Wooo cheap costuming!

Had an extremely good rehearsal for Winter's Tale last night. I really like the character of Antigonus. It's fun playing a brave, righteous person, and getting to do courageous things and agonize over the terrible things that other characters do. Not since Cordelia have I gotten to play someone so straight-up heroic. I particularly like the physicality of the scene we did last night, with Leontes shoving Antigonus around and Antigonus takes it because he's his king. I like balancing the defiance of the mad orders with the still-unquestioned allegiance to his liege lord. This is a really good role and I am having a lot of fun with it. I hope Steph is pleased with me. I enjoyed working out the scene with her.

Got my character hint for Stars of Al-Ashtara. At this point we are not allowed to say anything about who we are, so I will say only that apparently my highly flexible casting questionnaire for some reason made me a tougher rather than easier cast, but still from what little information my hint contained I think I like the sound of it. It inspired me to go on eBay and find myself an amazingly well priced couple of costume pieces of the sort I've always wanted to wear. I agonized over what color to buy, settled on one in a panic, and then immediately regretted after purchasing it. Hopefully my frantic e-mail request to change colors will be received before shipping. If not, oh, well, most colors look good on me anyway. It may be too sexy for the role, but it's an Arabian game-- when else am I going to have an excuse to dress like that? ;-) I may end up using it as my Halloween costume as well, since at the moment I have no plan for one.

*Sigh* I'm turning into that girl who has to use any dress-up occasion as an excuse to look slutty. I hate that girl. She's so uninspired. But I really really like this costume.

The last straight girl on Earth

Sometimes I feel like the last straight girl on Earth. As more and more of my nominally straight female friends decide that they're at least a little bit bi, I am continually blown away by how few girls I know have that aversion-to-physicality-with-women that I used to think was a hallmark of feminine heterosexuality. And while if this is your genuine setting I wish you Godspeed, but I must confess a slight irritation with how it ties into a certain kind of sexual politics that has always gotten on my nerves.

I've never been a big fan of the expectation that all girls are just a couple appletinis away from a picturesque lesbian encounter. It's almost become the norm that if you go to a certain kind of party that frequently happens on college campuses, chances are you're going to see at least one instance of non-gay girls making out. And when this happens, you're going to have at least some of the guys in attendance hanging nearby enjoying the view. And I find this kind of gross, for a number of reasons.

I guess it's not like it's really my business; people have a right to be into whatever they're into, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else. I don't even have a problem with guys thinking girl-on-girl is hot. Hell, I think guy-on-guy is hot, so I certainly don't see anything weird or wrong with it. The thing that does bother me is the cultural standard that girls are becoming expected to feel and express some level of bisexuality, in which men are allowed to have pornographic interest, because that's the way men want it.

I guess if the girls are willing to do this stuff and allow it to be watched, who am I to tell them they shouldn't be doing it, but are all these girls really totally okay with interacting sexually with other girls while guys look on to be titillated? The fact that so few of these girls actually ever date other girls gives me a bit of pause, but that's not necessarily an indicator of attraction. Heh, I was REALLY attracted to a certain black-haired friend of Alain's, but that didn't mean I wanted to date him, after all. And I certainly think you're still responsible for your actions-- I don't care what kind of pressure is being laid on you, you have a responsibility to yourself to refuse to do anything sexual that you don't want. Nobody can make you do anything just by encouraging you. But I have a hard time believing that no desire for validation and to be considered desirable factor into it, which is incredibly repellent to me. Are none of the things the girls want being compromised?

And worse, it's never the other way around. Guys never make out for the viewing pleasure of girls. It's just not done-- straight guys are straight, God damn it, they don't go in for that fag stuff. It doesn't matter that maybe I'd like to get the chance to watch two guys who don't look either like twinks or like Tom of Finland models. And really, that's fine, but that girls don't get the same respect for the rigidity of their sexuality is not fine. It's a double standard, one I am very much not okay with.

Apparently emerging research suggests that while men's sexuality tends to be rigidly defined, women are more inclined to blurring whatever lines they fall between. In other words, men are more likely to be inflexibly attracted to one gender and one gender only, while women are more likely to feel some level of bisexuality. Of course these are just trends, and plenty of people don't conform to them. I invite you bisexual men out there to raise your hands with me as exceptions to the rule. But this kind of pisses me off because this emerging viewpoint validates that double standard. Yeah, maybe it is true, but I feel like that people will use that to say, "Well, it's okay for me to lay that expectation on girls because that's just what girls are like. But it's totally not okay to lay that expectation on guys, because guys aren't like that."

That is such phallocentric bullshit. I'm not normally the sort of feminist who wastes a lot of time railing against the patriarchy, but here's one case where I will gladly make an exception, because basically, all the standards and expectations are set up by men, for men. Men's sexuality is consider inviolate because men want it that way, and women's sexuality is considered flexible because men want it that way. I mean, talk about being a victim of the male gaze.

What this comes down to is, as a person with a rather rigid sexuality, I dislike that fact not being respected. Since if that rigidity were compromised it would be actively damaging to me, I dislike when its existence is dismissed with "Oh, all girls are a little bit bi." I want to be like, "No, fuck you. Why don't you go stick your tongue down some other guy's throat for my amusement instead?"

People of course should do what they want. Just because the number of girls who are okay touching each other seems to be going up doesn't change what is true about myself. And of course nobody can make me do anything I don't want to do, no matter what their assumptions or expectations might be. But that double standard gets under my skin, and unfortunately even genuine things that seem to support it are going to get under there as well.

Several things

Again a lovely weekend with Jared comes to a close, and again I try to dwell on the positive-- that I'm seeing him on a regular basis, that he may be back for good soon, that we are doing well despite the distance and every time we do see each other is great. Again, I try to be happy that our time together was so nice rather than sad that now he's gone. It feels good to be doing everyday things with him like dinners and seeing friends and watching movies. Positivity and hopefulness are not natural to me, but I'm beginning to see that in this situation they may be truly necessary.

