The Fifth Circle of...Hilary Term

Greetings, one and all, and welcome back to witness my incipient mental decay.

Having turned in multiple papers thus far, I am feeling much better about my abilities to...write passable papers in about 12 hours total.  (BIG grin.)  Alas, despite my best intentions, I have not quite been able to shake my procrastination habit, though recent developments have proven promising: the past two days I've spent four and five hours respectively in libraries, studying away.  I feel quite research-y; it's lovely.

Thus, a few reflections on the effects of prolonged study and some thoughts on the Oxford System (Patent Pending). 

1) I am doing research.  Like a big girl, a grownup, a proper scholar.  Granted it's not particularly groundbreaking -- I don't have the vast background that would be necessary to write the sort of articles and analyses I read, and I have little interest, at this stage, in things like textual history -- but the difference is quantitative, not qualitative.  I've chosen my subjects and I explore sources on them; I evaluate and compare and analyze and synthesize and refute.  It's strange -- but more and more I'm figuring out that I can learn things on my own, with minimal guidance from teachers.

2)  Writing 1.5 ten-page papers every week for eight weeks, and doing nothing else, is interesting.  It's intense, especially at first, when, having finished the paper, my US-higher-ed-primed brain expects there to be a lull and not an immediate new assignment.  And in some ways the experience is a little impoverishing -- I only see my tutors once a week and once every two weeks, and while our converse is stimulating (and surprisingly equitable; one does not feel so much like a lowly student as like a scholar being mentored) it's also limited.  Nor do I have classmates working on similar projects with whom to commiserate and exchange ideas.  I'm obliged to be very independent, which has its advantages and drawbacks.  And it's very immersive -- if nothing else, I am sure going to understand the different layers of textuality in the Ars Amatoria, and the various configurations of sublimity, rebellion, and causality in Romantic interpretations of Milton when I get back.  I feel like I'm actually getting to know my topics, on my own time and in my own way, and not having any kind of interpretation fed to me.

3)  Oh, my good golly gosh, the libraries.  They are so full of books.  There are so many of them.  Their opening hours and laptop policies are all different.  And...they are marvelous.  I love that every other building, it seems, is a library.  I love that there are so many books.  Even though I don't request the rare editions and original printings, I love the fact that if I needed to, I could.  And I love that it doesn't matter how obscure the thing I'm looking for is: they will have a copy.  Today, for instance, I found -- on one shelf -- Charles Williams' All Hallow's Eve, everything ever written by Virginia Woolf, and the same for WB Yeats.  A few aisles down -- all of Byron and Shelley's personal correspondences, in book form.  A floor below that -- Middle English dictionaries.  Linguistics and syntax textbooks.  MASSES of Shakespeare.  And this is all just one building -- the English Faculty Library.  If I went to the Sackler, or the Lower Reading Room of the Old Bod, I could find every issue of every philological journal ever, either bound or on various web databases.

 -- Everything's there, in other words, and it feels so...I don't know...comforting.  For once in my life, there are enough books.

4)  Because my study is so independent (see what I did there?), I'm finding myself not only honestly interested in the background to what I'm studying but in random other tangents as well.  And, cooler yet, I'm actually finding some time to pursue them.  Part of this is due to not having any other homework or classes apart from my tutorials (WIN), but part is due to the independence fostered by the aforesaid conditions.  It's like the entire university has said to me, "You want to learn about something? -- Hell, we're not gonna hold your hand; we've all got dissertations to write.  Go read some books about it."  And I have been, and I discover that reading books is a legitimate way to learn about things -- especially reading "broad and shallow;" speed-reading through a wide variety of texts on a subject and lingering only on those things which attract your attention or seem to make sense.  I read and read, and come back to speak to my tutors, and they say things like, "So how did you find Stanley Fish's take on Milton?" and I come back with, "Oh, I thought he made some good points, except for XY and Z; Waldock totally disagrees with him, of course, but then what are you going to do? -- it's Waldock."

 And then I have to pause, and realize that those words actually came out of my mouth, and that I am speaking with some authority on a subject that, a week ago, I'd only have been able to sort of hem and haw over.  Research works, and more importantly, I can do it.

*Bonus)  So far all of these experiences have served to further confirm my inclination to skip grad school, since so far it seems like most schools are tightening the reins on research.  You don't just get to read what you want; you're increasingly subject to a) produce papers, b) do events like conferences and lectures and collaborations and things, and c) "engage in dialogue on relevant matters," which is code for "wrench your favorite topic around until it has some tenuous link with our Buzzword of the Day and pretend like you care about that".  So I'm thinking -- I know you've heard me say this before, but it's still true and not a platitude -- the only way I can continue my education is to stop going to school.  And indeed, this in itself is not foreign to the Oxford ethos; a lot of the professors here don't have doctorates, and don't care.  Some of them, I suspect, are just given honorary doctorates because they're so clearly more brilliant than what the postgrad mills are churning out.

Nevertheless, if I were ever offered a reasonable shot at doing grad work at Oxford, I'd take it, and here's why: you really are living in community with other scholars.  Because there are so many individual colleges, they're all tiny, and everyone seems to know each other.  Moreover, there's a legitimate sense of investment in the community.  I know what all the colleges back in the states say about having that homey campus-family feel, and I'd even say that my own college does a good job of fostering a fairly good sense of community.  But in Oxford, there's not really such a thing as a college campus: there's one building, with a dining hall and classrooms and common rooms and library and dorms and quad and cathedral, all within one walled-in complex.  Then there's the town.  You want to eat something other than hall food?  Go into town.  You want a capuccino?  Town, baby; there's no cutesie college cafe (though there is a bar -- apparently a rather cheap one -- in my college basement).  Books?  Sweatshirts?  Town. -- But you want to study, meet your friends, go to class, there's one place you do it, and it really feels more like a home, and less like a company. 

Of course, I think the walls have something to do with it.  I swear, if Normans attacked tomorrow, you'd find hoards of students turned out in motley battle gear, barring the gates and shrieking defiance as they fling hot oil down upon the foe. --You don't get that, so much, on your typical sprawling sleek mid-nineties architecture modern campuses. ...no, what you get is the sense that half the student body would sort of shrug and shuffle back to their dorms in their jammies, and of the remaining half, most would be torn by indecision and some would attempt to understand the Normans' cultural context and meaning-making paradigm and where they were on the Rainbow Spiral of Self-Actualization, so they could justify their meekness in handing over whatever paltry cultural treasures their libraries had been holding on to.

Not bitter.  Not at all.  ; )

And now for something completely different: the Oxford Pub and Coffee Tour of...Oxford:

Pubs: The White Horse is OMG THE WHITE HORSE.  I LOVES IT.  Conveniently located, serving very tasty foodstuffs for only slightly painful prices, comfortable, frequented by locals, warm, low-ceilinged, brimming with culture, and offering the tasty (if somewhat less than ebon-dark) Wayland Smithy, and a very good blonde Cornish beverage.  Also one of the barkeeps is Glaswegian.  He sounds so lovely.  And they are nice to me and don't pester me, but also will chat with me if I'm lonely.

