Housemate love!

[abilouise]

I just sort of failed at an experiment in trying to live up to unattainable standards of white American beauty (read: waxing my 'stache). Tomorrow: paying someone else to do it. But my housemate E. told me that one thing he loves about me is my ability to show the political-ness of *anything*, a characteristic he shares and has gotten crap from several ex-girlfriends for (and that I have gotten crap from at least one current husband for). We are both a pain to watch movies with. I totally ruin movies for myself and others by pointing out the lack of ANY female characters in Yellow Submarine. etc., etc. But I think that doing something painful to look more like a girl-child/hairless WASP is a pretty obvious political thing, after all, Hothead Paisan takes on the Spritch Aisle. But secretly, waxing it was sort of fun/satisfying. Hating something attached to my face every time I see it in the mirror takes a lot out of you after a while. And ripping it out from the roots is *way* more satisfying than bleaching it an unnatural piss-yellow. Now I want to go to one of those places where an anorexic-thin woman with an exotic accent who would faint if she saw my hairy legs does it brusqely!

The point here is that it takes a lot more energy and probably money too to transform society or at least my own view of it so that I DIDN'T hate the way my 'stache looks than to do this. And there are bigger feminist battles to fight anyway. Identity politics is so 90s, right? I get sick of being a such a damn purist after a while.

Comments

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think that I have devoted too many brain cycles to thinking about hair issues and politics and symbolism, so it makes me feel better to find out that other women also spend too much energy on similar topics.