Why women cry when they get a bad haircut or color

 

Recipe for stress: Take a young soul, a soul brand-new to the world, and tell her that the most important work she’ll ever do—in fact, her prime reason for coming into the world—begins with her ability to get another person to fall in love with her. Then watch as she learns to manage her body--something she has not much control over--her shape, her hair, her skin. Watch as she practices and fails at, or gets very good at, flirting. The tease, the advertisements, the come-hither. The thing is, she will probably succeed to some extent (though she might not). Regardless, she’ll see the results as her own doing: if she failed, she is a failure. If she succeeded, but if things fall apart later or she realizes she succeeded at the wrong goal, that will be her fault, too. Or it will be difficult to tell to what extent it was her fault. Meanwhile, the habit of valuing herself according to her body will be ingrained in her for her entire life. Even if she succeeds in separating herself from the opinions of her husband and others around her, she cannot separate her self-concept from her sense of her own body (weight, hair, skin). She will then watch what happens to her body through and after childbirth, middle age, menopause, old age with an increasing sense of waning power in the world. It takes much training to counteract this. 

 

So I cry when I hate my latest haircut/color. And I can’t even be just sad about it, because there’s also the guilt: why not cry about a real problem, you shallow woman? All this about your appearance?

God's Still Driving This Car

Yesterday I had to take off some earrings I had been wearing for most of the day because of irritation. I said to Roger, who bought them for me, "These must have nickel in them."

"They don't!" he said. "I researched them! I know not to get you that kind!"

I shrugged. "All I know is that they hurt, so they're going to D.I."

Later, he came to me and said, "I did some research on the site I bought the earrings from. Turns out you're right. They DO have a little nickel in them--a 'negligible' amount. I saw the word hypo-allergenic and figured they were OK without reading to the details. But you could tell."

Now, as I'm still recovering from the surgery, I am again thankful to God for arranging my life in better ways than I could. I was scheduled for the repair surgery with a device years ago, and everything fell through because my insurance refused to pay. That was a disappointment. Then, a couple of weeks ago when I went for the stitch surgery, I arranged to have an official nickel test beforehand because I had heard that sometimes the surgeon discovered, during the procedure, that a patient's hole was too big for stitch repair and required a device. There are currently no 100% nickel-free devices available (though the manufacturers claim that the amount is "negligible"). Because of various factors (including an allergist's failure to explain things to me), the nickel test I had done was inconclusive because it was read too early. (It was read after only 48 hours, but the doctor reading it--not the one who ordered it--claimed that it needed "up to a week" to be accurate.) But the early reading showed no irritation, so on the day of the surgery we decided to go ahead with the device if necessary.

Thankfully (and I mean that word very literally--I am so thankful), it was not. So my experience with the earrings yesterday made me thankful again. I have heard horror stories of the problems some nickel-sensitive people have had with the device (culminating, once they figure out that it is the source of the strange symptoms, with open-heart surgery to remove it).

I want to remember this. I want to remember during disappointments and misunderstandings and normal daily bruising that God is really in charge. Trust, trust, trust.

I find myself trying to apply this to what's going on in the country/world right now. I don't ever want to claim that God wishes for our suffering or actively brings it about. There are some hard, hard things going on that are simply tragic. But I've found that when I bring the camera in from long-shot to close-up, I see God working in people's lives. I see a lot of families getting closer to each other during this time, experiencing spiritual growth as they do church together. I see people making changes that should have happened earlier (leaving a job they hated, for example). I see communities pulling together as they help each other, or working hard to speak up against society wrongs that have been going on too long under the radar. In the worst scenarios (death and disease, domestic abuse), I find that I can hold two things in my mind at once: pain and faith. I can feel the tragedy and mourn it, but I can also believe that somehow God is reaching for people, still, and waiting for us to reach for Him.

