body mod: mUndane

Quick note: If sushi was called raw sea kittens, it would be all the more delicious to me. Don't get me wrong, I adore cats. I've been told "crazy cat lady" is in my future. I don't even watch movies with minor cat abuse. Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" nearly broke my heart with the "Meow" incident-- if the narrator had perpetrated it, I would never have forgiven him.

Nonetheless, cats are not fish. And I love ridiculous words and phrases, such as "sea kittens". That would make sushi just a bit sexier for me. In fact, I might start saying I'm going out for sea kittens. It's the same as calling my gyno "the pirate doctor" and cracking jokes about my job as an abortionist's assistant. That's just my humor.

What I came here to say, however, has absolutely nothing to do with dietary or bloviatory habits. It has to do with self-mutilation, of the mildest sorts: eyebrows.

Honestly, I started really putting some thought into this as I stared into the mirror, tweezers in hand, wondering if I should just go in for a waxing. I've never had my brows waxed; in fact, I was late to the plucking game and only started after a friend sat me down about four years ago and dove in. Not to say I was bushy-- I thought my natural eyebrows were rather nice. "It'll change the shape of your face," she said, and I let her reign.

And it did. It at least changed the way I looked at my face, and how it was structured. It became second nature, and I even started to get a thrill out of it. I felt feminine, delicate, and as though I was... okay, maybe I didn't put that much thought into it. The funny thing was that I kept doing it, even after I entered into my "know how I really look" phase. The entirety of my college career I didn't dye or style my hair, things that I had done frequently in high school. I'd cut my hair, but never really shape it beyond a layer or two. If I went for a bob, it was a straight bob, if I grew it out, I cut it flat all the way around. And I've never been one to wear make-up.

I wanted look unashamedly like me, at a time and in a place where everyone was trying so damned hard to look like anyone else. I was able to look into a mirror and say, "Yes, I know that girl." And then pick up the tweezers for a stray.

Maybe it's not funny to anyone else that I never even thought about it, but now I'm looking back at pictures of myself from college going, "Did I ever really know that girl?" My hair's a more confident shade now, and I've got some kicking fringe and contacts, and I even wear some eye make-up from time to time now that I'm not hiding behind my glasses.

Because that's the thing, I guess. I've always found that the best place to hide was in plain sight. If I don't keep secrets, no one can blackmail me. If I tell you upfront what I'm about, then you can't have any revelations about me. If I went out looking brazenly like myself, I could at least pretend that no one saw me.

So now I'm trying something new. I promised 23 would be a monumental year, and it's doing just that in ways I wasn't anticipating. So as far as body modification goes, I'll be getting another tattoo or two, and maybe another couple of piercings. I'm going to shave my pits and legs, I might even get a manicure. But my eyebrows? I'm letting those babies go au naturale, just to remember what I look like.