metaphortunate son (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metaphortunate) wrote2013-12-19 12:45 pm
metaphortunate) wrote2013-12-19 12:45 pm
Entry tags:
question #2
lovepeaceohana asks:Predictable, possibly, but - what has been the most surprising thing about parenthood?
For me, personally, the absolute most surprising thing was the way I shifted my gender presentation identity way, way the hell over to femme.
I used to do most of my clothes shopping in the men's section. Before the Junebug was born, I hadn't carried a purse for maybe 17, 18 years. I had no interest in wearing makeup outside of Halloween; I had one tube of lipstick, grudgingly bought basically at random, which I would maybe wear on Valentine's Day, I'm not really sure why. Superstition, maybe. And now I wear dresses, and read beauty blogs for fun.
That's part of it; there's also the way that I've become way more invested in the house being tidy, which has coincided disastrously with having babies, which means that I started getting more upset that the place is a mess at the same time as I produced two tiny, yet incredibly powerful, MEGAMESS-O-TRONs.
My Republican friend, of course, suggests that having kids has brought out the innate gendered-ness of me & Mr. E's characters. I think this is bullshit. I think what it is, is a couple of things. First, I have a longer maternity leave: that means that I am home right now while Mr. E is not. It is way easier to not give a shit that the place is a mess if you spend an hour a day there, versus if you spend all your waking hours there. But also, we were not raised by wolves in the forest: I think that we will never know what is innate, but having kids has stripped away some of our veneer of civility. Leaving our deep programming. And having kids is way easier if things are clean and put away. You don't have to pick the old garlic pieces out of the crawling baby's mouth if there's no old garlic pieces on the floor for him to find. When one of us is chasing the naked toddler, we are equally likely to angrily say "Is he entirely out of clean pants?" But in me that translates to a mental note to fold the fucking laundry so we can find the clean pants when we need them, and to go by the local baby consignment store sometime and buy more pants. Because we've both been trained that that's my job.
The difference is that, with kids, the stakes are higher. I long ago made the decision that some lady of the house jobs are not my job. I will not do thank you cards for Mr. E's side of the family/friends. It is not my job just because I am the girl. This mostly means that they don't get done, and Mr. E's side of the family probably thinks that I'm an asshole, because I doubt they would blame him, because he's a guy and it's not his job. And y'know what? I can live with that. I would rather have that than taking on yet another job.
However. If I don't buy the Junebug pants as he grows out of them, he doesn't get new pants. And I can't live with that. So I take that on.
About the makeup and clothes and so on: that, I suspect, is to do with how unattractive I started to feel after having the Junebug. And pretty is a skill: I don't have the time/freedom to exercise much, (although I will more as Rocket gets older and more on a schedule and strong enough to go in a jogging stroller) but I can go by the Walgreens and buy some red lip balm. And I know they say pretty isn't the rent you pay to exist in the world as female. I do think that's true….as long as you're not existing in the traditional, i.e. dependent, female role. If you're paying for yourself, be as ugly as you want, I say. But now that my kids are living in a neighborhood, going to a daycare, that I could never, ever, ever afford except for Mr. E's money, I guess I feel like I had better up my appearance game. Because we know what happens to kids' standard of living when their parents get divorced, you know?
(I know that Mr. E loves his kids deeply and would never let them go wanting, no matter what happened with us. I am also pretty sure that everyone who ever had kids with someone they were in love with at the time thought that exact same thing.)
I should make it clear that I didn't really make a clear-eyed analysis and decide to care about lipstick because it might affect my kids' financial future. I just found myself becoming interested. This is an attempt to figure out what might be going on in my head. The results, however, are a matter of record.
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Fortunately at this point we've found good solutions for most of the big ones, so I'm reduced to saying things like "When you leave toothpaste in the sink I want to PUNCH THE WALL" and really that's not so bad in the grand scheme of things. But this is a good reminder that a baby is going to disrupt our carefully constructed equilibrium on that front, and we should be braced.
I remember my room being so messy when I was a kid that I had to leap from the doorway to the bed--assuming I could open the door. My backpack was full of paper that was wrinkled and torn from me shoving my binder in on top of it. Now I'm the neatnik of the house, and scrupulous about things like putting the laundry away as soon as it's clean. Part of it is that I have a system that really works for me, and part of it is that I've taught myself to enjoy the physical act of housework, but I think I mostly just care more about myself now than I used to. I keep things tidy because I have panic attacks when I lose something and depression attacks when I break something, and the slight annoyance of tidying is far better than the misery and woe. And I've developed a sense of entitlement around my own stuff--when I want to wear a particular shirt, it had better be clean and pressed and where I can find it!--so then I have to maintain it in the condition to which I have become accustomed.
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This sort of thing is a big motivator!
I'm fascinated by your thoughts on appearance.