I don't want to sugarcoat things or wear my faith like a gaudy designer dress in front of people who are in deep distress. But I have not lost hope, and just because this time has been easier for me than many, I don't believe in a God who wants me to. But He wants my hope to motivate me to action (which is the definition of faith, I think). I'm not sure what action, though. For now, what I can think of is speaking truth and bearing testimony. Listening to other people's stories without judgment. Donating what I can. Being braver and more honest in my political actions. What can you think of?

Glad To Be Back!

Hello, there! Does anyone read any blogs anymore? I don’t imagine they do. But I’ve been re-reading my old journals and blog entries lately, and I’ve realized a few things:

1) As I have discovered in other ways (particulary, by doing NaNoWriMo and MoPoWriMo), a regular casual writing goal/routine (by which I mean “not with the intent to publish formally or to work into anything that will be published, but just for the joy and habit of writing”) leads to more creativity and generativity in my formal writing. When I am writing more, I get more ideas. Writing generates writing.

2) At the risk of cutting against or contradicting the spirit of #1 above, many of the things I worked through in blog posts ended up as poems or essays later. I didn’t consciously draw from by blog posts when it was time to sit down and generate formally, but something about having thought through and written about those ideas years before made some of them stick with me so that I was able to bring them up in my mind later.

3) I continue to suspect (as did/do some of my poetry professors) that I am an essayist in a poet’s body. My essays, of which I’ve actually finished and polished very few for publication, have done much better in the world than my poetry, in terms of critical acceptance. I have published maybe 4 or 5 actual finished essays. One of them was nominated for a Pushcart. One of them was mentioned as Notable in a Best American anthology. Two of them won or placed highly in contests. Would that my poetry had those kind of percentages! So I’m curious what would happen if I dedicated some time to actual study of the genre, both in reading and writing it. I wish, even, that I could go back and get another MFA in CNF, just so I could have the experience of making it a real, formal study.

In light of these realizations, I’d like to return to blogging as a present to myself. For now, I’m going to set a goal of posting here once a week at a minimum. As I look around here, I see that I had some great interactions with the readers of my blog. What a cool community it was! I miss that. I’m not sure that I could get this back, since no one reads blogs anymore and I’m not even sure anyone would ever notice that I was blogging still. But maybe I could gather some readers if I linked through facebook and twitter and instagram. I’ll think about this after I’ve generated a few posts here.

In the meantime, here’s a report of what my life looks like these days in terms of the themes that my blog USED to focus on:

1) My Kids are Old.
During the golden days of this blog, I was in the midst of the storm of child-raising. I was, thankfully, past the hardest stage (toddlers and babies), and finally getting my head above water a little. But my life centered around my children’s adventures, triumphs and struggles in a more moment-intensive way than it does now. I wouldn’t say for a second that my children’s triumphs and struggles are any less heavy in my life. I’ve got three young adults (two returned missionaries, one current missionary) and a teenager (senior in high school), and, as you know if you’re there yet, the problems just get bigger along with the kids. But that’s not to say that I feel more burdened. In fact, this has been a phase of great enjoyment for me. I’m interested in exploring some of that here.

2) I Am Old.

So, if my kids are old, that makes me . . . older. Yes, I am very much in Middle Age. More specifically, I just turned 50. There’s no more even pretending that I am on the young side of anything.

I don’t think I’ve hidden the fact here or anywhere in my life that I have always feared dying young. My mother died at 43 and her mother died at 34, so I don’t think that my fear is all that unreasonable. And so I’m a little surprised to be here at 50. But I think that maybe most people find it surprising to discover that they are grown-ups, and then middle-aged, and then elderly. It’s just hard to imagine in general.

I have to say, though, that reaching 50 has been a completely positive thing for me. First of all, consider the alternative: not making it to 50 isn’t something to rejoice about. Second, I absolutely claim all that I have learned and enjoyed about my 50 years on earth. Third, when I was at my sickest, I made a plea to God to allow me to live long enough to raise my children. I feel that I’ve made it to that point. Peter is almost on his mission, and the others are proving that they can handle adulthood. They really don’t need me anymore. That’s not to say that I don’t look forward to much more time with them (and, hopefully, grandkids!). But I really do deeply feel like anything from here on out is cream. I’ve had my fair turn on this earth and done all I really worried about not being able to do.