I have decided I will be attending the "open dress" night of the Boston Babydolls "Wrathskeller" performance on Tuesday, October 26th, and I hope some of you will be willing to come that night with me. Tickets to this open dress are limited, but only five dollars a pop, so if you'd care to join me I encourage you to buy early. I saw last year's version of the show and really enjoyed it, so I am excited to go again this year. I like them as a group, and they speak to the shameless showoff inside me as well. I recently bought a coupon to take one of their classes on LivingSocial, so I'll have to figure out a time to attend. One of these days I'll work up the courage to audition, especially since laurion* has assured me that not everyone has formal dance training.

Sunday I played in Lise's FantasyCraft game, which was a lot of fun and some very nice company. I am electing to continue with the sort of character I played in the sample mod, a halfling assasin-burglar-type sneak-thief whose current defining character trait is her complete lack of a mental filter, leading her to say exactly whatever weird, inappropriate thing is on her mind at the moment. Her name is Ophelia Dunning, and I think she will be very fun if the rest of the party doesn't resort to stabbing her to get her to stop talking. She doesn't have much of a backstory yet, but we've got a while before the next session, so I should be able to come up with something sufficiently quaint and amusing in that time.

Confronting No Makeup Week

There's a blogger by the name of Rabbit Write, known for exploring topics of gender and interpersonal relations. I don't often read Rabbit Write, but I have added her to my blogroll, as I am interested in those subjects as well. Recently she has put out a call to all women to stop wearing makeup for one week. Her intention in this is to challenge us to examine our relationship with cosmetics.

I don't wear makeup in my regular life. Never have, not a stitch. No powder, no shadow, no liner, no gloss. The only times I ever do are onstage and to go goth. I, then, will examine not why I wear makeup but rather why I do not wear makeup, because many of the same issues are at play.

I used to feel very virtuous and superior about it. I congratulated myself on being free of neurotic concern that I needed makeup to be attractive, that I did not succumb to society's insistence that women must falsify themselves in order to be acceptable. Like it made me more evolved and indepedent. Society has a conflicted view on makeup, and while I do think women are strongly encouraged to wear it so that they look the way they "should," at the same time there's also points awarded to the girl who looks great without it. I still can't help but roll my eyes at the "except" girls-- "Oh, I don't wear any makeup. Except foundation." "Except eyeliner." "Except lip gloss." Don't give me that. Either you get to wear makeup, or you get to claim the status of not needing it, you don't get to do both.

I have evolved in my perceptions since then. I can acknowledge that makeup has a use and a place, and is not inherently a sign of insecurity or of conforming to unfair external expectations. I will probably wear makeup to the next formal event I attend, if only as an acknowledgement of the formality. But still, I don't particularly like it, and for a number of reasons plan to continue my avoidance of it in all but the most specialized of situations.

There are practical objections to makeup, of course. That shit is expensive, especially the good stuff, and when I see the price tags firsthand I frequently am relieved that I don't need to buy the stuff more than once in a blue moon. Makeup is often very toxic, containing trace amounts of any number of unhealthy compounds like lead. And there's the whole feminist angle. Are we making women's bodies unacceptable when we decide they are better when they have a layer of paint on them that makes them conform more closely to a supposed beauty ideal? Are we telling ourselves that are faces are not good enough as they are and need to have redder lips, more defined eyes, and clearer, more even skin? And that leads to an even more basic ethical level where we come back to my age-old opponent, the temptation to place too much stock in the value of beauty. Does makeup encourage vanity and contribute to that notion that beauty is not just something nice, it's something IMPORTANT, and not just important, SO IMPORTANT that we have to do whatever it takes in order to have it, even if that means buying expensive toxic compounds to obscure your real face and make a better false one?

I consider these things. But the most personal level to me, tied up with the things I have the least personal resolution with. For me, it comes down to the fact that even now, I still cannot help but see makeup as "fake." If you find something beautiful about me, I want it to be real. Not something I had to put on, something that without I would not be as beautiful. It's the same reason I don't dye my hair or get extra piercings. I wear my hair in such a style that it looks just as good on me mussed from sleep or wind or activity as it does freshly done. I work to keep my figure in such a shape that I am just as proud of it bare as the day as I do when dressed in the most flattering clothes I own. And by that same token, I wear no makeup because I want you to know that this face is my face, no tricks, no deceptions. One of the most treasured compliments I have ever received was from Jared on one of the earliest occasions we'd slept in the same bed and woken up together. "Wow," he marveled. "You look just as good first thing in the morning as you do all the rest of the day."

And I do. I do wake up looking this good. This is me. Not my clothes, not my makeup, not anything I put on. I really am this beautiful. You could take me in front of everyone I know, strip me down, and blast me with a firehose, such that everything was taken away but me, and I would be ashamed of nothing.

In recent years I made a little joke, designed only to display my own self-confidence, but in practice carelessly cruel: "Makeup is for ugly girls." I would say it with a self-satisfied smile and an arrogant toss of my head, the intention being to say that of course someone as beautiful as me would never need such a thing. I didn't really mean it the rest of it, the implication that clearly there must be something lacking in you if you wore it. It was, like all too many of the things I do, all about me-- without considering that yes, I may be fortunate to look this good without it, but not everyone is so lucky.

And a lot of it is all accidental. Why do I like this natural beauty so much? I tend to prefer to be judged on my merits, and I must admit, my natural beauty doesn't have much to do with anything I do. Maybe I work out and take care of myself, but my good metabolism and pleasant features are things I was born with and had no control over or input upon. Do I really deserve validation for an accident of good fortune?

There is a likely evolutionary explanation. An attractive person is a person whose genes are desirable enough that you would like to combine your own with, as well as a person who is likely healthy enough to bear the offspring. If my beauty is natural, then you have a good basis off which to judge my suitability as a mate. If my beauty is not natural, then to a certain extent you have been tricked, and therefore thwarted in your biologically-driven attempt to find the most desirable genetic material.

Still, it isn't as if I can't relate to some of the things makeup is supposed to provide. Pleased as I am with my appearence, it most certainly isn't perfect. If nothing else, my skin has never been the greatest. I have had acne and blackheads to varying degrees of severity for pretty much all of college, and the tone is somewhat uneven. One of the major things I dislike about the way I appear in pictures is how greasy and blotchy my face appears, way more so than it does to me when I look in the mirror. Probably wouldn't turn out that way if I wore makeup. I certainly have admired in the past when friends more skilled in makeup wear it so well I can't tell whether or not they're wearing it all, like blendedchaitea*.

