An anonymous guest post. We welcome one-off guest posts as well as regular contributors: see the join us page.
BiCon is a place for experimenting with how you present yourself and behave (within the terms of the Code of Conduct.) BiCon is a place which explicitly rejects policing people’s appearance whether for being too fat or too slutty or not feminine/masculine enough or overly feminine/masculine or any of the reasons people do that shit.
I am a feminist and I do not believe my clothes or body are anyone else’s business.
And yet, I sometimes struggle to believe these things apply to *me*.
I realised in the car this morning that my BiCon would be significantly improved if I gave up on high heels and wore trainers all week. I don’t wear heels often and they hurt my feet a lot. In heels, I hobble around the site, I’m unable to dance at the ball as much as I’d like and generally feel grumpy. Normally, I wear heels in the office but I’ve been getting lazier about that so I am out of the habit of wearing them at all and I know that means my feet will hurt more, sooner. I’ve tried those cushion things but they don’t help for long.
As I realised how much better I’d feel if I wore trainers all weekend, my Jerkbrain started up.
“You’d look silly.” – I don’t care*.
“You’d look like an idiot.” – I don’t care*.
“You’d look ugly.” – I don’t care*.
“You’ll be surrounded by all these pretty glam people and look like you don’t know how to dress yourself.” – I don’t care*.
“You’ve got nice clothes to wear but they’ll be ruined by wearing them with trainers.” – I don’t care*.
“You’ll look like you have some sort of gross foot disease.” – I really don’t care. And fuck off with the disablism, jerkbrain.
*Spoiler alert – I do care but I want to feel free and comfortable at BiCon more. Also, some of these have a subtext of class snobbery which I can’t quite articulate but it’s definitely there.
And then it starts with manipulation.
“What about all the people you could be flirting with? They’ll be put off by your stupid shoes.” – If people care more about my shoes than my conversation, then they can fuck off / we can go to bed so I can wear sexy shoes without having to walk in them (delete as applicable.)
And now some variations on old songs – these ones hit on specific fears/insecurities.
“You’re just lazy. If you started wearing heels more regularly, this wouldn’t happen. Another thing you’ve fucked up and failed at.” – Causing myself pain in order to reduce future pain *for no good reason* is a stupid plan. And my life is a work-in-progress, not a failure.
“Every other woman manages it! Why are you so rubbish at this?” – I’m a feminist and I reject body policing. And gender essentialism for that matter. It’s bullshit to insist people (not just women) undergo painful beauty rituals to be acceptable.
“You are always shit at these sort of femme things. That’s why you are dull and uninteresting.” – I identify as a lazy femme. I pick and choose which bits of femme presentation work for me and refuse to be shamed for not conforming. (This has a subtext of not queer enough.)
“Stop trying to make this into a big political issue, you humourless bitch. It’s not about feminism or queer identity, it’s shoes. How trivial.” – If it was trivial, it wouldn’t be a problem for me not to wear heels. (There’s a subtext here of being a bad feminist for taking trivial things too seriously.)
****
When battling my jerkbrain, I find the key thing is to notice it, rather than just accept its sneering and accusations as reality. When I articulate its objections (bad woman, lazy woman, ugly woman, bad queer, bad feminist), I can reject them instead of being tricked into defending myself by proving I’m not those things.
I also notice that my jerkbrain subtly brings up disablist/sexist/classist ideas. “You don’t want to be thought of as one of *those* people”, it whispers. I wish I didn’t have those ideas and I am working to challenge them internally and externally. As with a jerkbrain, noticing the framing helps to reject it, rather than implicitly agree by being defensive.
Regarding actual shoes, I have remembered that my incredibly useful green bag has space for spare shoes so I will be wearing sexy shoes sometimes and changing into comfy shoes WHENEVER I WANT TO!
ROLL ON BICON 😀
