I think I am going to get new glasses. I have been wearing my goggles a bit more at work recently because my computer screen is pretty far away from my eyes. It has been helping. But I have also noticed that I might need a stronger lens since things are still a little blurry at a distance. And then I thought that in a few months I am going to be at Machu Picchu - amazing and wondrous site of an ancient civilisation widely described as indescribable but I won't be getting the real picture because of my slightly short sighted right eye. So some new glasses with transition lenses is the way to go I think. That way I can wear my goggles outside and still avoid the squinting business I hate so much. I found some great frames at SpecSavers. Actually it was kind of freaky, I just walked in on a spur of the moment thing, picked up some black and green frames and they were perfect! You can get 2 frames for $199 and the single frame would cost $149 so I am thinking I might get two pairs. It's good to have a backup I suppose. Eventually one of them will get lost or broken and it's cheaper to get two now than get another pair separately later. Mr Rudd is going to help me buy them too :)
That was the lunchtime excitement.
Not much other excitement going on today - except that one of my students is a cross dresser... Why do men who dress like women always choose to emulate slag fashion? I don't think I have ever seen man garbed as a well-dressed woman. It has been amusing though to see someone even more uncoordinated in high heels than my friend who shall remain nameless. She knows who she is. Seriously though, if I was going to dress as a man, I'd be buying myself some sharp suits, not hobo pants that hang in a gravity defying nature just below my butt.
It bothers me that being a 'woman' is seen to involve wearing lipstick and stockings, but I guess when you have a 5 o'clock shadow and back hair you have to do everything you can to avoid being seen as a man. Clearly there are people who, for whatever reason, feel like they have been born with the wrong genitalia and they know this just by what is going on inside them. We all know what sex we are in the same manner really - so why do we need such stringent exterior demarcations of male and female? Some women really do seem to enjoy the make up and high heels part of being female - but how much of that is their unadulterated desire to express their femininity? How do we know they aren't acting under pressure created by perceptions of what it is to be a woman - on a subconscious level of course.
Just from talking to other women and observing mother-daughter relationships other than my own I can see that I grew up on a different environment than most girls. I don't recall being obsessed with make up, or shoes, or clothes like a lot of other girls seem to remember. I didn't even know what makeup was until an embarrassingly late age - and even then it was a strange concept.
Other little girls were being groomed by their mothers for the daily ritual of hiding their faces behind orange powder and black pencil. It just seems such a strange thing to do, to start this process of self-deprecation and erosion of confidence in bare skin - and to encourage it in your own daughter seems even stranger. It seems like women are determined to perpetuate the myth that femininity can only be achieved through concealing oneself in some respect. And, groomed for it or not, we are all drawn into it eventually. I do not wear make up to go shopping, to play sport or to work, but I do wear it to go out dancing. Why?
There is no logical reason.
I think I am happier and more self possessed because I am not one of those girls who will hide in their car waiting for a friend to deliver mascara before they will go into work and expose their naked eyelashes, but the reality is I am just as sold on the femininity lie as they are. Maybe their version makes more sense because they are committed to making up everyday for every occasion in order to be a woman whereas I am picking and choosing the occasions where 'looking female' is necessary. If I am a women and I feel female then whatever I am doing is feminine, surely? If a woman plays sport then playing sport is a feminine thing to do.
Hmm, this has been a little rambling. I fear I am getting into Germaine Greer territory...
Dont' get too excited boys!
