It is Not My Job to be Pretty

I'd like to first start off by saying that I IN NO WAY look down on or seek to change people who love makeup, who take pride in their artistry with it, who love high heels or fancy suits or dress to impress or any other way they want. If that makes you happy, more power to you! This is not about "that shouldn't make you happy". This is about slowly realizing that it doesn't make me happy, and that I don't have to do it anyway.

Until very recently I had rules about how I could dress. There were fewer and fewer of them as I grew older (I learned to love my legs and not feel like I needed to hide them in order to shield the eyes of the masses, I even learned that it's totally fine if I don't shave them all the time AND that sometimes I really do want to shave them and BOTH of those are okay). I bought huge silly glasses because I wanted them, without trying them on first, and then I bought giant BLUE glasses which I have always wanted and never thought I was allowed to have because they make me look silly not pretty. I shaved my head and I didn't look as pretty without my curls but I looked like a badass which is just as good, maybe better. I learned that leggings totally, totally are pants and that "my stomach isn't perfect so I can't wear crop tops" is stupid.

The titular realization really started with shaving my head. I wanted to be cool. Like, literally. I was working outside for ten hours a day in hot, humid, Florida and any hair was too much. I wavered about it for a while but the decision to do it came from that realization. "It is not my job to be pretty." My job is to be a field biologist and to love and enjoy my body and do what makes me feel good and shaving my head helped me do all of those things. I had to haggle with the barber, who did not feel comfortable shaving my head and at the end told me I was "lucky to be pretty enough to pull it off" which made me super uncomfortable, but it felt awesome and it looked super cool. I started posting pictures of me making silly faces instead of always smiling perfectly. I started barely looking in the mirror or at pictures before I posted them because my hair always looked the same, and that has continued since my hair has grown in. I don't know what it's doing up there, it's just kind of crazy curly and doing it's thing. It does its job, I'll do mine.

I've barely worn makeup in years but I've recently decided that even for big events there is no rule that says that I have to try. Sometimes I want to and it's kind of fun if I can make it look nice but I really don't like how it feels on my face and how hard it is to get off and how stressful I find trying to put it on. So. Why do it, unless I want to? It is not my job.

Similarly, I've very recently started Accepting my Eyebrows. I have Some Eyebrows. I kind of wish they were less bushy and shaped more nicely. But you know what? I really don't wish that enough to painfully pluck them all the time or pay someone to rip the hairs out or learn how to do whatever other methods of hair-removal there are. I used to shame myself when I didn't remember to pluck regularly. Which was always. Because I hated doing it and it was a chore and it is NOT MY JOB. So instead I have embraced my weird bushy eyebrows. And if I feel compelled to pluck them, I will, it's not a hard and fast "plucking your eyebrows is giving into misogyny" kind of rule, it's just...if I want to I will, if I don't, I won't.

Some Eyebrows

The rule I haven't stopped to consider changing (until now) is my No Warm Colors rule. Back in middle school I went to one of those Makeup Parties where they try to sell you makeup and tell you things look good on you so you'll buy them, etc. They did this thing where they lay two fabric swatches across your chest and had everyone look at your face. One side was Cool Colors and one side was Warm. They went around and did this to every girl in the room. Most of them looked basically the same on both sides but they got to me and everyone in the room went "Oh my god, you look SO bad in warm colors." So from that day on it became a Rule. More than a rule, it became almost a disability. "Oh man, I love that shirt but I can't wear warm colors", etc. I never questioned it. They had told me it made me look bad. I could not knowingly do something that makes me look bad. It's against The Rules.

A few months ago I bought a bright pink shirt at Goodwill because I was going to some Breast Cancer Awareness night at a club with a friend and everyone was supposed to wear pink. It was only a few bucks and the cut looked pretty good on me but it was definitely a Warm Pink and so I would only wear it for this one occasion in which I was forced to and then I would donate it back or give it to someone or only wear it for fieldwork or exercise or something where no one would see me.

But it stayed in my drawer. And I liked it. It stood out among my sea of blues and greens. I wore it to yoga a couple of times. I wore it when I was just lounging around the house. I would never want anyone in the outside world to see me in it, but I could wear it with my dark green pants on days when I felt shitty and feel like an adorable watermelon instead.

