Shallow! And vain!
So people are talking about makeup and clothes. Despite my handicapped laptop, I have to blog this one (especially since I actually woke up before 8 on a non-teaching day--will miracles never cease?).
Can I just say this? Yes, I can, b/c it's my bitchy blog. When boys start nattering on about how women who wear makeup are shallow or high-maintenance or whorish (fast becoming one of my favorite words, anyway), this woman-who-almost-never-wears-makeup-and-keeps-her-nails-short gets really really annoyed. It's sort of like the "you aren't like other girls" thing that we all (should) know is just sexism disguised as a compliment. Now, I admit: makeup probably tastes gross, if you are making out with someone who has it on. If it's badly applied, it doesn't look good. And if one is all made up for a party, especially if one isn't used to wearing the stuff, one can take kind of a hands-off approach, like Madeline Khan--may she rest in peace--in Young Frankenstein. ("Don't touch the hair!" "No kiss!"). But boys: makeup is fun. Sometimes fun to play with--pseudonymous kid, who loves having his nails painted, knows this (yay me for raising a boy who gets to enjoy some small vanities)--and fun, also, to sometimes feel vain about and pretty oneself up. Vanity can be awfully fun, you know. God knows the boys have the right to decide that makeup-wearing women are not their type; women, in turn, have the right to roll our eyes and decide that such boys are insufficiently playful and ironically shallow, what with that whole don't-wear-makeup-or-i'll-make-snap-judgments-based-on-superficial-things thing going on.
On the question of clothes, here's the simple answer: academics dress badly because academics, for the important youthful years when one is likeliest to be vain, are paid crap. I used to dress well, because my husband had one of those real-world jobs that more and more seem to privately subsidize graduate education. And then I got a job, and he quit his, and now the lot of us are living on a junior professor's salary, and we all know what that means: my former wardrobe is starting to look perhaps just a tiny bit shabby, and in order to delay the aging process, I wear cruddy clothes when I'm not teaching. Cuts down on the dry-cleaning bill, don'tcha know, and preserves the silk blouses. Doesn't help that pseudonymous kid's birth permanently changed the size of my feet, so that there were $300 shoes that I had to give away, heart breaking, because they no longer fit. (Newsflash: no one tells you this, but pregnancy relaxes your joints, which makes your feet bigger, and they often don't return to their former size. Sucks.)
Now, all that said? I still dress well, mostly. I buy myself new or stylish used clothes periodicially. I learned a long time ago that if you like something and it's a good price, buy the damn thing; saves you spending more than you have to later when you need X outfit for Y occasion. But it ain't easy like it used to be. I am in bad shape now, lingerie-wise (so painful, what with the fucking around, to have to pick through one's lingerie drawer trying to find something that doesn't look too dingy), because lingerie doesn't get seen, so I haven't bought any in a long time (it is on the "to do" list, now, though, because I am really reaching the outside limit on possible date undies.) I had a meltdown last December when I realized I was too poor to buy moisturizer, for god's sake: then I decided, fuck it, and whipped out the goddamn credit card. These are the compromises we make when we are broke. And it fucking sucks, because I'm old enough now that I remember deciding "I'm an adult. It isn't too much to spend over $100 on a pair of shoes. $70ish for a nice skirt or blouse is a good price. $200 for a good suit is a bargain. $30/ month on facial care stuff isn't outrageous, and I hate shaving, so I am going to fucking spend the money on waxing, thank you very much. And a woman needs decent bras, which cost about $60, and that's just the way it is." Because you know, my body isn't growing, I'm not changing sizes, I have a well-defined sense of personal style and an eye for fashion, and so most of what I buy isn't disposable. So, spend a little more to buy stuff that's nice and that you won't get sick of in three months. Have it altered so that it fits well. Keep it dry cleaned. That's how it's done.
But now, though I'm in my mid-30s, when by the standards of the North American middle class it's not unreasonable to spend that kind of money occasionally on one's appearance--and not doing so, frankly, makes it hard not to be shabby--dude, I do not have that kind of dough. Maintaining my sense of style is important to me. No fucking kitten sweatshirts or baggy-ass jeans. So keeping my sense of being pulled together takes work, now, goddamnit, and it ticks me off. It's shallow, but I'm not kidding when I say that my inability to afford to clothe myself sometimes feels like a symbol of why this job annoys me. I've been teaching for years, what's with this "starting salary" crap at 35? I'm a college professor, why can't I afford to dress like a grownup? And why, for god's sake, am I paid so badly that I can't afford to buy books for my kid? Why did my husband, with a B.A., earn about three times what I earn within four years of starting his second career, just before I finished my diss? (He hated the work, and we both think parenting is important, so yeah, we're taking a big financial hit which will doubtless bite us both in the ass come retirement time. Rant on the economics of family life forthcoming, perhaps.) Yes, I can afford to keep us on this salary--just barely, in small town midwest low-standard-of-living ville. But when we were living in big expensive city, he was keeping us on *his* salary, in much, much better style.
So yes, professors (I think this is even more true of K-12 teachers, by the way). How we dress is really an outward expression of the professoriate: a lot of hard work and personal sacrifice, if we try to keep up "professional" apperances. A lot easier if we just accept the reality that, in a lot of ways, we aren't treated as "professionals."
