New Sunday Series: Putting Literary in Lolita

Taking time to reflecting on life in general through writing is an excellent way to process experiences. Keeping a journal doesn't provide the same strength in benefit, since one records new things as they happen without giving them time to sink in (and you've seen how bad that is for writing if you've seen my oldest blog posts). How can you if you want to record all of an event's details before they're forgotten? To learn anything, the subject in question must be revisited, thoroughly examined, and analyzed. If one can't learn something as straightforward as algebra without these things, then understanding our own personalities and experiences will be impossible without this kind of focus.

So what's this reflective writing doing here on a style blog?

I'll remind you, respected reader, that the difference between fashion and style is the difference between reaction and action. This is not a fashion blog promoting the newest releases of lolita brands, even if that sometimes happens. This is a style blog, where clothes serve as a self-expressive art-form, an ambiguous language, and an ambivalent reflection of clothing's existence in our society. The Literary Lolita, in other words, is taking Sundays to get literary and explore the self that is so often expressed in lolita style.

All entries are poems, short stories, or non-fiction essays authored by me (Rhon C.) unless otherwise stated. If you are interested in submitting your own piece exploring the connection between self and style, contact me through the The Literary Lolita's facebook page. If it is put up on this blog, you will be credited and linked according to your preference.

The first post has been placed under the following cut for those who are only viewing this post to find out what the Putting Literary in Lolita series is about.

On Being a Girl

My father’s life was crushed by vaginas and tits, if you ask him. My mom also hated women, though now, finally, she’s happy in her four inch stilettos, elegant red dress, and thigh holster with her .357 Magnum (only because the 40 won’t fit no matter how hard she tries to jam it in). From the outside it looks like she’s playing the part of an ideal woman from a man’s perspective. Or my stepdad’s perspective, because that’s actually pretty weird. All three of them taught me, at some length, that a woman’s place is at home, making it shine for a strong, masculine, prize husband.

Right now I plop onto my black ikea couch and apprehend a call to Mom.

“You should have married William,” Mom’s voice picks up a thicker Vietnamese accent with the momentum of her excitement. “He’s stable. You know, if he’s still single I bet he would still marry you if you would just settle down. Not in California though, it’s full of hippies. You want to raise a family in a God-loving state.” I envision her posture perking up with her voice, “You can move onto a ranch!” My guilt builds with her image of the American Dream.

“I’m pretty happy with Eric, you know… Yeah, it could have been nice. I’m okay, really! I love you, Mom. Yeah I gotta go pick him up. Bye, oh, say hi to Dad for me! Okay, bye.” We use my boyfriends as metaphors for lifestyles, and skip over the girls I’ve dated since she’s in such great denial of my amorous and sexual orientation that she literally ignores the topic when I bring them up. Is it that radical?

I slouch from the couch to the closet. My only pair of jeans disappeared on a trip to San Francisco. Oh no, have to wear my favorite dress. My sarcasm is cheerful. I pose excessively before the mirror and leave five minutes late for lunch with Eric.

The difference between me at 24 and me at 4 is only slightly more than of anyone else who survived the same stretch of hormones and heartbreak. I spent my childhood with inch long hair and plaid over-shirts—despite loving dresses, but appropriately because the best fun was building dinky freeways in the sweetly scented dirt with my CAT hotrods. Saddened at having two and a half feet of hair cut off, but grateful to not have to brush it anymore, I didn’t find such an incident worth as much thought as the next GI Joe adventure (would one be exposed to the fierce tundra of the freezer? No one knew where they would end up). What was extra confusing was halfway in-between, 14 and suddenly immersed in crowds of other teenagers. Now I had tits.

“She’s faking an asthma attack,” a paramedic looked at 15 year-old me with disgust as I wheezed panic, gripped a cheap plastic school chair, and cut off my own air with the power of a hypochondriac. My mom drove me to the hospital to avoid ambulance fees, and in the end the
paramedic walked back through my wing with a twinkle in his eye while I sat humiliated and pissed—the standard state of many teenagers. Hello, emo loner phase.

Hatred comes from fear. Fear usually stems from ignorance. We are afraid of the dark because we can’t see what it may be holding. I didn’t know what females were supposed to look like or act like, and no one besides my parents could offer a clear explanation, and that explanation nagged at me like a urinary tract infection. My fear of women (or being one?) was so complete that I would have anxiety attacks  many times over from 14 to 17, learning to keep them quietly without passing out (remember to breathe. In, out, in out, inoutin-ack. Restart.)

I committed to getting a sex change (goodbye, tits, vagina, and self-loathing,) but before 18 had done enough research to learn that it was already too late. I’d never have broad shoulders, my hips were already widening, my voice would be forever trapped like an 8-year old girl’s… and worst of all even after the surgery had healed and I’d finished paying the thousands of dollars to get it, my penis would probably never even be anything besides a dangling flab, of which I already had two on my chest, thanks. I put it out of my mind and joined the Army, vagina and all.

People don’t really have a gender in the Army. Instead, a private has their anatomy.

“Females, to the tar pits!” And all of us with vaginas trudged to a 200 foot sandbox full of shredded rubber tires and tears. We crawled on our bellies, we “shrimped” across (an action involving clenching the abs until curled like a shrimp, and then exploding into a line, primarily inching along one side with only shoulders and knees as points of contact with the ground) about fifty times and then we dragged our feet back to the barracks for a good night’s three hour rest. The female drill sergeants had a bone to pick with the world, and I went from being one of the slowest and weakest to running two miles in fourteen minutes and outperforming half the males in the rifle range and scoring perfect marks in the classroom. Not bad. The discipline and activity is good for a teen with too much free time. Who had time to think about that superfluous gender crap when there were floors to buff and weapon systems to polish?

Any stolen free time went into books and magazines. First, it was a backpacking magazine. Then, a weakness for flowers emerged and I got a magazine about gardening, and somehow, with my mind cleared of life before the Army, I purchased a magazine called Victoria, which was filled with rose gardens and Victorian houses and photos of scones and pots of tea and various other things that reeked girly. My time in the Army is over, but so is my child and teenhood.

I think of my mother’s thigh  holster on the short drive to Eric’s work, and straighten out the petticoat

beneath my pink skirt.