In which I range from shallow talk of jewellery to a mini, soft-feministic rant.
I have a social life, and I'm not quite sure how this happened. All over the place, there are people wanting to do things with me, and it's very odd.
Whenever I say things like this, I'm afraid it comes out a little 'Oh, I had no friends, WOE IS ME,' (maybe a little less than that), and that's not what I mean at all - I'm not a very sociable person, and I'm happy with that: I have friends, and they're good friends, and I spend time with them and that's good. But I just ... suddenly I seem to have many friends, and I'm planning many and varied things with them - there are barbecues, and picnics, and day trips to London, and lazy rowing, and coffee galore, and balls and all sorts - and it's great, but a little odd and so busy. But nice.
I hate this weather. Well, no, I don't: it's nice weather. I like it: it's sunny but a little breezy, and generally rather nice. But I don't like what it does to me: I am hot and sweaty and disgusting like mank. You should all be glad you're not near me. Adding to this is my sunburnt scalp - I daren't wash my hair because I cannot scrub my head decently because oh the pain - luckily this is subsiding, I hope to be able to wash my hair tomorrow - so my hair is greasy and horrible, and on top of this, my head was sore and itchy and mank where I burnt it so I put Savlon on it. In my hair, yes. Adding to the general mank.
(Anwar has never come across Savlon. You all know what Savlon is, right? Possibly non-Brits won't, but that's fair enough. Also, Anwar laughs at me for being sunburnt. It is an amusing impossibility* for him, like male pregnancy. Grr.)
So, I am manky and running out of clean clothes - maybe my evening will contain and exciting trip to the laundry - but any day now I'm going to get dressed with a little time to spare and brave the complications of wearing proper summery clothes. I have skirts, lovely skirts and new tops and shoes and mainly I've not worn them much, because it takes me too much time to match skirt and top and shoes and work out how far I'm likely to walk today and whether these shoes will kill me too much and can I really deal with people seeing my NAKED FEET today? and all such questions. Truly, I am indecisive about Proper Girly Clothes.
On that topic, I need some jewellery for the June Ball. My dress is black and shiny. What kind of jewellery would anyone recommend, based on my general appearance, my dress colour (bag and shoes will also be black), and the fact that I particularly like silver jewellery? There is a bead shop down the road where you can make your own jewellery which is tempting me even though I'm kind of non-arty and not sure how this will work - I've seen some earring there that I like, anyway, so I'm intending to make my own version for one or two pounds cheaper than the ready-made version (also will be for screw-ons, not pierced ears), and I'm wondering whether to do that sort of thing for necklace, too - I'm looking at glass based pearl drop earrings, and I really like gunmetal but don't think that would necessarily be so good with a black dress (though I might make some of those anyway for other times) - what other colour would anyone suggest? I was thinking maybe a dark red or green, or something pale - there's a not-very-green-but-nicely-pale mint, or just cream, or something. Hmm. Choices choices.
In general, I have once again confirmed that my taste in jewellery is annoyingly expensive - I like silver, and I like small moonstones and amber and suchlike things, and these things do not come cheap. *sigh*
I can't believe I have waffled SO LONG about jewellery, which no-one is going to be that interested in or advise me on anyway. I'm just getting rather over excited over the fact that I can have dangly earrings. *g* On that topic, people keep saying 'why don't you just get your ears pierced?' and, well, I don't want to. That is the short answer: there are various subsidiary reasons, but people keep trying to 'fix' these reasons and really I just don't want to, I don't want pierced ears, I just want the option to wear earrings for special occasions or when I want to feel pretty, so yes, being able to convert earrings to screw-ons is rather good, and making them from scratch also great.
On things that annoy me: Stephen Fry on QI last night talking about how 'girls don't tend to like physics'. Argh. It's just ... such a gross generalisation. If I said 'gay men tend to be effeminate' people would be up in arms, because yes, some are, but some aren't: people are people, generally. But a lot of people don't seem to see anything wrong with generalising women like that, and it bothers me a little. Mostly I'm resigned to it, and it doesn't matter that much, and in general gender equality is certainly so much better than it used to be, but then there are small things - or not so small; when I went for the York University open day for Physics applicants, I was the only girl in my group. Not realising this, because I am short even compared to other women, and was therefore probably invisible at the back of a crowd of men, the (male) current student tour guide made some rather disparaging, generalistic remarks about the kind of girls who do Physics, and, well, it didn't make me want to study at York. Oddly, I did feel that Physics at Durham had a particularly well-balanced in-take genderwise, compared to the other departments I visited. Anyway, I disgress - small things, I was saying, that are, well, the best way I can put it at the moment is that it's kind of like what loneraven was saying about white privelege**, or, at least, what Peggy McIntosh says about male privelege at the top of White Privilege: Unpacking the Knapsack. Um. Yeah, I reached that point where I still have the ideas in my head but the words and sentence constructions are running away. I hadn't considered the idea of male privelege before, but thinking about it, and relating it to white privelege, I guess that's a big factor. Um. See, the words, they have abandoned me.