In my own case, I'm still hanging on to the image--but the undies are getting a bit shabby.
Can I just say this? Yes, I can, b/c it's my bitchy blog. When boys start nattering on about how women who wear makeup are shallow or high-maintenance or whorish (fast becoming one of my favorite words, anyway), this woman-who-almost-never-wears-makeup-and-keeps-her-nails-short gets really really annoyed. It's sort of like the "you aren't like other girls" thing that we all (should) know is just sexism disguised as a compliment. Now, I admit: makeup probably tastes gross, if you are making out with someone who has it on. If it's badly applied, it doesn't look good. And if one is all made up for a party, especially if one isn't used to wearing the stuff, one can take kind of a hands-off approach, like Madeline Khan--may she rest in peace--in Young Frankenstein. ("Don't touch the hair!" "No kiss!"). But boys: makeup is fun. Sometimes fun to play with--pseudonymous kid, who loves having his nails painted, knows this (yay me for raising a boy who gets to enjoy some small vanities)--and fun, also, to sometimes feel vain about and pretty oneself up. Vanity can be awfully fun, you know. God knows the boys have the right to decide that makeup-wearing women are not their type; women, in turn, have the right to roll our eyes and decide that such boys are insufficiently playful and ironically shallow, what with that whole don't-wear-makeup-or-i'll-make-snap-judgments-based-on-superficial-things thing going on.
On the question of clothes, here's the simple answer: academics dress badly because academics, for the important youthful years when one is likeliest to be vain, are paid crap. I used to dress well, because my husband had one of those real-world jobs that more and more seem to privately subsidize graduate education. And then I got a job, and he quit his, and now the lot of us are living on a junior professor's salary, and we all know what that means: my former wardrobe is starting to look perhaps just a tiny bit shabby, and in order to delay the aging process, I wear cruddy clothes when I'm not teaching. Cuts down on the dry-cleaning bill, don'tcha know, and preserves the silk blouses. Doesn't help that pseudonymous kid's birth permanently changed the size of my feet, so that there were $300 shoes that I had to give away, heart breaking, because they no longer fit. (Newsflash: no one tells you this, but pregnancy relaxes your joints, which makes your feet bigger, and they often don't return to their former size. Sucks.)
Now, all that said? I still dress well, mostly. I buy myself new or stylish used clothes periodicially. I learned a long time ago that if you like something and it's a good price, buy the damn thing; saves you spending more than you have to later when you need X outfit for Y occasion. But it ain't easy like it used to be. I am in bad shape now, lingerie-wise (so painful, what with the fucking around, to have to pick through one's lingerie drawer trying to find something that doesn't look too dingy), because lingerie doesn't get seen, so I haven't bought any in a long time (it is on the "to do" list, now, though, because I am really reaching the outside limit on possible date undies.) I had a meltdown last December when I realized I was too poor to buy moisturizer, for god's sake: then I decided, fuck it, and whipped out the goddamn credit card. These are the compromises we make when we are broke. And it fucking sucks, because I'm old enough now that I remember deciding "I'm an adult. It isn't too much to spend over $100 on a pair of shoes. $70ish for a nice skirt or blouse is a good price. $200 for a good suit is a bargain. $30/ month on facial care stuff isn't outrageous, and I hate shaving, so I am going to fucking spend the money on waxing, thank you very much. And a woman needs decent bras, which cost about $60, and that's just the way it is." Because you know, my body isn't growing, I'm not changing sizes, I have a well-defined sense of personal style and an eye for fashion, and so most of what I buy isn't disposable. So, spend a little more to buy stuff that's nice and that you won't get sick of in three months. Have it altered so that it fits well. Keep it dry cleaned. That's how it's done.
But now, though I'm in my mid-30s, when by the standards of the North American middle class it's not unreasonable to spend that kind of money occasionally on one's appearance--and not doing so, frankly, makes it hard not to be shabby--dude, I do not have that kind of dough. Maintaining my sense of style is important to me. No fucking kitten sweatshirts or baggy-ass jeans. So keeping my sense of being pulled together takes work, now, goddamnit, and it ticks me off. It's shallow, but I'm not kidding when I say that my inability to afford to clothe myself sometimes feels like a symbol of why this job annoys me. I've been teaching for years, what's with this "starting salary" crap at 35? I'm a college professor, why can't I afford to dress like a grownup? And why, for god's sake, am I paid so badly that I can't afford to buy books for my kid? Why did my husband, with a B.A., earn about three times what I earn within four years of starting his second career, just before I finished my diss? (He hated the work, and we both think parenting is important, so yeah, we're taking a big financial hit which will doubtless bite us both in the ass come retirement time. Rant on the economics of family life forthcoming, perhaps.) Yes, I can afford to keep us on this salary--just barely, in small town midwest low-standard-of-living ville. But when we were living in big expensive city, he was keeping us on *his* salary, in much, much better style.
So yes, professors (I think this is even more true of K-12 teachers, by the way). How we dress is really an outward expression of the professoriate: a lot of hard work and personal sacrifice, if we try to keep up "professional" apperances. A lot easier if we just accept the reality that, in a lot of ways, we aren't treated as "professionals."
In my own case, I'm still hanging on to the image--but the undies are getting a bit shabby.
