Harmless Office Supply Or Identity?

I'm slowly coming to grips with my newly purchased planner.

I finally went to Staples and bought a 2010 planner. I'd asked for an academic one from work back in September but kept forgetting to follow up with the guy who does the shopping. And by November's end, an academic year planner just seemed silly. And then New Year's came and went, and with each passing work day, I've been using that teeny-tiny "future planning" yearly spread in the back of my 2009 planner. This past Sunday was the day I finally decided things had to change.

Even though my old planner was a mere 'weekly' calendar with no bells or whistles, I had gotten used to it--used to not having the monthly spreads every four weeks or so, used to not having the super helpful month tabs on the side, used to the pre-printed meeting hours not matching up with my usual workday/week. If I was going to spend my own money on 2010 planner, though, I wanted to get the planner of my dreams.

So after about 10 minutes of ogling the aisle, I am deciding between a small brown weekly/monthly and a tall handsome green weekly [only], and I decide to go with "size." Saying that I went with vanity makes it sound like I am a beauty-over-brains kind of girl, but I knew that by choosing the green one, I'd get both vanity and size. I'd get to be business but not boring. And that makes me practical, right? A more-bang-for-my-buck thing.

And then I notice a smaller, same shade of green, monthly [only]. I'm thinking: I could get both weekly and monthly [yes], have vanity [yes!] , and spend twice the money for the inevitability of not wanting to lug TWO planners around [no]. So I tell myself again that I'm being practical and decide to take the weekly green planner up to the register.

And yet, three feet before the register is a small table touting a bunch of planners for the new year. I owe it to myself to look. I skim over everything quickly, still clutching my green goddess, and then I see the words "weekly/monthly" printed on one of the larger ones. I flip it open, and it has monthly tabs as well. Examining the 'week' pages, I see that a workday goes from 7am to 9pm--good enough hours for my unusual schedule. Everything about this new planner is screaming "I'm The One!" Every thing, except for the hot pink cover. It's Staples brand, so I quickly go back to the aisle, surmise that yes, indeed this planner is one of only two Staples weekly/monthly's left in the store--both 'pank'--said in my thickest Texan.

Part of me, a large part, doesn't want to look at a hot pink planner for an entire year. I don't want to see it on my desk, I don't want to pull it out of my otherwise sophisticated Timbuk2 during meetings with school principals or intern interviewees.  In short, I don't want to be the girl with the pink planner. I don't want everyone in 2010 who sees me to think I chose pink, and what a shade it is, over all the other possible colors available to me, as if I'm some sorority princess turned law school student. I may have once been blond, but I am not that girl.

I wanted the muted, olive green planner.
But my shame in my own vanity made me buy the pink one. Who am I to care what other people think (perhaps my biggest character flaw)? I don't have to fall prey to the simple gender binary. So what if I'm not a girly-girl. By owning one thing that's pink, even owning and loving one pink thing, I am not redefining my gender. It's just a pink planner.

(If you've read this far, then you probably understand why this detail has turned into a blog entry. No matter how many times I think it, this post is evidence enough that this pink planner is not just a pink planner.)

Maybe I have it wrong. Maybe my choices weren't spurred by vanity after all but by self identity (probably both), and I've been giving vanity all the credit. Maybe I needed to write about my Elle Woods planner to confirm for myself that my gender identity is not made by things that surround me, that I can still feel and be the girl who likes green even though I'm also the girl who sports pink.

And then somewhere in this thought I can't help but see this analogously, minutely, to how some people feel all the time. Some people, whether they identify as transgender or not, feel consistently let down by their circumstances. Maybe the clothes they have to wear match society's views about how they should dress but don't match their internal sense of self. And once I'm here in my thought process I start to fester about how crappy society's gender prescriptions can be and about how I support folks being true to themselves as frequently as they can. And then that thought of course leads me back to feeling bad about my pink planner purchase. Pink isn't me, so why did I let myself not follow my self? And then I feel doubly the schmuck because now I've tried to liken my trivial office supply list to a person's experiences with gender variance or gender nonconformity. Will the self shame ever end?

So, as I'm trying to come to grips with my purchase of the hot pink planner, I am forced to remind myself just how deeply Gender effects confidence.

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I used to think my planner said I was stressed but well time-managed, organized and yet fun. Now, I'm not so sure. What does your planner look like? What features are a "must?" What does your planner say about you? Is this an accurate description?

Why Movies and TV (and most books) Suck

(Written Christmas Eve, Posted….today.)


