duty?

I can't fucking help it...I've been reading the fat blogs again. Swear to god, soon it will be baseball season, and I can occupy my mind with that when it's slow in work or I'm stuck home doing mounds of laundry. But right now I'm burned out on election coverage, schizophrenia message boards, reading television snark, looking up recipes for stuff I might make, and even online window-shopping for shoes and purses. So, yeah, it's the fat blogs. (Yeah, I know, I know, read a freakin' book, Andrea. I can feel neurons dying even as I type.)

The shoes and purses mentioned above? Germane to this discussion even. One of the tenets of the "fatosphere" is debunking the cultural assumption that women with BMIs over 25 or whatever don't care about looking good, style and fashion, and so forth. And, as with everything in life, there's a backlash to this. Some other fat bloggers who could really give a shit about being "non-frumpy", about stereotypical girly shit, about fitting in with the accepted standard of female beauty, object, with the objection running along the lines of "it's not my duty to the world to be pretty" (or decorative or whatever.)

I really had to think about that. Obviously, anyone who knows me or has read me over time knows I have very mixed feelings about this. I *am* girly. I wear makeup and jewelry. I enjoy buying clothes and purses, and ohgodyes, boots. Particularly boots. I also have periods where I deeply deeply resent the amount of time and money that goes into upkeep--though I spend way way less time and money on upkeep than many chicks.

Why do I bother? Not with the stuff that gives me pleasure in and of itself, like boots and earrings and the occasional beautiful sweater or new jeans, but with stuff like hair color and the endless root retouching that entails, and removing body hair, and mascara just to go to 7-11, all of which is more a big chore than a source of enjoyment? Do I feel I have some duty to look good to the world in general?

Well, no. Mostly I do that crap, as much as it pisses me off on one level, because when I feel like I look good--or at least okay--I feel better. I'm sure there's enough psychotherapy available in the world that I could be cured of that, but it'd cost more money than salon services, 'k? And some of that crap I do, frankly, so that I can get laid occasionally. I mean, I guess I do feel that in a relationship you do have some duty to remain kinda attractive for your partner. And outside of a relationship, you're going to have more options if you make some stab at "conventionally attractive," like it or not. No one said that's fair, but...

But! Here's the other big piece of it: no, I do not feel it's my duty to the world to look pretty or decorative, but the sucky fact is, as a woman, the more you are, the better the world treats you, even if they're not getting in your pants. Even if they don't want in your pants. We/I could bitch about that like the objecting bloggers, and say it's not right, and not fair, but it ain't gonna change human nature. My duty in life, such as it is, is to myself first and foremost. If making a stab at conventionally attractive smoothes my way through life, refusing to do so out of...what? principle?...would be self-defeating.

Slogans are nice, principle is nice, reality is crucial.

xoxo