I've found there are lots of times when dressing the part makes things go more smoothly. Job interviews are an obvious example, but when I first got my house, going to hardware stores and garden centers always seemed to be more productive if I dressed more conservatively and more middle aged than my usual jeans, t-shirts, no makeup look.
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I'm hoping you don't actually mean to say all that's standing between you and divorce is that red lip balm. I just....*sigh*... Other than that, this is an extremely insightful post (read from the perspective of someone who would still like to have kids though my odds are diminishing...rapidly) and I thank you for writing it.
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I don't think long term partners owe each other not gaining weight or any of that incredibly gross stuff people say sometimes. And if we live long enough, we will get old and smelly and icky with the ear hair and whatnot. And I've had two kids now: it's not my most attractive time, with the bodily fluids and the leaking and the not having time to shower until 5 pm and etc. And Mr. E's been there with me through all that. And I think our marriage is doing fine.
Also, at this point, it's really funny to me how there are occasions when we dress up and look nice, but sex is totally not correlated with looking nice. We look nice when we're going out. Sex is correlated with us being at home and not sick or exhausted and both the kids being asleep. It helps if we're already at least partly naked to start, too. Lip balm doesn't fucking come anywhere into it!
And yet. And yet. It is easier to get hot for someone when they look nice sometimes. I love it when Mr. E looks nice and we go out to dinner, it's fun. It also makes me feel like he cares what I think. I want to do that for him too. And yes, I do think that is important to our marriage.
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(I guess - here comes my parenthetical thought on the topic - that what I feared as I read what you wrote is that your guy could or would be that superficial, which in a meta way sort of made me wonder if my own guy could or would be that superficial, which of course almost led me into a full-blown - albeit mercifully brief - panic attack. I can count on one hand the number of times I've done full make-up regalia since I've been with him - and even my fullest make-up regalia is deliberately quite a light application by today's standards, because I freakin' hate make-up - but he swears without it I look fine - in fact he says much more that that, but the point's not to brag, simply to state that my fears about my make-up-less face have been, according to him, baseless so far - and uh, that was not intended as a pun, but oh well.
Having children can and would throw a decided wrench into all of that, I suppose, as I would lose the last tenuous strands of my still-together face and figure along with any basic idea that I should present as human or even self-aware most of the time - babies are a lot of work and involve a huge lack of sleep and time to yourself, after all - which makes it doubly reassuring to hear you've hit that point in your life with your guy twice now and still have his...loyalty...and his attraction to you, I guess.)
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And I know they say pretty isn't the rent you pay to exist in the world as female. I do think that's true….as long as you're not existing in the traditional, i.e. dependent, female role. If you're paying for yourself, be as ugly as you want, I say. But now that my kids are living in a neighborhood, going to a daycare, that I could never, ever, ever afford except for Mr. E's money, I guess I feel like I had better up my appearance game.
Both of these statements resonate with me so hard that my head is still ringing.
Just, DAMN.
I actually just donated the last pair of dudepants that I own. And part of it too is that the shape of my body changed sufficiently following two pregnancies that dudepants just ... don't fit the way they used to, and aren't actually comfier than ladypants at this point, which wasn't true pre-pregnancy. But part of it is also that, like you said, it's part of the role, it's the part of me taking out insurance against the possibility of divorce and wanting to be able to say that I did everything right that I could, even if it's not who I am.
Raisin' my glass to you, yo.
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(ETA I forgot the useful-for-context facts that I don't wear makeup and tend towards neutral clothing, even for work, because at my workplace I Can.)
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So true.
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Like thistleingrey, I don't wear makeup and tend toward neutral clothing because my workplace lets me get away with it. I have noticed that I am starting to care slightly more about my appearance (slightly nicer clothes, sometimes I will think about wearing lip balm), and I think these are for two reasons, one related to what you said and one that isn't. The related reason is that I sort of feel like I need to impress people at work a little more now (possibly because I have a kid to take care of, possibly because I'm working fewer hours now that I have the kid) and I've noticed that people are impressed by nicer clothing, even on men, even when they're not "supposed" to be.
The unrelated reason is that now that I'm a mom and primarily responsible for E's social development, I now hang around WAY more moms, pretty much all of whom care about their appearance more than I do, and I kind of feel like I need to fit in a little more to help my kid fit in a little more?
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Do you anticipate changes in gender presentation
down the road once the kids are in fifth grade?
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I have not successfully predicted a single goddamn thing that has happened, not even just in my head, over the past three years. I have absolutely no idea what I will want to do in ten years, and no way of finding out except to work it out one day at a time, and if there is anything that I say I am sure of, do not believe me.
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I've never been any sort of planner or predictor, so I can only imagine how strange it is for your life to turn from one direction to 176° another way. See also: more baby.
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