And being 50 is freeing. No one is going to be fooled anymore that I am young. I’m feeling braver and braver, then, about giving up the effort to hide my age. In fact, I had always planned to let myself go gray once my last child was home from his mission, but this COVID quarantine stuff has led me to consider going gray now. Here’s the progress so far.

I’m reserving the option to dye again once I have to head back to school in the fall, but hoping I won’t. I love the idea of being free of the bondage of the bottle. More than that, I love the idea of helping show the world that women shouldn’t be afraid to look their age. I dream of world in which women are valued for much more than how they look. I should put my money where my mouth is.

3) My Health.

There’s been a new, major development, which I’ll get to in a minute. Outside of that, I’ve been doing generally pretty well overall. I still struggle with fatigue and may for the rest of my life. I sometimes have harder times—I suspect I just get recurring mono, among other issues. But I have reached a point of acceptance and peace about my health burdens. I am remarkably blessed in that I can do all I need to do and most of what I want to do.

I am excited to report that I was able to lose 20 pounds last winter using Noom, and now weigh my lowest since before I had kids. So that feels good.

The big development is that I finally had surgery to repair my heart! I have been trying to get this surgery for years. You can read about the original discovery that I had a hole in my heart here. Since all that, something really exciting happened: a doctor in Europe invented a new way of repairing PFO that does not involve a device. Instead, a stitch is used to close the hole. This is much better than a device for many reasons, but the biggest reason in my mind is that I have nickel sensitivity, and the device has a little bit of nickel in it—enough that some people have had reactions and subsequently have required removal of the device via open-heart surgery. So I have spent a few years trying to get insurance companies to recognize that PFO repair is a good thing and that this new way of doing it is the best way. After lots of effort, things finally came together and I had the repair with the stitch just last week. I am still in recovery and so can’t tell if there’s a difference, but I look forward to finding out. (And, in the meantime, I have reduced my risk of stroke, so that’s a good thing.)

Here I am with the surgeon, Dr. Jim Thompson, who practices in Virginia:

4) My Writing
I see that a lot of my blog entries from the good ol’ days were about my concerns as a writer. Was I a writer? Should I invest in myself as a writer? How? And in what genre?

It was my dream to return to school for an MFA and, eventually, I did! I wrote about my first attempt here, and then about my experience in the program here and here. But here are some post-program thoughts:

a) It was absolutely the right thing for me to do. One of the biggest reasons is that it gave me an MFA so that I could teach on the college level, something I’ve been doing ever since and which I am passionate about. I love teaching even more than I love writing, and I am good at it. Another big reason is that it did help me improve—or, at least, it taught me the path by which I could improve. I learned how to push myself. I learned what and how to read. I learned about individual aesthetics and a little of the big philosphical questions behind poetic craft and aesthetics.

b) Although I am supremely grateful that the professors admitted me to the program, I see, in retrospect, the benefits of professors ONLY admitting students whose work they are interested in. For most of my time in the program, I was convinced that no professors were interested in my work—that they had admitted me sort of grudgingly. I won’t get into the reasons that I believed this here, but this belief handicapped my progress. It wasn’t until after I was done and I went to a retreat where I found people who were truly interested in my work that I began to grow. Once I felt that interest—and it was interest in the work I’d done that I felt was closest to my heart—I decided to return to the things that truly interested me, and when I did, my work blossomed. I wrote tons more LDS stuff, but not all of it was LDS, and because I was writing so much more and with more joy, even the non-LDS stuff was a lot better than it had been before. I wonder, then, what would have happened if I had felt this excitement during the first few months of my program. I think I would have grown a lot more and a lot faster. Again, though, I am so glad they accepted me ANYWAY, because that MFA is so precious to me and has truly helped me.

