I periodically do things to get out of my comfort zone. I started years ago before a friend introduced me to LW where I pleasantly discovered that CoZE was recommended.
This write-up is about my most recent exercise: Do a Non Gender-Conforming Thing
I chose to have my nails painted. Having painted nails requires low enough effort that I have no excuse not to and, wearing them out in public is just out-of-the-ordinary enough to make me worry about how people will react. After getting them painted, I realized why girls say “My nails!” a lot after a manicure and worry about screwing them up. It took work to paint them and chipping them makes them look like shit. Can’t let that happen to me!
Then I challenged some friends to do it and gave these suggestions:
I think breaking arbitrary societal conventions and expanding comfort zones are positive things so I’m challenging a few people to try it and post a picture or video. Bonus points for a write-up of how you felt while doing it and any reactions from observers.
(Those who live in Berkeley are playing on easy mode.)
(People challenged may totally already do these! The list was limited to my imagination and ideas I could find. The idea is to get out of your comfort zone so feel free to get creative...)
Exercises I came up with:
Ideas for men:
Get a manicure/pedicure (it’s basically a massage)
Wear (traditionally feminine) jewelry
Carry a purse
Play a “girly” pop song loud enough for others to hear
Order a fruity alcoholic beverage
Get your nails painted
Wear a feminine outfit (or at least a pink shirt or something)
Read/ask about fashion or some other traditionally feminine topic
Ideas for women:
Wear a masculine outfit. (I feel like women have to try a bit harder than guys here)
Don’t shave your legs for a week
Don’t shave your armpits for a week
Wear a tie
Give a guy a compliment
Ask a guy on a date
Don’t wear makeup for a week
Don’t wear a bra for a week
Read/ask about sports or some other traditionally masculine topic
My thoughts so far:
It’s still weird for me to see my own hands. It takes me a second to recognize them as my own. “And how pretty they are!”
I’m already hypervigilant in public but we were in public in a new area and I was more hypervigilant than normal. I had to fight the urge to keep hiding my fingernails in the grocery store. I was worried that our hosts at the Airbnb we’re staying at would be weird about it...
Now I’m caught between not wanting people to see my nails at all and not wanting to see them all chipped (it’s hard taking proper care of them!). I’m conscious of my dad seeing this. I do weird enough things that my model of people in my tribe reacting is “John doing another thing...”
I need to get rid of them before we visit our friend’s parents so that way I don’t make a weird first impression. A lot of the discomfort has more to do with being misperceived or miscategorized. For instance, one time after getting my haircut, my shirts was covered with hair, so my friend lent me her Pink Floyd T-shirt to wear. I wasn’t defying social norms by wearing a Pink Floyd shirt, but that was not the kind of thing I would usually wear so I felt extra-aware of the potential for being perceived a certain way based on how I was dressed. Likewise, if I smoke a clove cigarette or cigar, which I do once every six months with a certain friend, I would be horrified to be falsely labeled a regular smoker.
I’ll have to try this again when I’m in public more frequently to give it a fair shake.
Meta-Communication:
I’m also getting out of my comfort zone because I’m not sure this is the right place for this type of post or if these kinds of posts are welcome.
Cross-Posted and editing from my Facebook. Feel free to follow me there!
What I find interesting are people who “break out” of their gender-roles only to fall into conforming strictly to whatever the new one is: boys wearing skinny-jeans and deep v-necks and girls wearing their grandfather’s shoes (or ones they bought at a thrift store) and carrying a briefcase. In a sense, a man wearing women’s clothing isn’t that much different than him dressing like a goth or a punk. Gender is just the last of the great wearable ideologies to have been opened up to being monkeyed with. But we’ve now reached the point where we seem to have already entered a post-gendered and weirdly more ideologically driven world of cultural symbolism in which it is important to be seen to be breaking gender conventions (transsexualism, metro-sexuality, men’s make-up and skincare, and the skinniest skinny-jeans you have ever seeny-seen). So, in a way, the more radical act has become to rationally accept the chains by which you are fettered and break out of your comfort zone by staying exactly where you are.
