I think the whole idea first occurred to me probably a couple years ago, but not in any huge way. I was at the ATM in my tiny, adorable neighborhood in the city, having trouble opening the door, and the person behind me offered to do it. Then she said, “Holy shit, Becky Allen?”

She was someone I went to school with. Being from a small town with a tiny school, by the way, that means she’s someone I went to school with for about twelve years. We had both ended up in Inwood, by random coincidence. And having known each other for years — never having been close, but always friendly acquaintances — of course we recognized each other.

But it was, I think, easy to recognize me regardless. So that’s where the thought came from: in my mid-20s, I looked, for all intents and purposes, exactly like I had in my early- to mid-teens. I have always had long brown hair (somewhere between a bit below my shoulders to a bit above my waist); I have always worn glasses; I have, for well over a decade, worn essentially the exact same outfit on a daily basis (sneakers, jeans, t-shirt, hoodie — yeah, every day). And I’ve always felt pretty fine with it, because I’m just not someone who’s ever really cared a whole lot about how I look. I can remember being pretty young — maybe nine or ten — and explaining to my mom that I wanted to join a nudist colony because clothes are just such a hassle. Like I said, I’ve had long hair; I’ve never done anything with it except stick it back in a pony-tail to get it out of my way. I dressed simply, didn’t put any time or thought into it, and that has never mattered to me.

But it struck me as really weird to think that at 25, I looked exactly the same as I looked at 15. Because I feel like such a different person. Or — well, I have the same core, but a lot of the traits that swirl around that core are different. And of course that’s normal, because darn near everyone will change drastically over a ten year period, especially one that sees you go from a high-school freshman to an adult with an apartment and a salary. So looking in the mirror, for the first time, I’ve been kind of unsatisfied with what has always been — due to convenience and accident, not design — my look.

Here’s some more stuff: I don’t do visuals. That is an odd statement, I get that, but I’m — best I can describe it is detail-blind. I have really poor visual recall; I don’t notice things like colors (I’m not color blind, I can differentiate them fine, but I don’t notice them) and I certainly have never noticed what people around me are wearing. (However, I have fantastic audio recall; I can memorize entire movie scenes after seeing them once, and recall conversations with near-strangers years later.) So the thought of walking through a store and trying to pick out an outfit freaks me out quite a bit. I can’t even tell you what colors clash, let alone what will flatter my body, or what styles are, uh, stylish.

And there’s a matter of time and importance and prioritizing. This stuff has just never been my priority. Ten years of a steady pattern happens in part because it’s easy. And aside from the fear of shopping, there’s also a fear of…other stuff. (Deep, I know.) Whatever phase it is in late middle/early high school, or whenever, when girls experiment with makeup? I missed. Where they learn to do things with their hair? I missed. Where they, you know, start to care about anything even remotely related to femininity? Oh wow did I miss that train. And now, at 25, when I see the makeup counter in a department store, I feel stupid. I wouldn’t know where to start, even if I wanted to.

And…it’s weird. Like, say I wanted to wear a skirt. It just has never struck me as practical for my own life. I don’t sit; I sprawl. My feet dangle in pretty much every seat (my office finally, kindly, got me a footstool for under my desk) so I tend to kick them up on something so they don’t get pins-and-needles-y all the time. That is not exactly ladylike — and I don’t really worry about being ladylike unless I’m wearing something where sprawling might, you know, show the world my underwear. I prefer to keep that somewhat private. On top of which, that whole outside temperature thing is a problem. I’m almost always cold, and skirts just don’t keep me warm like pants do. So I could only wear them in the summer anyway, and even that is very limited, because my office in the summer is kept at a crispy 50 degrees or so — we keep blankets around to huddle under — so it’s not like that would be comfortable, either. And besides, wearing a skirt always seemed to me to require wearing nice shoes, and — let’s just say I was once asked, when picking out a dress for one of the few occasions I’ve actually found it necessary to dress up, if I was going to wear a pair of Pumas with it. Because everyone who’s met me accepts that — cute little black dress and grubby sneakers together — as a serious possibility. (I didn’t. Given the bleeding and blisters that ensued, I wished I had for much of the night.)

