(no subject)
Ugh. Just awoke from unnecessary mid-day nap, and I'm feeling much the worse for it. I had the heater on, and was curled up under two doonas, and I woke up suddenly for no discernible reason and was very confused for a moment about why it was light outside. I lay there for about two minutes feeling weighed down by my limbs and the universe's perverse insistence on linear time and wondering how long I could ignore the desperate urge to pee. It wasn't very long, really. I tend to be stubborn about how often I pee. It's this irrational twitch of mine--my mother has pelvic floor problems and when she has to go, she has to go, and I always hate just giving in to the desire, especially if I'm in bed [Edit: OK. I just realised how that sounds. I hate getting out of bed in the middle of the night to pee. That type of 'giving in', not the type that involves late-night emergency laundry]. At folk-fest this year I slept terribly for three nights in a row, and it wasn't till I was on a night shift and thus not getting smashed before I went to bed that I realised I was just suffering the effects of too much cider preventing me from sleeping on my stomach like I like to. I'm sure there's a anti-drinking message in there just waiting for its chance at a national campaign.
I found a copy of Namoi Wolf's The Beauty Myth at work on Tuesday, and happily started reading it in favour of my admin law stuff. Earlier in the morning I'd finished off this Cosmo I'd started devouring the night before. After work I went about bought a wet, shiny chocolaty lip-gloss so I could wear it when I saw Zaius* later. If I was to write a silly overly-ironic novel about the contradictions inherent to modern female life, it'd be full of juxtapositions like that, and I would have to shoot myself for writing it.
It is a bit difficult to assess The Beauty Myth because it was written over fifteen years ago, and it has such an American focus. I don't disagree with Wolf's basic theory about the effects of our culture-wide obsession with image and beauty and the damage it does to women and the feminist movement, but the grand reactionary social trend that she posits reads almost like a conspiracy theory. Wolf knows this, of course, as she points out in the beginning--"societies tell themselves necessary fictions the way that individuals and families do". But polemics don't lend themselves well to abstract un-targeted arguments, and the way she talks about, for example, the 'professional beauty qualification' as being 'designed', as 'intended' to institute certain outcomes... I don't know---the human general resistance to change, economic opportunism, social unease at the idea of majority of the population suddenly acquiring unmitigated freedom from previously defined roles.. all these factors are demonstrably capable of resulting in the persecution that Wolf's seeing, but they exist at such a scale that it is at best a mindless persecution, and Wolf's terminology that suggests a focused design and intention... makes me squirm. It's ultimately irrelevant since surely the emphasis should be on the end result rather than playing semantics about how we got here, but but but...
*Not his actual name, obviously. But oddly fitting. For why_lederhosen's benefit: It's D.
I found a copy of Namoi Wolf's The Beauty Myth at work on Tuesday, and happily started reading it in favour of my admin law stuff. Earlier in the morning I'd finished off this Cosmo I'd started devouring the night before. After work I went about bought a wet, shiny chocolaty lip-gloss so I could wear it when I saw Zaius* later. If I was to write a silly overly-ironic novel about the contradictions inherent to modern female life, it'd be full of juxtapositions like that, and I would have to shoot myself for writing it.
It is a bit difficult to assess The Beauty Myth because it was written over fifteen years ago, and it has such an American focus. I don't disagree with Wolf's basic theory about the effects of our culture-wide obsession with image and beauty and the damage it does to women and the feminist movement, but the grand reactionary social trend that she posits reads almost like a conspiracy theory. Wolf knows this, of course, as she points out in the beginning--"societies tell themselves necessary fictions the way that individuals and families do". But polemics don't lend themselves well to abstract un-targeted arguments, and the way she talks about, for example, the 'professional beauty qualification' as being 'designed', as 'intended' to institute certain outcomes... I don't know---the human general resistance to change, economic opportunism, social unease at the idea of majority of the population suddenly acquiring unmitigated freedom from previously defined roles.. all these factors are demonstrably capable of resulting in the persecution that Wolf's seeing, but they exist at such a scale that it is at best a mindless persecution, and Wolf's terminology that suggests a focused design and intention... makes me squirm. It's ultimately irrelevant since surely the emphasis should be on the end result rather than playing semantics about how we got here, but but but...
*Not his actual name, obviously. But oddly fitting. For why_lederhosen's benefit: It's D.