Welcome to Sleepover with Bianca Lee Garcia (@biancaleegarcia)! It’s our hope that this Sleepover gives you an idea of what it is to be Bianca’s friend, as represented by intimate vignettes recorded textually, visually, and verbally.
Scroll on down to join us— don’t forget your sleeping bag and pillow!
On words and memory
“I always have my journal. I like to journal every day ‘cause I’m like terrified of forgetting when I’m older and so I like to have a documentation that’s like my own reality show. I’m a Cancer, so I love to remember everything and I’ll take receipts, business cards, labels from food that I ate with my friends, like insane. It’s like a hoarder, but in a journal… And I like to get a book whenever I go on vacation somewhere, so I can kind of remember where I was and I’ll write inside the book where I was when I started it and then I’ll write where I was when I finished it, which is fun now that I move around.”
“When I moved in I was like, ‘I need a green wall.’ And I just did not pick the right shade. It’s a bright Nickelodeon-slime green when I wanted to get this nice olive Dakota-Johnson-kitchen green. Everyone thinks I have like a green screen in my room. It’s a lot.”
Nighttime rituals
“So I have my diligent skincare routine that I do and then I like to read before bed, always. Because I think it’s like a nice way to unwind my brain but then I wind it back up because I love using my phone before bed. I have an extension cord that stays on my bed with me, like it’s so bad. I’m probably gonna get like electrocuted one night. Addicted to my phone. And if I can’t fall asleep my comfort thing is watching episodes of shows that I’ve seen to death already, because it’s such a familiar sound.”
“There’s something about feeling like there are no rules when it hits a certain point of night.”
Favorite sleepover memory
“My first time having a sleepover was a big deal. I was like, ‘Okay,’ like, ‘I’ve made it. I’m old now.’ And we stayed up all night, like genuinely stayed up and then went to school. And I just remember being so delirious and I was like, ‘Oh but we’re adults now. I just pulled an all-nighter, yeah, like, I’m so cool…’ I don’t know, I think it’s something about making these decisions for yourself for the first time that feels so independent. And that sense of freedom is so sweet, especially when you’re like fourteen and you think, ‘Ugh I’m in charge of everything now!’”
Special treats and indulgences
“I’ve only recently gotten into sweet stuff. I never was a sweets person. If I’m gonna spend a little time I’ll make myself chocolate covered strawberries, which is a labor of love. I’ll have to plan that out. Sometimes I’ll do it at midnight and be like, ‘Well now I have to wait ‘til two in the morning to eat these because they’re not gonna be ready.’ Or I love a popcorn. That’s my favorite I think. Like a nice microwave popcorn is such an underrated snack. And a good movie. I love when they play a Harry Potter marathon on TV. I’ll just sit there with my popcorn and I’ll make another one eventually with like a little bit of truffle salt, which makes me feel like I’m a bit more of an adult even though I’m literally watching Harry Potter in my childhood home by myself. My dream scenario.”
“I had a big candle phase and I never lit any of them… Duffels of candles. Terrible. It literally looks like I robbed the Byredo store.”
On femininity
“Femininity is so tied to beauty and beauty companies and just like marketing in general which is weird. And I think in the past few years people have untied it from gender which I think is really cool. It’s less like a ‘girly’ thing and more like its own kind of feeling essentially. Self-expression I think is tied to femininity and just letting yourself try different things… I guess that’s really what I tie it to, like a freedom or like a self-expression or just kind of allowing yourself to exist exactly as you want.”
