3 posts tagged “rambling”

I haven't really stopped being busy since September. College brings work and friends and troubles and Big Decisions(tm) and a severe lack of sleep and so I have been doing so very much. It doesn't help much arriving as late as I do even if I do leaver straight away. Of course, I also need to keep family stuff, even if I really would rather make it just stop for a while and so that just means doing more things, getting more headaches and not shouting at Simon to just stop talking nonsense and actually listen to me for once!

I've also recently realised that, for all I've been spending a lot of time with people recently, so much of what what we discuss is just pointless. Which is a not always a bad thing, but I certainly need more conversations on Descartes vs. Satre and what the attraction is for straight men to lesbians and straight women to slash and what Cameron really wants in the contexts of conservative and, indeed, liberal ideology. And more of course. I have been finding myself really annoying, but I think it's mainly just not enough intellignet discourse.

Lessons have some of this, but I'm stuck with quite a lot of people who would rather just throw stuff about and mean no one else keeps a chance to actually engage in their lessons, leaving me bored out my mind. I occasionally with I didn't pick somethings up to easily. On Monday Dan (one of my Philosophy teachers) wrote 'property dualism' and, figured out what it was, because to me it was enitrely obvious. Meanwhile the entire 90 minute lesson was spent explaining the basics to the class because even the people who are normally on the ball didn't get it. It's not really about me being smarter, I just work in a different way and vtend to be quite good at breaking down vdown language in my head, despite verbally defining words being the bane of my existance.

So I should try to get more of that in. and more sleep. And do my work. And be in all my lessons. And finish by bloody personal statement. And keep up with family and friends. And all the other stuff. Hopefully, I'll be fine and at least I theoretically have a long summer as a reward for doing this once I have.

At least I have half term to help my brain reform.

Go here to see my post on being considered attractive.

Self esteem in a curious thing. Vanity is generally considered to be a bad thing, is one of the 7 deadly sins in fact, and people can frequently confuse high self esteem and vanity. Mix this with the self-deprecating nature of British culture, and I'm sure many others, and it's bad to have good opinion of yourself.

On Scrubs once, I remember Carla said, 'I can look at my naked body for ten seconds before I have to look away, that's more then most women.' And while this can be viewed as an amusing comment on the way things often are, it's also self-fulfilling. It tells woman that they shouldn't be happy looking at their bodies.

I am not normally one to go in for this sort of talk, about the images portrayed by the media and their influence, etc. but it felt relavent to what I was saying. There has recently been a show on  called 'How to Look Good Naked.' which, much like What Not to Wear concentrates on wearing the right clothes, and is very good in that it's actually gives women confidence without telling them they need to change themselves completely. I've heard a lot of people mention it, because it really does work for other women too.

Anyway, as to myself. I have had quite good confidence about how I look at certain points, but it fluctuates a lot. I sometimes think I look brilliant, sometimes awful. It does not even relate to an actual change in how I look, either. I can be primped as much as I ever get and think I look awful, or make completely no effort and think I look great. It really is a state of mind thing, with me at least.

I can know I have good breasts, brilliant hair when I look after it, not too bad legs (although I vary more on this), etc. But if I feel bad about myself, all these things look bad to me.

Clothes are very important. I hate wearing trousers because of how I percieve myself to look in them. Someone else with exactely my body could probably wear them and have me think they look good, but not for myself. I can be very specific in what I like and sometimes I will think I look wonderful and my mother will tell me the opposite.

Which leads to another point. Most people, myself included, get a lot of validation from other people and their comments. But, at the same time, I'm less likely to listen to my mother, because we have very different ideas, and I'm less likely to listen to my step-mother, because while we have similar ideas I just don't believe her. It also depends on mood; having a strange man come on to me in the street is generally not likely to make me feel like I look good, unless I'm in the right frame of mind to think I do.

According to the media, I really shouldn't think my body is alright, but I often do. It might be better for me that I didn't, but when I'm think the right way I do, and when I'm not I'm not generally mentally in a place to do anything about it.

i would find it very interesting to see a male perspective on what is thought to be good, how they react to media, etc. I know every individual is just that, individual, but at the same time there is a distinctly different attitude depending on sex (I say sex here, because I'm talking about physical, rather then mental). Anyone got anything to say?

On Tuesday I got back from a week of camping. Since then I have rather been wallowing in self pity, so leaving this house today my hair was (still is) a mess, I'm tired and the was very little thought put into my clothes (although despite this I am colour co-ordinated, and I suppose they aren't that bad). So when walking down the street, thoroughly concentrating on reaching the bus stop it was very unexpected to have a man come up to me and start speaking and tell me I looked good. He disappeared before to long, but it really threw me. As it always does, in fact.

It isn't all that rare for me to get random men talking to me and complmenting me on my appearance etc. although they are pretty much always Asain and not brilliant at speaking English. I can think of a couple of black guys (one on a rail replacement bus in north London who asked if I was Jewish, and if I was reading a love story, one on the tube out of the other side of north london when I had gotten very little sleep), but generally they are Indian, or Sri Lankan, or Pakistani etc.

Maybe this is related to where I live, as white people are probably a minority in my area. I remember discussing this once with a friend after, on the way to her house, a man had insisted on giving me his phone number, to the point where he stopped a random passer-by to get a pen. She suggested that my features might be particularly attractive to people from such backgrounds. It might be related to any English people who did like me being too English to do what these men do.

My hair often seems to get attention, for example when entering one of the portaloos at the camping event I mentioned earlier a woman stopped me to talk about my hair and how she had seen it, during which a random small girl came up and said she liked my hair. This sort of thing seems to happen a lot, which while I sometimes accept my hair is nice, I had years of bullying related to it which takes my confidence down.

The man today was behind me when he started talking, so I don't think he could have seen my chest, which I do tend to think would be only thing impressive enough to lead random men coming on to me.

This has gotten long though, so I will leave it for now and perhaps continue later, with discussion of self confidence.