Girls

[littera_abactor]

The recent spate of genderfuck stories triggered something of an epiphany for me.

I'm no good at being a girl.

I'm happy to be female, yes, and I can't even imagine wanting to be male, but the distance between "female" and "girl" is huge.

Actually, the difference between "female" and "girl" is me.

I can't dress myself. I finally learned what a

Comments

[resonant8]

Sounds to me like you're no good at being a drag queen.

Me, I figure that, since I am female, everything I do is feminine by definition!

[littera_abactor]

Oh, no. I'm not going to hold myself to drag queen standards; that's just asking for feelings of crawling inadequacy. I've only ever known one drag queen well, but he:

a) Knew all these really complicated girl things, to the point that he'd start giving me advice and I wouldn't even know the words. It would just be "So you bliskropanch to tyrjownk and that makes your uiopcuton fogovitive." And I'd say, "Um. OK." And he'd say, "So you're going to..." and I say, "bliskropanch?" And then he'd sigh and fix my hair himself.

b) Was gorgeousSo, no, I'm not trying for drag queen. I've given up on real girl, too, even if my mother hasn't. At this point, I'd be thrilled not to be the kind of person who dies from, say, a tragic pantyhose mishap. Or has to be untangled from her clothing by her loved ones, which happened to me less than an hour ago after I got my head stuck in one of my new pieces of clothing. (Which I was just trying on, to see if it fits. It doesn't. Or it would, if I could wear three-inch heels with it, but if I did that, the

[fanofall]

That? Is the BEST ATTITUDE EVAR.

[maygra]

I have this urge to come out there and do my very funny imitation of "What Not to Wear" and "Decorating Cents". Plus Garage Sales and Goodwill are your friend. also, short hair can alos be your friend and the instruction to the hair dresser that you want to "Wash, brush, go" is prety generally understood

[maygra]

I should just mention that typing is also gene-related. I didn't get that one either.

[littera_abactor]

That one I did get! Apparently I got typing and my sister got girl things.

Hmmm. I think I got the better end of that bargain.

[littera_abactor]

"Misgendered linebacker" is a phrase I need to see a lot more often. For the record.

also, short hair can alos be your friend and the instruction to the hair dresser that you want to "Wash, brush, go" is prety generally understood.

I have curly hair. If it's long, it's just sort of wavy. If it's short, it frizzes, and it also curls out. In my misguided youth, I shaved my head a couple of times, and the growing-in stage was always hideous. I looked like I was wearing a tumbleweed on my head. One of those big, car-crushing ones.

And, unfortunately, when I say "wash, brush, and go" to hairdressers, they think layers. But that takes me right back to Tumbleweed Central. Or, if the layers are long enough, I can look like a misgendered (hee!) fugitive from one of those horrible hair metal bands.

The thing is, hairdressers tell me, "People pay fortunes to have your hair," and I never have the guts to say, "Anyone who would pay that much money for a haircut would know what to do with it. I don't and I never will, and I'll settle for tidy

[shayheyred]

I cannot express how endearing I find your post.
::charmed::

[littera_abactor]

Thank you!

Actually, I'm very lucky that some people do find this sort of thing endearing, because it's not like I can stop. I don't choose to get my head stuck in my clothes, or sit down with the wrong people in restaurants, or wander around with my shirt on backwards, looking like I failed my daily living skills classes. (Which I didn't, but trust me, they weren't teaching the skills I needed to know - I could figure out to use a bus and buy vegetables and balance a checkbook by myself. I needed a class that told me how to avoid looking like an idiot in public places.) But I always do end up doing these things, so it's just as well that my loved ones find it amusing.

[shayheyred]

I recently was informed by a co worker that not only was I wearing mismatched socks, but I had on one brown shoe and one black one (the curse of buying duplicate short boots in different colors). I have also tripped in the middle of Broadway and sprawled in front of oncoming traffic (and never let it be said that New York taxis don't know how to brake suddenly). I wore an evening dress to a wedding, confident that I looked ravishing, until my mother pointed out that unless I had breasts on my back, darts were supposed to go in front, and I was wearing it backwards. Sigh. So I know whereof you speak.

[littera_abactor]

I think I love you.

No, actually, I'm pretty sure I love you. The great FF was a clue, yes, but you wore a dress backwards to a wedding. Nothing can come between us now.

Except possibly a taxi.

And for some reason, I feel that this is the place to share that when I was in high school, I was walking down outdoor stairs between classes on a windy day and my skirt flew over my head, causing a) everyone to get an eyeful of my legs, my underwear, and very probably more personal bits than that (so no wonder the not-wearing-a-slip thing isn't getting me down) and b) me to trip over a stair because I suddenly couldn't see and fall the rest of the way down.

I wanted to die, of course, but in retrospect, it was better preparation for the rest of life than any other part of high school.

[littera_abactor]

One of our maps is of London, a little earlier than Regency. But I haven't put sticky notes on it yet.

*thoughtful appraisal of the fruitful and heretofore unexplored field of sticky note decor*

Tell me, what do the sticky notes say? And are they color-coordinated? Do they match your sofa? Any advice for the novice sticky note decorator?

[fanofall]

I hope all of that is for a fic you're writing, and I hope you are feeling the mental nudges I am giving you...

[pearl_o]

I sometimes suspect that most of the girls in middle school had all these arrangements for sekrit girl lessons that no one ever bothered to tell me about.

[littera_abactor]

Yes! Yes, that's it exactly! And middle school is when it happened, too. Suddenly all the other girls knew all this stuff. And I was still playing with Legos and reading Victorian novels, and I just never caught up.

Jeez. You'd think some kind soul would put remedial girl lessons on a website somewhere.

[delurker]

Yes! Except for me it happened in primary school, when I missed the memo that told me it was time to stop with the imagination-based play and move onto hand-clapping, hopscotch and skipping. Even now I am slightly bewildered when I look back.