The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

The hardest part was the title.

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I’m not sure everyone can fit neatly into a category. I’ve tried, let me assure you, because assigning someone a label takes all their potential for intimidation away. We tend to fear what we don’t know or understand, and fitting someone into a ribboned box with a lovely tag that has their stereotype engraved on it lets the world make sense. When they exhibit signs of something that doesn’t fit, it can delight or dismay, but at least it’s always interesting.

We even have a way of screwing up gender, with people who are born with unwanted appendages insisting they are female, and people who are born without desperately wanting to be men. It makes it pretty clear that the idea of labelling, even when it comes to something as plain as sexuality, isn’t always so ironclad.

All that aside, I am a woman. I do not think all women are catty or phony. I think young girls and burgeoning women can be, mostly because they haven’t figured out who they are yet and are desperately trying to figure it out. Women are conditioned to cackle and peck, but I don’t believe it’s their truest self coming through. We are brought up to be pleasing, in a way that men don’t seem to be, and we have to pay special attention to our appearance and our dispositions, to the point that we become consumed by it. This is when we become insecure, because we can see that the other woman across the room is more at ease, or she fills out her sweater better, or her teeth are gleaming even in the limited light. It makes us feel smaller, somehow, like we didn’t make the grade, and rather than cry about it, we find a way to rise above it, mostly by bringing her down with sharp-edged words or turning our heads when she walks by. If we make ourselves believe she is worthless, unappealing and repellent in some way, then maybe the ones we work to please will start believing it too. We do not consider what she might be feeling, overcome with the weight of our inadequacies which render us selfish, if not imperfectly human.

As you mature, you begin to see things a little differently. You begin to understand that the only person who really needs to love you for who you are is you. Me? I’m still working on it, because I am still highly influenced by what other people’s perceptions of me are. I am a pleaser, but I am a bit of a conundrum in that if I feel like I might fail in pleasing you, I’ll get angry and blame you for having too high a standard. I’m a prickly pleaser. I’m always on guard, always looking for a hint of disapproval so that I may come out with both fists swinging, or I might just forget you exist entirely. My feelings get hurt too easily, and I am waiting for this to change, which my older friends assure me will. What I’m told is that with age, you start caring about what’s real, and you let go of what isn’t: the labels, the pursuit of perfection, the eternally-buoyant breasts and the quest for physical preservation. Illusions, all.

Many men are gossips, too. I’m always astounded by that, because it’s not what we’re lead to believe. Most of the greatest schisms in my friend-set in the past were initiated by the boys in the group, making low-toned remarks or angry proclamations. I guess it’s all in the delivery when it comes to a stereotype. If you say it with authority, it doesn’t come off feline-like. That said, if I have a secret to tell, I might be inclined to tell a male over a female. They’re less verbose, they’re less interested in approval. They don’t often sit around a cheesecake with a pot of coffee looking for personal anecdotes to share. Either they’re alone in front of the television or the computer, or they’re having a beer with friends while watching some kind of sporting event. It rarely gets touchy-feely, and the secrets tend to stay where you leave them.

I actually do enjoy the odd chick flick. I’m a sexual being, and the ones I like tend to like have some fairly frothy sexual themes. I love the smouldering looks, the simulated foreplay, the build-up of tension. I also love the settings, the colours and the witty repartee. Tell me the house in ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ wasn’t gorgeous. My sister, who works for a prominent interior decorator, told me that this is the number one request from clients, ‘Make me the house from that Diane Keaton movie!’. Then there is the clothing, the food (no one finishes a damn thing in the movies, throwing away ice-cream cones or getting up before eating the appetizer to make a dramatic exit), the hairstyles. For me, relationship movies warm me, and even though my favourite movies are not of this genre (I prefer dark comedies, dramas or period pieces), I have an understated appreciation for all things Meg Ryan or John Cusack.

I also think that all things ‘vampire’ related are basically just chick flicks with blood. They’re erotic, sure, and they can be violent, but they’re never that interesting to me because it‘s all been done before. I’m guessing this new fascination with ‘Twilight’ is largely a female one, in that I have been inundated with talk of it from my female friends and homosexual male friends. There’s something romantic about vampires, with their sucking and biting, and because this is kind of foreplay-ish, it appeals to the ladies. Every goth/vampire guy I knew back in the day eventually came to realize that they were harbouring homosexual tendencies, and not one baseball cap wearing, beer-drinking, steak-eating fella ever mentioned a deep affection for Anne Rice in her pre-holy-roller phase, so I‘m inclined to look at it as a pink-type thing. Am I labelling here? Maybe, and there are always exceptions to the rule, but I only have my own perceptions to go on.

Why am I talking about vampires?

Sex isn’t a big picture kind of thing. While it takes up a fair chunk of my headspace on a daily basis, I know that in the end it’s not going to matter much. The big picture is about the love you get, the way you loved other people, and if you did it all with sincerity and style. Sex is healthy and it’s delicious and it’s rejuvenating, but when it’s empty, it’s deadly. I adore the entanglement of limbs and the quick hot kisses as much as any person does, but because I’m a girl, and I work on emotion rather than sight and smell, I am always more passionate about who is kissing and tangling with me. For me, it’s about the connection, the respect and the need. While I can understand the pleasure of hot, anonymous, one-time sex, it would be like a nibble on a brownie. Delectable, rich and sweet, but not enough to satisfy me. Give me the meat.

I’m a girl, I can always find a way to work chocolate and sex into the conversation. I wear make-up, and I rub scented creams on my body (lilac, lately). I read poetry and I hate the way I look in photographs. I like to mow the lawn, and I have been known to rip the clothes from his body while he has stared up in shock and delight. I can be lazy, lying about and looking out windows, or I can be a springtime zephyr which leaves things sparkling in my wake. I like to play fight, until I become too competitive and it gets serious and someone has to stop me. I will not eat rare meat, but I have eaten barbeque-flavoured larvae. I love heavy guitar as much as I love listening to Edith Piaf warble. I hate horror films, but will watch documentaries on WWI and WWII without thinking of the irony. I hate shopping for clothes or shoes, and will whine the entire time I’m doing it, because my ‘style’, whatever it is, is not always in a store window or catalogue. I do not wear pink, opting for black, olive or grey, but I’m going to start making some changes there. I do not feel black, olive and grey lately.

Maybe it’s time for red.