Wednesday evening ramble: to thine own self be true

I read "Reviving Ophelia" back in college, but the irony of the inspiration behind the title and one of the most famous quotes of the namesake play only hit me a few days ago. Mary Pipher titled her book about the crisis facing adolescent girls after the ultimate crisised girl: she who, having no north star of her own, lost herself in the struggle of trying to choose between her father and her paramour. Not to put too fine a point on it: Ophelia might have overcome her teen angst had she had a stronger sense of self, had she had an internal driving force to help her navigate the mutually exclusive demands of the people in her life. How extra tragic, then, that it was to his son and not to his daughter did Ophelia's father say,

This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. 

Just sayin'.

There's another, less famous but wonderful written work-- J. Nozipo Maraire's "Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter"--in which the mother shares with her daughter a fable with the opposite message: never go against what you know is right, to accommodate someone else, for you'll lose the thing, and the someone else is never worth it. (In case you're keeping track, I read that within a year of graduating from college).

And last weekend, I read "A Bad Case of the Stripes" by David Shannon. Yes, I know it's a children's book; I read it to a small child. But it's an important children's book with an ever-important message: you only lose yourself by trying to conform to what everyone else wants of you. (Michelle Singletary points out that you'll not only lose yourself, but go broke in the process). I keep all that in mind, on a personal level, when my mother or anyone else tells me that veganism is man-repellent; I have not found that to be the case, but even if it were, what kind of person would I be if I went against my ethical beliefs to attract someone? I wouldn't want to date that person, and I wouldn't date the person who would want to date that person. But this post isn't about me; it's about how detrimental the barrage of "you're never good enough" messaging is to women. Jean Kilbourne lays it out here:

And I wonder whether Karen Salmansohn makes a similar point here by way of another famous heroine, Scheherezade--and whether we can leave aside that there's an implication that you still have to please a dude to survive, albeit by appealing to the dude's higher sensibilities--because in that given situation, that was sort of the case.

Scheherazade loved to read books and had lots of fascinating ideas and interests to share. Wisely educated in morality and kindness, she had a passion for poetry, philosophy, sciences and arts. She kept the king on the edge of his bed—not with mere alluring sexual positions—but with alluring stories to be told, each more exciting than the next.

Because it's Laurie Penny who really brings the argument home, and I have to add a disclaimer to her brilliant words, too: I keep my hair long because it suits me and is less bother; my natural hair is thick and unmanageable, and becomes only more manageable with length. So it's not about the situation or the look; it's about the message, which remains, "to thine own self, be true," but before I get to the excerpt on that, let me get to the excerpt on how it--the posturing--is BS:

The point is to look like the performance of femininity matters enough to you that you’re prepared to work at it. I know a good few women who do all this every day and nonetheless manage to hold down jobs, raise families and write books, and I remain impressed, but I’ve never had that sort of patience. 

Still, none of the women I know with long, pretty hair is anything like the “ideal woman” who’s spoken of in breathless terms on Men’s Rights Activism sites, Pickup Artist forums and in great canonical works of literature written and revered by men, because none of them are fictional. The “ideal woman”,  who wakes up looking like an underwear model, who is satisfied with her role as housewife and helpmeet but remains passionate enough to hold a man’s interest, who looks “bangable” but never actually bangs, because that would make her a slut, is almost entirely fictional. She exists mainly as a standard against which every real women can be held and found wanting. She exists to justify some men’s incoherent rage at being denied the ideal woman they were promised as a reward for being the hero of their own story...

...it seems to get at the crux of the problem that non-fictional women seem to present for a certain kind of man: we just aren't paying enough attention to their boners.
Tuthmosis is right, for all the wrong reasons. Wearing your hair short, or making any other personal life choice that works against the imperative to be as conventionally attractive and appealing to patriarchy as possible, is a political statement. And the threat that if we don’t behave, if we don’t play the game, we will end up alone and unloved is still a strategy of control.

and

The idea that women might not place pleasing men at the centre of our politics, consciously or unconsciously, makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Sometimes it makes them angry. I am regularly asked whether I think that feminism ought to be “rebranded” in order to threaten men less, because anything a woman does, even attempt to chip away at a massive, slow-gringing superstructure of sexism, must appeal to men first, or it is meaningless. 

If making your life mean more than pleasing men is “deranged”, it's not just short-haired girls who are crazy.

An infinite number of trolls with an infinite number of typewriters will occasionally produce truths, and on this point, yes, Tuthmosis is right. Chopping your hair off is “a political statement”. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made bigger ones in my life. But choosing to behave consciously as if the sexual attention and comfort of men is not my top priority has made more of a difference to how my life has turned out than I ever imagined. And that sort of choice still worries a great many women and girls, who learn from an early age to fear what Roosh V, well-known pick-up-artist and Tuthmosis’ editor, warns all “sick women” seeking to “punish” men by cutting their hair: “being lonely and having to settle for a brood of cats is not a good life for a woman, but that’s what will happen if you keep your hair short.”

Which brings us back to the benefits of being oneself, of having one's own north star, and of drowing out the message that we'll never adhere to the BS ideal:

Neo-misogynists tend not to want to sleep with me, date me or wife me up however I wear my hair, because after five minutes of conversation it tends to transpire that I’m precisely the sort of mouthy, ambitious, slutty feminist banshee who haunts their nightmares, but if I keep my hair short we tend to waste less of each other’s time. If you've a ladyboner for sexist schmuckweasels, short hair isn't going to help, although they might let you administer a disappointing hand-job. 

But if you want to meet men as equals, if you want to fill your life with amazing men and boys as lovers, as life-partners, as friends and colleagues who treat women and girls as human beings rather than a walking assemblage of “signs of fertility” – believe me, they are out there – then I wouldn’t start by changing your hair. I’d start by changing your politics, and surrounding yourself with people who want to change theirs, too.