And it's not like I don't make any alterations to myself in the name of vanity. A different cosmetic choice I make is how I take something of a scorched earth approach to body hair-- get rid of it, all of it, by any means necessary. I am ruefully amused by the contrast sometimes, between my delicate, finely-shape figure and my bear-like level of body hair. So I get rid of it to suit my aesthetic. But that's not very natural, now, is it? "Taking away," I suppose, feels more real to me than "adding." Everything remains is still mine, still real. And for some reason, that matters to me.

Sometimes I do think makeup contributes to society placing too much emphasis on the importance of beauty. Sometimes I think that we'd be better off if we didn't feel like we needed it so much. But I also am fairly certain that my aversion to makeup is not me having any less of a connection to that over-valuing, it's that connection expressing itself in a different way-- perhaps in the way of the "have" versus the "have not." Maybe I should have a Makeup Week to see what the difference would be.

To England, Hamlet

Frances departs for England today. I will be taking her to the airport this evening, and we'll have dinner together before she departs. I made her a small token for her to take with her, a little gift I've had in mind for some time now. This will totally ruin the surprise is she sees this before I see her today, but whatever. It's a photo collage of her in my shows and me in hers around a shot of us together out of costume. It has her as Hamlet and Andromeda-- I love how different she looks between the two --and me as Cordelia and the Fool-- I love how different I look between the two --as well as us arm in arm in a picture taken right after Lear.

I learned so much about acting and directing from observing and working with her. Her method of acting was always so fascinating to me, and I think I learned my most valuable directing skill, that of deconstructing and quanitfying what an actor is doing onstage, in the process of trying to figure out what made her performances work and how she built them. When I directed her as Hamlet I fell in love with her physicality and wanted to use it to convey how strange, restless, and dangerous the character had become. She was so much more imposing and effective because of the way the character was invested in her body and in her every movement.

Since then I have worked to integrate her style into my own performances. She is such an expressive, wide-ranging physical actor extended by the fact that she is so strong and flexible, and by watching her I've learned a lot about how to bring my body into my acting. We were cast as twin brothers in A Comedy of Errors, so I did my best to sort of "match" her, be compatible with her portrayal if not necessarily imitate her. Since those were highly comedic characters, we just kind of went for the same sort of exaggerated, slightly spastic silliness, and I think it worked. In King Lear she cast me as the Fool, which is very clearly the Frances-type role in the show, and that time I pretty directly channeled her style. The Fool's strange body positions were directly inspired by her, and the ceaseless moving energy was extrapolated from there. This prepared me for playing Puck, easily my most physically demanding role to date, where I would have to move as inhumanly as possible and would achieve the best effect the stranger and more contorted I looked. Studying and working with her has taught me so much about physical acting, and I know I am way better at it now because I had the chance to learn from her.

Good social news

Have been very much enjoying having Frances around this week. I had a dinner for her on Friday night, which though it had some logistical issues turned out to be lovely. I served chicken in a pureed sauce of carrot, onion, cider, and heavy cream, and after dinner the conversation lasted well into the night. I do not often spend a lot of time in the company of other girls, and how much I enjoyed it this time makes me think that it is something I could stand to do more often. Also in Frances's honor I attended the Hold Thy Peace open mic night they had on Saturday. It was fun just doing some Shakespeare riffs with my fellow friends and actors-- I got to read Petrucchio to Steph's Katherine, for example, a role I've always thought would be fun. It's made me really happy to have had this time to spend with her. And hey, anything that makes me less of a hermit and keeps me from falling asleep at ten is okay in my book.

In other social news, Jared is coming in again this weekend! He had a couple of interviews arise, so on the plane he will hop. Sadly he will miss Frances by one day. :-( He plans on being at BSCF and hopes to see people, so I encourage you to come to gaming this week to hang out with us. I will have to plan other interesting things for us to do while he's here, but that's a good start.

Frances in town, and the perks of living alone

The much-missed crearespero* has graced us all with a visit this week, stopping by on her way to grad school in England. She will be staying with us at Elsinore for the next seven days. Despite the massive clamor for her company from the moment of her arrival, I was lucky enough to get to bring her to my rehearsal and then take her out to dinner afterward. I had a lovely time getting to hang out with her again, and I look forward to having this week with her around before she departs the country.

We had some really nice conversation last night. She mentioned that she will be having a flat all too herself, and after I got finished dying of jealousy, we talked a little bit about the various issues one encounters in living with other people. My living situation has been quite good lately, and let it be known how awesome I think my current roommates are. But still, in my ideal world, I think I would still choose living alone over living with roommates. Now that I live entirely with amicable people there are actually pleasant things about having others around at home, but a lot of things about my nature inclines me to desire a space which I am in complete control of where I can be totally alone.

My frequent but not constant tendency to withdraw into my own thoughts makes it so I require a lot of alone time, and I am always most comfortable in the space I call my own. I don't want to make people feel like they're ignored, uninteresting, or unwanted, but if they encounter me when I'm in introvert mode, I'm probably going to treat them like they are. It's not my intention, but that's kind of the message that "No desire to talk to or interact with you now," sends. And I really dislike being put in the position of not getting to have my introvert time just because I'm afraid of coming off as rude or of hurting feelings. Living alone means that there is always a way to be in my own space, where I am most comfortable and at ease, where there's no one else around.

Theoretically this can be dealt with by living with understanding people who get that just because you don't want to visit or hang right now doesn't mean you hate them. And in large part, at least in my current situation, it is. But even the whole "being alone together" thing is difficult for me, because I am always so acutely concerned with what the other person may observe.