The King's Arms is a bit of all right, but big and very crowded, and gets a bit rambunctious as the evenings wear on.  Expensive food but their pork pies are cheap and decent.  Not bad in a pinch.

The Mitre: ehhh.  Overpriced, standardized -- too obviously owned by a chain -- the darkest thing they had on tap was Guinness... skip it.

The Turf -- supposedly the oldest pub in Oxford -- is a nice enough place, tricky to find, good food (again, spendy), a wide selection of alcoholz.  Very similar to the White Horse, in fact, but...for some reason... I like the former a little more.  It's cozier, less labyrinthine...and they know me there.  Sure, they know me as "that odd American chick who comes in on Tuesdays, collapses into a chair, drinks like a drowning fish, and scribbles in her notebook," but I think they do know me!...a bit!

On to coffee:

The Buttery -- brilliant.  Cheap -- you can get a 12-oz mocha to take away for under 2 pounds -- and delicious, using a lovely velvet-soft foam instead of the drier fare you get elsewhere.  They're quite friendly, and their flapjacks (which in England are not pancakes but sort of oatmeal bars) are superb.

The Missing Bean -- billed as the best espresso bar in Oxford, because it seems to be the only real espresso bar in Oxford, it's always very...busy, and a bit spendy, and they don't make their coffee particularly fast, but I may give them another shot, since I think their roast is pretty good.

Starbucks: don't.  Not in England.  It's just...sad.  I don't like Starbucks excessively much in the States, but I must admit they do a better job than over here...again, I blame a cultural lack of coffee understanding....

Coffee Republic: Does an all right job, especially at Chai Lattes, but service...sucks, honestly.  I feel like I'm being sort of hurried about, and no amount of soft folksy soundtrack and cunning wall art is going to make up for that.

Morton's/Cafe Creme: both of these do an all right job -- and more importantly, are nice to me -- but they're a bit too expensive, and their coffee not quite bliss-inducing enough for me to justify it.

A Reflection: England has a stellar pub culture.  One goes out, enjoys beers and gin-and-tonics, has some nommage, enjoys the atmosphere, the company; one does not get kaplashmammestered and make an idiot of oneself.  Service is friendly, food is good, everything is relaxed, laid-back.  Cafe culture is...catching on, but it doesn't quite seem as native.  Additionally, as I have noted, English breakfast is protein with a little fried starch on the side -- not big on flavor, variety, or French toast.  So I'm thinking there's a definite niche to open a nice place where we do specialty lattes and American breakfast options (like, say, Denver omlettes and pancakes with syrup) and, what's more, do it right.  ...Retirement plan?... I've already got an idea for a signature drink; I call it the Nutella mocha, and it is a hazelnut-vanilla mocha with a blob of actual Nutella stirred in.  Also I am considering a shot-in-the-dark with a kiss of heavy cream and optional chili-chocolate syrup called "The Trucker."  And who could forget "The Jaffa," an orange mocha, named for the famous orange and chocolate cookie/cake things they sell over here?... I could even introduce a glorified Raspberry Galaxy and call it "The Jammy Dodger."  And, of course, we could introduce the British Isles to the breakfast burrito.

...I'm seeing real potential here.  First, though, I should get my food worker's permit...

...and before that, I should go read Prometheus Unbound.  Again.  Perhaps this time it will make sense?

Love and kisses, all.  Keep trucking.  Six papers down; fiveish to go!

I Can Has Paper?

Greetings, O Ye Who Are Reading.  Welcome to week 2 of "the Abroad Experience."  This past week has been pleasantly academic, though as my due date nears, I begin to wonder if it was quite academic enough.  Well, that's all as may be.  As it is, I've finished a draft of my first tutorial assignment, involving Ovid's use of mythic digression and exempla in Ars Amatoria, and... oh, boy, I could go ON and ON about the man's brilliant use of Latin, but I shall refrain.  Meantime I am currently stymied on Milton and Coleridge; I've got 2000 words min. to write about them and I don't... know... what... to... say....

But no doubt something brilliant will occur to me.  Today I went and wandered around for a while, got myself thoroughly lost, and window-shopped for wool coats.  But in the process I found a wondrous place.  It is called, appropriately, Paperchase, and it is to me what a Chocolate-dipped Sparkly Vampire Store would be to most preteen girls.  Attest, ye gods and angels -- the notebooks.  The pens.  The different colors and sizes of paper.  The desktop organizers.  The colors.  The siren call of the reasonable prices.  I know, rationally, that 10 pounds is $16.45.  But it doesn't feel like $16.45.  So I could buy two of the little linen notebooks.  Or I could get one in leather for 50p more!

This place is not healthy, in sum, and if you want a souvenir from it tell me so I have an excuse to go back and buy ALL THE THINGS.  Meantime I've decided to only eat parsnips and ginger beer so that I have more money to blow at trip's end.

Also found some awesome cemeteries.  When I have time, eg when I don't have a 2000 word paper due in 2 days, I will go to them and brood and feel poetical.

Yeah, I really ought to be doing things...

So I will sum up with an observation on British culture and why I love it:

Staring is impolite.  Going over and talking to someone is considered a little odd; they probably want their privacy; Lord knows this island is teeny and crowded enough without people going over and interrupting others' thoughts.  Also, is there a queue here?  Were you looking at that self-checkout station/post box/food item before I was?  Wait, you're a LADY?!  Go first.  No.  Really.  GO FIRST.  And don't thank me.  No, it's okay.  You don't have to look at me.  ...well, okay, an awkward brief smile is all right, I guess, here let me return it.  Now let me adjust my leather carry-all -- yes, I am a man.  No, this is not a purse.  Where are you from, anyway?  Of course I carry a bag.  The Queen's saddle-maker provided the leather!  My grandfather carried tins of peaches around in it when the gerries bombed his house during the Blitz!

Oh, no, that's quite all right.  No offense taken.  Yes, these trousers are wool.  No, I'm not going to an interview... I'm going to the grocery store.  To pick up some nice parsnips.  What do you mean, 'dressed up?'  I'm not.  I'm wearing normal clothes.  ...yes, waistcoats constitute normal!! 

Gracious, the colonies are still dreadfully uncivilized, aren't they.  You poor thing.

-- And this is why I like it over here.

Now, for the ongoing saga of the Pub & Coffee Review:
3 Goats' Heads is kind of in a side street that's just this side of Sketchtown, but it's quiet and comfy and has lovely architecture.  Barkeep wants to be a rock star; looks a little stoned and air-drums to his iPod, but provides lovely cheap beer.  The stout is... not a beginner's stout.  But it renders one VERY happy, once you can get it down.