And today I was digging through my shirts for something to wear and I looked at my bright pink shirt and thought "Oh, but I was planning on going out today so I probably shouldn't..." and then I thought "OH MY GOD IT IS NOT MY JOB TO LOOK PRETTY" and I put it on. And you know what? I really don't think it looks bad. Maybe I will buy more pink things. Or yellow. Or orange! Maybe I am ALLOWED TO WEAR ALL OF THE COLORS!! What a crazy world that would be!

Pink shirt, hair going everywhere, silly face, bushy eyebrows. This is the first picture I took and it is fine. I don't have to take 8 more and pick the VERY BEST ONE. This is so fucking freeing, you guys!

A Midwesterner in Louisiana

So far I haven't really had "culture shock" down here, but then, I haven't gotten out that much yet, either. However, I have noticed a few key differences.

For one thing, it is already spring here, and spring lasts for *months* not just two weeks!

Administrators

Having now spoken to what I can only assume is roughly half of the administrators on campus for various things, I feel I have a firm handle on this one.

My whole life it has been impressed upon me that when you walk up to someone, say, a receptionist or other administrative-type-person from whom you want something, you stand very quietly and hopefully until they acknowledge you. In the Midwest if you get impatient or just anxious that they might not have noticed you and say "Um, excuse me?" very sweetly before they are done doing whatever they are doing you will get a glare-smile and they will be icily polite to you in a way that makes you feel ashamed and also fear that they will "lose" whatever precious paperwork you just handed them.

Here, no one will pay any attention to you if you are just hovering over their desk awkwardly. They will just keep doing whatever they're doing, even if it is blatantly texting on their phone, until you announce yourself. Then they will drop whatever they're doing and turn to you and you (read:me) will brace yourself for their Smile of Death or even worse their one finger and "I'll be with you in a moment" said quickly without looking at you or moving their mouth. But instead, miraculously, they are cheerful and happy to help you! Sometimes they even tell you about the last time they had to get an X-ray or whatever you're trying to get accomplished. They aren't angry at you for speaking at all! They just weren't going to be the ones to end the unbearable awkwardness. I'm starting to wonder if maybe no one down here feels palpable unbearable awkwardness permeating every situation the way Midwesterners do. (That is a Midwest thing, right? Not just me?).

Similarly,

Passive-Aggression

They do not know what passive-aggression is. Or at least, they only play in the minor leagues. At my UU service last week the Reverend was talking about how everyone seems to be enraged but express it politely (he did not even use the term passive-aggressive) and my heart fell for a moment because I thought the South was so much more open than that! Then he gave some examples which were things like "Oh good, I'm so glad you were late, it's not like I had anything else to do." Which is not even a little bit polite and I can't even imagine a real human saying that. A Midwesterner would say "No, don't worry, it's fine." with a strangely fixed smile and murder in their eyes.

How Are You?

THEY REALLY ACTUALLY SEEM TO WANT TO KNOW! I am so used to using no more than two words to express my mood to anyone who asks, even friends. I have the habit of saying "Pretty good" even when at a funeral or in the hospital for a car accident or whatever. Because there is that permeating sense of awkwardness if you try to reply for real (with friends we circle back to it eventually, but the most I usually open with is "Not great" and wait for them to signal that they are interested in hearing more).

Here they describe their illness symptoms, tell you all about the problems they're having with getting their house restored after the flood, tell you about how they've been working at this same store for 41 years and never really had a dream and never want to learn to cook (true story, that happened within a minute of meeting someone). IT'S FANTASTIC! Sometimes I start to get impatient and I frequently respond "Pretty good, how are you?" and then listen to 10 minutes of information but I love it and I want it and I'm going to get better at giving people my full attention and telling them something real because it seems really important.

I'm kind of freaking out.