See, most of the time I love having, and actively work to cultivate, a state of affairs where all eyes are frequently on me. Therein lies one of the chief reasons I keep a public, frequently updated Livejournal as opposed to a private diary, because I thrive on people's attention and interest. I'm sure even the little bug living under big rocks have noticed this. But I have a very definite idea of how I want to present myself in public, and at times that can take a lot of effort to maintain my preferred presentation. It's a bit complicated to describe exactly, but it's basically my way of appearing to and interacting with others to all the ends I find most valuable. We all have this to some degree or other, I believe, but I would think I'm a little more uncomfortable than most when mine is not what I would like it to be. I want, for example, to always be polite to people. That's something important to me. It can be tough to be polite, however, if you're tired, upset, or otherwise not feeling yourself. I have a rule that when I don't feel able to act like a person, I am not fit for the company of other people, and should therefore retreat to somewhere where I will not encounter them. There's a certain way you should act in front of company, and when you live with people, you always have some kind of company.

And of course there's some measure of vanity to it, as there is with everything in me. Though I am worlds better than about it than I was when I was in high school, I still dislike being seen when I'm sweating, bleeding, bloated, sick, or otherwise not appearing to my best. To this day, whenever I get a new zit, the first thought that crosses my mind is "Well, maybe I won't run into anyone I know today." And at any rate, I simply don't like having an audience for some of things I want to do that I worry may be perceived as weird or annoying. Having my own space means I have a place to hide when I'm not feeling up to being polite, engaging, interesting, and perfectly groomed. Again, I like to keep everything in order for when I have company.

I've had conversations with people about what it's like to feel invisible, which is something I've never really experienced and feel incredibly sorry for anyone for whom that's a common occurence. But even though I would never trade places with them, sometimes I wish invisibility was something I could turn on and off selectively. Because sometimes I don't have it in me to behave in the manner that I feel is appropriate for company. Sometimes I want to cram my hair into a squashy bun and sit around wrapped in a blanket and schlubby pajama pants. Sometimes I want to eat cake frosting with a spoon. Sometimes I want to watch endless hours of television I've seen a million times before. I have evolved enough to be comfortable talking about the fact that sometimes I do these things. But I still really don't like people being witness to when I do them.

Here go I with frivolous spending

So I've had this idea of purchasing a sideboard or a long thin side table for the living room for a while now, and last week it seemed like I had finally found something on Craigslist that fit my desires and budget. I found a very handsome dark-wood piece for just forty dollars and figured I'd lucked out. Unfortunately it turned out to be a lot bigger than I thought it would be, too big for what I wanted, and wouldn't have quite fit in my car anyway, so I regretfully passed on buying it. That left me with an extra forty dollars in my budget that I hadn't expected to have. So, of course, instead of saving it for rent or whatever, when I dropped off a couple of size-too-large sweaters at the thrift store, I allowed myself some time to browse to see if there was anything I liked.

I have to say, thrifting can be great when you're small. A lot of the time people who were small at some point don't stay small, so a lot of small clothes get donated, and of those people that used to be small, they were not usually small for long, so their small clothes tend to be less worn. An excellent example would be the really elegant pencil skirt I found. It's a dark green floral weave pattern on a black background, cut in the old-fashioned style all the way up to the true waist. Not as comfortable as hip-height, but very chic in a retro sort of way. And frankly if I were so much as an inch wider in the waist or even the hip, there would have been no chance of my fitting into it.

I've also had this bee in my bonnet about trying to incorporated dresses into my daily wardrobe, so I checked the dress racks as well. Of course I didn't find anything interesting that would be appropriate for day wear, but I did find a very sexy fancy black dress with an asymmetric hem and only one shoulder strap that fits me like a glove. I must find an excuse to wear this sometime soon. Amusingly, I chose it in part because it was a similar style and material to my beloved backless cocktail dress, and when I compared the two upon arriving home I realized it is the same brand.

The last thing I looked at were the sweaters. I'm interested in sweaters again as summer seems to have been blackbagged and kidnapped off somewhere already, and they're good for wearing to work. As I've said before, thrifting sweaters can be a tricky proposition, as they wear so badly that donated ones are often too stretched out to really look nice. But I actually got very lucky, finding an XS burgundy-purple Banana Republic v-neck made of merino wool. Merino is a lovely, maintainable material, and the cut was such that it would look equally nice worn alone, or with a collared blouse underneath it. Work-apparel score!

I had planned on the cavalcade of spending to end there, but not quite. Yesterday I went to Westborough to spend the evening hanging out with acousticshadow2*, and I got there crazy early because I misjudged how bad the traffic would be. We had a lovely time hanging out, hitting a coffee shop before having dinner at a place with the charmingly multicultural name of "Jose Murphy's," which offered a ten-cent taco night. It was a lot of fun, though I could have done without the rain driving down so hard that my windshield wipers literally could not work fast enough. But beforehand, while I waited for her to get off of work, I wandered around in some of the nearby stores in the plaza. One of which was a very interesting store filled up various kinds of unfinished pine furniture, and the second was a TJMaxx.

My mother tells me TJMaxx used to be a great place to find famous labels from last season at discounted prices, but in recent years department stores seem to mostly fill it with lower-end brands they couldn't get rid of in stores. Still, every now and then if you look carefully enough, you can find a gem. I found myself drawn to a display of lovely leather gloves in many interesting colors. I kind of wanted a bunch of the colors, because I like matching my gloves to my scarf when I'm bundled up against the cold, but I was drawn mostly, as usual, to the basic black. There was unfortunately no completely plain ones, which I would have preferred, but I did like the look of the ones with the slight gathering of material around the wrists. They were twenty dollars marked down from fifty, which for genuine leather with silk lining is not a bad deal. I really hadn't planned on buying anything else, but I've always wanted a pair of nice leather gloves, and I know I'll certainly wear them all winter. So in the end I went for it.

Though I'm not exactly thrilled at how easily the rarely-had extra cash slipped through my fingers, I am proud of myself for being able to find reasonably-priced items that please me, fit me, and will see actual use. So not a total loss, right?

"Merlin Feels At Home"

Got this picture sent to me by my dad last night, an art piece consisting of a photographic study of the sleeping family dog, which Dad has entitled "Merlin Feels At Home."



