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April 30, 2007

1146: Fighting the powers that be, etc.

This is probably not the best way to start your Monday morning, but it's how I chose to start mine...

Perhaps I just like testing my self-discipline that way. Maybe I just wanted to see how long I could stand my subway ride without ripping a grown man out of the seat he shoved me away from in order to secure for his fat, selfish self. Maybe I wanted to see if I could stomach the usual catcalls without giving into a heightened urge to grab one such pig and throw his pathetic body into traffic. One more, "Hey, baby, how you doin'?" And I'd be all, "SCHPAAAARTAAAAH!"

I actually had a long blog entry on our weekend movie-watching (Grindhouse and Hot Fuzz, among others) but I'm not quite in the mood to put the finishing touches on it and post. I'm more in the mood to kick someone in the throat. This is undoubtedly due to my giving into the impulse to listen to one of the handful of playlists on my iPod I generally try to avoid listening to in the morning. Sure, they get me pumped up, but they're more for gym-going than work-going. If I swing my little arm out and clothesline the tool on the treadmill beside me sporting an earpiece for a cellphone no one is calling him on and an insane amount of Axe body spray... well, so what? But that kind of behavior isn't going to really going to get me far professionally. Well, unless I change my profession. And given the way my stylist went an inch or so shorter with my cheveaux this weekend, I've gone from this... to this...

I wasn't quite into it at first because I'm a creature of habit and I'm always afraid that if my hair is too short, people are going to mistake me for a boy, which would be completely gutting. Whenever I mention that to people, they just laugh but it doesn't really change how I feel. I'm not entirely sure why I even care, because to think that anything I do is motivated by a desire to be physically attractive to other people oh-fends me and my women’s-college-grad sensibilities on some (admittedly ridiculous, knee-jerk) level.

It's the same part of me that thinks I should know MC Lyte and Queen Latifah. They remind me of girls I knew in elementary school and middle school before Tupac came to power; girls with asymmetrical haircuts, Nefertiti silhouettes hanging from their ears, and tight black jeans. We jumped a lot of rope together and enjoyed dance class, and then we parted ways -- maybe we met up again in college in a freshman writing class. Maybe we ate lunch together occasionally, but more often not. Either way, the distance didn't diminish the mutual respect. We still like to dance, and if you get too close, we will remind you of where you belong -- which is no where near us. Do you know what I mean? (My BMC lovelies are all nodding.) In any event, I know some of you are a bit confused because I've always claimed to hate rap -- this is kind of another conversation for another time, but I'll say this much: I hate what rap has become, particularly for women. There's no variety any more, although I could be wrong because it's obviously not a genre I spend much time keeping up with -- but rap today seems to have no room for the De La Souls and Tribe(s) called Quests of the world. There seems to be a singular perspective for rap now, and if women want to function within it (with a few notable exceptions), they've got to out-do the boys in terms of vulgarity and hardness -- they have to compete with men in terms of abrasiveness and exploit the very things which make them genetically female. Isn't that kind of sick? Anyway...

As for my hair and why I care how it looks... who can say? I just do. Truth be told, I find that people compliment me more often when my hair is shorter. I don't know if that's because it's more unusual, particularly in a city where women spend a lot of money to have very long hair (I don't know why people think New York women typically have short hair -- they don't), or because it actually (for whatever reason) looks better without that extra inch. I think people mistake short hair for confidence, which most people generally respond to anyway. In any event, the only person who seems to have a problem with my hair getting shorter is typically me and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I know that while I look more like this... I feel more like this...

Except I'd probably have a crossbow. Minor detail, I know, but I'm very detail-oriented -- even when enraged.

Posted by ashley at April 30, 2007 10:55 AM

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