Get the Look: Baba Yaga

by Jessica Jernigan

IMAGE VIA DEVIANTART

Known both for her skeletal figure and her endless appetite for human flesh, Baba Yaga is a fascinating study in paradox. She's wild and wise, cruel and kind, frail and powerful. No wonder she's been a fixture on the Slavic folklore scene for centuries.

But it's only now that she's becoming a style icon for women of a certain age — and even a few millennials looking beyond fast fashion and tired beauty standards.

IMAGE VIA WIKIPEDIA

Read more: Get the Look: Joyce Byers from Stranger Things

From her cottage deep in the birch wood, Baba Yaga rules over the space between the untamed and the domesticated. As she flies through the forest in a mortar and pestle, sweeping away all traces of her passage with a broom, she makes herself unknowable even as she asserts her impossible presence. She's poised between life and death.

But aren't we all?

IMAGES: FENDI HAUTE COUTURE: VOGUE, MANIC PANIC BLUE STEEL: AMAZON, BIRCH-BARK AND RESIN BANGLE: MODERN FLOWER CHILD, SKULL PENDANT IN YELLOW GOLD WITH DIAMOND EYES: AUGUSTINA, MAC LIPSTICK IN HALSEY: MAC COSMETICS

This is what the woman-in-the-know knows: We endure, even when youth passes. Beauty is only fleeting if we let others tell us what is beautiful. We make time our servant the moment we stop fearing it. In the dark places, we can make our own light. And our wisdom is a gift only for those with the courage to understand it.