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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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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