This is an extremely weird time. Two days after the inauguration of Trump I moved almost as far south as I could get, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to start a masters degree at LSU in Renewable Natural Resources. It's currently halfway through my first week. Longing for my partner, missing my friends, not sure how to find community here, not sure how being myself will be taken by my new colleagues. I feel constantly exhausted by the deluge of horror that's spilling from the white house every day, but I also feel really excited to be in this beautiful place following my dreams. My dreams to research and conserve our beautiful world and the creatures in it who are being harmed by human nonsense. Like the two ridiculous pipelines Trump just okayed and the extraction and use of fossil fuels which I'm sure will increase since the EPA is basically on lockdown right now and everyone employed by the DOI is supposed to stop communicating with the public and if it were possible Trump would order that use of the phrase "climate change" be made a felony. The CDC even had to cancel a summit on the health effects of climate change which should NOT be a political issue! Not allowing the sharing of that information is murder.

Meanwhile I'm down here overjoyed because I FINALLY have access to every science database that has ever thwarted me by asking exorbitant amounts of money for anything more than an abstract (you mean I can search Wiley AND Science Direct????? Ravenclaw HEAVEN). My project is to look at the effect on nesting waterbirds of a restoration project on a barrier island to mitigate sea-level rise due to climate change. This project is basically perfect and I've been wanting to go to graduate school for six years and I'm HERE, studying wetlands in one of the most unique and well-preserved areas for wetlands in the world (but also incredibly fragile and susceptible to things like oil spills and climate change). I'm also feeling more comfortable being openly queer than I ever have before (or was, before I moved South), something I've worked hard at for a really long time.

So I'm so excited and I'm terrified all of this is going to get ripped away. I'm pretty sure all my funding is through the state of Louisiana but I work in the USGS Cooperative Unit here at LSU which is who pays my advisor and is a part of the Department of the Interior. I am actually not positive whether any of my grant money comes from them or not. So far they are not affected by the same shutdowns the EPA and Forest Service and National Parks are, to my knowledge but...is it only a matter of time? Will Wisconsin actually shut down their DNR and if they do will other states follow them? Will I be unobtrusive enough to be allowed to continue my research? Will there be renewable natural resources LEFT when I graduate, much less jobs to research and protect them?

Am I safe as a queer female scientist in this country? Should I even bother applying for healthcare down here since it seems to be rapidly disappearing? Is it selfish to worry about all of that when I know I still have a lot of privilege and am not in as much danger as immigrants, Muslims, black people, and many other groups? I read an article recently saying that in order to preserve the strength to stay angry and keep fighting back you have to pick and choose a couple of causes to rally behind because you will burn out if you try to do everything at once. That makes sense to me. But how can I choose? The ones that affect me most? The ones that do the most harm to people in general? How can I, as a feminist, as a queer woman, as an empathetic human, not also stand up for black lives and native lives and Muslim lives and immigrant lives and science and truth and art and justice and prison reform and the environment and living wages and healthcare for all and freedom of the press and against LITERALLY EVERYTHING TRUMP STANDS FOR. How can I not be there for all of it? I mean, I actually can't. It pulls me apart when I try, I go numb and catatonic and useless. And I try to tell myself that the research I'm doing is resistance, is helping, that taking care of myself is necessary to revolution, that caring for my friends and family is too, that just being me is an act of rebellion, etc. etc. etc. but I don't know if I believe any of that. What could possibly be enough against this much evil?

27 Things I Learned in my 27th Year

1. Explanations and apologies are not the same thing.
2. It's okay to take a break.
3. I am not nearly as trusting or open as I thought I was.
4. How to tube and tag venomous snakes.

5. I have a mental disorder.
6. "Sometimes human beings just have to sit in one place and, like, hurt." (Infinite Jest)
7. I can just book airline tickets without permission from anyone else.
8. How to safely engage in civil disobedience/peaceful arrestable actions.
9. How to deepsea fish.
10. Polyamorous relationships are hard but great and totally worth it.
11. How to ear-tag small rodents.

12. You cannot force someone to love you the way you want them to, and if the way they want a relationship is too painful for you, you CAN walk away.
13. I'm better at cooking than I thought I was.
14. I can let other people take care of me. Sometimes. If I try really, really hard.
15. How to get angry (not just abstract political anger but like, at humans I know and love).
16. I look damn good with a shaved head.

