Find X.
My dress is too tight. My breasts jab. My lipstick feels contrived and my facial doesn't quite fit my complexion. My toes hurt from tiptoeing the last thirty minutes. My lips tinge. But I'm beautiful.
And more importantly, I'm really getting into the spirit of Crazy Day.
See, Crazy Day is a biannual event in my school where everybody competes to have the most excessively outrageous possible outfits. So this semester, I've decided to combine my thespian and philosophical ambitions into one: by dressing up like a girl, and moreover, by acting like one.
Finding the missing X chromosome has never been an easy task, but it's most certainly a worthwhile one. If everybody had two X chromosomes, then (stereotypically) we would all be less aggressive and pay more attention to our feelings. Outward bursts of rage will be frowned upon, car accidents would be rarer, bathrooms would be cleaner, the average lifespan would be longer, and military spending would be eradicated in favor of the nearest shopping mall. Of course, the NFL would go bankrupt and humanity would die off in about three quarters of a century, but such is a small enough price to pay for world peace.
First, some background: I'm Chinese, male, heterosexual and quite conservative, socially though not politically. As boring, in other words, as a bowl in a china shop. So for me at least, wearing a dress is quite out-of-character, even by the rather unrestrained standards of Crazy Day.
The actual day went pretty much as expected. My preparations have paid off: my depictions turned out to be amusingly realistic. So much so, in fact, that a few (they were a minority, however, I have to stress that. The vast majority of my school are tolerant people) individuals (in the hallways and the lunch lines especially) have taken to calling me a, and I quote: "*** ***," which was rather insulting for me even though it was obviously an act (On my part. They managed to act the part of bigots quite well).
See, I was not the first guy in my school to wear a dress for Crazy Day. I was not even the first to borrow make-up from a friend, or use paper balls to form pseudo-mammalian glands. I was, however, first in deliberately enforcing the "in-character" rule. Two days before, I've asked several of my (female, obviously) friends to teach me how to walk like a girl. A few of them were helpful enough to give, in addition to verbal instruction, an actual demonstration of the intricacies of feminine walking. (This is the part where me being a conservative socially becomes quite inconvenient, since the place I'm supposed to look at is the also the place I'm not supposed to look at, if you know what I mean. So I just kind of embarrassedly glanced in their general direction and took the cues from there.) But I digress.
All in all, it was really fun. Most of my friends and teachers thought that my impression was quite amusing, though my AP Lit teacher pointed out that my walking style would be greatly enhanced by high heels. I concurred, and started tiptoeing. For the entire day, I managed to not break character, careful to walk "like a girl" (one hand on waist, legs slightly bent, small steps, straight-line walking, tiptoe after tiptoe after tiptoe) with an especial focus on hip movement, to sit daintily and cross-legged, to talk with a high-pitched voice that imitated the shallowest characters I know on TV ("My full-length yellow dress is like, you know, so awesome?" "I thought of, like, wearing a polka-dotted skirt, but that, like, made me look like a cow, which was so last season." "I, like, think this poem could be totally improved if you use, you know, more varied vocabulary and stuff? and be, like, real careful about your iambic pentameter?"). This was especially amusing during Calculus.
There were many times where I was tempted to break character, but I persevered, whether the challenge be physical (it took me a while to figure out how to use the restroom), mental, emotional (more on that later) or nutritional (I was careful to eat a small, healthy lunch with small, dainty bites, and to ignore the hunger pangs that came with the gender). My greatest temptation came in the hallways between classes and in the lunch line, when I could have rationalized toning down my character significantly since "I don't know most of these people anyway." But I did not, in the end, and the repeated calls of *** *** only strengthened my resolve.
So what did I learn from all this? Well, I guess I learned to be more appreciative of America, the nation my family live in my choice rather than by birth. Even today, women in many other countries are denied the same (or in severe cases, any) educational opportunities that are granted to man. There are places even today where adulterers and homosexuals are stoned (often without trial), and America, with the 19th Amendment ratified nine decades ago and the recent repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, is certainly a shining beacon of tolerance and diversity.
Yet apparent equality is far from full equality, and advances already made are little excuse for complacency. Even today, the average woman makes 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, which is unacceptable for any so-called "enlightened" society. The discrimination against homosexuals is even more rampant, with same-sex marriages illegal in almost every state and a small, vocal minority constantly tramping on the rights of others.