As a result of that blossoming, I was able to produce enough work that I could put together a manuscript, and my book, Homespun and Angel Feathers, was published by BCC Press last spring. I am so grateful to BCC for their interest in my work (in fact, Steve Evans at BCC contacted me about the manuscript when he saw my facebook announcement that I was working on it). I am pleased with the book and its reception. And this spring the book won the AML award for poetry. If you know me at all, you know what that award meant to me. You can read the award citation here.

I was thrilled to be able to read from my book at BYU’s English Reading Series earlier this year. I also got to go to the meeting of the Mormon Arts Foundation in Dallas to present about poetry and faith along with Susan Elizabeth Howe. Here we are:

I’ve got almost enough work to make a second collection already, and I’ll finish that up in the next few months, but I think I’d like to take some time on essaying in the near future as well.

5) Crazy Sauce

OK, so that’s the report on my life. The other big things I might mention you’ve been experiencing, too: Trump. A pandemic. Protests about racial injustice. I don’t really want to get political here—at least not today, and not at the end of a long post. But let me just say that in addition to all the stresses of this time, my time with my children at home as we’ve been socially distancing has been very sweet. I love home church. I haven’t been missing the auxiliary church activities and all of the other things that usually take my boys and husband away from home. I realize, though, that this is not healthy for long-term. We need a church community—we need to see, and serve, each other regulalry. My boys need a chance to date and mix socially so that they can move on to the next stage of their lives. And, of course, many people have been devastated by this, physically or economically or both. So of course I have been praying that this burden can be lifted from the earth. But I am grateful for the sweet memories I will have of this time.

The grown-ups are dying.

-->

            I heard the news a few days ago that George H. W. Bush was dead. It wasn't like big news to me. If someone had asked me the week before whether he was still alive, I wouldn't have been sure. Maybe? Maybe not? So many names pass by me over the days and weeks and months. And years. And decades.

            I guess I'm getting old. I've said it before, and to someone my age and older it's so obvious that it doesn't need saying, but when you get old, you don't FEEL like you're getting old. Well, your body does. But you continue feeling like an awkward adolescent (but just more tired).

            But, as I said, so many names. All these people are dying. It's strange which ones hit me harder than others. I didn't really blink at, say, Stan Lee, or Burt Reynolds. But for some reason, David Bowie's loss struck me. (Our children were forced to listen to "Major Tom"—or whatever its true title is—"Space Oddity?"--several times that week.) And when General Authorities pass, that's a heavier loss, of course. With them, it's that they've always been there. They were the authorities in my life. The grown-ups. They leave the room, and suddenly, it's just us chickens around here.

            What am I supposed to do?

            I remember a time, shortly after marriage, when Roger and I were in our apartment together having just ordered pizza, a real splurge for our impoverished newlywed budget. We were getting ready to eat, and, as we had been trained, we were looking around for salad to have with the pizza. But suddenly it dawned on me. "Roger," I said. "We don’t have to eat salad with the pizza. Our parents aren't here!"

            So here I am in this life with all of the grown-ups exiting the building, and I'm not sure what to do. The thing is, I'm too tired and rickety to jump on the bed, and these days pizza makes my stomach queasy. Don't tell me that it's time to have fun and I'm no fun anymore! I really think I've lost my sense of fun—but that's another topic for another time. At least I can say that I am still enjoying myself. In fact, I think that I enjoy myself more and more as the years go by. Maybe that's because I'm lowering my standards. Whatever it is, the little things bring so much more pleasure. Clean sheets. Coming home after a trip. Quiet.

            Yeah, I sound like an old person.

            But I just don't feel like a grown-up. If I were a grown-up, that would mean that I know what we're supposed to be doing with this world we've inherited. It means that the people after me are looking at me, blaming me for the mess they find themselves, and the world, in. As if I had anything to do with it!