Note the dying-cockroach-esque pose, and the toy armadillo that he is apparently comfortable laying upon. :-)

Exit pursued by bear

So it seems I will be taking part in Winter's Tale after all. I had definitely decided not to audition when I saw how many people were on the sign up sheet. It would be much better for the club to try and include as many new people as possible, especially if there were a lot of new good actors. At first it seemed like Steph would have no trouble rounding out the cast with solid people, with a respectable numer of new recruits who seemed like decent people. But unfortunately one of the new guys, Dave, turned out to have a family obligation the same weekend as the performances, so he was unable to take the part. It's a real shame; the kid was talented and he seemed like a nice person too. It would have been good to have him as part of the club. At least he seems genuinely interested in taking part, which bodes well for future shows. He should be coming back out next semester, with any luck.

The upshot of this is that Steph asked me to fill in his role for him. Sorry as I am to see Dave go, I think I will enjoy being part of the show. The part I will be playing is Antigonus, the man who bravely steps up to take the rejected baby away, and meets him end by the wild things on the shores of Bohemia. I like the part too, small but interesting, with good business to do onstage and good interactions with other characters. I also get to act out the greatest stage direction in all of Shakespeare-- "exit pursued by bear." :-D

I don't clean because it's fun, you know

I always take slight issue when someone characterizes me as "loving to clean." I must gently disagree, my dear, with that assessment. Yes, I often wake up early even on the weekends to have time to devote to chores, but I only wish I could teach myself to love cleaning. I also wish I could teach myself to love exercise and hate the taste of Coke and cake frosting. Then certain desireable behaviors wouldn't all be so much of a pain in the ass. But alas, I love sugars and fat, I really do not like most kinds of physical activity, and I get no joy out of the act of cleaning itself. In fact, I frankly distrust anyone who says they "love to clean." When you encounter someone who describes themselves that way, it tends to be a sign that they don't clean enough for it to have become a real chore yet. Because believe you me, it certainly loses any fun or novelty it might have had given how much work that means on a regular basis. What I do get out of it, however, is an extreme sense of wellbeing of the results thereof, having a neat, orderly, and sanitary space in which to feel comfortable and relaxed. It's very disconcerting for me how frequently I encounter people who don't clean on a regular basis because they "don't like it." I don't exactly view that as something that factors into the necessity of the operation. I must say, one of the most surreal and funny moments I've experienced in recent memory is when I excused myself from a social activity on the grounds of having to go do chores, the response I got was, "But you did chores last week."

Counting the steps

I have decided to start wearing a pedometer again. Several years ago Usdan gave out cheap little Coca-Cola-sponsored ones in the checkout line, and for a while I tried to wear mine on my belt everywhere I went. I am certain I looked very dorky, but damn if it didn't encourage me to work toward making the ten thousand steps a day required for walking to be a viable way to burn calories. So I downloaded one on my iPhone which more or less works, but its function is interrupted and must be reset if anything else happens on the phone, and it is considerably less convenient to have something the size of an iPhone in my pocket all the time. I may still have the little Coke-brand on in my boxes somewhere; it might be worth it to check, as frankly, silly as it may have looked, it was more convenient for the purpose.

Also related to this end of walking more, I have replaced my everyday walking shoes. I am a devoted fan of simple, sleek, dark-with-a-stripe Puma athletic-styled shoes and have settled upon the Puma Speed Cat SD as my variety of choice. This is my second time purchasing this style in particular, and my fourth time choosing something with this similar kind of look. When discovering they came in both black and brown I got both, reasoning that if I alternated them they would last longer. I always write down in my Livejournal when I buy new ones so I can check how long the previous pair lasted me. I am very hard on shoes, apparently-- it's only been a year and a half since the last time I bought new pairs. I've heard a lot of people can keep one pair going for years without it sustaining any seriously compromising damage. Of course, I consider shoes "worn out" to the point of unwearability once their arch support gives out, even if they are still presentable-looking and otherwise in good repair. They are just too painful to continue on with once that happens. I plan on still keeping the old ones so that I can wear them when I don't want to mess up my good ones. I will just have to keep insoles in them in those cases; they've really reduced the pain issues I've been having recently.

שנה טובה ומתוקה

So Winter's Tale is now cast, and has even begun rehearsals. They had only the read through and then one night of blocking so far, since there are never any rehearsals on high holidays, and it is now Rosh Hashana. I am happy to hear that Steph is extremely pleased with her cast. I am as well; I attended the read through and was really happy to see how many good actors we've got. Hold Thy Peace seems to be starting off the year in very good shape, and I have secured permission from Madame Director to visit rehearsals every now and again so I can see a little of the process. Onward goes our little Shakespearean family.

Tomorrow night I will be attending a Rosh Hashana dinner. I am going to be making a mixed berry pie, one of my showiest dishes, which just happens to be pareve and therefore can accompany any other dish whether milk or flesch. I have all the crust ingredients, and I'm pretty sure I have corn starch and chambord for the filling, so all I need to buy is the various kinds of berries. I'll leave that till tomorrow.

L'shana tova to all my lovelies.

Beginning to experiment with food

So I am only just now getting to the point where I feel confident enough in my cooking skills that I feel I can experiment with at least a chance that the results will turn out edible. I tend to cook for large groups, and I've shied away from experimenting in the past because if I fail in that instance, well, my large group will have no dinner! But I am now at the point where I know how certain things react to certain cooking methods, and how different flavors go together, so I think it is time that I try to expand into developing my own cooking style through experimentation. This weekend saw two major forays for me.

There was a "welcome back" party at Elsinore this past Saturday conceived by blendedchaitea*, ostensibly just for people we missed who weren't here over the summer, but which pretty much ended up being a gathering of Hold Thy Peacers, which in my opinion is never a bad thing. We did it as a potluck of finger foods, for which I was planning on making a simple tomato-basil-mozzarella bruschetta. But when my family came up early in the week to help my brother move, my dad brought me two big coolers full of vegetables from his garden. Eggplants, zucchini, butternuts, tomatoes, garlic, hot peppers, sweet peppers, and three different kinds of unidentified volunteer squash. They were really great vegetables, but he brought me so many that there wasn't room for all of them in the fridge, and I was afraid the ones that had to stay in the cooler weren't going to last very long. Matt and Lise had also brought me beautiful Roma tomatoes from their garden, and I had only used a few of them so far. So I decided to make my standby dish for when I want to use a lot of different vegatables as once, a simple ratatouille. It would put the veggies to good use before they had a chance to go bad, and even though it wasn't a finger food, I figured I could also serve it at the party.

