I'm writing this with the total knowledge that I'm a day overdue for a shampoo. The bra I'm wearing is cutting into my ribs, but the straps are still slipping off my shoulders. My shoes are beat to hell and my socks have cat litter stuck on them. I'm a gross girl today.
I've talked about this with friends before (Julia, I still think sometimes about how we both agreed that we are "grimy girls," and it brings me comfort), how impossible it is to be clean all the time. I don't know why. It seems like most every other girl has an easier time of it. My friends are able to exfoliate, hair oil, lotion, shave; it seems never ending to me. I don't understand how other girls have the room and time for it.
Femininity; maintenance. It's easy to feel my failure to properly manage my self-upkeep schedule. It feels like everyday I need to be deep cleaning the apartment. Everyday that I should be getting my nails done and redone; cuticle oil, french tip! I'm sure men go through their own kinds of this, but today I'm concerned with the womanhood version. Gentlemen, feel free to respond with your own experiences with the weight of perpetual maintenance; I'd like to hear your masculine perspectives.
But I've never been too concerned with that. I just get preoccupied with other things. I'd rather be (forgive me, god) sleeping in, or on Pinterest, or writing, or meeting up with a friend for coffee. Getting up early or staying up late to take an hour-long "everything shower" (shaving everywhere, shampooing and conditioning, then getting out into a pristine clean towel and painting your toenails while your hair dries), I just literally cannot get myself to care enough to do it. I'd rather have greasy hair for a day then subject myself to the systematic feminine maintenance routine that it feels like I'm the only one lazy enough to fall behind on.
I realize this is possibly a controversial take; I always feel, anyways, like I'm the least well-maintained of the girls around me. But I just feel this deep frustration that girlhood requires such intense upkeep. Perpetual improvement, when really nothing is changing; at least it feels like that to me. If I start a workout regimen, cleaned up my diet, drank more water, what would really change? In reality, I think things would be different. I'd get fitter, healthier. Probably happier. But it's not about that, is it? It's about how you look, or taste ... how you smell.
She's so pretty, her hair is shiny!
She's so stunning, her abs are delicate but visible!
She's so well-groomed, she smells like soap and fruit!
It never fucking ends!
If it was about feeling good for yourself, doing what's good for yourself, maybe I'd have an easier time brushing my teeth at regular intervals. But it just feels like it's not. It feels like it's about how it looks to everyone else. Not just men, but other girls.
There's something about other women that just feels like they were made for it more than I was. Like I snuck in somehow, squeezed in next to someone in the single-file "Enter Women!" line and made it through security. I guess, though, that would mean I entered this oath to womanhood voluntarily, and I'm still not sure if that's the case. Sometimes I wouldn't have it any other way -- or, I should say, I wouldn't rather be a man. But some days I smell my boyfriend's slightly warm armpits and think the faint smell of body odor works so much better on him than it does on me.
There's something about ripeness, warmness, and rawness that feels like it suits men much better. Perhaps easier. Or maybe that's just my own shame that makes me think that. Ripeness is akin to developmental fulfillment, and I still haven't accepted that I am a full-grown, strong, well-curved woman now. I am not some skinny girl anymore: I am a woman, I am grown. I have sex, I eat steak, I drink wine and go to the beach. In my head I am still sixteen (fifteen? oh how the years wither away) and haven't even had my first kiss yet.
But back to my shame. Shame, shame, always shame.
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I am one of the vast, vast majority who I'm sure "size up" other women when I see them. I can be looking the most sketchy I've ever looked (hair stringy, ratty sweatpants hanging off my hips), and still think, "Oh she looks good/not good, how do I look in comparison?" It's not voluntary, obviously. I don't want to be a judgmental paranoid person, a paranoid woman (and I don't know where the critical eyeing comes from), but that's how it goes seeing other women performing womanhood successfully -- at least while you have to be one, too.
