Pirate Update, etc.

Sad, isn't it?

While I'm at it, here are some additional updates:

• I received a pass on my dissertation proposal.
• Noir said that the fallout from his prom night strip bar debacle was not as bad as he had feared.
• Zen sitting requires work.
• I'm still not drinking.
• Glasses Girl has not made frequent reappearances, but it does happen occasionally.

Vanity Fair

“[Masculinity is] a little like having to wear an ill-fitting coat for one's entire life (by contrast, I imagine femininity to be an oppressive sense of nakedness).”

So says Paul Theroux, travel writer. This aphorism drifts around my brain like a detached pixie wing. It’s true in some ways; men do seem expected to roam thelandscape all covered up. The man’s coat might also be an ill-fit because it is his father’s; society has forced him into Dad’s constrictive mold.

Femininity can mean nakedness—women are often considered an earthy lot. “I am a body farm, I am produce,” 22-year-old-poet-me wrote. Since then, I’ve read enough about capitalism and sexuality to observe that women attract men with their bodies and then make babies with those same bodies; we offer a complete mode of production.

I certainly don’t want to wear the ill-fitting coat of masculinity. How uncomfortable. Nonetheless, a body farm may want protection and cultivation; it may wish to appear lavish and welcoming, like an English country house or a Caribbean villa. Would I prefer a corset to an ill-fitting coat, then? What about a pair of merciless control-top pantyhose, or Juicy Couture sweatpants that cling more tightly than skin and stop just centimeters from exposing the tip of my vulva?People’s dresses are really addresses; makeup and clothes write a social language. In 1899’s Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen notes that as the “chief slave,” the Anglo-American rich man’s wife is primarily responsible for displaying his wealth, and she often creates this display via her person (think trophy wives or “Real Housewives”).

Some contemporary circles view enthusiasm about adornment as a sign of a woman’s shallowness or as a badge of her submission—we should not give precious time and energy to such frippery. Life is a serious business—no lip gloss. If you appreciate beauty commodities, you commodify yourself; thou shalt not Bluefly! “Real” women, apparently, should not care about how they look.

Keeping all of this firmly in mind, I still feel that material self-fashioning generates pleasures that are both mental and sensual. I love a low neckline, for example, especially if it creates a teaspoon of gentle curve. I love the soft brush of a powder compact, the caress of a thick mascara, and the smooth soufflé of a lipstick. The lines of a bias-cut skirt appeal to me, and I appreciate a close fit through my hips.

I could put Pope’s Belinda to shame. Shallow frippery? Why, yes. Hand me those blue dangly earrings—the ones that float like cumulus clouds.

Elizabeth I’s cousin, Arbella, once remarked, “I must shape my own coat according to my cloth, but it shall not be after the fashion of this world but fit for me.” I’m with her. I may not be Juicy, but I try to be refined. If I must be one of our culture’s peacocks (female, ironically), I will select my feathers with care, and I will attempt to flutter them with grace and discretion. I remain pretty naked underneath the fancy tail.

Glasses Girl

I’ve been extraordinarily ill this flu season. Just when I thought I had removed the anvil from my chest and overcome the hurricane-level coughs, I became infected again. This is a hazard of working in a social profession; they don’t mention that you socialize with germs.

This time, my eyes were affected; my sinuses produced so much phlegm that it started to seep out of my tear ducts. (I know this is revolting, but I want you to understand the situation’s gravity before I describe where it led me.)

I developed viral conjunctivitis. My eyes were vermillion, like a rabid dog’s. I was Lindsay Lohan on a plane back from St. Bart’s with nary a heated towel or a Vitamin B shot to soothe me. The doctor told me to apply warm compresses and eye drops. I willingly complied, and my scleras soon faded to a petal pink.

But I had to wear my glasses. In public. For several days.

Glasses and I have a long-term, tumultuous relationship. I’ve needed them to navigate my world since the second grade when I flunked a school vision exam. As a kid, the first thing I did every morning was reach out with one hand, grab my glasses by the top edge of both lenses, and swiftly pat them into place. It was like giving myself a gentle slap.

I hated that I needed glasses to survive. I was dependent enough. And I could never get pretty frames. I was the coke bottle girl—the one with big, chunky circles hanging from her nose. I tried various experiments with color and style, including round, oval, square (this never worked), turquoise, tortoiseshell, rose, purple. The basic ugly always remained.

No one ever called me Four Eyes, but I felt like one. To ease this burden, my mother let me get contact lenses when I was twelve. After a cumbersome training period, I was content. Instead of slapping myself in the face every morning, I was poking myself in the eye a couple of times, and no one could tell how truly compromised I was.

Eyeglass technology improved over the years; I remember the officious saleswoman at the Echelon Mall who up-sold me a “roll and polish” job. This process was supposed to reduce the lenses’ coke bottle effect, but to no avail. Contacts remained my default.

Fast-forward to the present. Surprisingly, I like my current pair of glasses. They are a good color and shape for my face, and while the lenses are not exactly paper thin, they’re no longer so Hubble-like. So when the nurse timidly suggested that it really would be best if I could wear my glasses for a couple of days, I was not as dismayed as I thought I would be.

With trepidation, I went about my glassed business. I taught class, saw friends, worked at home, and had dinner with my husband. I looked in the mirror and didn’t cringe at what I saw.

I looked good in these glasses. And it felt more like me somehow. The genuine me, the natural me. The me without pretense. I considered giving up contacts altogether.

Then, my virus dissipated. The saline beckoned. I’m relatively vain about my Atlantic blue eyes; however nice my glasses are, they do obscure my irises.

On a recent morning, I finished preparing to leave the house. Dress, blow dryer, and earrings had all been deployed. Each contact lens rested upon its pupil like a lady’s parasol.

I kissed my husband goodbye. “You’re not going to be Glasses Girl anymore?” he asked me. I detected wistfulness in his voice.

I'm not sure if I am.