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Who Has Time for All That Crap?
My supreme disinterest in anything women are expected to do.
Gather round, children, and get ready to giggle at this bizarre artifact of the not-so-distant-past: Home Economics class in school. Girls only, thankyouverymuch (Wood Shop was for the boys, so get out of here). And in those long-ago days in Home Ec, we young ladies were taught how to cook, how to clean, and — wait for it — how to apply make-up. Fun fact: my first year in Jr. High was the first year that girls in the Cloverleaf school district were allowed to wear something other than dresses or skirts to school.
Strange, but true.
So there we were, a roomful of awkward, somewhat embarrassed but intensely curious teens being introduced to foundation, blush, lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, and those weird eyelash curling gizmos.
Meanwhile, at home, my younger sister was waging a guerilla campaign to get her ears pierced (finally, she just came home from a sleepover with the deed done and took her lumps). I looked at both of these rites of feminine passage and couldn’t understand why anyone bothered. The most makeup I ever went with was drawing lines around my eyes with an eyebrow pencil (getting a steady, even line with eyeliner was beyond me) and adding some mascara. I never understood the rest of the makeup rituals…