17. How to commit.
18. You don't have to be tolerant of hate, ignorance, or intolerance. This includes arguing civilly to try to change minds.
19. It's okay to be wrong sometimes.
20. Anti-depressants/-anxiety meds aren't terrifying and didn't change my personality. And they actually can help a lot.
21. How to bachata.

22. Leggings are pants and crop tops are shirts.
23. How to find Bachman's sparrow nests.

24. What shame is. But like, in the way that a fish learns what water is.
25. I'm better at embroidery than I thought I was.
26. Our country is way more horrifying than I thought. Just way more.
27. It's okay to tell the truth.

America's Ghostwriters

Okay, so in my little corner of the internet we’ve been talking a lot about how to deal with white supremacists/racists/misogynists who refuse to respond when called out. The Liberal view, the view that I have always had, is that these are Good People who just don’t understand the implications of what they’re saying and that we need to meet them where they are and do the emotional work for them so they will see how harmful their views are.

This is coming up again while I listen to Immigants (We Get the Job Done) from the Hamilton Mixtape (by far my favorite song on this album besides Dessa’s). How is it possible that people hate immigrants? That “immigrant” has become a bad word in this country? I mean, if you want to talk about white and nationalistic privilege I am about as high on the scale as you can get. I had an ancestor on the Mayflower, I had one who signed the Declaration of Independence, I had ancestors on both sides of the Civil War, everyone in my entire family – both sides – was in this “country” before 1700 – before it was one. If I can see that our country is built on the murder of millions of Native Americans, forced immigration/slavery/oppression of African Americans and oppressed and vilified immigrants from all over the world – that we wouldn’t exist without them and that they make our country and our lives measurably better and that it is ridiculous to deny immigrants, especially refugees, entrance to our country and equal rights and every possibility that is supposed to be the cornerstone of being an American…if I can see all that other people must just not be looking. If I could just open their eyes. If I could just trigger their empathy. They have to be able to feel it. They HAVE to. It’s just ignorance, and ignorance has to be fought with information. Right?

But through a conversation with Gordon I realized that for anyone spouting these views who is unwilling to engage when they are called out it isn’t really about ignorance. They don’t really think that nonwhite people/people of other faiths/women/immigrants aren’t people…they just don’t actually care whether they are or not. This argument is physically painful to me, that someone could not be blind to what they're doing but actually just not care, but I think that it's true of most of the kind of bigots we're talking about. You can’t get them to engage their empathy because they are purposely shutting it off. They want things to be better for them and they don’t give a flying fuck about anyone else in the world and they’re using bigoted rhetoric to advance that position. Engaging their cover argument legitimizes it.

Here is the paraphrased conversation I just had with Gordon that finally has me feeling like giving up on arguing sense and empathy into humans who refuse to employ them and instead focusing my energy elsewhere. There are two ways this conversation goes:

Bigot: Group X aren’t people and don’t deserve the same rights as me and I’m going to crush them for my own benefit.

You: You can’t say that! Group X are real people and you should care about them and imagine them complexly and think about it from their perspective here let me explain why…

You will lose. You have already lost by engaging because they don’t care whether they should care or not. They don’t. You can’t convince them. You will expend a huge amount of emotional energy and they will MAYBE come away with something to think about that MIGHT EVENTUALLY blossom into understanding but they WILL NOT immediately change their mind except in EXTREMELY rare circumstances.

Bigot: Group X aren’t people and don’t deserve the same rights as me and I’m going to crush them for my own benefit.

You: You cannot say that.

Them: Stop me.

You: I will.

That is the only way you win. Don't convince them. Stop them.

Word Portraits

               In the age of selfies, when everyone carries a camera in their pocket and knows precisely what they look like at every moment, there is a burgeoning new market for the return of portraiture. Not with paint, no of course not. No one now would sit still that long or pay an artist when they can style themselves into oil with a few swipes of their finger and a good filter. They can post it immediately and gather Likes. It’s the easiest thing in the world.

