Thanks but no thanks?

The focus on individuality in our culture these days means that independence is prized as a virtue and dependency condemned as a vice. For this reason, along with the general life experience that tends to remind us that, mostly, strangers don't care about other strangers (unless they're really beautiful), I sometimes balk when a man offers to carry a bag or open a door for me. Am I supposed to protest that I'm fine, thereby freeing him from this obligation he's imposed on himself? The independence ideal would say 'yes', thereby creating an awkward schismatic moment where I internally waver between accepting or rejecting the offer.

But while I might occasionally feel awkward about random acts of gentlemanliness, I have never been offended by them and I don't feel demeaned by them. In some small way, such offers remind me that there are guys who look out for the interests of women, and the pendulum swings a little further to the side of trustworthy men. I feel cared for and respected, and such encounters usually leave me smiling.

Today, I had an unwieldy handful of groceries in my arm as I joined the checkout queue at the supermarket. There was a handsome older gentleman in front of me whose mammoth haul of groceries took up the whole conveyor belt and spilled over the end, so I leaned my pile on the basket at the end of the checkout and waited.

"Oh, you should go through in front of me," he said.

Without really thinking except to process the fact that there was no room for my groceries anyway and to assume he was merely "being nice", I waved him off. "Oh, I'm fine here. Thank you!"

He smiled but then shook his head and said, "You can't do anything to help anyone these days."

My immediate response was guilt, a feeling of sadness that I had refused an act of kindness. I went to explain or apologise, but he kept on talking. "Things are so different from in my day. Just the other day, I opened a door for a woman and she said to me, 'I could've done that myself, you know!'"

I went to say that I'd never refuse a door opened for me, but he cut me off. "If you wanna blame someone for the way I am, blame my mother. She raised me to be a gentleman!"

I wanted to thank him and let him know he shouldn't stop being a gentleman, but he continued speaking until he was through the checkout. I had not had a chance to explain myself or even thank him, but by the end of the conversation (if it was a conversation), I was not feeling thankful; I was feeling harrassed and oddly unsettled. As I walked out of the store, I looked for the man to at least give him an apologetic smile, but he would not meet my eye again.

 By the time I got to my car, I realised I didn't need to apologise at all. If his goal in allowing me to jump the queue was to serve and respect me and make my life easier, he had completely undermined it by taking offence and being angry at me for refusing his offer. If his goal, however, was to feel good about his own kindness, then it is little wonder he was hurt by my refusal.

But this is the thing with selflessness: it's meant to be, well, selfless.

I don't know if there is a moral to this story -- or perhaps, rather, there are two. The moral for me is that when people make an offer of kindness, they are usually happy to follow through with the act of kindness. The moral for gentlemen is that an act of service is only truly so when it serves the other. Being a gentleman is less about parading your masculinity and more about caring for women.

PS. Here, have a Cary Grant.

And streeeeetch.

My blogging muscles are limp and languid from disuse.

That’s what happens when you don’t exercise regularly, children. The condition that you built up slowly during all that investment of time and energy drops away in a flash when something interrupts the regime. Then, the longer you wait between workouts, the more insurmountable the challenge seems. If you exercise for half an hour four or five times a week, it can feel annoying lacing up your joggers yet again, but if you never exercise at all, pulling on those trainers isn’t annoying; it’s scary, and it feels nigh on impossible.

I think the exercise metaphor is close to hand because I got sick around the same time I did my last blog post. The stomach flu mauled me for about a week and then it haunted me for another two or three. I had no energy at all and it was downright depressing to see how quickly my body decided to embrace its inner (and never very far from the surface) couch potato. Even the most basic activity – like walking down the hallway – wore me out. Ugh. Hello again, week one of the 5k running program. I thought I was over and done with you forever.

Putting a blog post out there while I feel so unfit for the task seems similar to that. I feel frustrated with the unfamiliarity of the job, as well as with my own declining ability, and I seem to be saying things in the most complex way possible.

BUT. I’m lacing up my joggers, queuing up an appropriately upbeat playlist, and stretching my fingers.

So. Hi! What's new?

PS. That follow-up post to the discussion on beauty is still coming! Stay tuned.

