Patty and I are still in data limbo land. One of these data points will affect whether she will be able to visit me in Switzerland, so that's important! Others are a bit farther down the time line, but involve her next trip, potential career stuff on my end that has me a little flustered, and how those are going to interact with the trip to France I'm trying to plan for us.
Yesterday my residuals came. Which is nice, since the residuals tracker on the SAG website has been broken for a while, and I had no idea how much they were going to be. More than I expected (they were bad last quarter, but have been super high other quarters -- they just spiked again), which means I can register for the short film course I want to do without worrying about the $$.
Yesterday was super amazing for Dogboy & Justine fundraising and we're now past the 25% mark! If you go by the $75/day model we don't even have to raise any money today. If you go by obsessive averaging, we still need to raise $73.11 today to stay on target. All help is good help. We're also moving up on the Kickstarter site in terms of being popular, so all your clicking and helping helps too! More visibility! And, now that you've seen some more of mithrigil's awesome abilities as a song-writer (although, to be clear, she is not responsible for "Baby Monkey Riding Backwards on a Pig"), we hope you have one more reason to consider supporting us.
New York has become a central villain in this season's campaign ads. Let me tell you how enraged this makes me. I love this city. It's my blood. And I've lived a life of being told it's dangerous (when it hasn't been in over 20 years), of being told it was child abuse that I was raised here (fuck you), of being told that being from here means I'm godless, rude, have an ugly voice, or am a whore. And when that's not happening, it's exploit, exploit, exploit, which is one thing when it's people who are afraid to visit here loving Seinfeld and Friends and another when my city is used to justify mishandled military actions I don't agree with and revolting Islamiphobia.
I anthropomorphize everyhing, and nothing so much as New York City. And I hate watching people hurt her. Living in New York is like living in America's backstage story. My commute to work, my experience in the right sort of restaurants, my trips to museums and shopping -- it's all fucking filled with America's fanfiction and RPF. My mother worked at Tiffany. My father was an ad man. One of my best friends growing up was the daughter of a Broadway producer and we tap-danced in her house on the giant dimes from 42nd Street. It's hard to be a caretaker for so much dreaming. And it's hard to be the target of so much anger.
So that's what it means when people are cruel to my home. And that's what it means when people love it. And this is what I mean when I talk about being a finer thing. There's a precision in me that comes from living in and growing up in so strange a small kingdom. And it makes me very happy when others come here and choose it too. Because then we're all in a marvelous secret club, tiny and vast.
The subway in pictures. The transition in these from black and white to color is shocking. That transition happens in this chronicle in my lifetime. Those b&w shots of the city in the 70s and 80s really seem like another world -- more formal, more decayed, more dangerous. And it is absolutely the one I was raised in. The color stuff is like a strange sort of fake "now" -- I live in it, but it isn't true. It is a shame most of their 1970s pictures are in B&W -- those were garish, color-saturated times.
Why can't middle-aged women have long hair? I live in terror of the day that people will think I cut all mine off in deference to being a certain age. I'll tell you, at various times I've cut my hair to be more sophisticated, save time, mourn death, mourn a relationship, prep for a cosplay plan, and look more like someone I thought was hot. I never cut my hair to be good. And I almost punched a man in a bar once for telling me he thought I was so hot because when women cut off their hair it means they are finally over their fathers.
Speaking of religion: I believe that none of the major mainstream religions are inherently evil, although all religions may be used for evil purposes by extreme individuals, politicians, states, and organizing bodies or sects within those faiths. Which is to say I have no problem with essays attacking the leadership of the Catholic Church; the way religion is used by certain factions in the Israeli government; the exploitation of Christianity by US politicians; or the awful oppression that exists in states that are effectively Islamic dictatorships. However I do have a big fucking problem with "[Choose Your Faith] is [Choose Your Insult]." I find it personally, not abstractly, offensive. And I will tell you so when I see it. Similar abuse towards atheism and non-cult smaller faiths is equally not welcome here (It is, however, open season on Scientology, which has hurt people I care about). And yes, this comment mostly brought to you by the ongoing conversation about Wiscon and the Islamaphobia that comes with that discussion.
And I almost punched a man in a bar once for telling me he thought I was so hot because when women cut off their hair it means they are finally over their fathers.
"when women cut off their hair it means they are finally over their fathers"
WTF?!
My mom decided, when she was getting close to retiring, that since she had started the job with long hair, she was leaving the job with long hair. So a few years before she retired, she stopped keeping it chin length, and it's back to the two long braids I remember from when I was a small child, several inches past her shoulders. (She won't let it get longer, it "gets in the way.")
I had a quite short haircut for several years in my 20s, and finally couldn't deal with the part of my brain that said I look like a boy with my hair that length (the other part of my brain said I looked very cute, and it suited me - and no one but me thought I looked like a boy). So it's down past my waist now; I'm not sure how long it might get, but I don't intend to ever cut it short again.
And honestly, part of the reason it pleases me to keep it long is that short haircuts are expected of women at a certain age, though I also worry if having long hair in my 30s is a bad thing at job interviews, even if it's up in a bun.
I also worry if having long hair in my 30s is a bad thing at job interviews, even if it's up in a bun
Don't worry. I had mine long and loose all through my 30s and now into my 40s - and as a contractor, I'm job hunting every 2-3 years. My hair has never been an issue.
I anthropomorphize everything, and nothing so much as New York City.
I knew when I came to NYT that day in December 1984 that I was right to think of the good bits of it as Manchester, because that's exactly how I feel about Manchester (England, England).
I've never been back, which is a pity. I should have been back - I was offered six months by my firm in 1987 - but turned them down because of that disastrous day, which could have been so much less disastrous if I hadn't been with an idiot, if I'd been able to refuse defer to the man, the person with the American family (we were staying with his WASP step-grandparents in a retirement village near Trenton, N.J and for them N.Y.C. was Teh Evol and Not What It Had Been, if I'd trusted my own spidey senses.
