My mother never wears makeup and she hates brushing her hair, she always does so with a pained expression of annoyance. She never considered brand names of clothing, she always bought the cheapest shampoo. I am grateful to her for teaching me to be comfortable with my natural appearance, but it was her lack of interest in fashionable hairstyles that brought about two of the most hauntingly embarrassing moments of my life. I was in kindergarten; it was picture day. Are you getting a sense of nostalgia yet? The crayola colored backgrounds, the awkward podium, waiting in line while your fellow students gawk at your pose and try to make you laugh and blush, the weird lady and her never ending supply of thin pronged combs, and the man behind the flash with the toothy grin. Well, it was picture day. I refused to wear the dress that my mom had picked out the night before, which caused us to be late to school, again, because my mother had to hunt down something else in my wardrobe that wasn’t grass stained or a hand me down t-shirt. This left little time for her to comb my hair. She grabbed a thin bristled brush, the kind that are rarely used nowadays, except occasionally on dogs and cats, and she transformed my limp tresses into a floppy poof of messy frizz. She thought it was adorable. The lady with the comb apparently didn’t know what to do with me, and my image is forever captured in time for my brother to scoff at for the rest of his life.
The second hair embarrassment was more of a hurtful chide from my friends than a loving motherly mistake. It was right around eighth grade, the time when everything was changing and girls started wearing “outfits” instead of clothes. A few of my friends were discussing their hair care regime between classes, I was listening, interested, but without the slightest bit of knowledge to chime in. My friend Rachel was discussing how she used three different brands of shampoo and rotated them in a weekly cycle, depending on whether or not she wanted to style her hair straight or in curls. She was throwing out foreign words like diffuser, and mousse. The other girls seemed very aware of this lingo; they each went around trading secrets and comparing brands based on scents and desired softness. My hair was particularly messy that day. I had slept with it wet and braided. This was how Rachel had said she achieved the pretty kinks and waves that she wore last Thursday. Well, I never have had very braidable hair, and my kinks and waves went crazy. I had to force my hair into a very bumpy ponytail, and the two wings of friz sticking out from each side of my head would make a poodle consider sniffing my rear. Another friend, Torey, who I regarded quite highly as a close and dear friend turned to me, looked at my unbecoming crown, rolled her eyes and asked, “what kind of shampoo do you use Clara_ suave or Hannaford brand?” She laughed at me as she apologized, along with my best friend Jess, who had been my closest companion through all the Tomboy years since kindergarten. I was crushed, angry, and completely confused. I wanted to say, who cares what I use, it’s just hair, while at the same time I wanted to gloat that I used some high price Parisian shampoo used by Britney Spears or Julia Roberts. The truth is, I did use Suave, it was what my mother bought, and I was particularly fond of the coconut breeze, as well as the strawberry summer, which smelled exactly like Bubblicious strawberry gum.
There are many more of these charming little moments littering my memories of junior high. By highschool I started to cold shoulder these little incidents by just acting like I really didn’t care. I wore slippers to school for a solid year straight. I stopped trying to style my hair and I realized that I had natural waves if I just let it be. I decided, in short, to stay out of girl world as much as I could. I didn’t like it there. I didn’t return to my tomboy ways either, I just floated in my own realm, or tried to. I dared to wear prettier things by the time I was a junior, of course it probably helped that by that time I had a boyfriend. It wasn’t until college that I was really immersed into the girl world again, and made to feel just as clueless and innocent as before.
First it was the going out thing; the ritual of getting ready:
“Does this look good?”
"Yes."
“Do these jeans make me look too hippie?”
“ Women are supposed to have hips”
“ What do you think, cuffed or uncuffed?"
“ Whatever won’t make you trip on your heels.”
“ Do these jeans match this color shirt? "
“Well yea jeans match everything.”
(rolling eyes, an exasperated sigh) “No Clara, I think I need a different wash.”
I just don’t get it. This different wash thing is what really threw me off. My roommate freshmen year introduced me to the concept. I knew that some jeans were dark and some were light, I just didn’t know about the infinite number of possible differences in between. First I thought it was just her; I dismissed this method as one of her many vanities. I was soon to discover that other girls in the dorm were not phased by this question at all, but actually they would study her legs intently upon being asked, and answer with some comment on the hue, or the hem, or the pockets on the ass.
I soon began to realize that I was more than just stylistically out of the loop. I was considered the innocent of the group, much to my disgust, because having avoided becoming part of a girl group all throughout highschool, I hadn’t been exposed to many of the social norms of the teenage girl. I had only slept with one guy, and I had done nothing worse than drink alcohol underage. These girls had either tried a few drugs or at least seen them taken, and at the very least they knew all the codenames. I had to sheepishly ask what it meant to be rolling, and why it was different from tripping, and who the hell was this molly that everyone was doing? The most intriguing thing that I picked up was that when speaking to a pot dealer on the telephone you should never, and I mean never, say the words marijuana or weed. Instead you say something ridiculously vague with a completely obvious undertone like “hey man, do you think you could..uh, help me out?” or as my ex-pot dealer friend has explained to me you say, “are you chillin, got any nugs, any headies, any chronic?” Because, of course, any spy trained by the DEA, assuming that he has some way of accessing cell phones, will never be trained well enough to translate this implication. But I digress. What really left me in the dust with this crew was that they knew all the rules of hooking up, all the tactics of flirting, and most importantly how to abide by the most important rule of dating in college: keeping your options open.
The typical dating game in college is sort of like an open relationship, which is closed in December, back open in January, over in February, rekindled in April, on a break for the summer, and back on again in September. You must keep your options open so as not to miss the one. If you meet someone that you actually like, that you would like to get to know and enjoy some time with, you are seen as, depending on the reciprocity of the relationship, a stage 5 clinger, or someone who is settling down.
By this point my head is whirling with confusion and grey thoughts. And then we moved into an apartment and things got even weirder. Living with girls, to me, feels something like being caught in the middle of some sort of Susie homemaker competition. Everyone is trying to parent the others and each is being frustrated by the others attempts. Avoidance being my usual solution I took the backseat and forfeited the race for motherhood, only to suffer the consequences of being condescendingly coached on cooking and cleaning. “Yes, actually, I do know how to tell when my noodles are done, and no, I don’t need you to remind me to pull out the couch when I vacuum. “ After becoming increasingly annoyed by this constant stating of the obvious, and unwarranted nagging from my roommates, who I do love very much by the way, I found a much needed escape. I started spending time with a guy, one who I knew I was in danger of falling for. I ignored the efforts of the girls with all their “something just doesn’t seem right between you two,” or “he is going to get really attached and then you will be trapped,” and I went right ahead and I fell for him. Upon becoming attached I was detached from the group, in a sense. There was a lot of passive aggressive anger being directed towards me for not spending enough girl time, and this uncomfortable atmosphere made me even less inclined to be around. The relationship was eventually accepted and my inclusion in the group was maintained, but I have remained, much to my own accord, partially removed from the social structure. I prefer to be a wallflower, rather than a mask of who I really am. I prefer to trust my own rules, to follow my heart and conscience, rather than the ever changing rules of status that determine what a girl should wear, what she should look like, what her favorite color should be, how she should eat, cook, clean, wash her hair, date, party, play and learn.
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