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Dec. 7th, 2007 12:19 pmOkay, so over the last few months I've written several things about body image, self-acceptance, etc. I've also mentioned a few times about how I love who I've turned out to be, regardless of things beyond my control that currently make life difficult. But now I'm wavering in these things that I've worked hard over the years to cement for myself. Why?
Facebook. Damned Facebook.
Why is it Facebook's fault?
Well, many of the people I'm close to know about where I grew up. My family moved from a lower-middle class suburb of Chicago to Wheaton when I was ten. My dad still lives in the house we moved into then. For those of you who are unaware of this significance, Wheaton is extremely conservative- home of Wheaton College-, extremely White- 89% White-, and extremely wealthy- the median household income for a family is $104,000. While my family is pretty firmly White (in fact, we are technically WASPs), we are not, have never been, and will never be either conservative or wealthy- my parent's combined salaries when I was in high school barely broke the $50,000 mark.
I will be first to admit that I got a good education there. Certainly, while we did not rival schools like New Trier, we had a well above average music department for a public high school. I had five years of French, and spoke fairly fluently going into college. I have very fond memories of quite a few teachers, because they not only gave a crap, but they really knew how to teach. I also will be first to admit that I had friends, some even good friends, and had good times. Heck, sometimes I even had great times.
However, despite these things, I never felt like I fit in. I know everybody feels like they never fit in in high school, but I felt outside for different, non-emo reasons. I got along with pretty much everybody, and had friends from many different subgroups, but I certainly was never a "popular" kid- indeed, the only place I was distinguished in any way was music, but the only people who cared as much as I did about that were the teachers- I mean, it just wasn't cool. But beyond this, I could see the differences. I remember having an argument with a friend about the way I wore my earrings. I had a thing for dangly, artsy earrings back then. However, I couldn't wear dangly earrings when I played the viola. Having my ears double pierced (I didn't get the 3rd set till college), I solved the problem in my own way, by putting a pair of studs in the left ear, and wearing the pair of dangly ones in my right ear. This friend, who had recently made the "pom squad", informed me that this made me "look like a lesbian", and she wouldn't sit with me at the lunch table until I changed it around. I stood up to her until a couple of my other friends chimed in with "yeah, it looks dumb, you should change it". I'm still ashamed to this day that I caved.
I could go on for pages and pages about the problems in that high school with racism, sexism, homophobia/transphobia, classism, all sorts of things, but I won't, not right now. Maybe later. But this stuff really overrode the good stuff for me. Quite frankly, I hated going to school in Wheaton. It represents everything that is vile about the suburban lifestyle to me. I'd never dream of living back there, and I'd definitely never consider raising my children in that environment. I find it toxic.
So here I find myself, at 31. I am single, I have no children, I do not have a bachelor's degree, much less a masters- or three!-, I make well under the poverty line, I am considered medically morbidly obese (not that its actually all that hard), I live in a hippie commune, I've been arrested for civil disobedience- and I'm proud of who I am and what I've become. Why am I letting Facebook take this away from me? Why am I so worried that these people will judge me? Will they judge me? Will they care that these things are by choice? Will that make it even worse?
I suppose one answer is to just delete my Facebook account. I'm not really thrilled with Facebook, as a site- its pretty lame, has no discernible benefits as far as I can see except to prove to the people you went to high school with how great you are now, has a terrible, complicated interface made even more complicated by stupid "applications" that people write themselves. (And I ran across this very interesting paper about class divisions between MySpace and Facebook, and I tend to agree with it.) Except there's a big part of me that feels like this is just running away from the problem.
Another answer is to make my profile so scary that it keeps the riff-raff out- you know, write blatant, defensive things about stuff I'm certain will make people go "oooh, she's too liberal, I don't know if I want to be in contact with her again". But that feels immature.
Another answer is to be there, but not really interact. This is kind of what I'm doing now, mostly because I'm paralyzed by indecision. But if that is the case, why be there?
I don't know. Is anybody else dealing with the Facebook Dillemma? What are you going to do?
Facebook. Damned Facebook.
Why is it Facebook's fault?
Well, many of the people I'm close to know about where I grew up. My family moved from a lower-middle class suburb of Chicago to Wheaton when I was ten. My dad still lives in the house we moved into then. For those of you who are unaware of this significance, Wheaton is extremely conservative- home of Wheaton College-, extremely White- 89% White-, and extremely wealthy- the median household income for a family is $104,000. While my family is pretty firmly White (in fact, we are technically WASPs), we are not, have never been, and will never be either conservative or wealthy- my parent's combined salaries when I was in high school barely broke the $50,000 mark.
I will be first to admit that I got a good education there. Certainly, while we did not rival schools like New Trier, we had a well above average music department for a public high school. I had five years of French, and spoke fairly fluently going into college. I have very fond memories of quite a few teachers, because they not only gave a crap, but they really knew how to teach. I also will be first to admit that I had friends, some even good friends, and had good times. Heck, sometimes I even had great times.
However, despite these things, I never felt like I fit in. I know everybody feels like they never fit in in high school, but I felt outside for different, non-emo reasons. I got along with pretty much everybody, and had friends from many different subgroups, but I certainly was never a "popular" kid- indeed, the only place I was distinguished in any way was music, but the only people who cared as much as I did about that were the teachers- I mean, it just wasn't cool. But beyond this, I could see the differences. I remember having an argument with a friend about the way I wore my earrings. I had a thing for dangly, artsy earrings back then. However, I couldn't wear dangly earrings when I played the viola. Having my ears double pierced (I didn't get the 3rd set till college), I solved the problem in my own way, by putting a pair of studs in the left ear, and wearing the pair of dangly ones in my right ear. This friend, who had recently made the "pom squad", informed me that this made me "look like a lesbian", and she wouldn't sit with me at the lunch table until I changed it around. I stood up to her until a couple of my other friends chimed in with "yeah, it looks dumb, you should change it". I'm still ashamed to this day that I caved.
I could go on for pages and pages about the problems in that high school with racism, sexism, homophobia/transphobia, classism, all sorts of things, but I won't, not right now. Maybe later. But this stuff really overrode the good stuff for me. Quite frankly, I hated going to school in Wheaton. It represents everything that is vile about the suburban lifestyle to me. I'd never dream of living back there, and I'd definitely never consider raising my children in that environment. I find it toxic.
So here I find myself, at 31. I am single, I have no children, I do not have a bachelor's degree, much less a masters- or three!-, I make well under the poverty line, I am considered medically morbidly obese (not that its actually all that hard), I live in a hippie commune, I've been arrested for civil disobedience- and I'm proud of who I am and what I've become. Why am I letting Facebook take this away from me? Why am I so worried that these people will judge me? Will they judge me? Will they care that these things are by choice? Will that make it even worse?
I suppose one answer is to just delete my Facebook account. I'm not really thrilled with Facebook, as a site- its pretty lame, has no discernible benefits as far as I can see except to prove to the people you went to high school with how great you are now, has a terrible, complicated interface made even more complicated by stupid "applications" that people write themselves. (And I ran across this very interesting paper about class divisions between MySpace and Facebook, and I tend to agree with it.) Except there's a big part of me that feels like this is just running away from the problem.
Another answer is to make my profile so scary that it keeps the riff-raff out- you know, write blatant, defensive things about stuff I'm certain will make people go "oooh, she's too liberal, I don't know if I want to be in contact with her again". But that feels immature.
Another answer is to be there, but not really interact. This is kind of what I'm doing now, mostly because I'm paralyzed by indecision. But if that is the case, why be there?
I don't know. Is anybody else dealing with the Facebook Dillemma? What are you going to do?