Less beautiful:

I have some actually stunning friends. Like, the sort of beauty that makes heads turn on the street to watch it passing by. And sometimes I just want to ask these friends: “What it’s like to be beautiful? What’s it like to know that, in spite of your own perceived flaws (because we all have those), the majority of people who brush shoulders with you in this world will find you lovely?”

I am genuinely intrigued at the thought of this, but I have not found a way to ask the question without it sounding plaintive and pathetic. Even as a little girl, the idea of being the less beautiful one in the crowd was familiar to me. My sister Andrea was tall, blonde, and athletic. My sister Lauren was dark and olive-skinned, with big, soulful eyes and eyelashes a mile long. I was (or at least I thought I was) plump, with a mouth that was an orthodontist’s dream as well as perpetually frizzy hair. At school, my two best friends were adorable. One was tall and blonde with cute freckles. She did dance classes and was the first among us to get a bra. The other was tiny, whip-thin and dark-haired. She excelled in athletics as well as in academics. I was just smart-but-not-amazing-smart, very bookish, and pretty bad at pulling together an outfit.

Some of that stuff shifted as time went by. I got braces. I mostly outgrew my teenage skin. I finally got a handle on controlling my own hair (even though some days I just throw my hands in the air and declare that I am not going to bother), and occasionally I find the perfect outfit that I know is just exactly right for me and my weird body. Other stuff, however, hasn’t changed – like the understanding that I’m not the pretty girl in the room and I never will be. There are things about me that are considered unattractive. I know this because I have a pair of working eyes and because little kids say the things that grown-ups have learnt not to. And since I have worked with little children since I was in my teens, I get to hear their frank appraisals of my appearance on a semi-regular basis. The worst part of this is being reminded about flaws you are frequently trying to forget. The best part is that when they give a compliment, it really is sincere. Man, kids crack me up.

Perhaps the above sounds like a convoluted confession of really poor self-esteem – and I suppose it may be read as that in one sense, if only because the world is kindest to the beautiful people, and not being one of them has messed with my confidence in a number of ways. But besides all that, what I am really trying to say is that the whole idea of beauty and its place in the world is something I have wrestled with and pondered since I was small. I’m still far from discovering concrete answers or a clear resolution, but I feel like this issue must be highlighted, that we must discover what we think about this topic so that we can formulate how to see ourselves and the others around us, how to evaluate what import we should place on beauty. Beauty is no longer a peripheral idea; beauty is currency in this generation, and if we don’t actively work to formulate our beliefs about this topic, societal constructs will formulate them for us.

This was driven home to me anew a few months ago when I stumbled across an article that broke my heart. In it, Ann Bauer details her experiences growing up with the understanding that she was ugly. Hers is no self-pitying self-deception; rather, it is an awareness that grew from the way people in her world saw her and engaged with her. “We’re the same, you and me,” one man told a teenage Ann. “We’re both too ugly for anyone to love.”

When Ms Bauer shared her love story in a national publication, people wrote to her with scathing responses: “You’re a hag who looks like your husband’s mother, and my wife agrees. He will leave you soon.” That was only one of a number of criticisms that essentially said: “You don’t deserve to be with your husband, because you’re not beautiful enough.” Such destructive remarks proved damaging to Ms Bauer’s marriage as she struggled to believe that her husband was the one rare man who could stand to look her in the eyes and not be offended by her apparent ‘ugliness’. Eventually, Ms Bauer came to a sense of peace in her appearance that was highlighted during a night in Budapest:

Evening fell sharply there, which, I discovered, is the reason Hungarian women wear so many layers. The weather cracks at dusk, going rapidly from springtime sun to an ice blue cold, so skirts and shawls and long, winding scarves are essential.

Thus, I was dressed as a native the night we attended the opera: a long black skirt, leather boots, and floor-length cape. It was intermission. John was in the men’s room and I was waiting for him, when I turned and found myself looking into a full-length mirror. And I saw something I’d never seen before: myself, in a sea of women who looked just like me.

Part of it was the clothing. We were nearly all in black with trails of fabric wound around our shoulders and necks. But it was also the face, the form. Everywhere I looked in that lighted glass, there were women with large features, deep-set eyes, rounded cheeks, riotous hair, and delicate-yet-meaty little bodies. We were, in other words, an army of ugly people.