            At what point am I supposed to stop running around with my eyes on the ground lest someone ask me to do something? At what point am I supposed to "step up"—and what does stepping up feel like? Does anyone ever feel like they've "got this"?

            I guess there are smaller situations in which I have learned how to step up. I feel pretty confident in my classroom (but don't throw me any difficult student situations, or ask me really hard theoretical questions about criticism, or even expect me to remember the name of "That one poet who wrote Wild Iris" half the time [it's Louise Gluck, but when on-the-spot I forget names like crazy].

            Maybe "grown-up" means "knows how to fake it," or "can cope in one particular area, maybe, if you don't look too hard."

            Whatever . . . I'm just really, really glad that I am obscure. Nothing huge is expected of me. Right? Because I'm not ready.

Wonderings about Wonder Woman

So, I saw it. And now I'm wondering some things.

I wonder whether the people who loved it fall into one of two categories: 1) People who were already interested in all-things superheroes or comic book characters; 2) Women to whom the movie spoke about power, particularly female power, perhaps because they have felt less powerful in their lives, by virtue of being female, than they felt was right.

So, let me just say now that I fall into neither of these groups. I'm not that interested in superheroes and comics, and, in general, I have felt powerful in my own life and not held down by society's (Western, American, Mormon) expectations for me. I'm not criticizing you for having felt that way; I'm just saying this isn't where I'm coming from. So that's probably the biggest reason that the movie left me underwhelmed.

I'm not saying that it was a bad movie—it just didn't strike me as especially, well, anything. It was an OK movie, as far as action movies go. But nothing outstanding. FOR ME. I realize that this admission, and the further admission (which you probably already picked up on) that I don't even really care for action movies in general, means that I'm probably not qualified to even critique the movie and definitely not qualified to say anything interesting to those who loved this movie. Which, as it turns out, seems to be almost everyone who saw it! So .  . . I'm a loner, and chances are that at the very least, my comments will be boring to you, and at the most, I might offend. Sorry about that.

I'm just going to address a few of the "positive" things I've heard about the movie.

1. WW is a great example of a girl who is free—free of all the beliefs, expectations, roles, limitations about women that our crazy society (whether that means Western/European, American, or Mormon) imposes on women.

Hmmm. I can't say that I see this. I mean, yes, I see a girl being raised to believe that she is strong. No one will say this is a bad thing. But, really, "strong" in this situation seems to mean "as comfortable being physically violent, or at least aggressive, as highly trained Navy Seals," in particular. And although she does seem to want to seek nonviolent solutions, or at least hates killing for dumb reasons and using war as a problem-solver, I would have liked to see her be strong in other ways—in wisdom, for example. You could argue that she was smart (having read all those books, including the particularly-mentioned sex manuals, and knowing so many languages), but the director/story seems to bend over backwards to portray her as quite naïve, at least for most of the movie, which seemed to me to prevent her from seeming really smart.

I'm not sure why she is portrayed as naïve. Is it to show how shocking the violence of our society is? Strange that she'd be so surprised about that, considering how much of her growing-up time was spent in martial arts training, reading human history, etc. Maybe it is supposed to show true femininity or a peace-loving nature, to be so shocked at the evil in the world? Either way, that is less satisfying to me than if she had been shown to be strong in wisdom and understanding. What her naivete does, IMO, is to make her a pre-fallen Eve, childlike, when it is post-apple Eve, the one who consciously chose to progress and become more adult, who is the real superhero to me. And, in the case of WW, the "fall," or acquaintance with the fruit which brings a knowledge of good and evil, is something that happens to her (passively), not something she actively chooses. In this way she remains, to me, a symbol of the weak female to whom things happen, not the strong female that I recognize in the women around me who, having a full understanding of the evil around them, roll up their sleeves and get to work loving and serving.

