For the cause of the good.

Today I am having the back and sides of my hair cut, but none on the top and the front because I want to let that grow out so I will have a fuller head of hair. Hairdressers always want to make generous use of their scissors and cut your hair everywhere they have the opportunity to, whether you want them to or not, so you have to cut them off at the pass (no pun intended). I am looking forward to having my hair cut, as usual, because I always feel like a newborn woman afterwards, regardless of how much I look like a drowned rat in the all revealing mirror. I pretend not to see all the obvious flaws and act like I am the spring chicken with the great looks I had when I was much younger. But those harsh lights in the salon do make it difficult.

 

It helps if you dress well when you go there, so you can concentrate on your outfit and whatever jewelry you are wearing to complete the whole. Then whatever state your head is in after it's been fiddled with doesn't matter so much and when you get home, you can re-fiddle with your hair and get it right according to your own tastes. That is why you should never let the hairdresser put hairspray or styling gel in your hair.

 

I act like I am the most shallow woman on this earth being concerned about my looks, but I do care about them after a former life of not doing overly so. I didn't pay extra attention to how I looked until I was almost 40 and dressed very casually until that time, and that meant wearing mostly jeans and a t-shirt or sweater. When I liberated myself out of the suburban housewife trap, I became more free spirited and started to care a lot about how I looked for my own sake and not to please anyone else. It felt like a liberation to my body to dress it in colors and clothes that accented my feminine aspects. I became more aware of everything that was female about me and it was a relief.

 

I think I have gone full circle now that I have come out as a gay woman and very much feel all female in every way, and not in an earth mother sort of way, because that is way too maternal for me and I don't have those feelings. I think the ones I did have were for a great part the result of my environment which dictated that the greatest proof of womanhood was that a woman should produce and love her children and sacrifice her life to them. I now know that this did not come natural to me, but that I did show those feelings in an extreme form that made me act neurotic. I am a much better parent to my dog.

 

Mythology is a great burden.