Mission Burrito across the street from aforesaid pub is decent but overpriced.  Their "medium" salsa is about as painful as tomato paste.

"The Missing Bean" espresso bar rendered me an Americano that was, for once, good.  Very "cool" place; unfortunately, I think they know it.  Bathroom sign is a print-out of Obi-wan captioned, "These are not the restrooms you're looking for."

The Croissanterie cannot do a cup of filter (that is, drip) coffee to save their lives; I'd almost rather free waiting room coffee.  But, as I've said before: people don't quite get coffee over here.

If you're ever over here: find a food truck.  Ask for chips and gravy.  Feel Canadian.

And that, good people, shall be all -- except...

Border collie puppies.  Still don't know if I want one, but darn it are they pretty!

Foreign Affairs

I Am In England. 

Oxford, to be perfectly precise, for an eight-week study abroad program that may just end up stealing away my heart and nomming it, that I may never be content in a US institution of professed "higher learning" again.

Anyway.  My joy at being here is hardly entertaining reading.  And in the...week?  really?  So long and so short?... since I arrived, I have had time to make observations only of the most fleeting and superficial sort, mostly centering on how the Brits Do Things Different.

Here, then, a handy glossary/guide:

Driving: They do it on the correct, that is to say left, side here.  Which is well and good, except that it means you have to look right when crossing the street.  Apparently in some more cosmopolitan townships there are handy signs painted on the pavement, advising you to "Look Right."  Oxford, bastion of education, leaves its lonely foreigners to learn this hard truth empirically, that is to say, with much squealing of tyres and blunt force trauma.

Food: Not too expensive if you know what you're doing.  Dairy products have so far been vastly superior: butter, cheese...much creamier and tasting as if it comes from a happy ruminant.  But also prone to being a little disappointing, and getting to the table lukewarm and soggy.  Protein for breakfast; only a silly git or possibly an Irish type would eat cold cereal or yogurt and granola.  Coffee has been barely decent to nightmarish; it's like I've gone back in time, to the pre-Starbucks revolution era.  (I think it has something to do with the native and completely understandable English distaste for all things smacking of France.)  There IS a Starbucks in town, on (I believe) Cornmarket St. (where there is also the most upscale KFC you will see outside Saudi Arabia); it sucks.  The best place I have found so far -- not staggering, mind you, but not at all bad -- is on the third floor of a five-floor bookstore.  Coinkidink?  Creo que no.

Fries are chips and chips are crisps.  You do not want coffee to go, you want it to take away.  Rocket is a kind of arugula leafy thing.  A baguette is a long thin sub sandwich.  Yes, the fish and chips are good; mushy peas, however, make the dish.  Brown sauce is like a complicated ketchup, tasting mostly of tomato paste and vinegar; not bad; don't fear it.  Sliced bread is not sliced.  Why they say it is sliced I fear I shall never know. 

I live near a place called Mick's Cafe; a tiny ancient homey diner frequented by local types.  They look at me funny when I come in, but they don't judge me for wanting coffee and they do a wonderful if minimalist egg sandwich for breakfast.  It's a fried egg, not too done, still a little soft and yolky in the middle, between two slices of a bread so clearly soft, white, and synthetic, I think it shares 80% of its ingredients with play-doh.  Mmmm.  Bliss.

Drink:  Well, coffee is a big one, and we've established that it gets no respect.  The other big one is things of an alcoholic nature, which suddenly, with my magic passport, I am permitted to sample.  This was my first attempt at ordering something in a bar (the Eagle and Child, no less):

Me:  I think I want to try that (pointing).

Barkeep:  Okay...you want to try it?

Me:  No, I want a thing of it.  (Gesturing).

Barkeep (stifling smile):  A pint?

Me:  If you like.  Yes!  Yes, a pint.

Barkeep:  Because you can try it first...

Me:  Well, maybe I should try it.

Barkeep (speaking slowly, as if to an idiot):  It's a stout...

Me:  Yes, I know.  I think I like stouts.

Barkeep (handing me sample glass):  Or there's ales over here, you know, we've got this one or --

Me (having a mystical alcohol experience; draining glass):  No.  No, I want this.

Barkeep:  ...is that ID in your hand?  Could I see it, seeing as you have it out...

Me:  Of course!  Look, it's me!  I'm legal!  Now, about the pint of stout...

And so it went.  Stouts are terribly nice, but they require endurance and an empty stomach, since they're sort of like a small drinkable meal.  I like ales all right, especially the hoppy kind (I think they taste like biscuits).  Ciders are...well, ciders.  I like them but I don't think they like me; they tend to get me fairly wobbly (and in more of a dizzy confused way than a happy, bag of wet warm cement way) fairly quickly.  Best one I've found so far is called Scrumpy Jack.  Finally, ginger beer.  Oh, ginger beer.  It is like a really excellent artisan ginger ale, except it makes you warm and happy inside.  I buy them at Tesco and drink them alone in my room.

On a similar topic:  I have learned that I am a complete lightweight deserving of all your mockery.

Finally: Schooling:
There is no physical "University of Oxford;" Oxford simply refers to a confederation of tiny medieval walled colleges who all cooperate to share books and funding and things.  So if anyone's wearing an "official" "University of Oxford" sweatshirt, they got it at one of the many souvenir stores here.  (I meanwhile am contemplating getting a tattoo of a blue cat's face on my shoulder; Aedis Christi forever, but I digress.)  "School" here refers to primary grades only, so you don't say you're going to school here, you say you're going to college.  Similarly, it is rather missing the point to try and define the city as apart from the colleges and vice versa; while Oxford is a college city par excellence, the union of colleges and town also seems remarkably natural and unforced -- which makes sense, given that both emerged organically together, around a thousand years ago, and have had plenty of time to get used to each other.

I think those are the major points for now.  Had my first meeting with my tutors today and there's a celebratory ginger beer chilling in the fridge... also a reading list to get cracking on.  So I leave you all with this final note:

Berger Picard Puppies!

Thank you.

Gender Opportunity

"It's snowing!  It's snowing!" squeal the unfortunate freshmen from Cali, stirring from their drunken stupors to frolic clumsily in the streets.  Little do they know that the hard, suffocated ice pellets squeezed from an avaricious and cheap sky hardly qualify as a proper snowfall.  Fools! hiss I from under my six layers of various wool garments, all of them reacting with my Sahara-dry skin to create miniature lightning storms capable of shorting out the infrastructure of the ten smallest nations in Africa.  Fools! that they do not see the doom fast approaching, the fat wet flakes that cling lewdly to skin and coat and leaf and road and drown all hope in a seasonally-appropriate heap of fluffy white despair.

Ai, me.

