So I'm listening to Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging'" walking around the mall, heavy sack of Stuff slung over one shoulder. I am looking to replace a cell phone (and an excuse to trade UP into an iPhone or Blackberry, truth be told!) and as I look around me I think: I cannot wait to gtf outta this mall. This lone thought would quash any stereotypes about girls who love going shopping or partaking in 'retail therapy'. Not me! I want to get what I need, get the cheapest version (of passable quality of course) of the Thing I need, and get OUT as quickly as possible! and there are signs all over the place, signage for everything, "water, water everywhere but not a drop to..." understand wtf they are all stating..! And all these pretty Things, and displays and clothes just keep getting in the way of seeing those signs clearly, especially the ones marked "Exit"!
I'm not antisocial- far from it- but the mall and people in it all seem to gravitate toward fallin' or leanin' on me, brushing their bags and backpacks against my personhood (!), or stepping right in front of my path exactly onto the spot I am about to step into. So I wind up doing a little waltz, half a dosey-do and curtsey about a dozen times along a single corridor. But hellz bellz, all that bouncing and cajoling, is throwing me offa my game, and I am the hunter seeking what I need- on a mission and NOT to be confounded by these so-called- Wants! Finally my mind can't handle all the collisions, shiny things, bouncing bags, and dosey-doeing making it oh-so-much-easier to mentally check-out and into a fuzzy fantasy world with bad musak where rose coloured lenses depict pretty things as not being Costly, no sir! only as investments to be MADE..."Things that will make my life BETTER-er!" There is merit to having and purchasing Things, of course. I should know, I have plenty of them! But I hate Shopping, the recreational pastime, the stereotypical hall of female bonding, or the 'retail therapy'. It aint too therapeutic cracking open your VISA bill and having stark realities squelch your eyes and squeeze your heart a might.. Therapy? I think NOT. More like Crisis Management! Collateral Intervention!
The only type of shopping I do enjoy, oddly enough is for food (go figure). In this way, my anti-shoppping stance might be labelled by some traditionalists as being more 'manly' and less 'girly', I suppose. But I shrug at that, and think "I pity the fool who thinks such stupifying, arrested and dichotomous thoughts. I pity the fool!!" (MR. T style)
I also like to fix things. Got a problem? Ask me! (mind you, my specialty is of the social or emotional kind- am I Handy in that dept!) But if all you want to go is marinate in the same old drudgery and misery and whine about the same issue you have done nothing about since the last time we 'talked* (*meaning= the last time you whined using a different angle, and different words...you clever thing, you;), then I am not interested. Tell me about a problem you are having, I will listen intently. Then I will put in my two cents of how to help you! I want to help you in earnest, especially if it sounds like a sucky time for you. Sorry, I guess I am thinking like a 'man' again! Do you really want to do something about it, or am I just a pretty sounding board? I think you are sounding bored, myself...
Another little chink in my armour, I hate being 'coy' based on some gendered expectation of 'proper' behaviour. If I like a guy I will probably want to do something about it in time. I might want to do stuff with him, or kiss him or better! :)) I don't want to play hard to get, or act aloof to get him to 'chase' me. Life is short, man and it's getting shorter after 35, so either pee or get off the pot! (god, I am feeling colloquial and colourful tonight! hoo-aahh!!) I don't want to be chased, nor chaste! Am I thinking like a man, because I want to do the same stuff that you, boy, want to do? Nope. I am thinking just like me.
I want to be authentic, and act based upon my own feelings about the world, and I know it's up to me to figure out which messages are genuinely mine, and not someone else's, that is my cross (your heart bra) to bear. I like pink and pink is only a colour, yet it is loaded with meaning based on what our culture has projected on it, via socialization, symbolism, language and institutionization. Everything is coded. What would Noam Chomsky say about the lexicon of language and our codes and their purpose and subjectivities..? that is perhaps another rant in the making..
Still, why is yellow the only supposed gender neutral colour for a baby room?? Why not make pink the new gender-neutral colour? Why not imprint and encode, re-code messages over the no-longer-relevant or less non-productive ones? I would like to think, that if I were a guy I could like pink without having to resort to justifying it as being 'salmon-coloured'. cough* cough*
As we stumble into each other at crowded malls trying to be happy, buying cool stuff to feel good, we are all mirroring one another, by embodying endless dynamic combinations of Yin/Yang, and light/dark and blood/water, male/female, the Moon the Sun--and everything in between...and it is usually IN-BETWEENS where we really 'live, if you ask me.
The bigger question begs, "why are there no f* cell phones on sale anywhere?"
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