Well, apparently I'm a man.

So things are going much better with my roommate. I think she was just having a rough couple of weeks or so with her boyfriend (or something) and I think I was just kind of getting the bad end of it. Anyway, last night we had a friendly conversation and we were laughing and things were back to how they were at the beginning when she wasn’t a scary bitch.
Towards the end, she repeated her long-standing offer to do up my hair all nice. And then, excited by the idea, she then went on to say she was going to teach me all about make-up. So, not stuff I’m particularly interested in, but it’s definitely sweet of her to offer, no? Finally she clapped her hands together and call out, “We’re going to teach you to be feminine!”


A line which, while I have no doubt it was meant with good intentions, caused me to put on a show of giggling and smiling, but when I turned over to try to go to sleep kept me up for a couple hours.

It’s not exactly a news flash. I’ve always known I’m not exactly the most feminine girl. Part of that I’m going to blame on only having older brothers, and part of that I’m just going to be blame on how I am. I’ve never been particularly interested in hanging out with other girls, and I certainly don’t dress like one. So yeah, I get it, I’m not particularly feminine.

But am I really so unfeminine that I need “lessons” on femininity?

It’s a bit like being told I need lessons on blue eyes. I have green eyes. Teaching me how to have blue eyes isn’t going to make blue eyes natural for me.

I feel like raising a protest and screaming, “Excuse me, I read ‘Pride & Prejudice’ all the time and watch the Colin Firth BBC version repeatedly…how am I not feminine?” But I guess that’s more the exception than the rule for me.

I guess for me, being told that not only am I not feminine but also that I don’t even know HOW to be feminine, is one of those things like my glasses or my weight—something that totally doesn’t bother me until someone else (usually my mom) says something, and then it becomes this huge issue.

As I write this, it’s about 15 minutes before class. My roommate and I got up an hour ago, around the same time. I’ve been ready for about 15 minutes, whereas she’s still brushing her hair and putting on making and so on and so forth—and I took a shower this morning, whereas she took one last night. If being feminine means that it takes forever to get ready for something as stupid as ulpan class, then I want no part.

During ulpan, however, I was constantly thinking to myself, “Oh G-d, everyone in the room must think I’m a man!” I wanted to run upstairs and put on a skirt to clear up any confusion—but then I realized that, as bizarre as this might sound, I think I actually manage to look even less feminine when I wear skirts than when I wear pants.

Part of this makes me wish I lived in a burqa-wearing country. Cos I’d just walk around in a burqa, and if anyone tried to tell me I didn’t dress femininely enough, I’d be like, “Dude, do you not see we are all wearing sheets? How can one walking pile of laundry be any more or less feminine than another walking pile of laundry?”

Somehow though, I think I’d still manage to wear the least feminine-looking burqa in the country.


Okay, I realize that I’m taking this too seriously. What made me realize this is that when my little immigrant children pals were talking to me (they saw me at the gate to our building carrying groceries, and a couple of them came running up yelling stuff like, “LOOK, MY FRIEND IS HERE!” and then insisted on carrying my groceries for me), and I noticed that several times I was addressed using a masculine form. “Oh my G-d,” I thought to myself, “I’m so not feminine that these little girls think I’m a man!”

I then started really listening to the girls talk, and I realized that it was simply a matter of them not speaking with correct grammar. Sometimes I was addressed using feminine singular, or masculine singular…..but then I noticed a couple of times I was also addressed in the plural, and unless all of the little kids here have double vision, that can’t possibly be an intentional thing.

So….feminine, masculine, plural or whatever else I might be (maybe I could also be the Hebrew/Arabic dual form)….I guess I should just shrug it off and say, “Whatever.”


“Whatever.” Usually only girls say that, right?