When my hair starts getting long, I have very little patience, I usually just lop it off. (I do it myself, how I do that is another in the "Mysteries" series.) If I can't just get up, wet my hands and run my fingers through it before I run out of the house, it's too damned long.
But lately in one of the many forms of "mid-life crisis" people go through, I decided to let it grow, because it had gotten gray, and thinner, and I thought that before too much longer I wouldn't even HAVE enough hair to grow, so I decided to chill, have some patience, and see if I could let it grow long enough to be something. What, I had no idea.
I actually did this for the better part of a year, and it got long enough for people to notice. I kept catching reflections of myself and thinking I looked like Ben Franklin, but I held up. But one of those "gun in the mouth" nights (we all have those) I started drinking and saying "fuck" a lot, even though I was alone, and I could FEEL the hair, and it felt hot, it kept tickling my face, and I said "fuck!" Some more, until I found myself in my bathroom with a part of scissors, hacking off my hair like I was trying to stab a small, furry animal to death.
"Take THAT, fucking HAIR!" I know, it makes no sense, but I felt this growing hatred for myself and this goddamned hair. So I grabbed a big handful and just chopped. In the mirror it occurred to me that I wanted it vaguely symmetrical, so I cut both sides. I left the back for when I sobered up.
And of course it occurred to me, watching TV, seeing people, that so many WOMEN seem to find it so easy to put up with long hair all the time. In fact, they lavish all this care and money on it, expensive cuts, conditioners, shampoos, gels, mousses and sprays, "scrunchies", bows, goddamned endless shit. And it brought up a weird thought Ive often had about women. It doesn't seem to matter where they're from, if they're rich or poor, they do this long hair thing. You talk to them and they say strange things like, "I'm growing it out", as if it's a task that takes effort, like a guy might say, "I'm painting the house."
I look at women's hair, and then the whole way they look, and it's obvious that it ALL takes a lot of effort. And I realized that, in a certain way, to women every day is Halloween, and the costume they've all chosen is "woman."
Wait...what the fuck sense does THAT make, you already ARE a woman, why do you feel the need to get up early every day to have the time to put on your "woman" costume. They actually use the expression, "give me a minute, I need to put on my face."
EEEWWWW! What are they, zombies, with visible skull bones and eyeballs, like they have no skin? Why does a human being ever need to "put on a face"?!
It turns out that, although some do it sometimes, women mostly hate the idea of letting the world see how they actually look. They are compelled to brush on foundation, a little blush, some eyeliner and shadow, and that's the MINIMUM.
Men get up, MAYBE splash some cold water on their faces, shave if they really feel fancy, and just go. Men...are just MEN. Look around. The men you see look just like they...look, like they ARE.
Sure there are vain men who do a little more, but I'd say it's a minority of men who feel the need to spread skin colored paste on their skin to make sure it looks like face skin. And then blush, to look "young and healthy".
But it gets weirder.
Sometimes I'm in public and I see a woman and I think, "Jeez, would it hurt to put on a little makeup?" Even as a man I'm so brain-washed that when a woman forgets to put on her "woman" costume, it bugs me.
I realize this may sound a little picky, but what kind of world do we live in where we demand that women dress up like women to be considered "women"? I mean, they ARE women! The way they look IS how women look! But that's not enough for anybody. Frankly it makes me a little sick to see young girls in makeup, or see mothers showing their daughters how to paint themselves. Why does lack of a dick (no, that's sexist), why does having a pussy and tits but very little facial hair mean you need to "play a part", as if your life is a play or TV show? Who the fuck do you think is paying that much attention? (Creepily, the answer is really "other women", but I don't like thinking about that.)
This to me is weird, but the weirdest thing is that everyone seems to expect it. If I went up to a man and said, "Tomorrow I expect to see you out here painted in expensive makeup to look like a better version of yourself, and I don't care how much money or time it takes", I wouldn't be surprised if he helped ME get a little more color, like black, in my eye.
And we've managed to convince women that it's THEIR preference to go through all this shit, like we've convinced them that no matter how hot it gets, only MEN are allowed to take off their shirts at the beach. I don't care who sees my nipples, why should anyone else? "I don't want to give men a SHOW." WHAT?! Almost every moment of their lives they're made up for a "show". If a guy bugs you, call a cop or hit him with a brick!
Admittedly sometimes it looks nice for some reason, but mostly because we are conditioned that way.
God, I just realized that as a man I'm such a feminist that I resent the fact that society forces women to feel they're ugly without lavish adornment, even though women themselves don't seem to mind having to do it. It's a sick world. I guess that's no mystery after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment