I should note that when this happened, I was just walking around Memorial to return a book. The lady who stopped me probably didn’t realize who she was asking when she stopped me. During the same trip I also helped a former coworker figure out how to use a scanner, so I was all over helping people. Yesss!
I was thinking the other day how nice it would be to wear a hijab sometimes.
So when I was in about 8th grade, I got this truly awful haircut.* She just basically cut my hair straight across and I think chopped some layers in, which made it sort of triangular. She also didn’t give me any advice about products I could use to make it behave. As a result, I was teased pretty regularly about this for the rest of the year, or at least that’s what it felt like. Between that and a hundred other bad haircuts I have had the fucks beaten out of me when it comes to my appearance. I give basically no fucks what people think of how I look now. Sometimes I get to the gym before I actually look at my face in the mirror and notice that my hair (owing to the amazing humidity) is going to eleven.
The one exception to my zero fucks policy comes from work. I want to look at least a little bit professional for work. And with the humidity as high as it has been lately, that has been a challenge. But women who wear hijabs don’t have to worry about that. They just look super together all the time.
It might also be handy if I were the type of person who got shouted at on the street. But I’m not.** I don’t exactly know why–I’ve always considered that I’m not that attractive, and now I’m kind of out of the age range for being shouted at, but also I tend to walk like I’m going to stab anyone who talks to me (my friends politely say I’m a bit intimidating to approach). So maybe that’s it.
Anyway, it turns out that if you ask a librarian an open-ended question like “Where are the books?” you may get more of a reply than you anticipated.
We’ll file this one under PN56.L48 L86 2013 for Literature (general)–Theory. Philosophy. Esthetics–Relation to and treatment of special elements, problems, and subjects–Other special–Topics, A-Z–Libraries.
If you missed my last comic about Hamlet and existentialism (it came out the same day DOMA came down, so no one saw it), it’s here. Since I wrote it, I got a sort of remote talking to about modern dress Shakespeare, and also B and I went to see Joss Whedon’s lovely new version of Much Ado about Nothing. So I will try to write a bit more of my thoughts about that. I will say my opinion has been softened somewhat. I’m not totally convinced, but I’m willing to be convinced.
I have a marathon coming up at the end of the week. Bread consumption is up. Circus consumption remains the same. The weird aches and pains that come with tapering are coming and going. Other than that I’m tired and don’t have much to say, so here are some pictures of Mom’s kittens. Click to embiggen if desired.
* It turns out that many hairdressers don’t really know how to cut curly hair. I believe this is a remnant of racism in hairdresser training, because consider who typically has naturally curly hair: the Irish, Jews, and African Americans. Of course, the woman who cut my hair would never admit that she had no idea what she was doing. I got my first really good haircut about a year and a half ago. (That excludes the times my friends helped me out by buzzing it.)
** I’m actually a bit puzzled by this phenomenon, because I’ve read a lot of accounts from women who are. The best story I can muster is that when I was in Italy in 2003 someone shouted “bella!” at me. (Probably ironically?) Oh, the other day I was out running and a guy driving a truck shouted “woo.” I was at mile 9 of 10 and kind of dying, and also he was about a block down the street, so he could have been shouting at someone else.
