i'm reading 'a handful of dust' by evelyn waugh right now, and feel it's only fitting to include a quote from what's preoccupying me in m'journal: 'Poor people use certain expressions which gentlemen do not. You are a gentleman. When you grow up all this house and lots of other things besides will belong to you. You must learn to speak like someone who is going to have these things and to be considerate to people less fortunate than you, particularly women'.
not enjoying it terribly well, but once i start a book i find it difficult to just give up, and i've had a bad run of reading material of late. the only decent thing (and by decent i mean something i cared to underline/deface) i've read recently was 'save me the waltz' by zelda fitzgerald, which was a crimbo present from a particularly astute friend. i'm never sure if it's a good or bad thing when i race through a novel in a day, if it's because there's so much or so little to take in. i suppose time and careful re-reading will tell...
on a side note, the mister just called me into the bathroom (he's having a bath, where else?) to ask if dressing like i do makes me feel more 'feminine'. he has this odd notion that the most defining characteristic of womanhood is the presence of a womb, and other biological apparatus, which is understandable, in a way. i explained that because i've never not had a womb, and therefore the knowledge of my womanhood, that i don't have anything to compare it to, so it wasn't perhaps the best marker to use. i see how he thinks of biology as a safe signpost, because it hasn't been imposed by outside forces. it just is what it is (in my case at least).
he's one of the few men i know that has arrived at the fact of maleness as the norm for defining gender and culture, and by god does he fret about it. he worries that because i dress a certain way (let's call it 'retro' for the sake of argument) it must be an imposed, and therefore false femininity, that he is in some way to blame, as a man (who had no part in the creation of cultural stereotypes 50 frickin years ago) for the blisters i get from heels, and the hassle i may get for leaving the house in a frock.
it's neat that he cares, but he doesn't understand that everything i do doesn't boil down to 'femininity', that it has more to do with a rejection of corporate consumption, a refusal to take what i am given just because it is there.
how did i get from upper class toffs to gender politics in the space of one journal entry?! it's so hard to understand myself, that it makes it damn near impossible to explain to him that wanting to feel feminine and for lack of a better word, ladylike, doesn't necessarily stand in direction contravention to what he understands as my feminism. yeesh...
not enjoying it terribly well, but once i start a book i find it difficult to just give up, and i've had a bad run of reading material of late. the only decent thing (and by decent i mean something i cared to underline/deface) i've read recently was 'save me the waltz' by zelda fitzgerald, which was a crimbo present from a particularly astute friend. i'm never sure if it's a good or bad thing when i race through a novel in a day, if it's because there's so much or so little to take in. i suppose time and careful re-reading will tell...
on a side note, the mister just called me into the bathroom (he's having a bath, where else?) to ask if dressing like i do makes me feel more 'feminine'. he has this odd notion that the most defining characteristic of womanhood is the presence of a womb, and other biological apparatus, which is understandable, in a way. i explained that because i've never not had a womb, and therefore the knowledge of my womanhood, that i don't have anything to compare it to, so it wasn't perhaps the best marker to use. i see how he thinks of biology as a safe signpost, because it hasn't been imposed by outside forces. it just is what it is (in my case at least).
he's one of the few men i know that has arrived at the fact of maleness as the norm for defining gender and culture, and by god does he fret about it. he worries that because i dress a certain way (let's call it 'retro' for the sake of argument) it must be an imposed, and therefore false femininity, that he is in some way to blame, as a man (who had no part in the creation of cultural stereotypes 50 frickin years ago) for the blisters i get from heels, and the hassle i may get for leaving the house in a frock.
it's neat that he cares, but he doesn't understand that everything i do doesn't boil down to 'femininity', that it has more to do with a rejection of corporate consumption, a refusal to take what i am given just because it is there.
how did i get from upper class toffs to gender politics in the space of one journal entry?! it's so hard to understand myself, that it makes it damn near impossible to explain to him that wanting to feel feminine and for lack of a better word, ladylike, doesn't necessarily stand in direction contravention to what he understands as my feminism. yeesh...
The first dinner party in my new home went incredibly well. The midget chickens were divine.
heh