My hair was to my waist until I started swimming on a daily basis and the chlorine managed what one of the more radioactive bits of the Irish Sea hadn't and ruined it. Now it's in a mad chin-length anime-type cut, but one day it will be long again. And if I'm really lucky, it'll grey in the same silver front/pewter back pattern that my aunt's has.
My uncle's stepmother always wore her hair in a crown around her head. It came to her knees when it was loose (to this day, my mother talks about the first time she saw that with awe) and she never cut it short, even when she was in her eighties and it would have been easier for her, because his dad always loved to do it for her. That was their way of being demonstrative.
I hear you on your hometown being vilified. My entire life I've had to listen to people make jokes about what a bunch of dumb hicks we are in Texas, particularly when it's people who are presumably on my side politically. It's infuriating.
I come from the stupidest, fattest, and most-ugly accented part of the UK, and am damn proud of it.
:) Yeah, I can't separate out the things I love about Texas (particularly San Antonio), and the things I'm not too fond of. After all, my dad grew up a West Texas redneck (ie. someone who had to work out in the hot sun,) and my mom comes from a family of oil field workers. This is where I'm from.
A lot of women have to give up on longer hair at menopause, which may or may not be the same thing as the "midddle age" your article mentions. In my family, women's hair thins and breaks after fifty. That said, having realized that my cute rockstar short cut was in fact nearly identical to the short older lady crop that all of my maternal relations were sporting at the last reunion, I've decided to make one last effort to have longer hair before it goes away. (Note that 'longer' equals maybe to my shoulders; this hair does not get much longer.)
It's also true that unkempt long hair is a bane, and can age a woman once she's going to start aging anyway. One of the reasons I so loathe the way some people automatically think long hair is sexy is that I see too many split-ended, unkempt, uneven, poorly maintained long manes on people around me (of both genders), and in some cases, long hair does not flatter them, but they *know* long hair is sexy so they won't cut it.
San Francisco gets a little of this villainy too, as we are after all Sodom, and home of Pelosi who is being burned in effigy by the Right this campaign. But they rarely accuse the city itself of being filthy, or its people of being assholes (just fucking them).
You make me want to live in NYC again! I lived there for 9 really important years, quite a while ago, and it still feels like the only place that's real. It's like everywhere else is just an imitation of life. :( Maybe some day...
I'm 35 and have thick reddish hair I can almost sit on. Over the years I've learned to expect the people who think that they don't have to ask before touching/fondling my hair and I have a hatful of responses to the admiring comments or the demands that I donate it ... but what's new to me this year was the scornful, older women who seemed to think it was okay to yank out handfuls of hair. Is this new, or just new to me?
but what's new to me this year was the scornful, older women who seemed to think it was okay to yank out handfuls of hair. Is this new, or just new to me?
I've never heard of that sort of behavior, sounds like assault to me.
Felt like assault, too. The first time was shocking and the second was infuriating. I've been on guard for it ever since.
no subject
merrycaepa (from livejournal.com)2010-10-23 06:22 am (UTC)(link)
My mom is a bit past fifty, and she has a bit of a love-hate relationship with her hair; after years of varying mid-length cuts, it's in something of a hobbit mullet at the moment, which oddly suits her perfectly. Discussions of length aside, her hair started graying in earnest about ten years ago, and words cannot describe how ridiculously proud I am of her for refusing to dye it. It was dark brown/black originally, and the blackish base is still visible, giving the gray a very silver look. When I was younger, I thought she looked like a comic book villain - and now I think she just looks fabulous. Her mother, sisters, and secretary have all been after her to get it 'touched up' for years - to the point of buying her gift certificates to local hairdressers specifically for dye jobs - but she refuses. She loves having a silver head.
(Her secretary is also trying to get her to cut it short, but Mom refuses on the grounds that that feels like getting old. She is not a fan of Acting Her Age.)
(Wow, I didn't realize how passionate I was about this until I sat down and wrote it out)
When I had read that article my reaction was along the lines of, "WTF? Is this some NYC/dress-for-success thing, or is California just full of long-haired hippies?"
Born in New York City, lived there as a wee one, a teenager, and an adult (not consecutively, though). And did not have the experiences you did; but still love her fiercely, even though we got separate homes 16 years ago.
You know that scene in the first Spider-Man? Yeah. (The Roosevelt Island tram one. I think.)
I am willing to entertain that there are things about New York others may not like. I myself resent the lack of express helicopters to each borough. ;-) But not liking my city as a city? Door. Later.
(I wear my hair in a different Women Don't Wear Their Hair Like That.)
I have a fear/fascination* relationship with New York. It seems like a wonderful place, but there's that whole "if you can make it there" thing. It seems like it would be go big I'd just vanish like a drop in a bucket. At the same time, I spent many hours in high school in the library reading The Village Voice cover to cover, awestruck at the sheer number of things happening there. (Also, rather than Seinfeld, I really liked New York as presented in Mad About You.)
* I almost said "love/hate", but that's not really it at all.
Oh, the continuing and unwinnable appearance wars as laid out by The Beauty Myth. Wear your hair long and be accused of trying too hard to appeal to the male gaze, but cut it short, and you'll eventually get whined at for not trying hard enough. Fuck em all and wear it how you want.
I for one just shelled out to look like Charlize Theron in Aeon Flux. Just about managed it too, without going so far as plastic surgery.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mithrigil's awesome abilities as a song-writer (although, to be clear, she is not responsible for "Baby Monkey Riding Backwards on a Pig"), we hope you have one more reason to consider supporting us.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Page 2 of 2