Or, you know, find other gender-related things to not accept. When I was looking for a copper rod (to cut into some pieces for electron microscopy), the sellers looked at me like I was weird or something. Later, the guy who cut it for me didn’t want my money on account of me being female (but I threw it at him and escaped). And before that, the lady in the pawnshop where I tried to pawn it to get some urgently needed money to commute to work, was completely thrown (I guess they didn’t want copper much). All of these occasions were rather outside my comfort zone, but I do not see why I should not have done it.
Later, the guy who cut it for me didn’t want my money
specifically on this example; I would suggest that if you were only getting a few really short cuts it’s almost not worth the effort to charge.
For all of 5 minutes of work; factors like; accounting and working out a price and finding change and anything else involved in the transaction is not worth the effort involved. I have had similar experiences getting pieces of wood and glass cut on the fly, and people are generous enough to not charge. Was the person explicit about your gender? (even if they were, they could have been explicit about another person’s “great hat” or, “young lad”, any excuse to do someone a favour could be possible)
No, it actually took more than half an hour and about 90 cuts, and they said copper was far more viscous than the usual stuff they dealt with; and he said “I don’t charge women.”
Although yes, I believe he was being generous, and we did laugh when I was running away. It was just that after being invited to coffee at the market, I would rather we laughed over something else.
Presumably you were buying a copper rod because you needed a copper rod, and you had no choice but to be gender-noncomformant if you wanted one. It’s not as if you had an option to pick gender conformant scientific equipment and non gender conformant scientific equipment and deliberately picked the noncomformant one.
Also, there’s a difference between being considered unusual and being considered socially weird.Last time I ran into someone riding a horse on a city street I’m pretty sure I stared at him for a while—but that was because you don’t see many of those, not because I thought that someone who rode a horse in the 21st century was violating a taboo.
Ah, but the gender-conformant thing in the Department where I was a student would be to have a man buy a copper rod. Which seemed to be the understanding of all those people. One of which offered to buy me coffee. But he was drunk, so there’s that.
Generally, yes, I think it best to just disregard gender-conformity, but in a non-obvious way (for example, many women have backpacks, and many women do think handbags more feminine, and I have been advised to have a handbag, but nobody really would go to the trouble of making me do it. I had thought that small task would be just as neutral.)
I periodically do things to get out of my comfort zone. I started years ago before a friend introduced me to LW where I pleasantly discovered that CoZE was recommended.
This write-up is about my most recent exercise: Do a Non Gender-Conforming Thing
I chose to have my nails painted. Having painted nails requires low enough effort that I have no excuse not to and, wearing them out in public is just out-of-the-ordinary enough to make me worry about how people will react. After getting them painted, I realized why girls say “My nails!” a lot after a manicure and worry about screwing them up. It took work to paint them and chipping them makes them look like shit. Can’t let that happen to me!
Then I challenged some friends to do it and gave these suggestions:
Exercises I came up with:
Ideas for men:
Get a manicure/pedicure (it’s basically a massage)
Wear (traditionally feminine) jewelry
Carry a purse
Play a “girly” pop song loud enough for others to hear
Order a fruity alcoholic beverage
Get your nails painted
Wear a feminine outfit (or at least a pink shirt or something)
Read/ask about fashion or some other traditionally feminine topic
Ideas for women:
Wear a masculine outfit. (I feel like women have to try a bit harder than guys here)
Don’t shave your legs for a week
Don’t shave your armpits for a week
Wear a tie
Give a guy a compliment
Ask a guy on a date
Don’t wear makeup for a week
Don’t wear a bra for a week
Read/ask about sports or some other traditionally masculine topic
My thoughts so far: It’s still weird for me to see my own hands. It takes me a second to recognize them as my own. “And how pretty they are!”
I’m already hypervigilant in public but we were in public in a new area and I was more hypervigilant than normal. I had to fight the urge to keep hiding my fingernails in the grocery store. I was worried that our hosts at the Airbnb we’re staying at would be weird about it...
