Updates On Inking, Pain

I got the tattoo and it came out better than I could have hoped, which is about the last good thing that's happened in the last two months here. I got it on October 16th and we've been pretty much all downhill from there. I haven't really been updating because I know no one wants to hear about how I hate everyone sometimes. Yes, everyone. ESPECIALLY YOU.

Anyway, to continue what I was talking about way back then, the hair and the tattoo. I went back and had my hair re-done and it's red now, but I'm still not entirely happy. It's red and people call it red and all, but I know natural redheads whose hair is WAY more red. Anyway, right after I get it done it looks something like this but eventually it fades considerably. People still call it red but I don't feel like it really is. It still looks better than my natural color, though, so I'm keeping it. And the lady who colors my hair seems incapable of going any more red (I keep asking and it keeps not happening) so I guess it's going to stay this way until I feel like undergoing the grueling task of finding a new stylist-- which I don't plan on doing anytime soon.

The tattoo is pretty cool. I know its one wing looks all mushed up in that photo, but it's 'cause I was holding my arm back. That was right after it was done and it was really sore if I had my arm anywhere other than pinned directly at my side. Anyway, it's all healed now, so I think it's time for another one.

You know how if you ask someone if their tattoo/piercing hurt a lot, they always tell you it doesn't hurt? Same for waxing/threading and stuff like that. "Oh Brazilian waxes? Those don't hurt AT ALL, just go for it!"

All of these statements are lies. All of those things hurt. The thing is that they hurt, but it's tolerable, and its manageable. I think we come to assume that pain is something we can't reasonably have-- the reason why people get angry at me for not taking aspirin when I have a headache even though it doesn't affect them. To most of us most of the time, pain of any amount is something to be avoided at all costs, and to cause any amount of pain is abhorrent. If you and your friends are slinging rubber bands at each other and someone goes "OW, dude that one HURT!" then the game is over. You apologize. Why any of you assumed that getting hit with rubber bands WOULDN'T hurt is questionable. What's solid is that, if you sling a rubber band and it hits someone and it stings, you're an asshole.

So when you encounter pain that is manageable, you don't really know how to categorize it. Furthermore, since you actually sought out and paid to have this pain, you feel like you can't reasonably say it was painful. Why would you go out and pay someone to hurt you? So you end up saying it doesn't hurt, because that's the only category we have that accurately describes your relationship with the pain you experienced.

Just before my tattoo I suddenly panicked. What if the pain was more than I could handle? I was there with my then-boyfriend who had a massive tattoo all the way down one arm. If I couldn't take it I would have to concede that he was tougher than me, something I will never ever do otherwise. He told me he ended up watching TV and cranking up his headphones at full volume because it hurt so bad, and the sound of the machine made it worse. What if I couldn't take it?

Not only did I take it just fine, I didn't have any distractions. I just kind of starred off into space for two hours, occasionally chatting with then-boyfriend, mostly scanning the titles of the books on the shelves in front of me. I think this annoyed him because he kept offering me my iPod or phone and I kept declining, and finally he got cranky and decided to go get a soda from the store across the street so he wouldn't have to watch me be way tougher than him.

Update, Re: Hope

My optimism has waned considerably after three tries and vaguely-red-and-not-even-the-right-red hair. Why is it so easy to shake up my world views? I think all anthropologists are like this. If we weren't, there's no way we could use Warcraft to write on the creation of identity and the nature of human interaction. And certainly no one would give you tenure for it*.

If anything, the cognitive dissonance and guilt related to having to tell your perky stylist they messed up is just further proof that I am never going to change. And, more importantly, if I think dying my hair will make me change, I am dumb but probably also a fantastic ethnographer. Because in medical anthropology EVERYTHING MEANS EVERYTHING and no extrapolation is too generous. Take the last article I read, for example: People sharing food with each other in Fiji means that your body is communally owned and you are not your own individual person, nor do you have control over your own physicality.

So my excitement over the tattoo is combined now with a deep-seated fear of permanent disfigurement and a compulsion do just freaking do it anyway because like, come on. Really.

Though I guess it's not fair to say I'll never change, since I haven't turned in my last two weekly assignments in Ethnobotany and I don't even really care. Normally this would cause me to panic but these things are like, what, half a percent of the whole semester? And when I have a paper, presentation, project, or midterm nearly every day for three solid weeks, watching videos and giving trite summaries is just gonna have to go on the back burner. The fact that I'm okay with that is pretty interesting.



*If this does NOT make you want to quit your job and become an anthropologist, you better be a professional chocolates-massages-and-wine-at-the-same-time critic because I cannot imagine anything sweeter than getting paid to screw around in Warcraft and then tell people how to think about it.

How Dying My Hair Brown Made Me Fear The Future, Part II

My god. What if the tattoo ends up like the hair? Good looking to everyone but me? Just far enough from what I wanted that every time someone points it out, I get even more disappointed? If I can't even pick who to color my hair and cope with five days of off color, how could I possibly pick a tattoo artist? What would I do if THAT didn't come out right? If the wrong hair color makes me feel like I'm looking at a different person in the mirror, A) how much of a sissy am I and B) what the hell kind of reaction would I have to the wrong tattoo?