My housemates have been dealing with the increased stress of the semester by baking.  I wonder how long it will take them to realize that, as sympathetic as I may seem, I have therefore a vested interest in keeping them in a near-perpetual state of anxiety.  In the meantime, I will enjoy their various breads and cakes and continue musing upon things.  Like women.  Now, so far, we at the Snarling Id have spent a lot of time griping about men: why they suck, how to get them, what kind to get, and what one does with them when one gets them (short answers: Duh, MEN; try not to; the good kind; snuggle and talk about your feelings).  But the problem with talking about men is that I am not one.  Therefore I do not understand them.  I just have to guess.

But I am of the female persuasion, and thus have something of an insider's perspective on chicks, man.  And lately I have been pondering girliness.  For the benefit of any men in the audience, here, then, are my reflections (completely subjective and prone to controversy, as ever):

Observation 1: WOMEN HAVE FEELINGS.  I feel like a lot of people might be surprised by this.  Here's how the story of female maturity seems to be told: one day, around age 8, girls wake up and realize they don't like bugs anymore.  This is known as the onset of puberty.  Girls spend the next decade of their lives going CRAZY trying to deal with this.  This particular form of CRAZY is called hormones.  It makes girls cry a lot, and meet in bathrooms en masse for mysterious rituals, and only ever talk about how ugly they are, regardless of the fact that (thanks again to hormones) many men find them increasingly pleasant to look at.  In fact, girls can be offended by any behavior on a guy's part that would indicate he found them attractive, and then in the next breath decry the world for not loving them enough even though they're fat (even if they aren't really fat).  Then, eventually, they seem to settle down.  They become slightly more sane and even though they bear psychic scars from their adolescent trauma (as who wouldn't, really), it looks like they're back to normal. Some of them even like bugs again.  "Cool," guys think.  "Glad all the CRAZY went away."

Except, unfortunately, it didn't.  Did our hormones actually level off, like we were told they would?  Or did we just get used to them?  Or did we develop coping strategies (chocolate, romcoms, pillow-punching, puppy videos on YouTube)?  Or a mix of all three?  Anyway.  I think it's important to remember that even after a lot of the hormone-crazy goes away, many women still have to deal with forces beyond their control dictating how happy they will be on certain weeks.  I for one am currently MAD AT THE WORLD for no good reason and also WHERE IS MY CHOCOLATE?  WHO MOVED IT?  THEY MUST DIE.  But in a few days I'll be all, "Bunnies!  Cuddles!  Homework!  Let me nurture you and do all the laundry and stuff!"  And THEN I'll turn into a raging tigress who wants chocolate again, but so I can MELT it and SPREAD IT ON EVERY ATTRACTIVE MAN I SEE and then lose interest because OMG CEREBRAL THOUGHTS and then GIRL BONDING and then back to CHOCOLATE RAGE... you get the picture. 

Am I going to be the wreck I was in high school?  No, thankfully.  But I'm going to have the same feelings-cycle going on.  And there's nothing I can do to stop it.  I can't just skip to the happy-productive-sane-focused weeks and opt out of the rage-tears-lust weeks.  I feel like men, perhaps counterintuitively, attach a greater significance to their feelings because their feelings, vestigial and shallow as Hollywood informs us they are, are nonetheless usually tied to some external and identifiable factor.  A girl sobbing into her rocky road knows that the only reason she's doing it is because it happens to be the fourth, or the fifteenth, or whatever.  It doesn't make her feel less crappy, but it does help her accept that feelings are sometimes just things that happen.

So therefore, we should talk about them, all the time, and never feel the slightest bit awkward about it, no siree bob.  Which brings us to point 2...

WOMEN DON'T MAKE SENSE

Women communicate through subtleties.  We drop hints, we modulate tones of voice, we use body language, and, yes, just like you suspect, even though we're unfailingly polite and hug all the time, we all secretly hate each other.  (We also have secret mudwrestling meetings that you don't know about, where we wear yoga pants and slap each other and squeal and grunt a lot.  All your friends go, they just don't tell you because they don't want to share.)

A lot of guys seem to operate under the impression that we do this consciously, because, I don't know, we're bored or something.  Our ginormous brains grow weary of the taedium of modern life, which we all mastered years ago (during the CRAZY; you missed out on that too) and so we invented this Byzantine system of communication that makes our lives harder because that's how we roll.

Well, actually, that's not how it works.  Women are genuinely mystified by male forthrightness.  Just recently, I wanted to send a message to a male friend.  I carefully assessed every facet of our history, what I knew of him, the time of day, and the connotations of each word.  The message that I sent was, in essence, and after much deliberation, something like this:

Me: Want to hang out sometime?

Now, there were 3 responses I expected.  One was, "I'm busy," which would mean, "I'm not a horrible person who hates you but I really don't want to hang out with you, please stop asking."  One was, "Yes, I'm hanging out with Bethann and Stuart on Saturday, you should come," which means, "I don't want to hurt your feelings and it would be inconvenient if we were not on friendly terms, but I'd really rather not know you exist."  And one was, "Yes, why don't we go throw rocks at squirrels on the thirtieth?  Shall I pick you up or will you find transportation?"  This would have meant, "Sure.  I'd like to hang out."

The message I got instead was, again, paraphrased and essentially, thus:

He: Sure.  I'd like to hang out.

This, and I am not kidding, mystified me.  "What does he mean?" I wailed.  "Why isn't he following the rules?  How am I even supposed to take that?"

I continued in this vein until one of my male friends stumped over, glanced at our correspondence, and said, "He's just saying he wants to hang out with you." 

Thereafter followed a long conversation, here elided in the interests of sanity, in which my friend attempted to convince me that when a boy says, "Sure," what he means is "Sure."  It ended with my male friend asking the heavens why girls had to overanalyze everything.  The answer: for the same reasons boys have to ignore nuance and subtlety in favor of actually saying what they're thinking. 

So, no.  We're not cleverer than boys and showing off because we're bored/dicks.  We just naturally express ourselves by what we don't say, and naively assume that everyone else works the same way.  Does it make sense? Absolutely not.  But don't judge.

Observation #3: WOMEN HAVE BODY ISSUES
And they don't go away, and no, we're not crazy.  This is an anecdote I've been wanting to share with my sistahs out there fighting the good fight for a long time, and it goes like this:  for several years, I was mildly dissatisfied with my appearance, specifically centering around ten or so pounds that were certainly not unhealthy, but not exactly cosmetic.  Then around the middle of my sophomore year I got very busy and stressed and forgot to eat and the ten pounds went away.  And I said (once I had slowed down enough to notice), "Yay, I have hipbones!  Just like the models on TV"

And then I realized:  While being lighter meant my stomach was flatter, it also meant my chest was flatter.  My thighs had shrunk, but so had my stash of junk in the trunk.  So I did what any redblooded American girl would do: I ate more cheese.  And lo and behold, I started filling out my shirts a little better...but of course, my hipbones got camouflaged again...and so on and so forth.  A similar story with my skin: it's less oily, therefore less pimply, now, but it's also therefore drier and more fragile (and 'fragile skin' sounds very delicate and Victorian until you realize that all it means is more cuts, so more scabs, so the only 'Victorian' we've got going on here is a Frankenstein's monster aesthetic).  Point being: THERE IS ALWAYS A TRADEOFF and NONE OF US WILL EVER HAVE THE BODY WE WANT.  This causes us a certain amount of angst -- not crippling, and certainly not immediately indiciative of a full-blown eating disorder, but something that exists.  Even when girls get comfortable with their bodies and actually generally like how they look, there will usually be something that causes a little hitch of regret in their satisfied sighs, a rueful tinge to their vampy smiles. 

