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Apr. 12th, 2008 06:33 pmI've been thinking about Stuff.
I graduate from college in two months, and at that point the remaining bits of parental money that have been coming into my checkbook are at an end. I feel deeply overwhelmed by the stress of finding work that pays enough for me to live on. And deed to that, I'm at that time of the year when all my stuff is getting old and wearing out, and I feel like I have all these needs that I can't fulfill, and it's been spazzing me out.
And then I realized that most of those needs were derived from patriarchal compulsory femininity.
I don't have enough fashionable clothes. I'm running out of cosmetics. I need new shoes. And then I thought, my boyfriend isn't stressed out like this. Granted, he generally looks like he got pulled backwards through a briar bush, owing to his reluctance to do something with his hair, but he's not flipping his lid, and I am. And I don't need to be, even if I think I will continue to eschew the briar bush.
I have warm clothing. I have a place to live. I can afford food. I don't need new lipstick.
The patriarchal/capitalistic propaganda organs of my world have been yelling at me that if I don't have a constant stream of new, femmey stuff, I'm not a proper woman. But I don't have to care. I can have enough, and not think about it so fucking much. It will feel a lot less like poverty if I let go of the pornification mandate. I have plenty of pretty things, and I can make more out of the ones that are wearing out. I think I'm going to cut up a green silk dress that I bought ages ago and use it to patch and trim all the stuff that I don't like any more.
I don't need new shoes. I like the ones I've got just fine. Thy just have to be enough to get me where I'm going, no more than that.
(It makes my irony button deeply happy that I've been thinking and writing about this while listening to my bubblegumpop playlist on iTunes.)
I graduate from college in two months, and at that point the remaining bits of parental money that have been coming into my checkbook are at an end. I feel deeply overwhelmed by the stress of finding work that pays enough for me to live on. And deed to that, I'm at that time of the year when all my stuff is getting old and wearing out, and I feel like I have all these needs that I can't fulfill, and it's been spazzing me out.
And then I realized that most of those needs were derived from patriarchal compulsory femininity.
I don't have enough fashionable clothes. I'm running out of cosmetics. I need new shoes. And then I thought, my boyfriend isn't stressed out like this. Granted, he generally looks like he got pulled backwards through a briar bush, owing to his reluctance to do something with his hair, but he's not flipping his lid, and I am. And I don't need to be, even if I think I will continue to eschew the briar bush.
I have warm clothing. I have a place to live. I can afford food. I don't need new lipstick.
The patriarchal/capitalistic propaganda organs of my world have been yelling at me that if I don't have a constant stream of new, femmey stuff, I'm not a proper woman. But I don't have to care. I can have enough, and not think about it so fucking much. It will feel a lot less like poverty if I let go of the pornification mandate. I have plenty of pretty things, and I can make more out of the ones that are wearing out. I think I'm going to cut up a green silk dress that I bought ages ago and use it to patch and trim all the stuff that I don't like any more.
I don't need new shoes. I like the ones I've got just fine. Thy just have to be enough to get me where I'm going, no more than that.
(It makes my irony button deeply happy that I've been thinking and writing about this while listening to my bubblegumpop playlist on iTunes.)