I am thinking this evening about women whose selves involve extremes, extremes that we can't do anything about, or can't easily do anything about, and how those extremes of our selves affect our lives. I'd be interested in hearing any feedback here from women who also see their lives as being strongly affected by mind/body extremes especially, though as those of you who know me are aware; I'm always good on tangents, too.
Oh, and the guys can talk too. I don't mean to make this a women-only thing.
My extremes I'm most aware of are my mind, my breasts, my beard, and my childhood background. I was not the tallest girl at the dance; I never went to the dance, other than when I got drunk at nightclubs and occasionally (and most erroneously) strayed into the mosh pit.
I am five foot four. Not quite as good as five foot seven, but why does this matter?
I can never know the experience of a woman who is six foot eight. I imagine she must ask herself, too; "Why does this matter?" though for her it will matter a lot more than for me.
My breasts are the six foot eight of me. They are size I cups, they are awkward, they throw me off balance, they attract men who want mommies at times. This is all terribly tedious. I don't like them at all. I want to have a B cup, while women with B cups want to have D cups, and strippers undergo surgery in order to have my breasts, only not sagging.
Dang, it's such a hoot to be a woman.
I started growing a beard when I was 19. I used to pluck it religiously, then I gave up and started shaving. I understand this can be lasered out.
What bothers me is that I feel so compelled to pretend it is not there. I will not leave my property without first shaving my face, any given day. It's a pretty heavy beard, since I've been shaving for so long. The pores have grown larger and the hairs coarser. By comparison, my legs, which I rarely shave, don't have a lot of hair, and what there is, is fairly light.
Even with my size I breasts, I often have been addressed as "Sir," when I run into strangers. My five o'clock shadow is pretty clear. I've had friends wanting to be kind tell me "You have a strong face."
Well, yes; I have a strong face; but I also have a beard and very large breasts.
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My mind started out being really good for language and math. I got so good at language that I abandoned the math, because I was becoming too scary to socially fit in, for a woman. Silly me.
That was even before the beard kicked in. But through the years, I've kept working hard on language, reading and writing relentlessly, as my friends here will know. Sometimes I really hit some high points. That is really great for me. I love you all for your props when you have given me them.
I only have the math anymore via intuition, though. I have a kind of sense of scale, that I find is shared by some of our science bloggers and other geeks here. It's really helpful to make those kind of connections, so we can talk about what that means, and how hard it is to deal with the crises our planet's ecology is undergoing, with people who just don't have that sense of scale, of how big the phenomena are, and how complicated and chaotic.
I guess I could try to study calculus again if I was in the mood, though. I took intro calculus about four times. Flunked the first three, aced the last one. The prof was a very attractive young fellow at UCLA. He started out saying; "Okay, you want to build a hot tub, and you have X square feet of redwood, in these dimensions. How do you work your materials to maximize them?"
I expect some will say that's not the best way to learn things. Well, honies; maybe it's not for you, but at that time, it worked for me. I think I embarrassed him a little. But I did a good job with my work, made the intellectual breakthrough to understanding at least a bit about what calculus was about, got an A, and most definitely didn't turn up at his home doorstep (though I did work out where he lived and bicycle by once and saw my prof, looking a tad irked, on his front lawn...but hey, it was on my regular trail...I didn't push it. Though it was worth it.)
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My family background included a lot of moving around, and some rather feral people. I am a rather feral person in some ways too, though I try very hard not to predate on other humans. I occasionally need to eat, so I have to be predatory, though I am a coward and pay others to raise cows who give me cheese, chickens who give me eggs, abused farmworkers who give me vegetables (other than the ones I grow myself; and even here, I am engaging in abuse; my family is not poor. Somebody paid for this).
The somewhat-feral people sometimes gave me gifts, sometimes were confusing. And some of them just plain were gifts.
It was sort of like being a gypsy, except with less of a schedule. I think it would have been easier to be a gypsy, because then I might have had a better sense of what to expect, and about how to limit my own expectations...just appreciate the gifts of the day, take what is offered. Be careful, we are gypsies, it can be dangerous. There are those who hate gypsies.
Are gypsies tall? Somehow I think of them as short, dark, and harried. Yeah, and bearded.
But the tallest girl at the ball must, too, at least sometimes, see herself, at least during that one dreadful night; as one who is not only being pressured to leave, but one who would only too gladly take up with a gypsy camp, if only they were tall gypsies, so that she could fit in, and be seen as not an ugly outlier, but beautiful like we here gypsies are. Even if you aren't the same color as we are.
Or maybe she will have a fantasy about short gypsies who will love and protect her. Kinda like Snow White?
Who knows what the fantasies of outliers are? How often do we ask them?
I do that here, and with love.