I don’t believe in Christmas, but I do believe in presents. And taking pictures of said presents, apparently. I recently bought a new camera. It’s a DSLR, an upgrade from my point and shoot Powershot. I figure the best way to figure out how to use it is to force myself to take pictures every week. So we begin..
Tattoos, piercings, accessories and hair styles – do these things reflect our identity or do we use them to create our identity? A chicken or the egg scenario you might say. My guess is that you’d argue quite strongly that how you dress and present yourself is a direct reflection of your identity, and that this identity is intrinsic to you. I would agree that our characters or natures are innate to us to a certain extent – but why is it necessary to present ourselves in a certain way to reflect and communicate that identity? And is the way you present yourself a reflection of who you are, or who you would like to be?
One of the reasons I came to ponder this question is due to the comments I’ve received from some of my friends regarding my appearance. I am a rock/punk chick at heart, but I am not tattooed, pierced, made up, or have a hot hair cut and color. People I know have told me – “you should get pierced”, “you should get some tattoos, you’d look hot!”. So far I have resisted the desire of others to turn me into some kind of carbon copy Suicide Girl.
Why do they suggest I make these kinds of changes to my appearance? I think it’s because there is a perceived discordance between the type of person I am and how I look. And an underlying belief that if you’re into certain things you should look a certain way. These friends know what music I’m into and what beliefs I hold. So as a consequence it is expected, and encouraged, that I present myself in a manner that reflects these things. I’m supposed to adorn myself and my body with the signs and symbols of the culture(s) that I identify with. But with my unstyled hair and nerd grrl glasses I look more like a daggy sci-fi geek than a music geek, and therefore, incidentally, I don’t communicate through my appearance “what I’m about”.
Like most people there have been times when I’ve thought about having my hair dyed and getting a tattoo, but I can’t escape the feeling of falseness these things invoke in me. What others might see as a “natural extension and expression of identity”, in my case I see these things as a calculated manipulation of how I can make others see me. If I exchange my glasses for contact lenses I’ll look hotter. If I get my hair colored and styled I’ll look more rock. If I get a tattoo I’ll look more hardcore, and thus BE more hardcore. The truth is I’m hot, rock and hardcore without those things, but as people tend to use shallow criteria based on how people decorate themselves to figure out what kind of person someone is, I am not considered to be any of the above. And that’s fine with me. I could dress and present myself in way that would communicate to the world my internal identity, but with the money I have, I’d prefer to spend it on records, rather than on fashions and decorations that would communicate to others what records I might have.
It seems to me that we use appearance to judge and attract others, and consequently, instead of taking the time to talk to people to get to know and understand them, we take a glance. From this glance we derive information from which we make a judgment about them. We don’t admit to, or perhaps are not conscious of this, but we know it. And the fact we know it is illustrated by the care we take in our presentation, so when people take a glance at us, they will derive the “right” information and make the judgment about us that we want them to. All this apparent manipulation makes me wonder when we really connect on a human to human level, rather than with the illusions of identity.
In alternative/punk/hardcore circles we tend to mock mainstream people for being fashion victims and blindly following the trends. I don’t know why we laugh at them, because from my point of view there is a fashion that people emulate in so-called alternative scenes as well. For a community which immortalizes individuality, I am continually surprised and disappointed with the uniformity and conformity with which these ‘individuals’ present themselves. Yes, we look different from mainstream types, but among ourselves, we share “a look”. So in that sense I don’t think that makes us that different from “them” at all.
Spikes and studs anyone?
When my doctor suggested that excessive menstrual bleeding was the source of my iron deficiency, I scoffed. Two days of super max heaving bleeding, three days of moderate bleeding, a few days of spotting, right? That’s just how it’s always been with me so I never questioned it. It turns out that I was bleeding too much, for too long, and that bleeding like a mother fucker for the first two days of my period was overkill and depleting my iron. My doctor seemed surprised that I was unaware my bleeding was abnormal “Don’t you discuss periods with your friends?” he asked. Well of course we’ve bitched endlessly about cramps, sore boobs, bloating and cravings, but I can’t ever recall discussing the ins and outs of our monthly blood harvest – I guess that one is still a taboo?
I do recall one time mentioning to a friend that I was thinking of trying cloth pads (such as lunapads). When I explained to her what they were after her repeated requests for clarification, she screwed up her face in utter revulsion and declared THAT’S DISGUSTING! I found her response somewhat contradictory considering that she was quite prepared to wash the most vile smelling shit out of her baby’s cloth nappies, but the idea of washing menstrual blood out of cloth pads was to her completely repugnant. I know which one I’d prefer.
Having amused my doctor about the lack of discourse on menstrual blood among my circle of bleeders, he prescribed a three month course of progestin (synthetic progesterone) to help induce a more regular cycle. This was several months before I was diagnosed with PCOS (because I was not overweight it did not occur to him to consider the possibility of PCOS at this time). Within one cycle the progestins kicked in and I was shocked to discover what a normal level of bleeding looked like – I was a bleeding (and scoffing) mother fucker no more.
Every bleeding lady I know likes to joke about how our hormones are like a roller coaster, but this is in fact how the hormones associated with the reproductive cycle ride; they’re meant to ebb and flow. Although I should point out these fluctuations ought not to be any more dramatic than a kiddie roller coaster – so if you feel like you’re on the the big dipper, lady, you’re on the wrong ride.
Progesterone needs to reach a certain level in order to trigger menstruation. My progesterone levels were taking too long to hit their peak, which not only adversely effects bleeding but also produces a prolonged pre-menstrual phase. This discovery was significant for me because it explained why years earlier when I had PMDD, the duration of the PMDD symptoms were sometimes a full 14 days and then some.
