- submitted by Linda Keenan on 04/21/2008
The Making Of A Suburban Hag
I recently walked around for two days with one eyebrow plucked. I do not have naturally dainty wisps framing my face, a la Grace Kelly. My eyebrows are more like Borat's. So I'm walking around with one perfectly sculpted, perpetual surprise-eyebrow and one untamed Borat.
And you know what? No one noticed. Not my husband, not my son, not the moms at preschool (maybe I'm fooling myself there), not the barista at Starbucks, and, most important of all, not me.
I want to make one thing abundantly clear: I have the time to look good. I'm a stay-at-home mom and my sole child has 12 hours of pre-school a week. If I could make up a good excuse for my slovenliness, I would, but I can't.
At first, I thought it was because I'm at home during the day in suburbia, and the only man around is 3 years old and will never care how I look. I bemoaned how unisex my world and routine had become: drop-off at pre-school (frazzled mommies), playdates (coffee-pouring mommies), get-togethers at night (tipsy mommies), wandering aimlessly through Target (restless mommies).
It all came to a head recently when I took a train to New York City for a funeral. There were these exotic, nearly unrecognizable creatures. Stepping aboard, I smelled them, an intoxicating brew of coffee, aftershave and testosterone. Then I saw them, wearing these amazing get-ups, "suits", I believe they call them. They had purposeful expressions, those Blackberrys and iPhones in their holsters, sort of like corporate cowboys. They were, are they? Wait, is that, oh my god, they are! These are men! And the women, all dressed for success, looked as foreign as the men. I didn't want to get off the train.
I was beginning to think I was morphing into a woman-hating shrew, and recently told my husband that I hadn't seen a man other than him since that train ride. Being serenely secure in his man-personhood, he actually felt badly for me, rather than jealous or alarmed. And as usual he was able to suss out the real issue: "is it the women you're tired of? Or do you just miss going to work?"
Of course, it was the latter. The men represented the faraway mists of my former life, when there were certain bare-minimum standards that were inviolable: I had to shower, I had to have a marginally professional outfit on, I had to read the paper to know what was going on. If I didn't do any of these things, invariably, it would be discovered, and remarked on (one memorable moment was my boss saying "it's not casual Friday, Linda!"). These days, I can have a renegade hair on my leg so long it's curling (I'm serious, I'm actually 'boinging' it right now) and there's no one to enforce the bare-minimum standards. And I am not one to uphold too many standards for myself.
They say you dress for your next job. I hope that's not the case. Because if that's true, look for me in a few years with my stale bread bag, talking to all my pigeon friends down by the train station, watching the commuters head to work.
Linda Keenan is a contributing writer at Burbia. Linda worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN. Before that she worked as a writer/producer for Bloomberg TV. She now writes satire, primarily about parenting culture, at Thoroughly Modern Mommy...read more rants
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