With only a week and a bit to go before I go from Corless to Malcolm, I figured I could start writing in this blog. Jeremy set it up for me and I actually have something to say, so I may as well use it.
I’ve never really been that much of a girly-girl, from the moment I decided to stop crying in front of the kids at school because they called me a cry-baby, I think I stopped wanting to even be anything like other girls. Mind you I think it also might’ve helped that my mum was a civil engineer, typically a bloke’s job. I developed interests in subjects that would usually be on a man’s list of interests, finally studying IT at university – and not just the girly desktop publishing or secretary type, either, but difficult programming with databases, C, Java, PHP and so on. When that was over, I went back to uni to make a film – although film directing is gaining momentum with female directors creating films, it is still a typically male-dominated field. At least when I was in high school, females tended to want to be in front of the camera, rather than behind it. Even when I broke into trying stand-up comedy, I was attempting to succeed in a male-dominated area.
Over the years, I cared less and less about my appearance, and tended to prefer male friends because they don’t bitch about you behind your back, they don’t share gossip, and I could generally rely on them when I needed them. Unfortunately rules of weddings require brides to have female bridesmaids, and my best friend is male. So rather than let other female friends wonder why I chose someone else over them to be a bridesmaid, I opted to have just one, and for it to be my sister. No one’s going to complain about that.
But how do you really turn someone like me into a real girl, as opposed to those hairy ones you chat to online? (That’s an in-joke for Jeremy). Luckily for Jeremy, the year before he met me, I had started to change somewhat. I’d lost a bit of weight and I wanted to show off my body some. I even started wearing skirts. And sometimes even dresses! Never cared for make-up, though; that was an expense I could never find the worth of. And contrary to what I said in the beginning of this paragraph, I had at least been shaving my legs and armpits since the middle of year eight, or thereabouts. Even if it was just with soap, water and a scummy shaver that required me to shave every three days.
Having lost my mum to cancer in May last year, the wedding has really allowed me to connect with other women, doing things with them that I would ordinarily have liked to have done with my mum. I’ve been receiving advice about female things that my mum was never really very good about telling me anyway, partly due to her disinterest in being a girly-girl. And I tell you what, it’s an amazing feeling to have other women helping you with your hair (and even showing you how to wash it properly after months of using hotel shampoo!), doing your make-up for you, helping you with your nails. Mind you, having inherited my grandmother’s long nails, I did know how to use some of the nail equipment, I just never bothered cutting them back to a decent length to then file and make pretty. But I’m really glad for the opportunity this wedding has given me to spend more time with my sister, to hear her say how beautiful I look in my dress, and to have her paint my nails, and just little things like that. Things you put to the back of your mind and say you don’t care about when you’re not as girly as the other girls you know.
Now if only we can teach me to keep my shoulders back, and to cross my legs while I’m wearing a dress, even when I’m sitting at my computer.
Dominica May 