With PMDD, depression and other symptoms only occur during the pre-menstrual phase, which should be no longer than 14 days. The fact I was sometimes experiencing symptoms longer than 14 days lead me to question whether I had PMDD and not some other kind of depressive illness. In fact it delayed my seeking professional help because I was unable to determine whether my mental health decline was restricted to the premenstrual period or was more permanent. In the end, after several months of monitoring my mood, I knew I wasn’t in a constant state of depression and figured near enough was good enough.
If I had known about this issue with progesterone back then, I would have sought help for PMDD earlier. It’s amazing to me that even years after recovery, the mysteries of my experience with PMDD are still being revealed.
In the first session with my new psychiatrist he asked me what I did for a living. When I told him I ran an online business, to my surprise, he rolled his chair over to his desk and asked “what’s the address?” In the middle of our session he jumped online to check out my online business! This took me off guard, and for a moment, I felt uncomfortable. Even though it was only an e-commerce website for my business, nothing unusual – but I guess for me, the online world and the real world are quite different things. It is rare for these two worlds to meet.
I did not have this blog at that time. And I stopped seeing the shrink after three sessions because my financial situation simply could not support it. No doubt my failure to make another appointment due to finances was interpreted as resistance on my part; to prevent the shrink delving any deeper into my psyche. Resistance is a normal part of therapy with a psychiatrist, and although I was no different in that respect, I literally did not have any money to continue. Financially speaking, I couldn’t afford to. Mental health wise, I couldn’t afford not to… but at $150 a pop every fortnight, it was beyond my reach.
For therapy with a psychiatrist to be genuinely effective, there ought not be any secrets, any holding back. And that means, he or she ought not to be shielded from knowing about your blog. Although on the one hand you might want to blog honestly about your experience of seeing a psychiatrist without the psychiatrist’s prying eyes…. but on the other hand… part of the process of therapy with a psychiatrist is that you are open with him or her about the therapy itself, in addition to whatever personal issues you are dealing with.
If you want an effective, honest and productive relationship with your therapist, I would not suggest writing a secret blog about your experience of receiving therapy, as it can only create a situation where you are being selective about what you talk about on your blog, and what you talk about with your therapist. Unless of course you are prepared to talk as honestly and openly with your therapist as you do on your blog, in which case if they did read your blog, there wouldn’t be anything you wouldn’t want them to read.
It is important to be aware that writing a secret blog about your therapy might be an unconscious strategy of resistance on your part. It is normal for someone receiving therapy to resist and block the path to vulnerability and transparency that the journey of therapy involves. Writing or creating a secret blog about your therapy, and your therapist, is a way of maintaining a space the therapist can not access and therefore enable you to retain some power in a situation in which you may perceive your power being threatened as the layers that surround you are stripped bare by the therapeutic process. In other words, it’s a way of trying to keep your clothes on when it’s time to get naked. This is not a healthy strategy if you are serious about getting the most out of your therapy.
If you are an avid blogger, writer or documenter, you may be bridled with an overwhelming need to write about your experience with therapy. If this is the case, it would be wise to reflect on the purpose of publicly writing about this on your blog. If you frame it as a means to sort through the issues you encounter in therapy, in manner where this reflection is complimentary to your therapy, this might be a better strategy. Writing, be it in a journal or a blog, is one of the best ways to process our thoughts and gain insight. Use it well, but use it wisely.
A reader asked me for my thoughts on the question, so in true off the top of my head fashion, let’s begin – Feminism has highlighted the ways in which women are dis-empowered and disadvantaged under patriarchy, but men can experience oppression under patriarchy as well.
The central tenant of patriarchy is the dominate position of men within a society; to lead, to control and make decisions for that society. Patriarchy is maintained by men fulfilling a patriarchal masculinist role, and women fulfilling a submissive, feminine role. Each role contains a range of expectations for the behaviours, interests, occupations each sex “should” perform. It is well understood that women’s potential is denied under this system, it is not well acknowledged that men can suffer under this system as well.
A patriarchal system demands a certain masculinist kind of masculinity from men, in other words, there are a narrow range of ways that men can “be”. Men are expected to live up to and embody a narrow idea of masculinity that values athleticism, aggression, sexual prowess, and a “hard” unemotional exterior, and, it’s compulsory.
Contemporary, compulsory masculinity is essentially defined in opposition to anything feminine, so in one sense masculinity means ‘not being a woman’. Consequently, anything traditionally associated with women or femininity is seen as pollution when it exists in a man, it undermines his masculinity and emasculates him. Masculinity and patriarchy is a collective enterprise, and thus all who are male are expected to embody the type of masculinity that patriarchal society demands. Any man who deviates from the desired form of masculinity undermines the masculinity of all; he lets the team down. Any man who does not conform to desired masculinity will be the subject of ridicule and rejection unless he steps back in line. Team patriarchy is go!
The kind of masculinity that society expects of men is not natural to all men, nor is it healthy to men, or society at large. Living up to the masculine ideal creates stress for men, and generates feelings of inadequacy in many. The kind of masculinity that is desired in men leads to emotional repression. Patriarchy oppresses men emotionally. It tells them that if they express emotions that make them look vulnerable then they are ‘like a woman’ or ‘effeminate’.
Under patriarchy, no man can be his authentic self without a struggle, and without a fight against an oppressive system that demands he conform to unnatural and unhealthy masculinist ideals.
