My Last

Here I am writing my last paper. Listening to Maria Taylor's Leap Year, which is the kind of song I have always loved and makes me feel like I have achieved some emotional fulfillment - that melancholy sweet bubbling in my chest and at my temples that I can be so in love, can be so brave, can be so strong and so vulnerable all at once. And I thought of burning the CD to take with me to the library tomorrow morning, so that I can listen to this beautiful song, bob my head, type my paper, print it off, live in this private but on display world where everyone can see that I am enjoying this music, enjoying my life, that I have something beyond the paper I am writing...

And then I realized that I will not be part of that community any more. I won't be in that private-public, on-display but on-my-own place where I exist as my own person but am so easily identified and defined as a student, preoccupied in the same things as everyone else: grades, classes, quarters, midterms, papers, men, alcohol, frat parties, dancing, bars, weekends and snooze buttons and limited budgets. I hadn't realize how much of an act my on-campus life could be, but it is. I have reveled in what I could present to other people, have manipulated my appearance through fashion, makeup, hair, the purse I carry, the shoes I wear, the look on my face or the confidence of my stride or my stroll or my swagger or my all-out run. This identity will be gone. And then, I am in the working world, one of so many more, and I can still present those things, but I will no longer be a part of that community where everyone else is trying to pose and present just like I am. I am headed into the vast world where it will not be so easy to pretend I am cool, I am confident, I am fine being alone in my world with my music. It won't be so easy to pretend because I am far less certain anyone is watching. Have I desired my whole life to have someone watching? Have I imagined my whole life that someone might be? I think so. I know so. Can I come up with a Big Brother when I'm out in that real world I'm supposed to confront soon? And if I can't, can I let go of that desire to be observed?

In my last days, I am returning to the long nights, the nights of procrastinating by getting down to the root of life and scratching at it to see the wick. The good old days with Sheila and the long nights and the treks to White Hen and the glow of our desk lamps in the windows and the harshness of computer screens and beeping alarms and warm beds and too-short catnaps that became too-long night's sleeps... The horror and the joy of those nights. The thrill of being alive and awake when no one else was, alone in a grey-blue night turning into day.

But I am too old for this, it seems. And so I return to my paper, too quick for my old self, but barely quickly enough for my new self who values sleep and not seeing dawn from the wrong side and getting to sleep in my bed with my partner and not feel that heavy curly-haired feeling under my eyelids.

Ostentatious Femininity Seems to Have Something to Do With Footwear

I don't know what's wrong with women my age. When I walk around campus, there is just this ultra, extreme, put-up femininity that I see. Women wearing rubber boots with colorful plaid prints, hip-hugging jeans (not that they have hips to hug) and a vest lined with brown-black fur. Or the women with pompons bouncing around their boots. The women who buy Ugg boots and wear them with oversized sweatpants and put makeup on, despite not showering. What is with women who do this? Why do these little symbols of femininity that some overpriced department store sells draw in women my age? What is it about patterned rubber boots that makes one feel stylish? I love fashion, but go for classic looks that you won't regret buying in three months! I bought the jewel-toned party shirts that every other girl was wearing last year, but I bought them because they were fun, cheap, and would look good for a party. I didn't buy them to be the height of fashion but to have something fun for partying. But on a day-to-day basis, what makes a woman put on short frilly skirts and boots and back-comb their hair and go to class looking like this? Do these women feel a need to be stylish at all times? Are they interested in attracting men and/or women? Is it competition between women?

Just as in high school, Jansport was the backpack to have, now we have women carrying bags marked with their sorority. They carry the weirdest shaped bags, and these bags are stylish on the justification that it is has their stamp on it? It seems any Brand justifies Fashion, not just clothing brands.

Thoughts on the State of the Female Sex

I have recently been pondering Elizabeth Bennet’s comment in Pride and Prejudice concerning “accomplished young women.” Darcy and Miss Bingley are discussing the talents required of young women: music, singing, dancing, drawing, language, “a certain something in her air and manner of walking,” and “the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.” When Eliza has heard their definition of accomplished young women, she remarks, “I rather wonder at your knowing any.”