My dress is too tight. My breasts jab. My lipstick feels contrived and my facial doesn't quite fit my complexion. My toes hurt from tiptoeing the last thirty minutes. My lips tinge. But I'm beautiful.
And more importantly, I'm really getting into the spirit of Crazy Day.
See, Crazy Day is a biannual event in my school where everybody competes to have the most excessively outrageous possible outfits. So this semester, I've decided to combine my thespian and philosophical ambitions into one: by dressing up like a girl, and moreover, by acting like one.
Finding the missing X chromosome has never been an easy task, but it's most certainly a worthwhile one. If everybody had two X chromosomes, then (stereotypically) we would all be less aggressive and pay more attention to our feelings. Outward bursts of rage will be frowned upon, car accidents would be rarer, bathrooms would be cleaner, the average lifespan would be longer, and military spending would be eradicated in favor of the nearest shopping mall. Of course, the NFL would go bankrupt and humanity would die off in about three quarters of a century, but such is a small enough price to pay for world peace.
First, some background: I'm Chinese, male, heterosexual and quite conservative, socially though not politically. As boring, in other words, as a bowl in a china shop. So for me at least, wearing a dress is quite out-of-character, even by the rather unrestrained standards of Crazy Day.
The actual day went pretty much as expected. My preparations have paid off: my depictions turned out to be amusingly realistic. So much so, in fact, that a few (they were a minority, however, I have to stress that. The vast majority of my school are tolerant people) individuals (in the hallways and the lunch lines especially) have taken to calling me a, and I quote: "*** ***," which was rather insulting for me even though it was obviously an act (On my part. They managed to act the part of bigots quite well).
See, I was not the first guy in my school to wear a dress for Crazy Day. I was not even the first to borrow make-up from a friend, or use paper balls to form pseudo-mammalian glands. I was, however, first in deliberately enforcing the "in-character" rule. Two days before, I've asked several of my (female, obviously) friends to teach me how to walk like a girl. A few of them were helpful enough to give, in addition to verbal instruction, an actual demonstration of the intricacies of feminine walking. (This is the part where me being a conservative socially becomes quite inconvenient, since the place I'm supposed to look at is the also the place I'm not supposed to look at, if you know what I mean. So I just kind of embarrassedly glanced in their general direction and took the cues from there.) But I digress.
All in all, it was really fun. Most of my friends and teachers thought that my impression was quite amusing, though my AP Lit teacher pointed out that my walking style would be greatly enhanced by high heels. I concurred, and started tiptoeing. For the entire day, I managed to not break character, careful to walk "like a girl" (one hand on waist, legs slightly bent, small steps, straight-line walking, tiptoe after tiptoe after tiptoe) with an especial focus on hip movement, to sit daintily and cross-legged, to talk with a high-pitched voice that imitated the shallowest characters I know on TV ("My full-length yellow dress is like, you know, so awesome?" "I thought of, like, wearing a polka-dotted skirt, but that, like, made me look like a cow, which was so last season." "I, like, think this poem could be totally improved if you use, you know, more varied vocabulary and stuff? and be, like, real careful about your iambic pentameter?"). This was especially amusing during Calculus.
There were many times where I was tempted to break character, but I persevered, whether the challenge be physical (it took me a while to figure out how to use the restroom), mental, emotional (more on that later) or nutritional (I was careful to eat a small, healthy lunch with small, dainty bites, and to ignore the hunger pangs that came with the gender). My greatest temptation came in the hallways between classes and in the lunch line, when I could have rationalized toning down my character significantly since "I don't know most of these people anyway." But I did not, in the end, and the repeated calls of *** *** only strengthened my resolve.
So what did I learn from all this? Well, I guess I learned to be more appreciative of America, the nation my family live in my choice rather than by birth. Even today, women in many other countries are denied the same (or in severe cases, any) educational opportunities that are granted to man. There are places even today where adulterers and homosexuals are stoned (often without trial), and America, with the 19th Amendment ratified nine decades ago and the recent repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, is certainly a shining beacon of tolerance and diversity.
Yet apparent equality is far from full equality, and advances already made are little excuse for complacency. Even today, the average woman makes 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, which is unacceptable for any so-called "enlightened" society. The discrimination against homosexuals is even more rampant, with same-sex marriages illegal in almost every state and a small, vocal minority constantly tramping on the rights of others.