Suddenly the insecurities came back. Maybe these are superficial changes and aren't really enough to make them go away. Even if I get the right red, even if I get the right tattoo, even if I didn't need grad school-- am I really going to feel different? I had imagined embodying the kind of person I wanted to be would make me that person. In all likelihood, I will not change. And when I imagine me in that body, it suddenly doesn't seem to appealing. Maybe I won't be vibrant and self-assured. Maybe I will still be worried and difficult, just with red hair and a tattoo and a lower education level.

While on the one hand I feel like I should know that getting body mods and new hair styles doesn't make a person change. But in my work to change thoughts and behavior, I felt like I needed to look different to really be regarded as different-- even just to myself. I remembered back when I wore whatever I wanted and had ridiculous hair, when I had friends and people thought I was tough. I was more obviously an individual, and because of that I feel now that the expectations of me were very different.

If I obviously looked how I wanted without much regard for how stupid that was, it sent three messages: 1) That I was stupid, 2) that I wasn't about to change anything I did for you, and 3) that I was stupid and wasn't about to change anything I did for you. Somehow, those three not entirely desirable judgments made me a more likable person. Back then no one ever told me "You know what your problem is?" or "You ALWAYS do this!" Back then anything I did to rub my friends the wrong way was met with a shrug and a write off-- well, that's Blossom. That's why we like her, she's kind of a jerk. It's funny.

Maybe I thought that if I started looking how I imagined would be awesome without concern for how weird it was, I could get that pass again. The imperfections would turn back into quirks. The quirks would build character, not a character flaw. In some ways, I would rather be the ranga with freckles and temper than anyone else.

So I'm going tomorrow to get the red, and ten days after that I'm getting that tattoo. I'm still not going to grad school and I don't plan on taking the GRE "just in case." I'll keep going to my unpaid internship, crossing my fingers that something I learn or someone I meet will prevent me from having to move back in with my parents next year. I will make that Rocky Horror joke in my medical anthropology lecture when we discuss the formation of the transsexual identity through surgical practice. I guess because hope springs eternal and even though the future is just as scary as ever, I'm not going to let that stop me from going there anymore.

How Dying My Hair Brown Made Me Fear The Future, Part I

Apparently some people were actually reading this and were disappointed when I stopped updating. Traveling this summer and moving back into the dorms, coupled with an internship and a full 18 credit semester, has left me with little time to bitch and pontificate. Time passed and shit happened. More on this later. For now, I would like to explain how dying my hair brown last Saturday made me extremely fearful of the future.

I've wanted to be a redhead since I was a kid. I always talked about coloring my hair but never did it because I used to grow out & donate my hair to nonprofits that make wigs out of them. Don't judge my hobbies-- it beats model trains and fantasy football. Some sick kids out there now have 12-17 inches of my flexible head growths. Anyway, I finally decided to just cave and color my hair. Originally I was gonna do it in a salon, then I got talked into doing it at home, then I got talked into doing it in a salon again. Last Saturday I came with the photos I've been pining over for the last few years (my tastes in shades of red have changed since the teenygoth days of yesteryear) and went to the lady who usually makes my hair look so damn good.

I left with brown hair.

Not intentionally-- and, mind, it was a different shade of brown. Somewhere a wire had been crossed that turned copper red to a not at all red kind of brown. The roots were reddish and, only seeing that, I left without realizing that all the hair behind my head was only about one shade off. It wasn't until I got home and inspected it in the mirror and normal, non-trendy salon lighting that I realized it was not at all red on 90% of my head.

People complimented it every day since, since it's still a nice shade of brown, but it's not red. It's not RED so it's not what I wanted, and no amount of being a nice shade of brown has yet been able to quell my disappointment. It's like finally getting the courage to jump out of the plane with your parachute to find you're only ten feet off the ground. You land on your feet and everyone claps a little, but it is just not the same damn thing as terminal velocity.

I rescheduled for tomorrow to have it re-done, but now I'm plagued by insecurities. This red was one of the first steps in my transition from a stressed student to someone who I was determined would be more relaxed, more accepting of her situation. I was going to stop fearing the what-ifs, stop sweating the extra efforts, and start doing the things that made me feel good. I started eating better, packing lunches and snacks so I didn't go hungry all day during class (a bad habit I've had since middle school). I stopped impulse shopping. I threw out much of my lazy clothes. I decided not to go to grad school right now, not to take the GREs. I convinced myself not to panic when I ran out of time and couldn't complete an assignment. I made the appointments to dye my hair red and get that tattoo.

The most immediate of these things has gone wrong. And not horribly wrong, because it's fixable, but many of these others are not. If dying my hair was a mistake, what else was a mistake? What about all the things I threw away? What about grad school? What about a freaking tattoo?