Is this a tragic example of how society has flattened the erotic aesthetic so that only one averaged-out set of proportions is acceptable?  Yes.  Is it actually, when you think about it, kind of more sexy that your svelte girlfriend has no butt, or that your busty wench doesn't like wearing skinny jeans, because that's what makes her yours and not just a generic someone?  I think so.  BUT: is it understandable for an objectively good-looking girl to feel a little regret that she can never have everything going for her at once and has to pick (say) between the size 4 jeans and the anything-bigger-than-an-A-cup bra?  I'd have to say so.  It at least makes a certain sense to me.

Observation 4: WOMEN ARE POWERFUL

And when I say powerful, I mean full of powers, as in, dark and secret and slightly mystic powers, as in, yes, we've all made demonic pacts, RUN NOW before we brainwash you with our Crazy.

Now, recent posts have dwelt upon the nature of male chivalry, and I stand by that.  I will argue that men should be proper men and take responsibility for their lives and their mating habits until the cows come home.  And I certainly understand the impulse that instinctively withdraws in horror from any man of whom a besotted woman might say, "Oh, I just know he can change...."

But let's face it: girls change guys all the time.  There are certain things girls insist upon (like, for example, an at least elementary familiarity with Feelingese and an appreciation for subtleties).  And because of our dark powers (like the ability to converse with the Saran Wrap demons and walk in heels), boorish guys eventually learn to shape up at least some of the time.  (The clever guys recognized the usefulness of women years ago and made alliance with them during the Great Craziness).  This is where your general run-of-the-mill feminist intellectuals and I part ways.  Should women be respected as human beings capable of thoughtideas and suchlike?  Indubitably.  But female power doesn't always have to look like male power.  I think, if anything, it's a little bit sexist to suggest that just because a woman gets a man to do something by making him think it was his idea rather than ordering him outright makes her a submissive terrorized powerless victim.  I think specifically female power could actually be a necessary component (not the only one, mind you) in making relationships work.

I wish I could end this with something witty, but it's really late, and I have to read things.  So I will say goodnight, and remember to hug the ladies in your life (after first ascertaining, in an appropriately roundabout fashion, if their feelings would render them amenable to such an embrace).

Girl Power.

Manliness, Sweaters, My Future

The nights grow darker and descend ever earlier, highlighting the strangeness of my life.  I've been trying to get up before seven in the mornings, when it is still quite dim, and by the time I get around to dinner it is already dark and cold.  And my day has, really, just begun: after dinner I get to start the "studying" part of my studies, completing tasks which are seeming increasingly irrelevant and... separated from what I want to be doing.  I've a whole stack of books and stories I want to read - not frivolous things, things I want to study, big thick theoretical literary and theological works I'd love love love to spend a solid week devouring and digesting and meditating on, and I can't, because (and this is a painful thing to have to type) I have to instead read Gertrude.  FRICKING.  Stein. 

(Shudder.)  It's not that I hate modernists.  Give me Woolf or Eliot any day.  Hell, give me James Joyce.  But... Stein.  Man.  It's cruel that she exists in the same universe as me.  I mean, when we've reached this point of the semester, Muppets in drag will follow.

So, in sum, my schooling is interfering with my education, and I am doubtful that this situation will ever improve itself, and I am questioning my previously-unquestioned plan to simply coast my way through the academic track, grad school to more grad school to professorship to tenure, because if it only gets worse, and not better, from here, then I'm doomed.  I know I write less in terms of output now than I did in high school, and I think I've actually gotten worse in terms of creativity...do I really want to do this for the rest of my life?  And if not, what do I want to do?

Which brings me to the two seemingly disparate topics of tonight's post: self-care and men.

The latter is more fun, so I will address it first.  It has recently been suggested, by various well-meaning but dismayed adult consultants, and half-humorously (but half-not), that I simply marry a rich middle-aged man and make his evening years more comfortable, while publishing novels in my (ample) spare time.  This...is actually sounding more and more like a good idea, which frightens me.  This could be my future.
But... well, as always, Destiny's Child explains the situation a little more eloquently than I can.  And, well, compared to the run of men my own age, quiet sensible middle-aged men are looking pretty damn' fine.

Which leads to my nascent dissertation on the stages of a man's life, and why all of us trying to avoid gold-digger-dom are increasingly screwed.  Here, then, with apologies to Shakespeare: The Stages of Man.

1) Little Boy: Many never progress beyond this stage (and can be seen wandering around campus, in their basketball shorts and stained T's, see earlier posts).  They are mostly harmless, but also have a hard time conceiving of the world beyond their impulses and desires.  They relate to others mostly in terms of Pleasure or Utility (to borrow Aristotle's categories) and generally slouch around having tantrums, being bored by anything that is not centered around them, and (not to harp on it) wearing basketball shorts.  Everywhere.

Reaction to poop joke: loud, slack-jawed laughter.  Bonus points if the voice cracks.

2) Geek: This is when boys start having interests, realize that girls exist and are actually kind of really different than their guy friends, and have a crisis of confidence.  This is the "shy and sensitive" kind that, in all likelyhood, is just too insecure to say what he thinks and tends to hero-worship sympathetic female friends -- from afar.  Also, somehow having an awareness that social faux pas exist makes them more awkward than type 1.  Sometimes showering or wearing correctly sized clothes can be a problem.  There is some hope for this type, as with patience and coaxing, they can sometimes be formed into decent specimens of humanity.  However, they represent a considerable investment of time and energy, and what we're looking for is someone to make an investment in us.  Of money, in case that wasn't clear.  And red-hot lovin' wouldn't hurt, either. 

Reaction to poop joke: Laughter, but surreptitious, hastily stifled, and in some cases eschewed in favor of some biting comment about maturity that only serves to highlight their bitterness over not getting to enjoy the poop joke.

