May: May Dove Canady

I had never seen May until 2021, but it came at a perfect point in my life. The main character May Dove Canady and I have so much in common. Let’s tally it up.

-traumatic childhood
-spent time in isolation with little interaction with others
-wants to make new friends
-is considered too weird to have friendship reciprocated
-affinity for dolls
-inherited special doll from her mother
-obsessed over some dude’s hands
-bisexual/pansexual
-mentally unstable
-upcycled pieces into a new whole

It feels like fate that I would find this movie right now. If you believe in that kinda thing. It did not escape my notice that I could not locate any images of May in the outfit I chose to recreate of hers though. Maybe this movie is too deep of a cut?

(Side note: a companion music piece to this blog post is Doll Parts by Hole which was also influential in my life.)

This outfit consists of the same Mossimo boot cut jeans I wore as Allison from Hocus Pocus and Heather Donahue from The Blair Witch Project. The Freebird Hustle boots are the same ones I used to be Sidney Prescott from Scream.

I took an off-the-shoulder shirt I acquired at a clothing swap.

Initially, I gathered the collar together with a couple of safety pins.

Then I took some scraps of red felt and black lace to make the patches.

After I pinned them to the shirt, it only took a little hand stitching to achieve the final look.

For my hair, I used the same wig I’ve used for a bunch of characters. For some of the photos it is pulled back into a pony; for others, it is worn down. I only have lip balm on my lips for makeup, and for my accessory, I have a pair of my partner’s old glasses in some shots.

For my first prop, I am using a pair of Singer scissors that I swear on my grandmother have only ever been used to cut fabric.

For more props, I added in a tiered storage display of spools of thread with one lose one. I also added in some dolls and doll parts. The doll on the right is named Cathy Ann and was my maternal grandmother’s. The doll on the left is named Arlene and was my mother’s. The doll heads I inherited when I moved into my great-grandparent’s house.

For my final prop, I used the second half of the CBD cigarette that I used to be Chris MacNeil from The Exorcist. *I am not advocating for anyone to smoke any type of cigarette here, but if you already do and have some on hand, it will definitely help elevate your May Dove Canady outfit.* You could also wear an eyepatch, those large dark glasses they give you after eye surgery, or have a box of jujubes on hand too.