               But perhaps these people who constantly show the world how they wish to be remembered could benefit from Word Portraiture. Anyone can take a selfie but who can describe themselves with accuracy? Who knows how they move? How they look in unstudied moments? For a nominal fee I will paint you into a prose-poem. Like any good portraitist I will soften your wrinkles and make warm the light. I will learn the briefest flash of your eyes, the falter of your lips, your shyness as you glance aside. I will witness you with all the accuracy you can handle.

               So come into my shop. Sit with me in motion and emotion. To ease your mind I will share my story. I would have been a writer but I had no gift for plot. Good with verbiage but not verbs. My characters moved through one dimension with a complicated grace but nothing ever happened to them. I was an artist, not an author; words were just my medium.

               It’s been two years and I am still in business. The secret is to be studious but soft, true to life but just a little sweeter. Look around the gallery and sample my wares. My hourly rate is reasonable; all you have to do is let me in. Without Da Vinci all that’s left is Mona Lisa with a selfie stick.

Live Broadly, Love Deeply

There’s a kind of motto I came up with (or stole? It’s so hard to tell) when I was in Texas trying to figure out what the hell I was doing with my life. “Live broadly, love deeply”. It is still kind of a mission statement of my life but the thing is it’s hard to do both at the same time.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been cultivating the courage it takes to living broadly. Going new places, trying new things, spending a lot of time alone doing the things that I want to do, experiencing new parts of the country and the culture. I started dancing again: first jazz, then hip hop, then Latin, I learned how to catch and tag sparrows and rats and snakes, I tried new restaurants by myself, went camping by myself, spent all day with the ocean alone, had strange wonderful conversations with random strangers. I’ve seen and done a lot of amazing things and I am extremely proud of the person I’ve become in that time (or perhaps, always was).

But it’s been really, really lonely. I have a lot of friends I love a tremendous amount and a couple I even keep in pretty good contact with but the phone can only do so much. I’ve made a lot of fantastic acquaintances. I love meeting new people, but it’s hard to really get to know them beyond a surface level, hard to integrate yourself into their life when you both know you’re leaving in a couple months. Hard too, to break yourself of the habit of being a loner enough to try to get close to them. It’s a layer of protection when you know you get attached easily and are leaving soon (plus a lot of underlying trust issues that made me want to be a loner in the first place but we won’t get into that here). Here in Florida has also been the least social field job I’ve ever had. Even though I live with several people who all seem pretty cool, I almost never see them. We all pretty much just smile and wave when we pass each other in the kitchen and basically don’t talk or hang out. It’s weird. And that was sort of how I felt living in South Carolina, too. It felt very temporary. Living with my parents was very familiar but also a little uncomfortable. There comes a point at which you can’t go home again, not for very long (especially when “going home” is a brand new house in a state you’d never been to). I made some friends but by the time we started getting close I was leaving. I loved Charleston, I loved exploring the city and living on the coast and all the new experiences, but it was broad and not deep.

I left Wisconsin triumphantly in January, planning not to come back for more than a short visit for a long time. I’ve been saying I want out of the Midwest for YEARS and I do hate the winters and the springs, now that I know that spring in the Southeast lasts for MONTHS and is BEAUTIFUL and full of FLOWERS instead of lasting for two weeks and being mostly mud.

But I went back to Wisconsin a few weeks ago. I’m sorry if you’re a Wisconsinite reading this and I didn’t tell you I was there. I was only going for a few days and I wanted deep quality time with the few people I was going to see. I stayed with Gordon, with whom I’ve had a strange, slowly growing relationship for a while now. We’ve been quiet about it, we didn’t really know what it was. It didn’t truly solidify into something really real until we saw each other again. After months of phone calls it felt so good to be with him. So much better than I imagined. It was indescribable. I don’t even really want to try except to say that it was such an intense amount of love and care that it was sometimes too bright to look at.

I went down to see Jenny and her brand new tiny human. I got to the hospital the day after she gave birth. I’ve never seen a baby that fresh before. I helped Jenny get in and out of her chair, still in a lot of pain from her C-section, and held baby Charlotte who slept peacefully and made tiny squeaky noises while Jenny and I talked about our lives and our loves and everything. Rob stayed to chat for a minute before he went off to check on Ryker and they both insisted if I ever wanted to I could stay with them and Charlotte’s hair and chubby cheeks were softer than anything in the world and it felt unbelievably good to be a part of that family.