Only, for the first time in my memory, we weren’t. I wasn’t. I was normal, even conventionally attractive. Stylish. Interesting. Sexy. Simply that.

I stood in front of that mirror in the Hungarian State Opera House, watching couples mill. Men holding the arms and hands of dozens of women who could’ve been my sisters, mother, and daughters, tipping their heads back, kissing them lightly, gazing with naked admiration at faces like mine. 

I am happy for the confident conclusion to Ms Bauer’s story, but saddened that such a story even exists. What broke my heart the most was that this woman, in her profile shot, is anything but ugly. Her nose, frequently the object of taunts and criticism, looks fine to me. Ms Bauer is not a supermodel, no. But few of us are. And it made me realise that the reason I’ve been protected from the cruelty of randoms is not because I’m somehow better-looking than this sharp-thinking, intelligent, creative, feminine woman; no, it’s simply because I’m not in the public eye and I’m surrounded by people who think I’m beautiful because they love me, rather than loving me because I meet some required standard of beauty.

In the appearance-driven climate of our ‘now’, we think beauty deserves something. It deserves love, it deserves admiration, it deserves the better job, it deserves notice -- and ugliness does not. None of this is true, of course. Beauty is a collision of genetics, as randomly assigned (at least to our limited perspective) as the extra chromosome that results in down syndrome (as in the case of my brother), or the deformity that is clubbed feet (that's me). Beauty is a gift of grace distributed in the most confusing way, yet somehow we have given it grave import and ranked it far above other similar assignations.

A woman is not a better woman because she is beautiful, nor is an ugly woman less of a woman because she is ugly. Beautiful women do not feel more, nor do ugly women feel less. Beauty is there to be appreciated, yes. Beauty is lovely. And it can be enhanced or ignored, but it should not be worshipped.

Beauty is not a virtue in and of itself; it’s a characteristic. No more, no less.

And of course, this is just the beginning of the conversation. I have more thoughts -- including my problem with the word 'ugly' and the related idea of 'beauty' referring merely to the external -- and there could be a whole discussion about the seemingly innate craving to be desirable, to be perceived as beautiful even if not conventionally pretty. Would love your thoughts on this and a follow-up post to come in the next few days.

Words take time:

My sister Lauren shared the following quote recently on her blog:

A culture that is rooted more in images than in words will find it increasingly difficult to sustain any broad commitment to any truth, since truth is an abstraction requiring language. -- Kenneth Myers

It explains, far better than anything I could come up with, the radio silence that's been beaming loud (heh heh) and clear from my corner of the internet.

I am a big fan of images, and one of the reasons I love the internet so much is that it gives me access to this massive treasure trove of gloriousness from all around the globe (my reblogging tumblr account is basically a collection of everything I find pretty pretty, lovely, wondrous, or cool). Plus, in my own sometimes pathetic way, I get to contribute to the treasure trove. I can add to the discussion with snippets of my life, and pictures are so easy to capture and share that it can happen in just a few moments. All of this is good and lovely. But I've been realising lately that "snippets" were never the original intent for my blog. Originally, the guiding principle that my blog bounced from was Socrates' idea that 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' I think pictures enhance life and capture life, but -- for me, at least -- to really examine life requires words, and words take time.

So that's why it's been a bit echoey in here. I sort of told myself I wouldn't post again until I had something worth saying -- no, not worth saying, because that's far too great a burden to bear. Who among us would say anything at all if we were forced to weigh our words in the balance every thing throughout history that has been most worth saying? Let us just say, instead, that my goal is to post when I have something worth thinking about. And that doesn't necessarily mean something grave or heavy; no, just something that requires a little space to stop and pause.

I rush to add that in a war between words and images, there is no winner. We need them all, and no single form of artistry is greater than another. That's why I'll still be sharing pictures here, but as accompaniment to my words, not in place of them. For the other little snippets of daily life, there's my tumblr. (Oh, and I finally got around to creating an "about" page -- which goes a long way to destroying everything I've written here about finding things worth saying. Never mind...)

