Today's special: rant of the broken record variety

There’s something that annoys me, something subtle and perhaps it may not seem like a big deal….but it annoys me all the same. It comes from remarks such as "You’re too pretty to be emo", "Geek girls have no style", or as a radio announcer asked Alex Perry the other day "Will we ever see a girl with chunky thighs and a PhD on Top Model?" (paraphrasing, obviously) So what exactly are we implying here, that all PhD students have chunky thighs? That pretty girls can’t be smart and into other things?

People have very clear pictures of how others should look and act, and fit them into the necessary boxes. You wear a lot of black? Into the Goth and emo box you go. You watch Star Trek? Well, then clearly you should go into the geek category. You do well at uni, you wear glasses, you follow celeb gossip, you read comic books, you have a studded belt…whatever, it’ll get you placed firmly in a category. It’s human nature to classify and order, I suppose.

The fact of the matter is, people very rarely fit into such narrow categories. It’s possible to be many things at once, to belong to many groups at the same time without great difficulty. This is hardly revolutionary information and I know I’m covering old ground. I’ve even made peace with society’s incessant need to label absolutely everything. It’s the comments that fire me up. "You’re too pretty to be emo." I mean really. Who says that to someone? Are you really judging an entire collective of people, and then, worst of all, somehow think you’re bestowing a compliment? Come on man, grow up.

I wear a lot of black, I have emo sensibilities, I listen to bands of dubious quality and go to shows, I have an eclectic knowledge of punk history, I’m smart, I write, I like Twilight and Harry Potter, I watch at least an hour of sci-fi a day, I play chess and I’m good at it, I like astronomy, I’m fascinated by comic books, I follow movie news obsessively, I soak up lyrics and quotes like a sponge, I "know the ways of the fangirl", I know the latest trends, I love cars and bikes, I go to rugby games whenever I can, I have more pairs of high heels than I need, I love all things macabre and all things French, I want to earn my PhD and if I lost two kilos, I’d definitely be thin enough to audition for Top Model if I wanted to. And everyone who’s ever made stupid comments to me about where I do and don’t "fit" can go right to hell. I don’t fit anywhere, and that’s exactly the way I like it.

Music: Golden - Fall Out Boy
Mood: Bored