Being a manly girl :-)

Long long long ago, Dhanya had passed on a tag to me. It was something about doing things your gender “is not supposed to do”. This was her entry – http://itsmyownspace.blogspot.in/2010/07/i-have-sinned.html

I was, like most girls, a typical tomboy in my early teens. There was a time I refused to wear earings, and mom had to drag in grandparents to convince me to keep the hole in my ear alive. I carried men’s handkerchiefs, umbrellas – and kicked stones on the road. Well, most of it is ‘was’.

Another phase came in my early 20s when wearing a lot of pink gave me the tag of a ‘typical girl’. Let’s see, now what do I do that’s considered ‘unwomanly’

1. I hardly use a comb. Not cause I don’t care what my hair looks like, I seem to think it is most beautifully curly when left uncombed.

2. I hear most of my girlfriends say they lose a lot of time deciding what to wear every morning. I take the first thing I see and mom complains I always end up wearing the same thing on and on.

3. I hate gold. And I forget to wear earings most days. I am mostly ornamentless.

4. Hate gossip. Long ago, whenever my friends used to talk about “those two being an item” I would say you never know from what you see, they could be just friends. So they’d say “There goes a couple of Cris’s friends”

5. I hate speaking like a child. In Malayalam we call this ‘konchal’. Many grownup women, I have observed, have this annoying habit of speaking “sweetly”. I believe it works as a turn on for men.

6. Hate appearing helpless and over-dependant for every little thing. They need an escort to cross the road! Err I say ‘they’ as if I don’t belong to that gender. I mean, some of them – which sort of form a majority.

7. This is not something I am proud of – but I don’t cook

8. Totally disorganized and messy (it’s such fun listing it here, suggesting all these qualities by default belong to men). I leave my desk, my bed and my room all messy. My girlfriends and mom try each time to bring some neatness around. I leave wet clothes on the bed – that, I hear is very manly 😀

9. I don’t use the c-word. Mm ok here goes: c-u-t-e. Also don’t use the s word. S-w-e-e-t. Especially ‘so c-word’ and ‘so s-word’. Not the puppies on the road, neither the babies. But I do love kids. Oh I also don’t use ‘miss you’s much.

10. I don’t notice what others wear. So everytime my mom or a friend comes and asks ‘so how is it’ I have no idea what they are talking about. I have also managed to call several of my mom’s oldest clothes brand new.

I think I will list some stuff that’s typically womanly too.

1. I love pink!

2. I carry a lot of ‘girly’ stuff like teddy bear bags and flowers on head

3. I like being expressive, yell ‘wee’ when I am excited and mope pretty obviously when I am down. Men, I hear, are not good with emotions.

4. I love dresses and skirts and lots of kohl on my eyes

5. I love giving cris-only nicknames to friends, which make them mine.

6. I love six. How is that womanly? Well women are accused of liking things that other people didn’t even think existed