The kitchen was really buzzing with a lot of us busy making our party contributions in there, so I wanted to get the ratatouille going quicky and give it time to cook, so I decided to take a chance and throw it together without a recipe. Enlisting lovely friends blendedchaitea* and nennivian* to help me chop, I tried to get the veggies that I knew would take longer to cook into the pot first, which meant the eggplant, the onion, and the butternut squash. Breaking down large squashes with firm flesh and hard skin can be really tough, but I've found the most effective technique is to take a large, cheap knife and tap it through the squash with whacks on the spine from a wooden rolling pin. Safe, efficient, spares your hands, and doesn't dull up your good knives. I did notice that the rolling pin was starting to take nicks from striking the back of the knife, so I may end up buying a wooden mallet to do this instead to spare my beloved pie-making instrument. So I threw it with the other longer-cooking veggies into the Dutch oven with a few tablespoons of oil, stirred to coat, and let that cook while we then went on to the tomatoes. I decided that Matt and Lise's Romas would be better suited to a veggie stew than the bruschetta, so they went into the ratatouille while my dad's heirlooms got cut up for the toast topping. I then dug around in the cabinets to see what else I had to throw in. Fortunately I had about a cup and a half of red cooking wine, which went in when the tomatoes did, and some dried basil and oregano. That was left to cook for about thirty minutes more, reducing the wine and softening everything up, before I called in some brave souls from the party to taste it. Aside from requiring a bit more seasoning in the form of salt and pepper, the stuff wasn't half bad! Topped with some fresh basil chiffonade sliced up for me by Charlotte, I was pleased to send it out in a serving bowl to the rest of the party. It was late enough in the course of the evening that people had become too full to eat much of it, but I enjoyed having as lunch and dinner for myself the next day.

My next cooking experiment that weekend, however, had more mixed results. Jared had brought me back a lovely big bag of apples when he went apple picking during his recent visit, and though I was happy to eat the sweeter varieties out of hand, I didn't really have a taste for the tarter ones. So I decided the way to properly use them was to bake them. Now when it comes to apple pie, one of my all-time favorite desserts and the first real dish I ever learned how to cook, at this point I can make it in my sleep. So I decided to do something a bit different. After making up the dough for the crust, I divided it into four pieces rather than my customary two, wrapped them individually in plastic, and put them in the fridge to chill. The filling was made up according to my usual recipe, but there was a good deal more of it this time because of how many little apples I had to use. I then got out my four four-inch mini pie plates and one of my regulation eight-inch pie plates. I took two of my wrapped dough balls and again divided them further so that each half would become the bottom crust for the one of the mini pies. Since they were so small, I decided it would be easier to press them into the pans rather than roll them out. Now on to the filling.

So the one other time I had tried to make mini apple pies was for the time Jenn and I made dinner together, and for some reason they just didn't come out right. They were dry, somehow. So I decided to make sure there was enough gooey goodness binding the fruit together by topping the apples with a tablespoon of sliced-up butter per mini pie. I then rolled out the third dough ball from the fridge and sliced it into strips so that I could lay little lattice crusts on top of each one. I almost ran out of dough, but with some clever patching they came out well enough. A milk wash and a little sprinkled sugar finished them off. Now came the tricky part-- baking. Again fearing that they would be dry, I decided to bake them at 400, like I would a normal pie, but only for fifteen minutes, and then I would check them.

While they baked, I turned to my other experiment, a pie-like apple tart. I took the last piece of pie dough and rolled it out extremely thin. It was really tough to get it round enough, and it tore in like eight places, but I managed to lay it out just inside the eight-inch pie tin. Then I poured in all the remaining apples and dotted with the typical two tablespoons of cut-up butter I normally do for a pie. But since I didn't have a second shell to lay on top of it, I dug around in the fridge to see if we had some kind of jam I could use for a glaze. My preference would have been apple or apricot, but we didn't have any. So I settled on a sweet berry mixture that gave the apples a pinkish tinge. After pulling the mini pies, which did look done to me after the fifteen minutes, I put the tart into the 400 degree oven. I wasn't sure of the bake time for this one either, but since it didn't have a top crust, I decided to set it for a half an hour and check to see how it looked. By the end of that time the apples were ever so slightly starting to singe at the edges, so out it came. I wrote a little note that said "Please eat!" as an invitation to my roommates and stuck it next to the mini pies. The tart, I decided, I would take to that evening's read through of A Winter's Tale.

After letting the mini pies cool for a while, I decided to try one. I was very disappointed. It was still kind of dry, both the crust and the apples inside! What happened to the extra butter? Digging a little further in, I found it-- it had pooled on the bottom and was making the bottom crust soggy. Ew. I guess a tablespoon for a pie that size was too much; after all, I only used two tablespoons for a much larger full-sized pie. I immediately went back to the kitchen and tipped each of the remaining three pies over into the sink to let that pooled butter run out. I hope that improved them at least a little. Roommates who ate them, feel free to let me know how they were, and what you think they needed. The only thing I can think of is that a 400 degree oven is just too hot for a pie that size, even for as short a time as fifteen minutes. I guess what I should do is look up a recipe for a pie that size and see what temperature is recommended, and for how long. I can probably get away using my own recipe and have it come out if I do that. Alas, despite how I love miniaturized food, this particular one still eludes me.

Since the mini-pies didn't come out very well, I was nervous about the tart. I brought it to the Winter's Tale read through with trepidation, and made sure to secure myself a piece to make certain it didn't completely suck. To my surprise and pleasure, it was pretty damn good. The top was the slighest bit overdone, but the jam glaze compensated for it, and the layers beneath were just right. I also liked it in the thin crust. I was pleased to see it disappeared in fairly short order. Also present at the read through was a really unique and unusual cinnamon brownie that Steph made, as well as tasty sweet oatmeal cookies.