Being in my mother’s house for the holidays has its advantages. I don’t have to get up or go to sleep on any schedule, like I imagine Snow White needed to do; I don’t have to see ANYONE that I don’t want to see and this is mainly because it would be hard to see them if I tried (which is the complete opposite of the main wife on Everybody Loves Raymond); and I don’t have to worry about wearing something cute and impressive each day like all those girls on The Bachelor (see previous list item). And this year it’s especially just TJ (my mother) and me, since she’s recently decided to divorce her ungrateful bum of husband, and my brother won’t be home from his tour in Korea until nearly April. Just us unwed girls.

One more advantage to a Texas Christmas is the number of TV shows and movies on cable I’ve been able to see. In fact, if it weren’t for movies, my sudoku book, and my recently purchased copy of Wicked the novel, I’d be terribly depressed--due to a sparse Internet connection and the fact that my partner and I once again are spending this holiday apart. But back to movies. Last night (23 Dec. 2009), after an all you can eat fried catfish special at The Flying Fish in Ft. Worth, TJ and I went shopping. And after driving our bags back home (with the windows down and not a jacket in sight) we cozied up to the movie Miss Potter with Renee Zellweger. It wasn’t my first pick of what we should watch, but my mother thought I’d enjoy it because it’s about Beatrix Potter—the children’s book author which I loved so much as a youngster.

I was fascinated to learn that many of the characters Potter created she did so while still a child herself, and that she’d always had a knack for painting and drawing. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that the crux of the story lie not in the struggle of publishing and selling books, nor in the disapproval of her mother, but in the idea of marriage: for class or love or even at all. I’ll repeat that I did enjoy the film. It is only when being distracted while viewing or when contemplating the narrative arch afterward that I become exceedingly critical.

When the movie opens, Beatrix is a thirty-two year-old woman with an eighty year-old chaperone, unmarried and not seemingly unsatisfied with that. Her main goal is to find a publisher, which happens rather quickly.

The next phase of the story takes place as Beatrix plans the first book and becomes close with her publisher and his sister—another unmarried, unconventional, woman, Amelia. At first, I was excited to see a supporting lesbian character. I had secret hopes of Beatrix ending up with the sister whom it seems is very fond of her.  Half way through the movie, though, the publisher asks Beatrix to marry him and she says yes, after asking Amelia for advice and blessing.

Beatrix here is right to ask the friend/sister of the would-be groom. Amelia initially based their friendship on the fact that they are both independent and unmarried.  And yet, Amelia, put in this place has no other option but to say something like ‘it’s better to be loved’ and if you have that chance, take it.

The crux, as I mentioned earlier is that Beatrix’s mother and father do not approve of the marriage, for it does nothing for their standing in the world. And so, her parents cut a deal with Beatrix: she can keep the engagement and eventually get married with their blessing, IF she keeps the engagement secret through the summer. She agrees to this, and they take her to the country for the summer, hopefully to let her feelings for the publisher “cool.” In the meantime, the publisher gets sick and dies before Beatrix can even get back to London to sit by his bed.

Beatrix Potter stays unmarried, for the meantime, buys a farm or several in the country, and keeps making books and oodles of money. We know it is a happy ending to the movie because it says that eight years after Beatrix moved to the country, she married a childhood friend she met there. Oh, and by the way, she ended up buying 4000 acres to keep it from development and gave it to England for preservation.

What a major upset: the extraordinary accomplishments of this woman are mere margin scrawl compared to the power punch of not being able to live the life she wanted with the man she loved. And what is more upsetting to me is that I continually fall for this. Even though I was rooting for Amelia to get the girl, I was all mushy-hearted when the guy secretly gave Beatrix a beautiful ring in the lamp light of a snowy street. Mushy-hearted and jealous. And then I felt guilty for feeling that way and betraying my tie-wearing friend Amelia who couldn’t even ask the woman she loved to marry her even if she’d wanted.

What I can’t understand is whether my increasing want to get married (with a ring and dress and mostly all the other traditionally girly wedding things) is brought on by a bombardment of heteronarratives like the one in Miss Potter and most any other sort of drama—or if it is my increasing want to get married that is making me latch onto all of the wedding stories I hear/watch. I know that it’s an impossible chicken or egg scenario. However, I can’t help wondering if I’d feel the urge to tie the knot less if I were protected from watching any film or Television show with marriage as the underlying arch. (I know, I know—this wouldn’t leave much to see in network or cable TV, but it would help me from feeling like Monica from Friends, desperate for the day when I too can shop for a white dress.)