LOOK AT THAT FACE

The next day we met Maggie for breakfast. I literally ran down the street and flung myself at her. God I love her so much. We held hands and sat in a tree and dangled our feet over the water and talked about everything and cried and laughed and hugged and kissed each other’s faces and I have missed her. So. Much. And we vowed that even though we are both terrible at long-distance communication that our love will never ever ever decrease, only increase and pieces of me that I hadn’t realized were missing fell back into place. 

After that Gordon and I went to see my horse. I’ve owned Lark for 16 years and I hadn’t seen him since January, one of the longest absences ever. He let me hug his face – which he never does. He stood completely still while I untangled his tail for an hour – which he never does. He was patient and sweet in a way that showed me that he had really missed me. I rode him bareback and it felt like coming home. Gordon even got on – his first time on a horse – and it was maybe the cutest thing that has ever happened. Afterwards we stood with Lark as he ate grass, just standing quietly with him and listening to the munch of his teeth which is one of my favorite sounds in the whole world. I like to just stand while he eats, to be part of his herd, because that’s how horses bond. Gordon understood and stood quietly with us, the three of us herding.

TRUE LOVE

And I burst into tears. Gordon put his arm around me and I buried my face in Lark’s mane and Lark made comforting munchy noises and I just sobbed. It felt like my heart had grown twelve sizes and still overflowed.

The truth is that I am really good at the living broadly part. It’s not that hard for me at this point. I like being alone, I’m brave about trying new things, I am curious and fascinated by everything…I could spend my whole life skating along the surface exploring new things and meeting new people. Loving deeply is hard. I didn’t realize how hard until recently. Through a lot of talking to Gordon and some therapy and some medication I have realized…well, a lot of things that I’m not going to go into now. Suffice it to say I’ve been numb and terrified for a very long time. I crave deep, real, love, but never feel like I can break through and find it. I haven’t felt it in person like that for a very long time and I certainly wasn’t prepared for feeling so much love so intensely in 24 hours.

For a long time, I thought that real strength meant Independence, meant being off on adventures alone. And I’ve certainly found that kind of strength in myself the last few years and I love it and it is so much fun. It’s one of my favorite things about myself. But I think the much more difficult (for me) kind of strength and courage is the strength to be open and let others in. That would be a much braver act for me. I still have a lot of work left to do but I am definitely less numb now than I have been in a very long time. I’m not ready to settle down forever, but I want a community. I want people around that I love and to build real trust, to really feel like I can be open. I want to be able to really get to know new people. And really get to know a new city! I want to be a regular somewhere. It’s so strange that that sounds so much more terrifying to me than running off and living in a trailer in the middle of nowhere in Texas, or driving all over the country on a solo roadtrip, or any other low-paid, short term, dangerous job alone in the boonies. I think a lot of that has to do with the fear that learning to love deeply and trust others and forging a friend family for myself will take away my ability to run all over the world alone and do crazy shit, but that’s the beautiful part: I don’t have to choose. I can have both. Live broadly AND love deeply, after all. I just have to prove it, to work hard at it. It’s a challenge. And luckily, I’m both competitive and stubborn.

So this is my current Life Plan:

Tomorrow is the last day of my job here in Florida, which I have absolutely loved. I’m going to go back to South Carolina for a couple of days and then I’m driving back to Wisconsin and staying with Gordon and Andrea for a while. I am extremely nervous and excited about this. I’ll visit as many Midwest friends as possible while still having time to just be in Beloit. I’ll really sit down and work at applying to grad schools. Two to three years for a masters is a good amount of time to find a new place, settle, make new but real friends, build a community, etc. But before I go to grad school, I’m going to Europe. Alone. To just wander and adventure and see things I’ve never seen before.

Live broadly, love deeply. This is my plan, anyway. Maybe it’ll fall through. Maybe I’ll chicken out. Maybe something will go terribly wrong. Maybe I won’t get into grad school. I’m terrified about basically every part of it, but then again, I’m terrified all the time. So. Nothing to do but walk forward with my eyes, mind, and heart wide open and see what happens.