And hair. I have occasionally blowdried it out of necessity, because long hair takes a lot of time to dry, and walking around in the winter turns wet hair into icicles. But…doing something with it? I’ve always felt like a pony-tail was not very flattering on me, but I’ve never had any idea what else to even consider. Getting my hair out of my way has always been way more important to me than anything else.

But the thought festered. I want to look different. Not in a huge way. Like with personality, identity: that core is still there. But I’d like the non-essentials to reflect who I am now, at 25.

So there’s a lot to overcome here. And I’ve been making progress. A few months ago, I cut 15 inches off my hair. This was a huuuuuuuuge change. It was above my shoulders for the first time — uh, I need to get it trimmed, my hair grows ridiculously fast — and too short to pull back. I luckily had a very, very kind stylist who talked with me not just about how I wanted to look, but how to do it. Products to use — yikes. And how to use them. And how much time it takes to do it. So even though this is possibly the easiest-to-maintain hair possible, it involves putting in a little bit of time, a little bit of effort. A little bit is a lot more than I ever had before.

And I try and think about it when I shop. Trying to look at things that aren’t jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies. Or at least that are different from the ones I already own. And trying not to wince at spending money on these things because I’m still getting used to the idea that better clothes cost more money, and yeah, it’s okay for me to look at priorities and decide to spend more on what I wear.

Which is a whole other point. I have plenty of valid reasons to think about how I look and what I wear; to put more time and energy and cash into these things. It doesn’t mean I’m selling out who I am — like I said, who I am is a core that is still very much in tact — but I do have to remind myself, over and over, that caring about those things isn’t selling out to the patriarchy and beauty standards. Because while I’ve passively rejected a lot of those things, though laziness or nervousness or poorness or habit, I’ve also rejected them actively because that is a bullshit game I am not interested in playing. I’ve always been happy with my body and how I look. (I have no idea how that happened; if I did, I’d already have written the self-help book.) Some part of me does feel like caring and putting in effort is selling out; that if I’m happy with how I look, I shouldn’t want to change it; that if I spend money and time on it, I’m selling out. Which is just plain unfair.

Even ignoring the double standards and the whole fact that women are judged on how they look more harshly than men are, why shouldn’t I work to look how I want? What’s wrong with that? Because if this about me, and what I want, isn’t working or spending money or taking time sort of…just how that happens?

I don’t know. I don’t have a huge resolution to this entry. I know I’m happier now, with short hair (and acknowledging that I need to get it cut more than once every year or two), and I’m happier with fitted jacket instead of a hoodie in the fall. And that it’s an adjustment just to acknowledge that. But there it is. A personal essay.

It’s a lazy Sunday here. I’m sick — doing okay now, but I’ve been through a whole box of tissues since Friday — and lying around trying to convince my cat she wants to snuggle. (She doesn’t.) I was mildly productive, in that I upgraded my version of WordPress. Which worked as it was supposed to (huzzah!) with a minor side effect that now a lot of my posts contain wacky, non-English characters. Nrrrg. So I’m going through and fixing those, but in the mean time, have some links for your lazy Sunday reading pleasure:

Why Strong Female Characters are Bad for Women

Yeah, the trouble is, although these characters were marginally better than the original Damsels in Distress, they still ended up having to be saved in the final act by the male hero. There would usually be a scene (or three) where the “Strong Female Character” would be trapped by the villain and put into sexy clothing, I guess as a punishment of some sort. And even when she was being strong, she was always doing it in the sexiest way possible. She’d never, say, get a black eye or a broken nose in a fight. Her ability to fix cars (a powerful, masculine trait) would basically allow her to get sexy grease all over her slippery body. Her ability to shoot a gun was so the film’s advertisers could put her on a poster wearing a skimpy outfit with a big gun between her legs. All in all, the “strength” of her character was just to make her a better prize for the hero at the end – and for the horny male audience throughout.