3) Man: sometimes at first mistaken for the more well-groomed specimens of type 1 (a subspecies I like to call "Player," the "Cute -- but he knows it" flavor, or, alternatively, "Manslut").  They have a certain swagger which may be more or less defined depending on the Man's manners, education, and inherent intra/extraversion.  Nevertheless, it will become apparent in certain situations when the Man will act a bit like an ass, without regard for what anyone else thinks.  However, their decisions will be in line with an internal reason that has more to do with objective reflection on experience than the desire or whim of the moment, and if the Man is a good one, your initial irritation at their presumption will be softened by your appreciation of their integrity (by which I mean they are integrated, they "move as one" -- like integers -- there's minimal hypocrisy, and for the most part everyone is rampantly hypocritical.  How many times have you said to yourself today, 'I know I shouldn't, but (fill in reason).')

This is, incidentally, both the type that is rare not only on most mid-sized private libarts college campuses, and the type I find devastatingly attractive.

Reaction to poop joke: Loud, full-throated laughter, and if a girl standing next to them should happen to shoot them a disapproving look, their reaction will not be a defensive "Whut?" (type 1) or a sheepish grin (type 2) but a tolerantly amused glance.

There.  Now you all know my thoughts on the subject.

Part II: Self Care, Sweaters, and the Hierarchy of Metaphor.

During the long weekend, I contemplated all of the evil things I had to do with my time when I would rather be doing other things, and whether or not I was doing the right thing with my life after all, and while I was engaged in these salutory meditations, I found myself getting guilty.  How dare I try and figure out what I wanted?  Didn't I know there were clothes to wash, homeworks to do, children starving in Haiti?  How did I muster the gall to take a time out and sit quietly?

I don't know if guys do this.  Chicks do.  All the time.  I call it the Female Self-Martyring Syndrome to distinguish it from ordinary "martyring" because a martyr usually has a worthy cause, but FSMS is its own cause -- that and the confused identity of the nurturer perpetrating it.  Basically, it's the idea that we are not allowed to take care of ourselves, because that's what horrible selfish people do and we should be spending everything in the service of our careers, our families, our friends, our communities -- what-have-you.  I was wrestling with this a bit because, though I am as prone as any other female to think that I am responsible for everything, I've always resisted the FSMS label because it feels too facile, too self-indulgent, too pop-psychology.  (Besides, what if it really is my fault every time something goes wrong?)

Then I had a revelation.  We are not ourselves.  We are the greatest gift we've ever received.

We are, in essence, a cashmere sweater.

I shall elaborate.  Philosophers have wrestled for aeons with the question of what human consciousness and identity is, and no one's come up with a simple answer.  To what do we owe the unique mix of drives, tastes, experiential frameworks, and emotional responses that make up our usness?  Evolution?  Random chance?  The kindness/cruelty/indifference of the Universe?  We don't know.  We didn't do anything to earn ourselves.  The least we can do is be grateful for our selfhood.

And here is where the hierarchy of metaphor comes in handy.  What is gratitude?  What does it look like?  Well, say you randomly got a really nice cashmere sweater one day -- apropos of nothing, from a maiden aunt you hadn't seen or written to in years, who doesn't have all that much money and, hey, we're talking a nice sweater.  The sort of thing I have detailed, faintly melancholy, "when-I'm-a-grown-up-I'll-dress-like-that" daydreams about.  Like, upward of $200.

How would you properly show gratitude for it?

Well, you could put it in the closet and never wear it, for fear of "wrecking" it, but that would just be a waste of a good sweater.  Alternatively, you could wear it all the time, even when making chocolate mousse and painting the garage, and never wash it.  It'd be trashed in a matter of weeks.  That also would be a waste.  If you made sure it was clean and ironed it before an important interview or job presentation, and then you told your maiden aunt how nice it had been to have such a cool sweater at such a significant time, that'd be pretty cool.  If you took care to have it dry-cleaned and mended when it (inevitably) got runs, that'd be good too. 

And if, say, you met a friend on the street with a significant roadburn, then there would be two wrong things to do.  You could decline to help entirely, saying that you can't afford to risk your sweater since your sweet Aunt Mabel gave it to you, and wouldn't she be disappointed if it was ruined, etc.  (One imagines the friend would then send sweet Aunt Mabel hate mail, and she'd have a crisis over your dishonoring of the family name and write you out of her will and perhaps passive-aggressively contract tuberculosis and guilt you about it.)  On the other hand, if you whipped off that sweater and used it to daub Neosporin on your friend's arm, when the raggedy T-shirt you were wearing under it would have sufficed -- well, that's not quite cool either. 

We are the cashmere sweater.  Or rather, "we" are transcendent identity (see the protoexistentialists on the irreduceable "I") and the sweater, all snuggly-warm and completely unmerited around our fragile selves, is our drives, emotions, needs, fears, personality bits, etc.  It's easy to think it selfish to take care of that sweater when it gets run-down, but it's only selfish if we're going around thinking that we are ourselves...if that makes sense.  If, however, you start to think about the gift of your self (all your strengths and subjectivity and suchlike) and what it's enabled you to do and experience, and realize that it's not something you created, own, or have any control over...suddenly, taking care of that sweater, and "knitting the ravelled sleeve of care," and letting other people pick up the slack sometimes, and sacrificing minor external responsibilities in favor of this bigger one, seems a lot less like selfish indulgence and a lot more like the prudent, sane actions of someone humbled by their own mysteriousness.

This is the high and rarefied argument with which I hope to excuse my current immersion in Oprah magazines and attempts to identify my inner child, nurture my creative self, and, ultimately, justify my loveless marriage.

If that makes sense.

I leave you with Britney Spears's rendition of what will likely become my classy!golddigging theme song, as I attempt to charm the wealthy but reserved with equal parts sparkling wit, youthful naivete, and judicious sock-based augmentations.

Good night, LA.

Further Ramblings

It is now very autumny and properly October, which is most satisfying.  Life proceeds, leaving me trotting in its wake, calling with faint hope, "Wait, you dropped me!"  At the moment, though I am drenched in agenda ("things that MUST be done") I have no motivation to do...any of it.  I am instead enveloped in a horrible but vague dread and mournfulness.  Thus, I am blogging, hoping that doing something I meant to do but don't have to do will soften my mental block and ease me into productivity.

Also, procrastination.  But I am surrendering to the impulse.  I think it's the only thing I can do.

This feeling of abstraction from self is a fairly common one for me, and also one I am not supposed to encourage.  Overactive Vata, excessive Fiveishness, call it what thou wilt, according to what character assessment system thee pleaseth, fact is I'm currently hiding from my body.  The cure for this is usually: a) doing the work that you keep not wanting to do and b) to prevent recurrence of same, exercise.  I do not enjoy exercise, as a rule, though I am very fond of walks.  However, there is one thing that gets me excited about my physicality: stabbing people.

See, I have a well-subverted but also dangerously well-developed violent streak.  Others may choose to deliver vengeance through snide comments or revocation of privilege, but if a situation gets dire enough that I feel redress may be necessary, in my heart of hearts I want to stab.  I want physical and permanent marks of the dissatisfaction that has finally grown severe enough to develop into rage.  There is very little betwixt and between for me.  Either I am slightly miffed, but not miffed enough to mention it, or I want to kill you. 