(Also you should go read loneraven's post about white privelege because it is thoughtful, interesting and well-written (as always) and it made me think.)
Anyway. A more trivial example: the world is also ridiculously biased towards right-handers. I hesitate to compare it because clearly racism is a far, far larger problem, but actually it's not that long ago that left-handers were rather oppressed. Still not on such a scale, but even up to the time when my uncle was at school, people tried to force everyone to write with their right hands - which has left him and countless others with terrible handwriting - and blamed them for clumsiness when they couldn't do things properly 'the normal way.' More on this later, perhaps: left-hander's day is coming up.
Um. In short: the world needs to stop enforcing such an idea of normal, on large and small scales, and the enormity of that is staggering because a large part of white privelege or male privelege or any sort of discrimination is that people tend not to realise they have it. That's the way society has developed, that's the way it is, but people don't realise that it shouldn't be that way because it always has been, and unless you come across these problems yourself, or have them pointed out to you, you're fairly unlikely to realise. And that's problematic.
I am sinking into utter uselessness with words, so I will go away now, yes. *sigh* I do like having the free time to babble on LJ, though. It's rather nice.
*I say impossibility; I mean near enough impossible in Britain for skin that is (half) adapted for Mauritian sun. Which is, you know, hotter in winter than a British summer. But apparently not humid, cool and sea breezy and lovely and possibly one day I will go. There are tiny islands that you can see across, and proper blue skies, and GIANT TORTOISES THAT YOU CAN SIT ON. Awesome.
**I hope you don't mind me linking, Iona; it was an interesting post and it made me think.
Whenever I say things like this, I'm afraid it comes out a little 'Oh, I had no friends, WOE IS ME,' (maybe a little less than that), and that's not what I mean at all - I'm not a very sociable person, and I'm happy with that: I have friends, and they're good friends, and I spend time with them and that's good. But I just ... suddenly I seem to have many friends, and I'm planning many and varied things with them - there are barbecues, and picnics, and day trips to London, and lazy rowing, and coffee galore, and balls and all sorts - and it's great, but a little odd and so busy. But nice.
I hate this weather. Well, no, I don't: it's nice weather. I like it: it's sunny but a little breezy, and generally rather nice. But I don't like what it does to me: I am hot and sweaty and disgusting like mank. You should all be glad you're not near me. Adding to this is my sunburnt scalp - I daren't wash my hair because I cannot scrub my head decently because oh the pain - luckily this is subsiding, I hope to be able to wash my hair tomorrow - so my hair is greasy and horrible, and on top of this, my head was sore and itchy and mank where I burnt it so I put Savlon on it. In my hair, yes. Adding to the general mank.
(Anwar has never come across Savlon. You all know what Savlon is, right? Possibly non-Brits won't, but that's fair enough. Also, Anwar laughs at me for being sunburnt. It is an amusing impossibility* for him, like male pregnancy. Grr.)
So, I am manky and running out of clean clothes - maybe my evening will contain and exciting trip to the laundry - but any day now I'm going to get dressed with a little time to spare and brave the complications of wearing proper summery clothes. I have skirts, lovely skirts and new tops and shoes and mainly I've not worn them much, because it takes me too much time to match skirt and top and shoes and work out how far I'm likely to walk today and whether these shoes will kill me too much and can I really deal with people seeing my NAKED FEET today? and all such questions. Truly, I am indecisive about Proper Girly Clothes.
