Not keeping up appearances

[cosmolinguist]

Jenn started talking about dressing me up and plucking my eyebrows and putting makeup on me--notice how I'm not the subject of any of those clauses, everything there is being done to me--and while I have no real problem with any of those things, I don't want to bother doing them myself. I think Jenn likes the idea of me disliking all that stuff, because she doesn't seem to acknowledge when I like them (or at least don't dislike them). Maybe she'd rather be the hero, single-handedly dragging me from the horrible depths of prepubescent tomboyishness. Or maybe she doesn't acknowledge it because she's not paying attention. Either way, she seems to like makes a project out of me, at times, when it strikes her fancy. I tend not to mind.

The project, of course, was not just to preen me; the preening is only a means to an end for her, and the end is going on a date with my boyfriend.

I sort of chuckled at that--Matthew and I don't have dates. I pointed that out, but she wasn't paying attention to reasonable, practical objections. "You should have dates," she said. I said, we're far apart, we've done all the date-like things (movies, food, etc.) for years--waitresses and people selling movie tickets thought we were on dates, which always amused me.

And, most importantly, we really don't care about stuff like that. We don't talk on the phone, except on those infrequent occasions when we have imminent plans to coordinate or something. I am still teased by not knowing how long we've been dating because I don't know when we started. (All we ever say is "October"--so, hey, that means we've been dating a year now! cool!) We're not ... drippy, to use Jenn's word, when we're together. And we don't have dates. He has to drive here if he wants to see me, and so he buys the gas that gets him here and I pay for his food or whatever we do while he's here. Jenn is bothered by that ... but I would feel bad if I insisted that he pay for everything, which he probably wouldn't do anyway.

But no, Jenn wants chivalry, I guess. Doors opened, dinners paid for, flowers bought. That doesn't surprise me when I think about how she herself relates to guys. If she wants something she can turn on the feminine wiles, the skirts and hair spray and the façade of innocence: "What are you talking about? I'm always like this. Now buy me things, pay attention to me, kiss me ... or try to kiss me so I can hit you and be indignant!" It seems to work for her. She's perfected it, honed it down to an art form. (The frequency and duration of such behavior has decreased since she got married, but it hasn't entirely gone away.) This makes no sense to me.

But, apparently, my romantic propensities make no sense to her. Despite my attempts at explanation, she continued to insist that something fundamental is missing in Matthew's and my relationship. I maintain that we're just going about it differently, that just because she doesn't see something doesn't mean it's not there, that I don't really like to dress up (and I'm not any good at it), and I doubt Matthew would notice anyway. It's not our style.

She doesn't think it's a matter of style, though, but one of objective reality that we are blatantly ignoring. I find this interesting ... not because I'm worried about the quality of my relationship, but because it makes me wonder what makes people think that dating is standardized. There are things you are just expected to do, hoops to jump through, appearances to keep up, she says. It's not a matter of style. If you dressed up and he didn't care, he would be a bastard. I told her she was overreacting. She didn't believe it.

But Matthew has never been one to do things just because people might expect that of him. I tried to be normal for a while--I come from a well-meaning but very normal family, so it took me a while to figure out that "normal" really is dumb and doesn't exist and wouldn't make any sense if it did and it's just an impossible standard that serves only to stress people out and such. Due at least partly to the influence of Matthew and other friends I started to make around the time I met him (my sophomore year of high school), I have given up paying attention or pretending to be normal.

And I'm an English major, so I was taught that all our ideas about courtly, romantic love were invented by somebody in the south of France in the eleventh century. Or something like that. Maybe it's the twelfth. Anyway, the point is that I know that all this stuff about flowers and making guys pay for things is totally arbitrary. I don't think the lack of that stuff really means that Matthew's a bad boyfriend or that we aren't acting enough like we're dating.

She says other people think this as well, this bit about me being neglected by my asshole-ish boyfriend, but I recognize that as a tactic my mom uses all the time: she makes odd statements seem more authoritative by claiming that some undefined group of people is in complete agreement with the odd statement. I think that one's "appealing to the majority," but then I never could keep my fallacies straight. But even if they're right and some vague group of people does agree with this odd statement, I have learned that the proper response to this is "So?"

I'll just have to go on dating my odd friend in some odd way. But I still might end up with my eyebrows plucked and makeup on, two weeks from now.

Comments

[acromonkee.livejournal.com]

Romance is the shits, friendship is the only thing that doesn't end up pinching in the end...

SO I think your friendship-love relationship sounds great...keep those brows shaggy, I say.

[cosmolinguist]

Even though I believe that there are things more important than acting cute, and that friendship and actually getting along is one of those things, it's nice to hear it from somebody else.

My eyebrows have been plucked once, before my best friend's wedding. I was her maid of honor, hence a couple of friends--Jenn being one of them--thought they should do it. It was an interesting experience. I laughed at them a lot. When they were done, I put my glasses back on and looked at myself in the mirror. Since they hadn't done anything too dramatic, and since the frame of my glasses goes right in front of my eyebrows, I noticed no discernable difference in the appearance of my eyebrows at all. I felt, quietly, vindicated.

Now that I think of it, my unplucked eyebrows are another aspect of me that "bothers people," according to Jenn. Not just her, but people. Oh my. Whatever shall I do.

Power to the eyebrows!

[ismelljello.livejournal.com]

Oh my. Does this mean there needs to be anti discrimination laws for hairism too? :P

[cosmolinguist]

No, it just means I have to ignore Jenn (and my mom, on the hairiness issue, though I don't think my mom will ever complain at Matthew and I not acting drippy enough for her tastes).

[kratkrat.livejournal.com]

I happen to agree with the way you do things, and disagree highly with your friend. So you are not materialistic, and do not define yourself by some arbitrary definition of how you're "supposed" to behave. Big deal. Do you care for each other? Do you treat each other with respect and as you each wish to be treated? If so, then you are far ahead of the curve, in my opinion, and everyone else can just go pound sand down a rathole. :-)

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah ... when I mentioned to Matthew that Jenn thinks he's not nice to me, and tried to explain her reasons for thinking so, he said, "so I'm not patriarchal and possessive enough?" (and some other adjective too, which was also good, but I can't remember it now). That made me laugh.

I love him and have no problems with how he treats me, and as far as I can tell he feels the same, and that you should say such nice things about that situation makes me happy. :-)

Oh, and you may be interested to know that I do indeed know a little more Linux scripting now. I found something about shell scripting for beginners, and it's reasonably cool. The coolest thing, though, is that I can tell it was obviously written in some other language originally--"What Kernel Is?" "Who developed the Linux?" "Why to Write Shell Script?" It's quite funny. And I know a few more things, now. Ever-so-slowly, I am getting better.

[parakleta.livejournal.com]

With my last girlfriend we did things about the same way... but every once in a while we'd get done up and go to some fancy restaurant we probably couldn't afford and it was kind of fun.

That ended about 6 months ago after a decent run of 3 years, but it's interesting now that it's over to hear what people thought, and it seems quite a few people thought I was an arsehole towards her.

We basically split stuff based on how convenient it was for each of us to do it. I earnt the money because I had a decent job and government benefits. She did the housework, because she didn't have a job, and had more free time. Seems a lot of people thought I should have done an equal share of the housework, and let her starve... or something.

To be honest, I did make some mistakes which I didn't realise I'd made until it was too late, but they were more just differences that we hadn't noticed at the start... anyway, bygones.

I've never much cared for all that fancy stuff... in fact, there are some girls I see who I think are hot, and I'd like to date, but they're all fancy looking and I figure they're probably too much hassle. I want a companion in life, not a princess.