Like a girl.: seanan

When I was a very small Seanan, I wore blue jeans and frilly pink dresses and liked to have my hair cut so short that I looked like I was auditioning to be one of the Midwich Cuckoos. (That impression was helped by the fact that I was a cornsilk blonde who spent all her time in the sun.) I caught lizards and snakes and crawdads and frogs; I collected buckets of garden snails and jars of rolly-polly bugs. I skinned my elbows and knees and stubbed my toes and once gave myself carpet-burn all the way across my face by goofing off on the stairs. I collected My Little Ponies and loved to read just about anything I could get my hands on. I watched He-Man and She-Ra and the Muppets and reruns of Doctor Who, and I never really gave any thought to whether or not I was acting like a girl.

When I was a slightly larger Seanan, I wore blue jeans and flowered jumpers and kept my hair in ponytails so it wouldn't get in my eyes while I was running around the creek or sliding down Cardboard Hill. I drew crazy pictures and read until my eyes ached and spent my Saturday nights watching horror movies and rooting for the monsters. I filled the bathtub with bullfrogs and tried to teach them to follow simple English commands (it didn't work). I still collected My Little Ponies, and my favorite author in the world was Stephen King. When asked what I was going to grow up to be, I usually answered either "a writer" or "a horror movie host, like Elvira," and I was totally planning to marry Vincent Price, because we could honeymoon in any one of his many, many haunted castles. And I still never really gave any thought to whether or not I was acting like a girl.

Somewhere around age eleven, things started changing. Suddenly, about half the things I liked, and had liked my whole life, were "boy things." My love of horror movies was a problem, not because it was going to give me nightmares or warp me into a serial killer, but because it was "worrisome" to other mothers, who thought I might lead their daughters into "bad behavior." This "bad behavior" would apparently involve, I don't know, being able to name the current lineup of the X-Men and explain the mechanics of spaceflight. I was naughty. Again, I was doing exactly what I'd always done, but the world around me was shifting, and I wasn't shifting fast enough to keep up with it. Now, some of this was my fault; I wasn't a very socially aware kid—there was always something more important to do!—and I didn't keep up with the cultural norms. But a lot of it was mystifying to me then, and is mystifying to me now. I'm fortunate to be cisgendered. I have always been a girl, felt like a girl, known I was a girl. I'm just a girl who likes horror movies and musicals, spiders and kittens, Stephen King and My Little Pony. So what the heck is the problem?

Apparently, that is the problem. If I'd been more of a tomboy, people would have had a convenient box into which I could be placed. My sisters, faced with the same issue, grew up to be James Dean and a goth Betty Page. I kept trucking along as Marilyn Munster, frustrating people who wanted me to be easy to categorize. That was okay, because they frustrated me, too. I always just assumed it would eventually go away, and we'd all get to be people, and the girls would do things like girls because girls were doing them, not because of some innate "girliness" of the things, and the boys would do things like boys for the same reason. Better still, maybe we'd all just do things like people.

It didn't go away. If anything, it's gotten worse, since now it's "cute" when I know horror movie trivia, and "totally predictable" when a spider scares the ever-loving crap out of me by dropping on my head while I'm trying to work. It's "strange and interesting" when a girl writes horror, even though the majority of people in your average horror movie audience are female. (Mind you, the gender ratio inverts for written horror, I think largely because there is so much rape in modern horror fiction. Every other chapter, the rape returns. I can skip it when reading, but I have real trouble writing it, current genre standard or not. Maybe I'm weird? But when I write a book, I want to enjoy it, and I don't really enjoy writing about rape.) I'm expected to be nicer, better-dressed, and work harder than the men of my acquaintance, just to stay on the same footing—because otherwise, I'm trying to get by on being a girl.

I am a girl. That's not changing. I am a snake-loving frog-catching horror-watching virus-studying skirt-wearing Midwich Cuckoo Marilyn Munster girl. I'm not getting by on anything. I'm not making comments on gender politics when I combine my Bedazzler with my chainsaw. I'm just being me. It's about the only thing I'm any good at.

Everything I do, I do like a girl. And that's okay.

saffronrose

August 14 2010, 18:56:49 UTC 6 years ago

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I wasn't afraid of reptiles, or most household bugs/spiders. Apparently competing with boys in middle school for grades was Not Done, but I didn't understand that. I never understood the Let the Wookie/boy Win mentality, either. I was always fascinated with medical news, and history of the plague, leprosy and St. Vitus Dance. I wish my parents had been a little more forthcoming on how to get a job, or in dealing with moeny.

I have always hated being put in boxes, and the one male Latvian who tried got short shrift. I don't fit boxes very well, although I do more than I used to, alas.

Keep being you, you ARE good at it, and what you write is the more fascinating for it.

seanan_mcguire

August 16 2010, 14:34:27 UTC 6 years ago

Thank you.

August 16 2010, 17:26:38 UTC 6 years ago

BTW, I lived near TWO men who caught bubonic plague in the 80s, one in Diamond Bar, and the other a veterinarian in Claremont.

The first one posed a quandry to the doctors treating him, as they didn't know what it was, but kept giving him wide-spectrum ABs until some bright soul dicovered the dx.

The second one was also a hiker, and he thought it was something minor he should tough out. I never did find out how his clients felt about the possibility he could pass any fleas not found to their pets...

August 18 2010, 15:06:14 UTC 6 years ago

Ooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Awesome.

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