle into themselves. Being passionate about all parts of living is a lovely thing sometimes, but it is also very challenging to feel so deeply about certain things. Some parts of living deserve the reverence of simplicity; I often feel I do life an injustice by not being able to let things be. So, that’s something I want to work on.

I want to channel my immense passion into parts of living that really deserve it, and learn to mellow my emotions towards things that deserve peace.

Maybe I sound mad, but passion is more overzealous than beautiful when you let it run mad. I truly believe there is more beauty in one’s ability to harness it.

​Could you share a poem you wrote?

“On the Eve of Everything”

Hair twisting up before it falls,
Interludes crash on
The rhythm of dirtied locks,
Waving strands curled inwards
Round.

Cheeks of crusted tarts,
The formation of lips
Pulling taught, Loosening pucker,
Tremors overlay sublime
Space.

Blurring portrait,
Shades of mood
Mark red under truth,
Eyes burn with time’s freckled
Imperfection.

The sunken down pocket of her face,
Rests, than rises
Averted gaze searching,
Or maybe waiting for
You?

Prisms of the mind,
Like soft yellowed grass
In the eyes,
Protruding heart of throbbing
Expectation.

A monument of ruins,
Stroke by stroke made
Weary by some toxic crusade,
Hair twists upwards then
Falls.

​Talk about the most challenging thing you’ve overcome, how did you do it?

The realization that all of your good may not be good enough for someone else really scars the heart. I overcame this trauma by seeing the good in what I had always deemed bad. Be with someone who loves all parts of you—that which is good purely because you’ve chosen to not let it be bad. Rather, let it make you badass.

If you were designing the ultimate playlist what 3 bands/artists would you definitely include?

Bob Dylan: holy shit… That is all.

Two Door Cinema Club: dance yourself into oblivion.

Portugal. The Man: just because they rock.

​You’re on a deserted island with 3 other people of your choice: who do you choose?

Me

Myself

And I

I think some alone time would be good for me.

Where you can find Baily: https://www.instagram.com/bailyr/ 

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