I might spend the next few months growing a beard.I decided that if I was going to start blogging again, I couldn't add to my old blog. It's a time capsule of my past life, the life before I decided to change everything.
It's been six years since my last post, reader, if in fact, anyone is reading, and that person, that other Ampersand Duck, is a long lost construction. Of course, I'm still essentially me... or am I?
Argh. I'm not getting into all that stuff. It's 2020, but there's no jetpacks. What the hell?
Instead, I'm living in a flat in Canberra, with a housemate that I don't really know, waiting out the progression and hopefully eventual dissolution of the COVID-19 virus. I had a practice run of being flat-bound only a few months ago, during the Great Bushfire Season of 19/20. This is weirdly much better. I can go out on my bike for a ride around the startlingly busy lakeside bike paths, or for a much more secluded evening walk through the empty suburban streets, looking at the lit windows, knowing that 90% of people are online (until the internet stops, and wouldn't that be fun) and the other 10% might be making Christmas Coronials, the next generation of pre-apocalypse babies.
When I say 'growing a beard', I don't mean I'm going to transition in any sense. I have come out, yes. I do dress in a retro-butch dyke style (if it can be deemed a 'style'), yes, but that is done because I don't like to be distracted by clothes nor fuss about my appearance, and 'men's' clothes and hairstyles are wonderfully low-maintenance and low-fuss. I look back on my old photos and my old blog and I realise that dressing as a 'woman' was always for the gaze of the partner. Or the uncomfortable father, who just yearned for me to be 'normal', whatever the hell that is. None of that gaze now, and I'm happy about it.
Thank you to the nice friend who saw a photo of me on Facebook dressed in a suit and asked me if I had pronoun preferences. It was a really considerate question, but the answer is no. I'm happy as a woman, I just don't want to dress as one.
So, the beard is based on the amount of chin plucking I do as a Woman of a Certain Age past Half a Century. I have grown out my eyebrows to reveal the luxuriant Scottish 'hairy eyeball' mode of my father, but I still care about my chin. A few years ago, egged on by another friend, I tried a short course of laser removal, but FTS, it hurt. It struck me today, looking into my vintage magnification mirror that sheds delectable shards of pale creamy-green lead paint that I must resist chewing on, that this is the perfect moment to stop plucking and just see what happens.
I'm doing a lot of university teaching online since my two campuses locked down, but the students and I happily agree not to use the camera (I'll write more about that in another post). I'm face-timing friends, but I can position the camera carefully. Communication pixels are pretty forgiving. I don't think Flatmate will care.
I'm so curious. Can I stand it? This might be my only chance to see what shape my chin-line is: am I full and shaggy or scrappy and wispy? There's so much beard action out there, shall I take this on as a feminist body-image art project or just a chance to give up my last act of conscientious grooming?
I could transition to a full-blown old crone. I'm halfway there, having developed a wonderful crone-wart on my nose which is straight from a picture of Baba-Yaga. I could disappear from the gaze forever, slip through the streets unseen, a genderless shadow, able to BUGA-UP to my heart's content.
Of course, I'd clean myself up a bit if teaching resumes in the classroom. No need to scare the children. Ah, vanity, you are still alive and kicking, despite my best attempts to not give a shit.
So... hi, I guess I haven't changed that much.
How wonderful that you're back to blogging. Bearded ladies have a long and distinguished history. I am finding in my fifties that as my chin hairs become more wiry the hairs on the rest of my body become sparse and pale. The more I think about human hair--why we have it where and when--the stranger it seems to me.
ReplyDeleteBhahaha I've only recently started trying to pluck out hair from the sides of my lips, it does my head in trying to hold the tweezers and get them onto a hair 😳 every inch of my body fights it, I can only hope everyone stays back and they'll never see a beard hair anyway!
ReplyDeleteAnd here I am worrying about not being able to get my grey hair coloured every three weeks. I haven’t had to start chin plucking yet. No doubt it’s around the next corner. Too busy for anything right now. I will love you no matter how hirsute you are. You are an amazing and selfless friend and a bloody great human, that’s all that matters to me. Xx
ReplyDeleteAwww thanks all. Isn't body hair the weirdest thing? I remember shaving my arms when I was 11 because I couldn't see any on other women's arms... and then I did, suddenly. I saw it everywhere, and I felt stupid. It's stupidly normal, though and it's such a contentious thing. I see a lot of young women proudly showing their pits but still shaving their legs.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this post I have been re experiencing my moustache and thinking about a full Frida Khalo. My mother had a lot of facial hair which I plucked for her as a child. I had better eyesight then. I think it gave me a touch of trich. I’ve long kept hairy underarms and legs since early twenties , but facial hair I kept my vanity to my shame (is everything to do with shame) though admired those who left their facial hair as is. Hair is an ever fascinating topic. Thank you Ampersand Duck.
ReplyDeleteLove the update from the last blog! Wow, that really takes me back ... feels several (or at leat two) lifetimes ago. When I started to type here, it automatically tagged me as 'Ariel', with a photo of me, skinny, with hair to my waist (I cannot grow my hair that long now), in Mexico with a cow. I like that you've rebelled and rejected the video component of communication in the time of coronavirus too. I hate how awkward the video chat makes me feel ... so aware of my own face as I talk, ugh. Have considered rejecting it. You write beautifully. I like the transport into another place, another state, and another experience of isolation.
ReplyDeleteHey &D,
ReplyDeleteGreat to have you and your beard back in blog form! I have one chin hair that grows from a mole, so although I could do a witch thing I don't think I can in the beard Olympics.
So good to read your journalling...keep it up.