(another) fly-by hi:

This week is squished pretty full, so I'm leaving this here as a kind of fly-by filler post while I gather thoughts for something more substantial. I'm laughing now as I look at the photo collage I've compiled, since this looks like a dream existence: all play, and no work. There's work going on, certainly -- uni and my two part-time jobs which spread themselves over four days each week -- but it's the play that makes the difference, isn't it? You can slog on through most things if there are small windows of time to be with cool people, to prepare nice food, to soak up the sunshine, to make things with your hands.

What keeps you sane?

Socially awkward penguin:

or: a very long-winded discussion by a hyper-analytical person about the discomfort (and the joys) of interacting with strangers.

At an event on the weekend -- a lovely event, so bear that in mind -- I found myself seated at a table of strangers. This can either be the best thing in the world or the WORST THING EVAR GO AWAYYYY. Though in the innermost recesses of my self I'm kind of shy, it's probably more fear of intruding in another's life than actually shyness. So it doesn't entirely stop me from striking up conversations, and once those initial icebreaker conversation-starters are over, I can talk to pretty much anyone. I like people, so it's fun.

Being stuck on a table with strangers makes it even easier. You don't have to walk across the room maintaining eye contact the whole time. No, for some reason, your hosts or the event planner have decided you and they and they and they would make an interesting social mix for a few hours, so half the work is already done. Someone's next to you, they're not going anywhere, so why not get to know each other?

It sounds logical, and sometimes this goes off without a hitch. But other times the experience is so unbearably, uncomfortably awkward that I feel myself thinking CANNOT COMPUTE. HOW DO HUMAN? It's obvious to you, then, without me explaining it, that last weekend's event was going in precisely that direction.

I was kind of on the end of a long table. Seated near me was one young couple, but my seatmate on the other side never showed up. Hmm. An empty seat already precludes one half of the conversation options. Past the vast gulf of the empty seat was another couple; after a brief hello, they got chatting to the people on the opposite end of the table, and turned to face them or each other. So I did my best with the people I was seated near, starting with something in common, our mutual friends. They smiled politely, and answered my questions, but they did not offer anything in return, nor did they ask me anything. After a respectable amount of time had passed, I sat back to allow for the customary polite pause (also to gather my arsenal of other possible conversation starters). They filled it by speaking to one another a little in low tones, but mostly just looking around. When the gap got to the point of awkwardness, I started again, but again came up against a brick wall. The ball never bounced back in my direction and I sat there like an obnoxious puppy just waiting for someone to pick it up and throw it.*

Since the people I was so unsuccessfully trying to relate to seemed pleasant enough, my usual tactic kicked in. Obviously it must be my fault.

I don't know if this is a human trait, a feminine trait, or one uniquely embarrassingly mine alone, but I tend to blame myself for social catastrophes. Maybe I'm being annoying. Maybe I'm not interesting enough. Perhaps I smell like the garlic bread that was offered for hors d'oeuvres. I'm weird. My face is communicating unfriendliness. I've accidentally said the magical word that released a cone of silence over the person I'm talking to! And so on.

If you have ever been in this dark pit of social despair, you will know the feeling. In your desire to communicate warmth and friendliness, you sit there with what you hope is a gentle yet winning smile, meant to suggest that you are up for conversation but will definitely not glom on to anyone like a barnacle. Rather, you will preserve a healthy, polite distance. What's more, you are hoping to catch the friendly glance of anyone as an entree into the conversation, but you don't want to stare outright because that would be weird.

All up, that is a lot to communicate with a facial expression that's barely there. And of course, after about ten minutes of this, you have a visage-related existential crisis. You forget how to smile at all and start to wonder if you are grinning like a homicidal psychopath, not only scaring anyone away from you currently but also scarring them with an image that will later haunt their dreams. 

Yeah. So that was my position after about half an hour of failed mingling. I began to think despairingly of how many more hours of this I would have to endure, and contemplated shrinking myself down, Antman-style, and making an escape.

The only alternative was to bridge the gaping void of the empty seat to my right and reach across in decidedly uncool fashion to leap into the smallest possible chance of a segue with the other couple. If one of them so much as blinked in my direction, I was going to do it. My chance came, and it was awkward -- and then suddenly we were talking about all sorts of things, and she and I had heaps in common, and her husband was a dear, and we nattered delightfully about subjects both light and heavy, and at the end of the night she gave me her contact details and a hug.