So I suppose when you experiment with food, you're going to hit some and you're going to miss some. The more I try it, the better I'll get at it, and in turn my all my cooking skills will improve. Heh, after all, my new motto when it comes to entertaining is Horace's fine quotation, "A host is like a general-- it takes a mishap to reveal his genius." I certainly can't be afraid that things are going to go wrong with that outlook, now, can I? :-)

"Could Mohammed move a mountain, or was that just PR?"

Sunday I went to see usernamenumber* in the MTG’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar. I attended the Sunday matinee, and Bernie and Plesser were good enough to accompany me. I enjoyed Evil Dead there very much, and I know now that I should never miss a chance to see Brad act and/or sing onstage.

The production was decent and I enjoyed it, but it had issues. To put on my critic hat, as I threatened Brad I would, the biggest problem for me and the one that kind of pervaded the whole show was that the sound levels were really off. I had a very hard time hearing the singers over the band, which unfortunately made it harder to appreciate everyone’s performance. Judas was a good actor as well as a good singer, but he particularly got lost volume-wise. Brad of course was amazing, easily my favorite performance in the show. He has such a rich, strong voice, and I very much enjoyed how he conveyed the peculiar conflict of Pontius Pilate, particularly when he exploded with frustrated rage when the man he was trying to spare would do nothing to save himself. I also had no idea that wired_lizard* could dance, and my compliments on her really fun costume work!

My favorite scene was the scourging of Jesus. They had a very clever, visually striking way of doing it. They had Pilate stand on a higher level than everyone else, cracking his whip and counting the lashes, as Jesus was seized by the arms and turned away from the audience, so that the ensemble could run downstage, dip their hand in a bowl of blood, and smack their bloody fingers against Christ’s back in time with each of Pilate’s strokes. I thought that was an incredibly clever way to do that. Other highlights include Greg Lohman’s really fun performance as Herod (his song is one of my favorites from the show) amid girls dressed as sexy security guards, and the tiny Asian guy with the BIG BASS VOICE playing Caiaphas.

I wish I could see it with Jared and hear what he thought. He's a big fan of the musical, and while I saw the movie a million years ago, I didn't remember it all that well. He and I had an interesting conversation as to how the musical is ambiguous about whether or not it sees Christ as truly divine. As for the group I went with, Plesser was the only one of us with real familiarity with the music. He was sorry that Pilate's Dream was played electric instead of acoustic. I was just glad that they did Superstar justice. And though I'm not sure I agree with every stylistic choice made by Andrew Lloyd Weber, I find his adaptation of them material very interesting. Recasting Jesus as a sixties-style revolutionary is a great idea because he really was a revolution. Religiously, socially, politically, ideaologically revolutionary. He did what every great social reformer means to do: he changed the world. And after all, as I've always said regarding the saga of Christ-- even if you don't believe it, you gotta admit, it's the greatest story ever.

Nameplate

I finally got my name on my office door.



Only took a year. ;-) Actually it was mostly because I didn't care that much. But having it now, I must say it's kind if nice.

Is good body image dependent on feeling physically beautiful?

I wrote once a while ago in this entry that for some reason I was bothered by how so many of the style blogs I've started reading go about promoting positive body image. Back then I was trying to parse out why the approach they took felt off to me, and though I still don't have real conclusions, something occurred to me that I wanted to work out. I think a major component of my discomfort with their approach is that it seems to suggest that the only way to feel good about your body is to be able to regard it as physically beautiful.

I hear so much complaining about how much societal pressure there is on women to be beautiful and that there is something wrong with the notion that this is the most important thing for a woman to have. But appearing so frequently along with that are exhortations to expand the standards of beauty so more women can fit the definition. That seems really contradictory to me-- it puts a weird premium on physical appearence that I'm not sure is healthy. It suggests that even though beauty shouldn't be a value indicator, it IS a value indicator, so everyone has to be able to feel beautiful, because it is simply too important a thing for any person to feel complete and valuable without.

Does that bother anyone else? Because it feels like a mixed message to me.

I do feel like everyone deserves to feel desireable-- to feel like they are worthy of being wanted, loved, and valued. One of the reasons I believe everyone should dress well is because it gives you the power to appear to your best advantage, telling the world that you are a worthy human being from the moment they lay eyes on you. Concerning yourself with this is helpful to you because you have control over this presentation. But your physical beauty is determined by factors which can only be marginally affected by anything you do. Everyone's heard of that person who is constantly struggling to lose weight, to hide things with makeup, to change something about herself that genetics already determined were not going to be changed. Do we want to say that just because nature made it so you're always going to be a size twelve or that you have a round face instead of a heart-shaped one that you are not worthy of being wanted and loved? Do we really want to allow beauty to have such an enormous share of what constitutes desireability? If we're so fed up with being bombarded with messages that YOU'D BETTER LOOK PRETTY OR WHO CARES ABOUT YOU, shouldn't we be encouraging ourselves to place value on other, more important qualities instead of all scrambling to claim the "beautiful" marker?

Now God knows it's not like I don't have trouble with this issue myself. It was suggested in a very trenchant observation by meamcat* that in that original post I might have been trying to ask the question of "How do you feel good about your body if your body is not beautiful?" This is something I have a problem with. I have a hard time liking the features of my own body that I don't feel are beautiful. I had about a paragraph here in my first draft of this post about everything that's wrong with my boxy ribcage, but I deleted it because I decided it was in bad taste. Because it demonstrated how deeply I too am in that mindset of putting all the value in beauty, and not in any other quality, and that is not something I want to be endorsing. We don't all NEED to be pretty, because that is not the be-all and end-all of personal value! We should be able to feel good about our bodies even if they are not physically beautiful!

I hear the reaction to my saying that now-- "Easy for you to say, conventionally pretty girl. How would you feel if you didn't get to see yourself as beautiful?" Got a point there. God knows it is way too important to me that I be the pretty girl, that I base too much of my self-image and maybe even self-regard on it. I acknowledge that I am more fortunate in that department that many are, and I don't have to know what it's like to be in a less fortunate situation. Maybe if I were, I wouldn't feel so comfortable saying "We don't all need to get to be pretty." But we all have things that are good about us, and that's one of my gifts. There are other things that I don't get to be. I can't sing, I'm not good at math, I can be very unkind, I'm surrounded by people who are smarter than me. Not everybody gets to be good at everything. Am I really so compensated by my physical appearence that clearly it overshadows anything else I might lack? Is being pretty SO MUCH MORE intrisically valuable than any other positive quality? And if it's not, do we want to give it that status by treating it as if it is?