(Via Pen-Elayne)

Gee, I wonder why this article is of interest to me? (New category, but it seemed necessary.)

Related:

Stupidity Is the Great Unfavorable

Simply saying that a heroine is smart doesn’t mean that she isn’t dumb as a stump. We readers have to be SHOWN through her actions and behavior that she actually has an IQ higher than a lumberjack’s leavings. If she makes a boneheaded mistake, she has to acknowledge it, not ignore it, deny it or, god forbid, be praised for it. If she owns her bad behavior, it actually raises her favorables. So lead her into the dark alley, allow her to be saved and then have her acknowledge its a stupid thing and then agree to stay home the next time that some type of combat is taking place or until she learns how to wield a gun or sword or lightsaber.

(Via Jennifer Kesler of The Hathor Legacy)

This article makes a really good point — making a female character perfect (or trying to) doesn’t make her likable. Characters don’t need to be perfect, they need to be interesting, and they need to actually face consequences for their actions. That’s actually part of why I like Casey from Greek so much — she’s not an especially nice, wonderful person. Sometimes she’s actively horrible. But she (mostly) has to deal with the fallout from being horrible, and I’d rather watch an interesting person screw up and deal than a perfect person be…perfect.

Rant: Zombie Feminism

Ever since Dr. Frankenstein reanimated a woman to serve as his monster’s bride and she said no, the zombie woman has been a weird figure for female resistance to control. Zombie feminism is an uneasy subgenre, daring to use freakish gore and death slapstick to pose questions about what it might take for women to become unrapeable. Or for men to see women the way women see themselves.

(Via Erika)

Not a lot to say about this one — horror and zombies are not really my thing. I didn’t know zombie feminism was even, you know, a thing.

The “retarded” renaissance

“When kids see the movie and then use that word to tease someone — or call someone ‘Simple Jack’ — they’re not making fun of Hollywood,” says Alex Plank, founder of WrongPlanet.net, a prominent online forum for people with autism and other neurological differences, and a member organization of the “Tropic Thunder” protest coalition. Or, in the words of one blogger whose son has Down syndrome, “When we award tacit acceptance to a term such as ‘retard’ or ‘retarded’ in casual conversation — or worse, when millions of people watch a movie that also awards that tacit acceptance — it most certainly will gain even more acceptance,” she wrote last month. “My son will be going back to school in a couple of weeks. And all around him — I guarantee it — kids will be telling other kids not to go ‘full retard.’ And everyone will think it’s OK to say ‘retard,’ or that this or that is ‘retarded.’ And my son will walk through the halls, and more people will think of Nick as a ‘retard’ than did a few months ago. Nick deserves better than that.”

(Via Chaos Theory)

I’m someone who believes that language is important. I grew up with the very strong message in my school that the word “retarded” was just wrong — absolutely off-limits. I slipped into using it on occasion post-college sometime; I think, as the article points out, there is a lot of online snark that embraces the word. And I don’t think it should be normalized. Like all language, I don’t think it should be banned or censored — but I don’t think it should be normalized. Just because you can use a word doesn’t mean you ought to, and as I think the words we use can and do effect people around us, I choose not to use it.

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you. Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race. With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. Visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white businesspeople and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black, Asian, and Latino businesspeople and professionals. At the same time, because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it. Witness the last two Democratic presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry: one each from Harvard and Yale, both earnest, decent, intelligent men, both utterly incapable of communicating with the larger electorate.

(Via The Swivet)

I don’t entirely agree with this article*, but it raises some good points — and some things I’ve personally struggled with. Brandeis is not Ivy League, but desperately wishes it was; so on the one hand, I’ve got an elite education, and on the other hand, I’m from a very rural, economically depressed farm town. The two come into conflict a lot. And I do think it’s important to not get academia tunnel vision — something I know I’ve had at various points — because there is a lot of the world where academic excellence is entirely unimportant, and its very, very easy to get so secure in the academic world that you lose track of everything else.

* And you can probably guess, I’m not a fan of the phrase “Ivy retardation.”