2. WW decides, after seeing humanity in all of its weakness (post-"apple"), that she loves it anyway and finds it worth saving. Hmmm. Nice idea, but I'm not sure this is actually what the movie portrays. In the movie I saw, she loved one particular MAN, and did it all for him. Now this could be parsed one of two ways: either she is the typical boy-crazy female whose motivation comes from love (and seeking to be worthy) of one man, or she is showing us that a mature person can do the Christ-like thing of seeing good, and bad, in one individual, and also the Christ-like thing of loving others specifically and individually, thus finding them worth fighting for. This second option is, of course, much more worthy and interesting, but I'm not sure the movie supports this reading; the bad guys are certainly all bad, though it's true that the good guys are demonstrably flawed.

3. WW is a critique against violence: witness her fury at the concept of a machine gun. Ah, nope, I'm not with you on this one. How many hours a day was she training in violence on that island? And the first concern when she gets new clothes is whether she can kick in them? And how does she end up solving all problems—with more might and trickier violence (or cooler violent technology, her wristbands) than her enemy?

4. WW questions conventions in interesting ways: witness her question of why main-sexual-interest-guy won't sleep next to her. OK, well, I happen to believe that motherhood is an immensely important force in the universe. One of the reasons that marriage (and the honoring of marriage vows) is a good thing is that it is the best way to raise happy, healthy children. So I didn't think it was cute that she was naïve about the reasons why unmarried people should be careful about beginning a potentially sexual relationship. And that makes me wonder: where is motherhood in this movie? Look at the women on WW's home island: none of them are mothers in the actual biological sense. Why, then, do they have such obviously motherly figures? What are the breasts for, and why should we go out of our way to show them off?

I can't help feeling that at times, WW seems like a sexy Barbie doll trained to bat her innocent eyes at everyone and jump around doing cool acrobatic moves, free of the "restrictions" of motherhood and the way it ties women down. What if you took a woman and removed everything womanly about her, like motherhood, and a deep wisdom about the nature of humanity, and a desire to progress in that wisdom, and a desire to be in a deep, nurturing relationship with one man--except, of course, leave her with the womanly characteristics which are sexy—and then gave her a lot of training in violence so that she is a warrior? What would you have? I'm thinking what you'd have is a man with breasts.

5. I do share the yearning that many fans of this movie have expressed to see more (and to become myself) examples of females who are free from fear. And I do appreciate that WW showed us a woman not afraid to walk in scary places alone. I would really, really like to have that experience. In this way, I appreciated the vicarious experience of power that WW gave me. But there is one way that I feel unfree as a woman that this movie failed to address, and I feel great loss over this failure. That is, I don't feel free of society's expectations regarding my (and all females') appearance. I hate that I feel it's my duty to spend more time getting ready in the morning than my male acquaintances do, that I need to color my hair and keep my weight more particularly under control, etc. I hate that I lose time in my day to these things that I wouldn't if I were a man. You can argue that it appears that WW didn't spend much time in front of a mirror, but I think you'll agree with me that the choice of an extremely gorgeous, well-built, perfect-skinned actress didn’t make this particular "freedom" very clear. Oh, and the skimpy clothes had their own rhetoric as well. How would this movie have been different if WW had been a little heavier, a little less obviously gorgeous, and much more fully-clothed? (This, by the way, is why I think the choice for actress for Katniss in Hunger Games was so heartening. She was beautiful, but not stick-skinny, and what she said and did was always more important than how she looked. Katniss as a character had her own flaws, though; I admit that.) I, for one, would have found the character of WW in this movie a lot more freeing if she had been a little less of a sex symbol. But, I understand: sex sells. I guess the creators are betraying their own beliefs about men here, as much as their beliefs about women.

So there it is. I'm a Grinch, I know. I don't mean to stomp all over your spiritual experience, but the fact that so many women were moved by this movie says more to me about how much women yearn to hear great stories about themselves and their potential than about what good can come from this particular movie.