Shaking hands with school

On this grey and miserable first Monday of September, I come to understand that many young people across the country are returning to school today. How my heart weeps for those poor unfortunate souls. I'm sorry for their inevitable treading/sitting/placing their hand on chewing gum incidents. The 'it was only banter' name calling. The painful realisation that this year is not the year they become cool, but maybe next year. And I’m sorry for the drudgery of Gove's shadow - aspirational grades and targets and their teachers having breakdowns and their friends having breakdowns and Learning Objectives and What am I Learning Today before they've had a chance to sit down.

I don’t miss school. I used to worry I would because I don’t like change and my life up until now has been very familiar and simply a case of placing one foot in front of the other on a very even terrain. But now that I’ve jumped off that pavement and onto a sort of yellow brick road, heading towards this big green mystery, I can see that the pavement was quite grey in places and didn’t have much of a view because there were so many speed limits and signposts in the way.

School was fun and made me laugh and shaped me in a way that nothing can knock out of place. School filled me with insecurities but it also filled me with a raging fire and I am finding value in both. School is the home of my early adolescence and that’s a connection that doesn’t leave you. But I honestly can’t say I miss it. In year nine Mr Lucas played the entirety of ‘Summer of ‘69’ by Bryan Adams in an assembly and told us that we were in our golden years. I believed him for long enough to appreciate school for what it was, but I realise now that my ‘golden years’ lie very far from the confines of over-sized blazers, science classrooms and parents evenings.

But perhaps there are things I do miss, if I dare to let myself admit such a sin. I may not miss the grey and gritty institutional side of school, but there were little by-products of being a teenager in a familiar environment everyday with the same people that were pleasant. I miss the simplicity of it all. I think that's something I never knew to appreciate because it didn't feel simple at all at the time. I sorely miss the biggest deals in my life being what part I got in the school show or my incompetence in French lessons. Even at A Levels, when I felt more worn down and empty than I have ever felt in my life, I recognise a year later that there was still a certain simplicity about that time. I remember Mr Morrow telling me in Year 12, when I was staying after school to do a history mock exam paper, "A Levels are the hardest thing you'll ever have to do in education. Honestly, University is much easier". And in many ways, he was right.  University is freedom, but school had its own type of freedom too - the freedom of still being a child. It's tempting to try and shake that label off as soon as you can but there's really no need to - children are allowed to find things overwhelming and challenging and children are helped by grown ups when they struggle. When children cry they are comforted and their deadlines are extended and their essays are marked before submission. That's not to say that Universities are any less supportive - there are many means of seeking comfort and guidance, but it's not part of the package and it doesn't seek you out in the same way that a teacher who has known you since you were 11 would notice you're not quite yourself. You have to make the effort and help yourself, which isn't quite the same but it's adult.

I left school very bitter. My favourite teacher suddenly stopped making an effort with me right when I needed them most and my final grades were much lower than I had predicted. I was filled with a feeling that all was for nothing, but that was as untrue as Mr Lucas telling a room full of 13 year olds that their school years were their ‘golden years’. Sixth form was a sad time but I guess the rest was pretty great. This was cathartic.

To end, here is some advice for those still trapped:
Stay in school kids, but there’s no reason to cry at prom.

'Just don't'

Note - I wrote the bulk of this post in early June, but left it unfinished. I decided to leave the opening context the same for ease of read, but the date of publishing will be a few months later.

~

A few days ago I was sitting in the sun with a group of friends, predominantly boys, enjoying a BBQ. In the midst of conversation, one friend joked that my legs wouldn't get burnt if I didn't shave them. Perhaps I should have laughed but instead I responded 'I didn't want to shave them'. There was a pause, leaving just enough time for me to tell myself a hundred times in my head that I shouldn't have said that. Then a short discussion broke out in front of me, lead by my male friends, about how inconsequential and easy it is for a woman to 'just not' shave. Regretfully, I partook little in this moment because I was too engrossed in listening to what these boys had to say about a subject they are dreadfully ignorant about. However, since then I have had time to mull it all over and now I have things to say...safely behind a screen. 


First of all, I wish to make clear that I am not challenging the simplicity of not shaving. On a totally practical level, the act of not doing rather than doing, it goes without saying, is easier. I also don't believe myself, as a woman, to be under any force to shave. I recognise and appreciate my fundamental ability to choose and I do, for much of winter, take advantage of this. However, when told by a group of boys, the same boys who will tell me at length how attractive the girl with the smooth skinned hairless body is, that it is easy for me to 'just not' shave my legs, I can't help but feel uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable because by saying this they disregard all of the external factors that influence my choice to shave (or not). Factors that take more guts than they would know to override and ignore. There is no 'just' in deciding not to shave my legs. There is fear of judgement, fear of not being beautiful, fear of rejection, fear of bringing an elephant into the room with me. And whether other people deem these justified or rational fears is not relevant because they are mine and they exist by no lack of reason. I am reminded every day, subconsciously as well as consciously that beautiful women have hairless bodies, and not wishing to speak on behalf of womankind, that's really difficult to ignore.


These male friends of mine do not deliberately encourage women to look a certain way, and they cannot personally be held accountable for attitudes that are the result of generations upon generations of patriarchal brainwashing. But they do play a part in my choices, and to close their eyes to that with their hands in the air as if to say that I haven't been taught to seek male gratification since I was a child is frustrating.

I'm not asking for a solution or an apology or for guilt. I'm not imparting any blame or seeking sympathy. I'm simply nodding to this state of affairs I find myself in where there are (whether we choose to acknowledge it or not) deep rooted ideas of beauty ingrained within society which leave many people feeling paralysed into a state of robotics; doing things not out of choice or necessity but from a blinded perspective that this is normal and that normality is law. To quote a fantastic Mitchell and Webb sketch, 'Men: shave [just your face!] and get drunk. Because you're already brilliant.' But for us ladies, there's contouring, waist trainers, Brazilian waxes and Kylie Jenner lip kits sweeping the Western world like an unwelcome flu virus. And for every one of these brainless epidemics on the cosmetics counter, the ever unreachable bar has been raised for what it is acceptable to look like when leaving the house. I will stress again here that of course we do not have to abide or follow these trends. And actually, I think deep down and lost amongst the ifs and maybes of this piece, that's precisely my point. No one has any obligation to obey social expectations or gender stereotypes, but it's difficult not to. This is not a practical issue, it's an issue of attitude on both sides. 

So please, guys, don't tell me to 'just not' when you belong to the body that instructs me to do so.


Ro is listening to: Toothpaste Kisses by The Maccabees

My mother does not cry

I’m a crier

A watery-hearted, soft-in-the-middle crier

I routinely sob


There was a time I was embarrassed by my blubbery nature for my mother’s eyes never wet. I know she is not made of iron, but her pretence is convincing to those who do not share her blood. For a number of years I tried to be like my mother; to feel and to hide it.
To remain rooted to my path, unmoved and undeterred. To get things done.

But I am not my mother

I was not made to get things done

I was made to feel and to show it.
To empathise, sympathise and story-tell.
To listen, to grieve, to hope, to challenge, to help.


When I cry it is not always because I am hurting and my mother’s dry eyes do not always mean she is not hurting. I think she may know more hurt than I will ever realise, but who can say?


My mother does not cry.


~


Note to self: Should post more of my writings on here, even if they are late night rambled nonsense like this.