WHY.

The difference couldn't have been more defined, but it's only today that I worked it out fully in a way that makes sense. I wasn't being a socially awkward penguin, and neither were they, particularly. Rather, they just couldn't be bothered. And -- here is where the lightbulb binged into blinding, obvious light -- that has nothing to do with me. Yes, if I was rich or glamorous or a celebrity, maybe they would have been bothered, but I don't have to feel bad about their inability to try. The difference between the dead conversation and the living interaction was that in the latter, both parties were willing.

Why am I saying all of this in an excessively-long blog post? Perhaps just as a reminder to myself and to you that all any of us can do is our best. Communicate friendliness and warmth without being creepy. If it doesn't go anywhere, it's not necessarily your fault. And who knows what backstory the other person is dragging along with them? Don't feel bad if the social engagement comes to an awkward, screeching halt. It takes two to... convo.

*so many cliched (and mixed) metaphors! Woo. Go me!

Me and yo(u)ni:

Of all the schoolday feelings and memories, the one it seems I'll never outgrow is that thrilling sense of fresh, bright anticipation at the beginning of a new school year. I'm a dorky little nerd for admitting it, but one of the most exciting things about the new beginning was shopping for fresh school supplies. Brand new, whittled to a perfect point pencils. Notebooks fat with crisp unblemished paper. Erasers without grey smudges and the corners all worn off. Lunchboxes shiny, with no dings or revolting tattered name labels -- and all of it new, clean, and smelling good.

Don't judge me for this obsession; it is an inherited trait. My mother felt -- feels -- exactly the same way. And just as the feeling's never quite worn off for her, it's stayed with me, too. I can't help it. The start of school and the assortment of fresh supplies conjures up the same response as the first day of January, or the opening page of a blank journal. The possibilities! The newness!

I'm there again now at the beginning of semester 1, 2013. If all goes according to plan (and we all know that often it doesn't), I should be finishing my five years of tertiary education (I can't believe it's been that long) this time next year. It will be exciting to have it done, but I'm in no hurry because school still gives me that same giddy eight-year-old feeling. I'm taking the part-time route with my postgrad studies, doing two subjects a semester. I am subject-greedy and would love to do more, but if I put the recommended hours into each subject (again, how often does that happen?), then it's supposed to be a 24 to 30 hour a week investment, even with just two subjects. So I'd better stick with that, I think.

This semester, my classes are Critical & Creative Writing Through Literature and Contemporary Literature, both of which are fairly self-explanatory I think. The little pile of books there represents a handful of the set texts for these classes. There are more, but I am doling the buying out like a good little budgeting person. Mostly, I'm excited about them. I am frankly blah about the idea of reading The Turn of the Screw, since it's a ghost story/psychological mindmaze. But it's short, so I'll get it over and done with quickly, and I'll read carefully so I don't have to read it twice. I finished The Driver's Seat today, which left me with a disturbing but oddly mesmerising aftertaste. I can see why it was set as a text, but it definitely feels like the sort of thing I'd read only because Uni Made Me Do It. I am currently immersed in The Princess Bride, which is of course brilliant. I keep forgetting I am meant to actually be studying the book instead of just reading and laughing.

One of the assignments for the critical & creative writing class calls for students to do a 'textual intervention' on either The Princess Bride (yes) or The Turn of the Screw (no). Suggestions include (and I'm quoting here from the course in abridged form):

1. Interviewing one or more minor characters from either novel, to gain their perspective on the events of the story.
2. Explore how a changed setting would affect the narrative and style of the story—e.g. how would the fairy-tale elements of The Princess Bride work if set in Tasmania?
3. Explore how changing characters would affect the story: imagine if in The Turn of the Screw, the governess was a male tutor, or the children were much older.
4. Consider how you would transform a scene or two into a stage play. 

Isn't that the coolest essay prompt ever? I'm going to have fun with this one.

Enough about Danielle's Thrilling Postgrad Adventures. What about you? Whether formally or informally, what are you learning lately?

/nerd out.