I must agree with Miss Bennet’s view on the state of female dispositions, even today, but my definition of “accomplished” must differ from that of Austen. Things have changed a touch in two centuries; I do not expect an accomplished woman to play the harpsichord or dance a reel. No, if I were to meet a truly accomplished woman, I would see intelligence, a quick mind, a deft ability with language, and a heightened self-awareness that enables her to master her emotions quickly when faced with less accomplished members of either sex. Indeed, though I wring out my dislike on this page, I most respect those persons who can hide their real dislike for others behind a careful and considerate visage. This too is the mark of an accomplished woman.

I do not claim to achieve such subtlety nor mastery in any of the areas that I have mentioned. However, just as a gay man may make fun of other gay men, I am a woman, and as a woman, I claim my right to pronounce that women are in a deplorable state. I believe it to be nearly impossible to find a truly accomplished woman, not for some deficiency in the sex, but for the fact that evolution and popular culture are against us.

Intelligence, sadly, I believe to be a genetic inheritance rather than an influence of environment (thus explaining why so many geniuses come from horrid backgrounds and so many nitwits from pleasant and privileged environments). Therefore, I cannot offer any sage advice on how to increase intelligence amongst young women, except to say that the bearing and raising of children today is made so bothersome and difficult that any woman of reasonable intelligence would think twice before willingly entering into a contract of eighteen years.

The difficulty I observe in our culture is that women who wish to cultivate their mind must devote time and energy on higher degrees of education and pursuing careers that actually interest them. However, it is very difficult to write a dissertation or devote one’s full attention to one client when one is required to breastfeed, drive children to soccer practice, and participate in other activities required of the good mother. Our own society demands women care more for their offspring than for themselves, and the intelligent woman knows this is not always possible or advisable. Indeed, the intelligent woman would note that population is already full to bursting and consider raising one spectacularly gifted child the best course of action.

Where intelligence is a genetic toss-up, a quick mind can be honed by training. Participating in debates with one’s parents and friends, reading the best authors and watching news programs that challenge one’s intellect will build up a woman who is well-read, capable of understanding many arguments, and unafraid to challenge others’ assumptions. She will know and understand her opponent’s argument before the other has thought it, and like a chess game, be several steps ahead of the actual debate.

However, what I find when I survey the women about me is that many are entrenched in their own limited experience of the world. They are unable to fathom lives beyond their own because they have never had to imagine another world, another upbringing. I do not require hardship in the childhood of the accomplished woman, but those-who-have-not always know about those-who-have, while the reverse is less likely to be true.

Here I come to the quality most difficult to find in the accomplished woman: facility in language. How delightful it is to my ears to hear a woman who uses language as a tool to argue more precisely her point or express exactly how she is feeling or what she believes. But facility in language, both written and oral, is in severe decline. I find myself impressed if magazines use the words “their,” “there,” and “they’re” correctly. If an actress or another highly visible woman were to use a word like “aplomb,” I would be struck dumb. If she continued with words like “efficacy” or “virtuosity” or another neglected, delightful word in the English language, I should die happy. However, since Plain Speaking is so celebrated by our politicians and our media, the pressure to hone one’s oratory is negligible. Women, particularly young women, get away with, “It’s like… you know” and the lyrical, incisive words that might fill that ellipsis are replaced with a hand gesture, a shrug of the shoulders, or, worst of all, a flip of the head.

Self-awareness is the magical element in this search for the accomplished woman. A self-aware woman knows when and how she is forming her argument. She is aware of how she holds her body as she debates with another. She is aware of her gestures and uses them to punctuate rather than express her argument. The self-aware woman knows how to express herself. If she wishes to be kind, she softens her tone and adopts a gentle manner. If she wishes to cut, she knows how to sharpen her tongue and fill her voice with power so that her words - carefully chosen - have the weight of her conviction. In short, the self-aware woman, by nature intelligent, with a mind honed by her own acuity, and a proficiency in the English language, is the most formidable force I have ever hoped to encounter.

But as language degrades into slang and un-nuanced body language, and women are set lower and lower standards for expression and intelligence, I cannot see how the accomplished woman can survive. She will move in ever-smaller circles, find less and less to pique her interest as reporting becomes so biased or base that there is no point in reading or watching, and the classics will seem products of beautiful, bygone eras that she will fantasize about as her friends babble and flip their hair and her teachers become more ignorant creatures. In short, the accomplished, self-aware woman is an endangered species, even more so than in the 19^th century.