I am a girl and thus it is an accepted fact of life that is would be embarrassing for me to admit that I, Madeleine Clare, like cars and motorsports. It would also be a social faux pas for me to thrust hand upon heart and declare that I also do not possess one speck of interest in my entire being at all in fashion, clothes, or anything pink and girly. My mother saw me getting ready to go to a 30th birthday party and told me that I dress like a lesbian. Thank-you Mum.
My main point: it seems to me that social conventions and stereotypes over the years have become so strict and quite sever that whilst no-one was looking, our lives have suddenly become ruled by them.
I’ll put my social life (what there is of it) on the line and use myself as an example. I, according to my mother, “dress like a lesbian”. I quite like cars and I like driving them, and I can change the spark plug in most vehicles and know that a ‘chassis’ is not some 17th century undergarment. Yet in juxtaposition to all this, I like doing my hair and wearing mascara. I like reading and I know what the word ‘Regicide’ means. I also own quite a number of evening dresses. I’m a bit bipolar in that sense. Kind of like a female Indiana Jones but without the whip and hat; all leather and sensible walking shoes. But then I might wear my pleated navy skirt down the street whilst I shop in the book exchange store for a new dictionary. I’m ever-changing, which I’m happy with, but society isn’t.
When I was in year 12, there was a text that we studied in Literature called ‘Hedda Gabbler’, which basically is about a wealthy aristocrat who had suppressed her true being to confine within social conventions so much so, to the point that she married for money, hated her husband and ended the play by shooting herself in the head. That’s the same situation that I find myself in; bar the shooting and marrying for money bit. And the aristocrat thing as well. But apart from that, identical.
You see my predicament. I am rough and sensible enough that I could slot quiet nicely into the ‘Tomboy’ category of life, yet the moment I put on some nice shoes and purple lace underpants for a night out with the girls all the feminists and butch women disappear and are replaced by sexist men and giggling pink people waving their ‘Girly Girl’ banner at me. Then I come home, put my glasses back on and sit down to watch the Discovery Channel and then nerds rock up at my joint with gluten free cookies for their allergies and Ventolin inhalers. (It’s never dull round at my house.) But apart from my house filling with freaky people on the weekends, unless I want to suffer the same fate as old Hedda, then I’d best sort myself out from...myself.
Surely there is a way that all these aspects of my persona can co-exist in peace and cheerful harmony without recking death and destruction upon our strictly ordered and socially sound lives? The answer is no, because I’ve tried this and all that happens is that on a Friday night my house fills with nerds, butch women and manly men passing around tea and biscuits. It's driving me insane.
You would think that it would be easy to just simply isolate on element of my persona and feed off of it for eternity? No. I tried being a girl for a week and I failed. I took the fuse out of my Dad’s car because he kept playing horrid 80’s tunes on the way to work and it irritated me, and now he thinks he’s broken his car. Which thus destroyed my attempt at being a girl. I then tried just being a tomboy. Which also failed because I don’t like manual labour and I also rarely go outdoors unless I am extremely motivated, such as on the odd occasion there is no more food in the fridge. I then tried being a nerd for a while, which worked ok until someone asked me to times $.75 by 2, and I pulled out my phone to use the calculator because I can’t add up. They say just try being yourself? It’s harder than it looks people.
Argh, perhaps it would just be easier to marry into money?
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