You can’t make yourself small enough for most people. They want you to chop off bits of yourself, all the outlandish impulses, the outstanding ideas, the outrageous extravagances. Everything “out” must go, so you can fit inside your assigned box, your cubby, and their illusion of control. There is a norm and you must follow it, in every particular – every idea, every notion, every article of clothing, chosen to match this reduced image of yourself, this false image, the image that fits inside its square frame.
In the fairy tale, the evil stepsisters are ugly, and not above self-mutilation to get what they think they deserve. A royal servant comes with a tiny glass shoe and off comes a toe, a heel, to be able to ride off on a royal horse a princess. But the puddle of blood soon betrays her, and the price, though high, cannot buy her what she thinks she wants.
I have a confession to make. I am mean.
I’ve been in a denial a long time – decades, to be honest. How time flies.
I remember the first time it was brought to my attention, the first time I realized it, because it was the exact same moment I decided to Change. Only, I didn’t really Change, I just went into hiding.
I was not the kind of little girl who easily fits into what “little girls” are supposed to be – pretty, nice, pliable, outgoing and friendly, and a little bit dumb. I was plain and smart and shy and meaner than sin. The difference between who I was and who I was supposed to be became more apparent when I hit puberty, before anyone else in my class, and boys started to notice and comment and in return I pushed boys down concrete stairs, clawed them until they bled, and pelted them with knuckle-ball water balloons.
So picture that girl, in her tomboy pants and button-down shirt at a school dance, with giggling girls who are cute, and friendly, and a little bit dumb, who “like” boys, and I don’t, though I’m “supposed” to, and then some bitch in a poodle-skirt “accidentally” spills her Hawaiian punch down my butch button-down shirt, so I “accidentally” spill (okay, it was more like throwing) mine on her pink felt skirt, and then her legion of friends tells you: You’re mean. And won’t talk to you for the rest of the dance, which kind of sucked before the Incident, and definitely sucked after.
That shame, that ostracization – that right there was the proverbial straw. I can’t be mean, I thought, or I’ll have no friends, and twelve year-old girls need friends. So I promised to Change, post Hawaiian punch. I made a Vow.
The Vow was mostly a Vow of Silence. If I had an opinion, I silenced it. If I disagreed, I shut my mouth. If I didn’t like someone, I bent over backwards to be nice. Nice wasn’t kind, exactly – it was more like trying not to be offensive, like it was my problem if someone was a jerk to me. (This is rape culture, by the way – if you offend someone else, it’s not their fault – it’s yours. Their actions don’t belong to them, they belong to you, who clearly caused them.) My looks are offensive, I thought, my tomboy clothes – the problem with me must be me, and not with you, so I’ll change, I’ll make myself smaller, defer, talk softly, slouch. I will concur that I need permission to do any of the things I have denied myself in my attempt to be “nice” – to hold my own opinion, to disagree, to take up space, to dress the way I like, to be unattractive.
I learned my lesson too well. The only way to not cause offense is to be so small and unimportant that no one takes any notice at all.
But it’s hard to be so small, to be held in a straight-jacket of anger and frustration of never being yourself. Eventually a pool of blood forms around your feet, and you can play it like a victim, not responsible for the act of self-violence, or you can take off the goddamn shoe.
Experimental City 