Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

All my tank tops are in the laundry, so this morning I went looking in the closet and found a white, light-weight short-sleeved shirt. I put it on and was reminded of why it was in the very back of the closet, a missing button I had probably meant to fix last fall.

I looked at the shirt, fastened the remaining buttons, and said "ah, well, it's 2020, nobody cares," which is a combination of people caring less about appearance, and me being less likely to see anyone but cattitude than at this time last year.

More comments I've posted elsewhere: ( describing appearance, money as gift, unusual experiences, famous ancestors )

A couple of weeks ago, someone (friends-locked) was talking about how she dressed, and why, and said something about expecting that she would "age out of pretty altogether", and that even if she could still dress well then, it wouldn't be as effective, because of the competition from younger, prettier women. My reaction was an odd certainty that I didn't need to worry about that anymore.

I don't know if I was ever pretty in the sense she's talking about, but what I have now is something equally real and less ephemeral, I think. It's not just personality; I know my partners like looking at me.

The almost immediate follow-up to the thought that I didn't need to worry about aging out of my looks was to wonder when and where I got that self-confidence. I'm still not sure, but it's there. Not always, and not about everything, but somewhere along the line I've gotten a lot more comfortable with how I look. Not just in terms of not fretting about it, not wanting to spend a lot of money and time on it, but that I look good.

Last Sunday, I bought cough syrup at a Walgreen's in Cambridge, Mass. The cashier started to ask for my ID, and as I reached for it corrected himself, saying that he only needed my date of birth, which I gave him. I don't know if not selling dextromethorphan to people under 18 is store or state policy, but he clearly was sure that I was old enough, so it didn't actually matter if the answer I gave him was valid. (It was: I can reel off two or three zip codes other than my own without thinking, but asked date of birth and I'll either tell the truth or maybe ask why you want to know. More likely the former.)

Real women--and real men, but maybe not real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri--have pores in our skin. We come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and all of us, in all those shapes, have pores.

By this--not by weight, shape, or age--may you tell the real woman from the airbrushed model.

Late this afternoon, I walked into his cubicle to give Marvin (the more-or-less-supervising proofreader) something. He then told me to wait a minute, and then started to tell me "This is from a job you did earlier today" before realizing that no, it wasn't me, it was JuJu. Now, JuJu looks about as much like me as roadnotes does, and for similar reasons [along with a great fondness for flowing dresses and skirts], so I observed that "I realize that we're both bilaterally symmetrical, but JuJu and I don't look that much alike."

Thanks, Sis.

Well, that's done. When it dries, I'll get a better idea of whether I like the effect with long hair. julian_tiger took the whole thing calmly, and in fact was poking around in the bathroom while cattitude and I were standing at the sink (which is next to the door) doing things with purple hair dye.

This time, I got my beloved Big Purple Cat to help me dye my hair. Not only did he point out spots I'd missed, he applied the purple glop to the parts in back that I have trouble getting at. (This was easier before I started growing my hair out.)

So I am quite happily purple, despite a few stained spots on my face that I smeared before cattitude took over the dyeing.

I just had a nice long talk with my mother, mostly about possible travel and about finances. It was all very encouraging, both in concrete terms and for mood and emotions. At one point she said "I'm just glad your hair isn't purple" and I told her it is, and she was quite cheerful and accepting of that.

misia posted some thoughts about what "femme" means. The responses included one from papersky that I like and mostly agree with, which prompted me to this response:

I can accept "femme" as one of the things people do--but like you, I don't really grok the whole butch/femme thing, and I don't fit into either. My problem is with binary choices generally, and a refusal to recognize that not everyone is one or the other. Butch/femme can become that, or it can be an axis or a set of possibilities. There are spaces that aren't on that axis, and for which "androgyny" seems to be the wrong term.

I'm growing my hair out. I lift weights. I was startled when a friend asked me, in the context of job hunting, "what are you going to do about the beard?" because I simply hadn't thought about my chin hair or how people might react to it. All of those may be read as gendering signals by someone, but that's not the main thing they're about: the hair is because I like it, and a few other people who matter to me like it, and because when I visit you and rysmiel I'm reminded that my self-image and proper being is as a long-haired person.

To a first approximation, I think you and I are the same gender, though I'm queer and you're straight.

To see the whole discussion, go to http://www.livejournal.com/users/misia/174339.html?view=809219#t809219

I was tempted to add something about the Tiptree Award and reading for it, but it didn't come. That'll probably be a long article, six months from now.