I met someone with a foot fetish.
I want someone who likes my feet, dammit.
I went with someone to the mall (*shudder*) this weekend--she wanted to try on a couple of dresses, and I ended up trying some on myself. would you forgive me if I told you that I fell in love with a girly black dress? And would you think less of me if I told you that I almost got it, even though I'd probably never wear it, just cause it looked so nice?
The reason I'm so intent on shunning 'girly' things is that they're so often associated with being dumb, or simply because they're things I don't want for myself. And I worry that, if I admit to one thing, I'll be assumed to be perfectly happy with all the rest of them. I don't cook, not because I can't*, but simply because I don't want it to be expected of me. I don't clean other people's messes because I know guys who've gotten along God knows how many years without cleaning their own apartment because all it takes is bringing some wide-eyed girl over who finds their lack of interest in cleaning endearing and feels she just has to do it for them. I avoided Home Ec classes like the plague; I went to math instead, much to the chagrin of certain school counselors. It's a rare thing that I'll admit that I can knit, sew, crochet, cook, or produce all kinds of Martha-Stewartesque crafts. I would rather people think I'm clueless or clumsy than that they expect me to do these things.
Much of this is directly related to having grown up in the Mormon Church. My parents raised my sisters and I to be independent women--I don't know how they reconciled this with the Church, but I am thankful. I was taught that whether I was female or male made no difference; I remember my aunt (who then lived across the street from us) speaking to my mom, concerned that I wouldn't play with dolls. I was playing with her sons' trucks instead. Deliberately--it had earlier struck me as stupid that I shouldn't just because I was a girl, so I set out to make a point. And well, their toys were more fun.
My aunt was a beautiful woman with light brown hair. She married a tall, wiry man with piercing blue eyes and dark brown hair. He liked blondes. She bleached and dyed her hair. One day, she showed up at our gate, crying, with his bicycle. They'd had a bad fight, and she wanted to hide it at our place to get back at him.
Some time later, they moved. He lost job after job, many times due to his irascible temperament. His eyes became sunken and his skin tan and leathery; he found farm jobs around the southern side of the country. They continued fighting, and ended up having four children. I don't know when he started hitting her. Maybe he already was that day she showed up at our house with his bike. I don't know when he started beating his children. I don't know when it was the first time he left her, nor how many times he came back.
Last time I heard of him, he had been thrown in jail for bouncing checks. Last time I saw my aunt, she had aged so much; her hands were bony, callused and peeling; she was still bleaching and dyeing her hair, now hacked and broken like straw. Last time I heard of her was last summer, while I visited my parents. She called my grandmother in tears--he had been hitting her again and taken off afterwards.
"Give me money for a train ticket and to bring her and the kids back here," I told my mom when she got home from work. "I'll go get her and drag her here if that's what it takes. And the bastard better not raise a finger at me."
My mom sighed. She had tried to get her sister to leave before.
"She'll just go back to him," she told me, shaking her head sadly. "I've tried. But what would she do? She has nothing to fall back on, and no one here will give work to a woman her age and with no experience."
My grandmother had poured a great deal of money into courses for her. She never finished any of them, or never tried to find work related to them. There was no need to, after all. She was a young, beautiful woman, and had just found a Prince Charming with piercing blue eyes.
My parents raised me to, first and foremost, be able to take care of myself. This was what I wanted to do--go to school, then go on a mission (women may serve on a mission for a year and a half at the age of 21 in the LDS Church, while men are required to go for two years at the age of 19), and then, if it happened, get married. If not, no big deal. And I fully intended to continue working after getting married. Having children was never appealing to me. After moving to utah, I was told by people in the Church that, because I was female, my priorities should be, first and foremost, be married and have a family, then, if I wasn't married by the ripe ol' age of 21, go on a mission, and only after that, school and a career. And I was to drop that, of course, after getting married. A career was something you had to fall back on in case some catastrophe fell upon your husband.
To this day, my father thinks I'm anti-marriage, and pretty much anti-relationship. He also thinks I can't cook. He's wrong about both. But I've tried very hard to distance myself from the things relationships, family, and marriage may mean to him--changing your name, having children, not working. He thinks I can't stand kids; he is wrong--I have a lot of fun with children. I simply don't want to have any of my own. Never have, and don't expect to ever change my mind.
"Maybe," he lovingly told me once, "maybe it's time you start taking better care of yourself. You know, get a boyfriend, maybe you need to, I don't know, talk differently, not be intimidating, maybe you need to change the way you walk, you know..."
Yes, I know.And that's why I get so worked up over liking a dress.
* Though as of late, when I do cook it ends up turning into an experiment ('I wonder if something edible would come out if I threw some
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