Internet Burkha
I fear working full time but that is the work I have taken. A while back I tried on a fearlessness of working full time on this blog.
It was a lie. Sorry, friends. A lie made possible by your unknowing of me. A lie that aided me then, and now. An alternative identity to test.
It is something I have a come to adore about blogging the privileges of anonymity. Like many of you, no doubt, I look down my big ole Western nose at any image of the burkha but maybe I am a hypocrite?
Think about it. Am I alone? Wherefore Mommyblogging?? Is not the facelessness (discorporea?) a part of it? Maybe there is something inherent to certain aspects of the feminine that begs a sort of blindness? Things like motherhood? Dead babies? Wretched disease? Maybe the burkha is not so myopic as my western views attest. Yes, it is a uniformity of women as a class. I get it. I get it. But, it is also a multiplication of identity. Woman within and without the dress, more than a single being, in a manner of speaking. That is how I feel, how I enjoy feeling, in here sometimes.
Burkha, the ancient avatar?
Ah yes, another patented, half-post. But since it never seems one I can finish, might as well put it out there?
ps. nice pic, eh? it belongs to natalie.
It was a lie. Sorry, friends. A lie made possible by your unknowing of me. A lie that aided me then, and now. An alternative identity to test.
It is something I have a come to adore about blogging the privileges of anonymity. Like many of you, no doubt, I look down my big ole Western nose at any image of the burkha but maybe I am a hypocrite?
Think about it. Am I alone? Wherefore Mommyblogging?? Is not the facelessness (discorporea?) a part of it? Maybe there is something inherent to certain aspects of the feminine that begs a sort of blindness? Things like motherhood? Dead babies? Wretched disease? Maybe the burkha is not so myopic as my western views attest. Yes, it is a uniformity of women as a class. I get it. I get it. But, it is also a multiplication of identity. Woman within and without the dress, more than a single being, in a manner of speaking. That is how I feel, how I enjoy feeling, in here sometimes.
Burkha, the ancient avatar?
Ah yes, another patented, half-post. But since it never seems one I can finish, might as well put it out there?
ps. nice pic, eh? it belongs to natalie.
Labels: half-post, Pollyanna Stuff, women, work
posted by mo-wo at 10:28 p.m.
6 Comments:
I originally thought about concealing my identity in this "Internet Burkha" but then I wasn't being true to myself. Part of who I am is sharing myself not just in words but in pictures as well. Thought provoking though...
What are you going on about? I look exactly like my avatar. Full-on make up. Girdle. Hair set to aqua-netted perfection. Coy knowing half smile.
I'm also pretty confident that people who like my blog probably wouldn't like me in real life. I'm way more concise and better grammared on the internets. Also in real life I seldom refer to Alan Rickman as my future spouse.
It's funny, this somehow resonates with the Enola Holmes mystery I'm reading, in which she keeps noting how she makes use of the uniforms of different classes or types of women to go unnoticed among them, and she does, indeed, get passed over as merely one more of that type. I think it's somewhat the same wtih mothers - bear a pregnant belly, wear a sling, or push a stroller, and you become invisible behind it, people assuming they know who and what you are by that synmbol alone.
I am not as anonymous as I would like to be. Not because of the face I present on the 'blog, which is pretty pseudonymous, but because of the extended relations who know it is there and who follow my life along like some crazy family newsletter. In other words, my audience has come to dictate my identity, not the other way around.
Sometimes I wish I could run away and start over.
the analogy is interesting...i think, in the West, we have a limited understanding of what the burkha signifies, perhaps similar to the way people who live outside the culture of online communities fail to get what it really means to narrativize our lives in these spaces.
full time, huh? i hope the reality turns out to feel as okay as the performance of it.
I'm admitting to being confused by your post.. you're working full-time, I get that.. but the part about lying about being afraid of working full-time, it gets a little confused.. are you saying you're hating your job, or that you're loving it?!
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