I sat in a frigid moot court room at a conference on the morning of March 8, trying to concentrate. Within an hour of the program’s opening keynote, my underarms had become damp with that weird cold sweat that happens when you are at once freezing and yet decidedly overwarm in your wool overcoat. I was distracted, trying to decide whether I was sick, menstruant, nervous, or inappropriately dressed. My coat was long and fitted over my suit coat, and I was vaguely worried about bleeding through or around what had become a misaligned feminine product. Sitting straight in all those stiff layers for several hours felt, I imagined, something like the confinement of a full body corset.
The collar was taut around my neck, which made me feel sort of protected, but my presently over-long hair was caught up in a bun that kept bumping against the back of that same collar. My glasses were smudged, and I can barely see out of them anyway at present, so I pushed them on top of my head. However, my piled up, giant-feeling hair kept rocking them off center, so they sat at a precarious tilt on their perch. Every time I leaned to get something from my purse, they would clumsily tumble forward off my head and onto the floor. My pulled-back hair was giving me hair headache (which is just hard to explain if you’ve never had it – maybe something like a toothache in your hair follicles), and my left eye was working a sty that made my left eyelid twice the size of the right one. My eyes are naturally a little unevenly sized, and it is especially apparent when I am tired, so with the sty, I was rocking a sort of partial Peter Lori look. Continue reading “Integrity of the Self by Natalie Weaver”
Feminism and Religion 