It doesn't sit well with me when I see an image of a woman on one of these body-positive blogs and the blog exhorts me to see her as beautiful when I don't. The issue, for me at least, is two-fold. First of all, honestly... there are things about people I just don't find beautiful. It's not that I think there's anything wrong those things, or those people, or even that I think they're ugly. It's just that on a purely aesthetic level they are not optimally visually pleasing to me. And whenever a blogger or whatever goes off on how unfair it is that a person who looks a certain way doesn't get to be considered beautiful, I get a little uncomfortable, because I think to myself, "But... they're not pretty. They just aren't." But I shouldn't have to feel guilty about that. I'm not saying every woman should comform to my aesthetic standards. I get that you're not here to decorate my world. But I'm not here to admire your display. I'm not sure why, maybe I just don't like feeling pressured or obligated to say something I don't believe, but I strongly dislike anyone trying to tell me that my view on what is beautiful is wrong. Beauty is, as the trope goes, in the eye of the beholder, and if you force me into your definition of it, you're just as bad as any cultural image that you decry that tried to do the same thing to you.

And secondly, I don't want to admire her for a virtue that I don't believe she has, and I feel like it's degrading and patronizing to her as well. Why can't we admire her because she's smart, talented, funny, or kind? Why do we have to manufacture a positive trait for her when she's certainly got real ones of her one that she deserves to be praised for? Everybody is good at something, and everybody is not good at something. We don't all get to be considered funny or wise just to spare people's feelings. By making beauty into something a person NEEDS, aren't we just reinforcing the notion that PRETTY IS ALL and if you don't have it you're WORTHLESS? Screw that.

On some of these blogs I read recountings by people who were tormented through their youths because they were not physically beautiful. Some people might use these things as examples of just how damaging it can be if people will not see you as pretty. But I find that an inappropriate reaction. The problem is that people are cruel, not that people don't get to be pretty. If people treated someone cruelly simply because she wasn't physically attractive, those people are dicks and their behavior is wrong. If that poor girl magically became pretty and was no longer set upon, the problem would still be just as disgusting-- being nice to someone, or at least not mean to them, because they're pretty is just as much bullshit. NOBODY gets to treat ANYBODY badly, FOR ANY REASON. The problem is not that their definition of beauty is too narrow-- their problem is that they are MEAN TO PEOPLE for STUPID REASONS like phyiscal appearence.

I'm certainly not saying beauty is meaningless. I believe it's a wonderful thing that should be enjoyed and celebrated. But I do not believe that it is more valuable, or even always AS valuable, as so many other good things a person can have. Not in life, not in work, not in art, and, to make an old-fashioned but still relevant point, not in love. God knows it can be hard for us girls to believe at times, but our mothers tell us this and we know it to be true. Beauty makes a man notice you. It doesn't make him love you, stay with you, or treat you right. It takes real positive qualities, less transient ones, to do that. And beauty makes you more of a target for bad men who don't care about those things. Being pretty certainly has its advantages, but it is NOT the most important quality to possess in this life.

And anyway, beauty fades. Yes, I'm very pretty now, but I'm going to get older and someday I'm going to get wrinkles and put on weight. And when I'm not pretty anymore, I better have something else that's good about me going on, because in the long run it's those other things that really matter, that make you who you are. Yes, pretty is a great thing, but in the end it's an accident of genetics that tends to have an expiration date.

I know it's a hell of a lot easier to SAY this is the right thing to think than it is to actually convince yourself of it. This is of course something I need to work on as well. God knows I'm just as fucked up as anyone, and like anyone I have good days and bad. I have days when I believe to the highest level of certainty that I am the most delicious creature that ever graced this Earth with her presence. I have days when, often when my unibrow seems particularly intent on growing back in, I am equally certain that I should be considering relocating to beneath a bridge conveniently near to a billygoat's home. Sometimes I am so disgusted by the gooey greasy slimey squishy meat-sack that is this human flesh I wish to trascend my base fluid-filled shell and become a being of light or perhaps a cloud, and I think to myself, "How can anyone NOT hate their body?" Sometimes I just can't get over how AMAZING it is that God made me this thing out of dust that lets me run, dance, type, fight, swim, have sex, have babies, heal myself, taste the difference between sweet and salty, and feel the sun on my skin, and I think to myself, "How can anyone NOT love their body?"

I need to believe this too, I need to learn this. My being influenced by this poisons me too. Among other things, this is where my fear of aging comes from. I've got to get past that fear of becoming less pretty, because I don't want it to be true that once it's gone there's not going to be anything left that's worthwhile about me. If I can't teach myself that there are more important things, how am I ever going learn to let go when the time comes that I have to?

Waaaaah, busy

Wah, so busy. Busy at work, busy at play, and busy all this week. I was going over my schedule for the next week and it is packed. Yesterday I spent the day with Jared until it was time to take him to the airport, and then I helped Steph run her auditions for Winter's Tale. We saw a lot fewer people than signed up, but there were definitely some promising candidates. Unfortunately due to family committment I was unable to attend the second round. My parents are in town today and tomorrow to help my brother move from his old apartment into his new one, and I am expected to report for moving crew duty. There's a chance I can show up tonight for callbacks, but I'm afraid I won't count on it. Thursday won't be so complicated, but this weekend is packed full. There are two parties I must attend, one of which I must cook for, as well as a show to see. Rawr, so very, very busy.

At least I did something useful today. To make up for my deliquency at auditions, today I ran Steph through my favorite exercise to help with casting a show, the one where you make lots and lots of sample casts in different combinations to see how you feel about them. She's considering a lot of people for a lot of roles, and doing this helps you compare how you feel about one person as opposed to another in any given part. I've used it a lot in the past, and I think the stuff we talked about it will help her run an efficient callback. I'm really excited to see how things go!