This has been different, though, since moving to Houston and out of the suburbia of my youth (nicknamed, with ambivalent affection, "the Bubble"). As a kid in Kingwood, my hometown -- god, it's hard to articulate. It really started, I guess, in middle or high school. Feeling not pretty enough, and not clean and/or polished and/or delicate enough. I remember being young and forcefully placed in dance classes, where skinny, spray-tanned, balayage haired moms would come get their precious (and equally semi-tanned platinum-blonde) daughters.
I recall feeling particularly ugly during those pickup times. The girls in the classes with me did competitions, could do the splits, all that shit. I couldn't dance at all. I didn't have the flexibility, grace, or the discipline. Closest maybe to having the grace, but still several years of devoted work away from anything passable -- several years I'd much rather spend reading, or running around outside. I'd always generally prefer (although I was mortified of this tendency of mine) making messes and being clumsy. Having real, untidy fun.
But in the city, things are different. People are more different, standards vary more widely. There are different genres of the female "ideal." These are the ones I have seen.
The nightlife ideal. High heels, painted toes, shaved legs. Long coffin-shaped nails, perfumed arms. Tight dresses, cinched waists and toned legs, sleek hair, fanned eyelashes. Every part of your appearance proof of your devotion to the elaborate beauty ritual you've mastered. Your life revolves around your evening performance: see, be seen. Drink, smoke. Party gracefully, dance slow.
The DIY music ideal. Tiny frame, wild hair, loosely revealing clothes. Minimal makeup, dark eyeliner. No heels, wear sneakers. Beat to hell. Still, shaved legs, armpits, tidy eyebrows. Smell nice, but like you aren't trying to. Excellent deodorant, no perfume. Never be seen sweating. Ideally you play an instrument -- if you don't, learn photography.
The Greek Life ideal. Ideally, you're blonde. At least have highlighted hair. Straighten, never curl. Work out often; be toned, not strong, and remain tiny. Almost like you're still in high school. Own expensive sneakers, and wear them at the muddy tailgates. Tiny shorts, tiny tank tops. Everything tiny. Let the men be extra big, here.
Those are the main ones I've seen. All require meticulous maintenance, all have standards. There's some level of sameness you have to adhere to in order to "fit in," and then there's the struggle of standing out. Not to be all feminist neoliberal whatever, but it's performative. It's not about hygiene or confidence, I don't think. Not really. It's hard to explain; we'll look at it from why I feel like I'm failing when I don't meet the standards.
The feelings: I feel undesirable, I feel ugly, I feel too-much, I feel complicated. These are the main ones that come up. Undesirable, obvious enough -- oh no, men won't like you, whatever. Been done to death. Ugly is much the same. In my head I hear, "Ohh ... you forgot to paint your toenails, no one will ever really see you. No one will think you're pretty."
I have someone who does, who actively tells me "yes!" to these things, and I still think that sort of bullshit when I'm out photographing for an event or whatever, wearing heels without my toes or fingernails done. Everyone will think I'm ugly, everyone cares. It's just awful, what you're told when you're young: nobody is looking, nobody cares about that sort of thing. It isn't true. People do look, people have told me they care, they saw. See.
Feeling too-much and too complicated sort of work in tandem. You feel too different from what your ideal is set up as. When I used to run with the music scene, for example, I felt a lot of things. Too tall, too wide. Too awkward, not "cool" enough, talking too much and about the wrong things.
Sensing that people think you're going overboard when you're actively restraining yourself (and so wholly) is devastating. And of course, people think you just don't make sense, sometimes. When you're not good at the silent rules. Not good at taking the quiet cues and obeying with grace. God it's awkward.
In the middle of writing this, though, I did get myself to shampoo. I even conditioned my hair. I wrapped it in a towel when I was done, and I let it dry. I have used the perfume I love for the past few days, when I feel like it, and I like how I smell. I'm going to do laundry today, and I just did the dishes. And nobody told me to. It was just something that felt right. I think I just need to start there.