I am the Girl Anachromism...
Jan. 16th, 2009 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sebastienneAh, the street-heckling has begun again. I must be being myself once more!
Of course, by dying my hair green and wearing neon-pink jumpers, I am doing exactly the same thing that I used to do when I was fifteen and would dress head-to-toe in purple and walk around London. (And I mean head-to-toe. Wig to boots, via make-up, miniskirt, and military jacket.) Sometimes the heckling was the only way to alleviate adolescent ennui, and I never really understood why until now.
People judge people. I'm not blaming anyone for that; it's pretty much impossible not to. But if I'm going to be judged, it will bloody well be because of choices I have made. My green hair, like my glam-goth purple once did, signals that I do not subscribe to mainstream beauty ideals, and thus that it is meaningless to judge me by them. (When I am judged by mainstream beauty standards - and this is the default way that I will be judged unless I am weird enough - I am judged as someone who has tried-and-failed to attain them. How pitiable. How sad. Poor silly fat girl, no-one will ever love her.)
So my hair is my war-paint. I realised today that this compulsion I have always felt to distinguish myself and stand out in this way is not attention-seeking - I exist as a woman in this society, the scrutiny is always there - it is a demand that the inevitable judgment take place on my own terms. To make you heckle me for the clashing colours I shove in your face, rather than pity me for failing to live up to someone else's standards. To be hated for what I am, not pitied for what I am not.
And if this all sounds very adolescent, well, that's where this behaviour has its roots, after all. But I wonder how many of you can relate to this, or something like it?
Of course, by dying my hair green and wearing neon-pink jumpers, I am doing exactly the same thing that I used to do when I was fifteen and would dress head-to-toe in purple and walk around London. (And I mean head-to-toe. Wig to boots, via make-up, miniskirt, and military jacket.) Sometimes the heckling was the only way to alleviate adolescent ennui, and I never really understood why until now.
People judge people. I'm not blaming anyone for that; it's pretty much impossible not to. But if I'm going to be judged, it will bloody well be because of choices I have made. My green hair, like my glam-goth purple once did, signals that I do not subscribe to mainstream beauty ideals, and thus that it is meaningless to judge me by them. (When I am judged by mainstream beauty standards - and this is the default way that I will be judged unless I am weird enough - I am judged as someone who has tried-and-failed to attain them. How pitiable. How sad. Poor silly fat girl, no-one will ever love her.)
So my hair is my war-paint. I realised today that this compulsion I have always felt to distinguish myself and stand out in this way is not attention-seeking - I exist as a woman in this society, the scrutiny is always there - it is a demand that the inevitable judgment take place on my own terms. To make you heckle me for the clashing colours I shove in your face, rather than pity me for failing to live up to someone else's standards. To be hated for what I am, not pitied for what I am not.
And if this all sounds very adolescent, well, that's where this behaviour has its roots, after all. But I wonder how many of you can relate to this, or something like it?
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-16 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-16 04:16 pm (UTC)