This proves problematic, since (for God only knows what weak Enlightened reason) society has seen fit to outlaw duelling as a method of conflict resolution.  Thus I am forced to sublimate and re-sublimate my (very) occasional murderous impulses, creating a cycle of anger that gets self-directed, spawning more hurt which spawns more anger, etc., etc.  My solution: reintroduce the duel, with the stipulation that it be nonfatal.

I mean, fighting for sport is already widespread.  Boxing, "wrestling," various Eastern imports, paintball, fencing -- all of these are ritualized combat, and their appeal is that of competition in its rawest form -- that is, the primal I AM BETTER THAN YOU because I can use my body and mind to physically wreck your s*** and keep you from doing the same to me.  We are all the discontents of civilization -- we all feel the need to defend our self-interests, and are prevented from doing so because of "morals" and "humanity" and other such trivial things.  Now, I am generally a fan of civilization and know that if it were removed I would be probably number 213 worldwide to die as a result.  However, this does not prevent me -- and apparently others -- from feeling a little frustrated sometimes, and so long as the lethal element is removed, the controlled and regulated expression of violence is, I think, quite healthy.

So why not go a step further?  If, after a terrible day at the office, it's wonderfully freeing to work out your frustrations upon the bodies of those towards whom you are favorably disposed, how much more satisfying to call out Bob from Accounting when he finishes off the office coffee without making more for the TWENTY-NINTH TIME?  How much more healing to externalize the conflict, to formally begin and end it?  How much more soothing, if you could look upon the bruises you inflicted and feel not a sneaking guilty pride but a calm satisfaction at an injury well and honestly redressed?  And how much more effective in the long term, if you could sufficiently thrash Bob, not with forced pseudocourteous words but with your WEAPON, so that he bore the memory of your "conversation" in his very neurons, and every time he walked by your cubicle with his empty mug you could smile ever so pleasantly and remind him of the hurting you will lay upon him if he continues to disregard your reasonable requests?

I think this is a far more humane method of conflict resolution.  Some will protest that the strongest will naturally get their way all the time; for one thing, this is already the case, and for another, even a pathetic shrimp such as myself, if sufficiently motivated and trained, can become a force to be reckoned with when given a sword: violence is the equalizer, while civilization gives the advantage not to the physically strong but to the morally unscrupulous.  Finally, would it not increase our fear of violating the rights of another person, our respect for the mystery of their inviolability?

Bah.  I grow excessively misty-eyed over the pleasures of jabbing metal into other people.  Most likely this represents a character flaw on my part, but screw it, we all have our flaws, and it is good to recognize them.  Also, it is good to stab.  Powerfully, unbelievably good.

On this note we segue into the Adorable Dog Breed That Wants To Kill You feature: the Borzoi.  Also known as the Russian Wolfhound, they're delicate, beautiful, a little dopey-looking with their long curvy noses, and frankly almost effete.  Their character is that of an aged spinster aunt: passive-aggressive, nondemonstrative, dignified, quietly loyal.  Which is why I take great pleasure in showing you the two sides of their personality they don't want you to know about:
PUPPIES!!!  Oh gracious, they're so cute.  They just want to chase and chase....

...and chase.  Yeah, Russians use these to kill WOLVES.  Which means most likely they can kill you.   With more beauty, grace, style, and ruthless efficiency than you will ever be able to muster.  Certainly with more than I can muster in the execution of such basic tasks as completing my homework.

Needless to say I badly want one.

With this I leave you, dear readers (all three of you).  Heartsstarshorseshoes.

Autumnal Ramblings

Greetings, O my dear tutelae!  (That means objects of my protection and patronage).  It is a lovely day where I am.  I never noticed before how beautiful the Spokane area is, and I don't know why.  My attic commands a view of the surrounding hills  and rooftops and they look very remote, enforcing the impression of a sheltered valley beyond which There Be Dragons (in the very best sense; dragons one can desire passionately, just not in one's front yard, to paraphrase the good JRR.)

This is very pleasing.  And we are all about the pleasure here.

Classes proceed apace.  There is something very satisfying about fall, but also something tormenting in its depths of restlessness and melancholy.  For one thing, to be proceding from class to class, getting one's days into a rhythm that one manages effortlessly, as one manages one's breath, feeling the pleasant exhaustion of a full day well spent and good work done skillfully are all necessary elements of a good, happy, and productive life and autumn seems to be their season -- whether by nature or by use or both, dead leaves and crisp mornings cry out for industry.  Also, jackets.  These are important.

However, the weather does odd things to me.  Fog, rain, twilights and grey dawns, foreign winds, the slant of the sun through the clouds, the smell of the air just after sundown before it gets really cold -- it engenders a terrible wanderlust.  Fortasse (that's 'perhaps') this has something to do with Halloween, particularly black and white horror movies, the aesthetic of which I'm afraid I never quite recovered from.  Fall to me says that hey, maybe your next-door neighbor really is a werewolf after all, maybe there is something in the music building watching you, maybe your lights keep going out because demon badgers are in your basement trying to lure you down to the breaker box so they can pounce on you.  Maybe the whole world is illuminated with terrifying but splendid things.

For some reason, thoughts of terror are more pleasing to me in fall than in winter.  I propose that there is a reason -- a complicated one -- for this.  For one thing, fall is melancholy.  It is the moment where summer turns, as it must, to decay, and it is the knowledge of this incipiant mortality that makes the whole three months beautifully sad.  However, winter is not melancholy; it is despair.  I suspect that I must have a little SAD, because sometimes it's all I can do to get through the winter months.  They seem to me not sad but bitterly ugly and mundane.  They inspire not reflection or restlessness of spirit but anger laid over a core of apathy.  Winter says this is your life; it is miserable and changeless and terribly trivial.

Fall is, in essence, a Danish or an Icelandic warrior.  It says: we are ending, we are dying, and this is a great sorrow because life is glorious, but it is also an honor and a pleasure because life is most glorious in proximity to death.  The sun is most beautiful breaking through clouds; the trees are most beautiful when their leaves die.  For this reason, horror as genre thrives in fall, where death is close but beauty closer.  Winter is not a time to engage in horror as genre.  It is horror as life, the ninth circle of hell.  (Can you tell I really don't like winter?)

To sum up, contemplating fallish things, I am filled with a visceral longing for something (though I'm blessed if I know what).  CS Lewis defines joy as a painful sensation that we crave; fall, then, is very joyful.

Now for a more serious matter, which I call The Snarling Id is a Misogynist Bastard Take Two.

It involves sartorial considerations and the frequent abuses of the words Modesty, Chastity, and Humility.  As before, this issue seems to divide the world into two camps, both of which are, in their extremer forms, intolerably smug.  I hereby attempt to hash out a via media (that's 'middle way') that, to my mind, more accurately represents what most people on both sides of the issue actually feel and do in relation to what they choose to put on in the morning.