On that topic, I need some jewellery for the June Ball. My dress is black and shiny. What kind of jewellery would anyone recommend, based on my general appearance, my dress colour (bag and shoes will also be black), and the fact that I particularly like silver jewellery? There is a bead shop down the road where you can make your own jewellery which is tempting me even though I'm kind of non-arty and not sure how this will work - I've seen some earring there that I like, anyway, so I'm intending to make my own version for one or two pounds cheaper than the ready-made version (also will be for screw-ons, not pierced ears), and I'm wondering whether to do that sort of thing for necklace, too - I'm looking at glass based pearl drop earrings, and I really like gunmetal but don't think that would necessarily be so good with a black dress (though I might make some of those anyway for other times) - what other colour would anyone suggest? I was thinking maybe a dark red or green, or something pale - there's a not-very-green-but-nicely-pale mint, or just cream, or something. Hmm. Choices choices.
In general, I have once again confirmed that my taste in jewellery is annoyingly expensive - I like silver, and I like small moonstones and amber and suchlike things, and these things do not come cheap. *sigh*
I can't believe I have waffled SO LONG about jewellery, which no-one is going to be that interested in or advise me on anyway. I'm just getting rather over excited over the fact that I can have dangly earrings. *g* On that topic, people keep saying 'why don't you just get your ears pierced?' and, well, I don't want to. That is the short answer: there are various subsidiary reasons, but people keep trying to 'fix' these reasons and really I just don't want to, I don't want pierced ears, I just want the option to wear earrings for special occasions or when I want to feel pretty, so yes, being able to convert earrings to screw-ons is rather good, and making them from scratch also great.
On things that annoy me: Stephen Fry on QI last night talking about how 'girls don't tend to like physics'. Argh. It's just ... such a gross generalisation. If I said 'gay men tend to be effeminate' people would be up in arms, because yes, some are, but some aren't: people are people, generally. But a lot of people don't seem to see anything wrong with generalising women like that, and it bothers me a little. Mostly I'm resigned to it, and it doesn't matter that much, and in general gender equality is certainly so much better than it used to be, but then there are small things - or not so small; when I went for the York University open day for Physics applicants, I was the only girl in my group. Not realising this, because I am short even compared to other women, and was therefore probably invisible at the back of a crowd of men, the (male) current student tour guide made some rather disparaging, generalistic remarks about the kind of girls who do Physics, and, well, it didn't make me want to study at York. Oddly, I did feel that Physics at Durham had a particularly well-balanced in-take genderwise, compared to the other departments I visited. Anyway, I disgress - small things, I was saying, that are, well, the best way I can put it at the moment is that it's kind of like what loneraven was saying about white privelege**, or, at least, what Peggy McIntosh says about male privelege at the top of White Privilege: Unpacking the Knapsack. Um. Yeah, I reached that point where I still have the ideas in my head but the words and sentence constructions are running away. I hadn't considered the idea of male privelege before, but thinking about it, and relating it to white privelege, I guess that's a big factor. Um. See, the words, they have abandoned me.
(Also you should go read loneraven's post about white privelege because it is thoughtful, interesting and well-written (as always) and it made me think.)
Anyway. A more trivial example: the world is also ridiculously biased towards right-handers. I hesitate to compare it because clearly racism is a far, far larger problem, but actually it's not that long ago that left-handers were rather oppressed. Still not on such a scale, but even up to the time when my uncle was at school, people tried to force everyone to write with their right hands - which has left him and countless others with terrible handwriting - and blamed them for clumsiness when they couldn't do things properly 'the normal way.' More on this later, perhaps: left-hander's day is coming up.
Um. In short: the world needs to stop enforcing such an idea of normal, on large and small scales, and the enormity of that is staggering because a large part of white privelege or male privelege or any sort of discrimination is that people tend not to realise they have it. That's the way society has developed, that's the way it is, but people don't realise that it shouldn't be that way because it always has been, and unless you come across these problems yourself, or have them pointed out to you, you're fairly unlikely to realise. And that's problematic.
I am sinking into utter uselessness with words, so I will go away now, yes. *sigh* I do like having the free time to babble on LJ, though. It's rather nice.
*I say impossibility; I mean near enough impossible in Britain for skin that is (half) adapted for Mauritian sun. Which is, you know, hotter in winter than a British summer. But apparently not humid, cool and sea breezy and lovely and possibly one day I will go. There are tiny islands that you can see across, and proper blue skies, and GIANT TORTOISES THAT YOU CAN SIT ON. Awesome.
**I hope you don't mind me linking, Iona; it was an interesting post and it made me think.