Uninteresting Musings

I have noticed something, while undertaking this project... It is an opinion I haven't quite solidified in my head, but I'll try to explain it in pieces.

In the beginning, while I was planning everything out in my head, I had expected this week to be incredibly painful. It has been painful, it has been embarassing, and it has been tiring, but it hasn't been anything as bad as what I had imagined.

Today, I'm afraid I cheated a bit. After going to those second hand shops and that art exhibition, I came home, put on a vintage dress, and went to a braai. On the way there, I stopped off at a shop to buy meat and other assorted condiments, and I of course passed the paths of a number of people, many of them young girls.

Suddenly the difference between them and I was so much more obvious to me than it had been this week, or even last week, and I suddenly realized a flaw in my plan.

Appearances are things, essentially. Your changeable, malleable, perennial appearance, like the clothes and make-up you wear, how you do your hair, whether you choose to tan or not, are peices of a mask (I know that sounds melodramatic, but bear with me) you put together, and this is the face you choose to show to the outside world. Yes, it is something you can change, and it is something you can turn on and off, but it is also a part of you, and your identity that is linked to you, even if only slightly.

The reason I felt the difference so much more strongly tonight rather than on any of the other days of my experiment was because tonight, I was wearing my identity, and that highlighted all the more strongly theirs. In my various disguises, I have felt disconnected from my appearance. It's a sign board held away from my body, only for the benefit of society to see, nothing I've worn has really felt like a part of me.

Until tonight.

Maybe people's reactions have been what they have been because they are wearing their identities. Maybe it's a good thing I've been wearing disguises and not my identity. I think if I had been wearing my identity, and asking people what they thought of me like that, I wouldn't have survived the judgements I've been getting.

It's just a make-shift thought.

Make of it what you will.