The first camp (the 'traditional' camp) says that one should dress like a lady and/or gentleman (but mostly like a lady).  It basically says that since men are pigs, women are under an obligation to cover up...and cover up... and cover up some more.  There is a problem with this: in today's world (yeah, yeah, I know, modernity is bunk, but unfortunately we inhabit it, or something close thereto) the women who wear very plain-Jane clothes (invariably long skirts, shirts that are not merely reasonable but cocoon-like) run the risk of calling attention to themselves as "very definitively NOT sexual objects."  I feel like this is something akin to telling all the men of the world not to think of pink...elephants.  They're going to be thinking about the ...elephants -- maybe not with regards to the ubermodest one who walks by them, but all of a sudden the ...elephant of women and how they look in their clothes has been brought to mind, and the next five leggings-and-UGGs girls who walk by are going to be seen in relation to ...elephants.

Additionally, and now this is just amoral ranting and personal aesthetic preference (which is what the Snarling Id is about), there's something very off-puttingly... pious about the obviously modest girls.  I don't mean pious as in having an understandable fear of and reverence for things regarded as sacred; not in the sense of "pietas Aeneas" or whathaveyou.  I mean it in the worst sense, the sense that gets used most nowadays, that of holier-than-thou snobbery or smiling brainwashed obedience to arbitrary authority.

I think I've probably offended the first half of my reader base by now, so I'll clarify: I admire the girls willing to stick it to the culture that says women are only valued in relation to their boobage and do not mean to suggest that all of them are passive-aggressive snobs.  But sometimes it can seem that way, and I think sometimes a "false dichotomy" is introduced (I quotesmark that phrase because someone used it near me recently and that's why it comes to mind, not because of any native genius) between the culturally prescribed clothing norms and respect of oneself and one's body.

The final issue with this is its inescapable sexism.  Yes, guys are a more visual species (term used loosely) and more easily led to objectify women, so yes, chicks have more sartorial power than guys.  BUT.  You honestly cannot tell me that women are not... more than academically interested when guys in rather brief shorts and no shirts at all are diving and flailing upon the field of battle... or, okay, of soccer.  The existence of male strippers proves that men and their clothing can be just as provocative as women.  And I don't think you're going to be able to convince men to worry about their virtue.  Further, what of the material goods that science says function in much the same way for women as physical, um, goods do for men?  Are we going to decry Lamborghinis as immodest and unchaste?  How about eye contact and romantic poetry?  The color red?

On the other hand (and, again, more insidiously) there is the "modern" world which says in essence, "Hey, I dress how I feel comfortable, and that's my decision, so you have no right to judge me."

There are problems with this.

First of all, I do have the right to judge you, as a person, by the choices you make and actions you perform.  I can't judge you as subhuman but I can judge you as acting idiotically.  And your decision to wear bondage gear (or a sports bra and unnecessarily tiny running shorts) to statistics class today is (I'm sorry) fair grounds upon which I may judge your mental state, the message you wish to send, and your overall classiness. 

So there's that out of the way.

Secondly, I'd like to discuss class, a word often tossed cavalierly about but having a variety of shades of meaning.  First of all, there is the unclassiness of sluttery.  This is its own special category, because most of the girls who wear the teeny tiny stuff -- you know, the egregious stuff, the stuff that makes other women go "Really?" and men... either pigs, or very sad gentlemen -- right, these girls deserve our...I don't want to say "pity" because for me that's really close to "scorn"... perhaps sympathy?  I mean, they're looking for attention.  We all know it's not a kind of attention we'd want, but maybe it's the only thing they can think of.  I don't think they get up in the mornings and think, "Wow, I'd like some shallow offensive meaningless interaction today!"  It's probably closer to what most of us are thinking: "Sweet Cheesecake, I'm so inadequate.  What happens if today they find out how much I suck?  Why does no one quite get me?"  And I humbly suggest that the reason we're so infuriated by this kind of cry for attention is because a) it works and b) somewhere deep down inside we're all terribly jealous.

I don't know if any guys even bother reading this, but I can't speak for you.  Men trying to be decent human beings will probably try to resist the urge to blatantly ogle the unfortunate, just as girls trying to be decent resist the temptation to enslave you all with our cleavage.  The INdecent of both genders are more to be pitied (there, I said it!) than cast into the outer darkness.

No, the true, deep, and insidious threat to class is in the laziness to which this kind of "whatever screw you it's my choice" paradigm has led us.  The problem I have with girls in Uggs and leggings is the same problem I have with guys in basketball shorts and stained tees.  I mean, who are they trying to impress? 

No one.

And they don't care who knows it.

The true issue for me is not whether or not one dresses in such a way as to conceal or highlight one's sexual beauty.  The issue here is modesty, chastity, and humility -- in their purest sense.  People seem to think that modest dressing equals blatantly prudish.  For me, modesty most closely means humility.  Say two people are going to be introduced to the president.  One decides to be classy and dresses in a nice suit and does his hair.  The other rolls out of bed and shows up in (I don't want to belabor the point) basketball shorts and a stained tee.  Who has more respect for the president? 

Furthermore: it's one thing to dress crappy because that's all you can afford.  But I feel like next to no one in the First World has this problem.  In many cases, a cheap but decent suit can be had for infinitely less than we spend on designer jeans and tee shirts or (heaven forfend) Juicy Couture velveteen sweat suits. It's like we spend more money showing how casual we are, how we don't seem to be impressed enough by anyone or anything to make an effort to neaten up.

That's why I think we should be bothered by the cult of just "letting it all hang loose": not because it will drag us down the slippery slope into moral and sexual turpitude, but because it shows how self-absorbed, lazy, and undisciplined we are; how much our self-esteem outweighs our self-respect; how numb we are to the distinctions of attitude we should have when approaching different activities.  You cannot go through all of life with the same amount of concern and engagement you have on a trip to the gym or a Saturday morning hanging with your peeps in front of the TV.

A final note in defense of baring tasteful amounts of skin.  As much as I want to be appreciated for my mind and heart, I also NEED to be appreciated as beautiful in the aesthetic/sexual sphere.  As an incarnate person (or, to state it another way, a highly developed neurotic ape) I possess a body which itself possesses sexual traits, and these are good and beautiful.  Not to be squandered in some futile plea for attention, not to be diligently concealed, but to be appreciated.  It's possible I'm simply very insecure and desperately trying to justify my scandalous ways.  But I'm gonna say it: I try to dress so that a) all the important bits are given their due respect and b) when I walk down the street, guys look up and maybe think, "Hm.  Not bad."

So, yeah.  Everyone dress up a little tomorrow.  Jackets are good. 

I leave you with a song that expresses the frustrations of many chicks (and maybe some guys?), a chance for P!nk to redeem herself.

Valete.