Now I’m caught between not wanting people to see my nails at all and not wanting to see them all chipped (it’s hard taking proper care of them!). I’m conscious of my dad seeing this. I do weird enough things that my model of people in my tribe reacting is “John doing another thing...”
I need to get rid of them before we visit our friend’s parents so that way I don’t make a weird first impression. A lot of the discomfort has more to do with being misperceived or miscategorized. For instance, one time after getting my haircut, my shirts was covered with hair, so my friend lent me her Pink Floyd T-shirt to wear. I wasn’t defying social norms by wearing a Pink Floyd shirt, but that was not the kind of thing I would usually wear so I felt extra-aware of the potential for being perceived a certain way based on how I was dressed. Likewise, if I smoke a clove cigarette or cigar, which I do once every six months with a certain friend, I would be horrified to be falsely labeled a regular smoker.
I’ll have to try this again when I’m in public more frequently to give it a fair shake.
Meta-Communication: I’m also getting out of my comfort zone because I’m not sure this is the right place for this type of post or if these kinds of posts are welcome.
Cross-Posted and editing from my Facebook. Feel free to follow me there!
Don’t spend your idiosyncrasy credits frivolously.
That depends on how strongly someone is limited by his perceived gender identity and the cost of engaging in the experiments.
I don’t really think this is spending idiosyncrasy credits… but maybe we hang out in different social circles.
Yes, this doesn’t really apply to my social circle.
A million times this!
Yes, this doesn’t really apply to my social circle.
Yes, this doesn’t really apply to my circle.
What I find interesting are people who “break out” of their gender-roles only to fall into conforming strictly to whatever the new one is: boys wearing skinny-jeans and deep v-necks and girls wearing their grandfather’s shoes (or ones they bought at a thrift store) and carrying a briefcase. In a sense, a man wearing women’s clothing isn’t that much different than him dressing like a goth or a punk. Gender is just the last of the great wearable ideologies to have been opened up to being monkeyed with. But we’ve now reached the point where we seem to have already entered a post-gendered and weirdly more ideologically driven world of cultural symbolism in which it is important to be seen to be breaking gender conventions (transsexualism, metro-sexuality, men’s make-up and skincare, and the skinniest skinny-jeans you have ever seeny-seen). So, in a way, the more radical act has become to rationally accept the chains by which you are fettered and break out of your comfort zone by staying exactly where you are.
Or, you know, find other gender-related things to not accept. When I was looking for a copper rod (to cut into some pieces for electron microscopy), the sellers looked at me like I was weird or something. Later, the guy who cut it for me didn’t want my money on account of me being female (but I threw it at him and escaped). And before that, the lady in the pawnshop where I tried to pawn it to get some urgently needed money to commute to work, was completely thrown (I guess they didn’t want copper much). All of these occasions were rather outside my comfort zone, but I do not see why I should not have done it.
specifically on this example; I would suggest that if you were only getting a few really short cuts it’s almost not worth the effort to charge.
For all of 5 minutes of work; factors like; accounting and working out a price and finding change and anything else involved in the transaction is not worth the effort involved. I have had similar experiences getting pieces of wood and glass cut on the fly, and people are generous enough to not charge. Was the person explicit about your gender? (even if they were, they could have been explicit about another person’s “great hat” or, “young lad”, any excuse to do someone a favour could be possible)
No, it actually took more than half an hour and about 90 cuts, and they said copper was far more viscous than the usual stuff they dealt with; and he said “I don’t charge women.”
Although yes, I believe he was being generous, and we did laugh when I was running away. It was just that after being invited to coffee at the market, I would rather we laughed over something else.
Presumably you were buying a copper rod because you needed a copper rod, and you had no choice but to be gender-noncomformant if you wanted one. It’s not as if you had an option to pick gender conformant scientific equipment and non gender conformant scientific equipment and deliberately picked the noncomformant one.
Also, there’s a difference between being considered unusual and being considered socially weird.Last time I ran into someone riding a horse on a city street I’m pretty sure I stared at him for a while—but that was because you don’t see many of those, not because I thought that someone who rode a horse in the 21st century was violating a taboo.
Ah, but the gender-conformant thing in the Department where I was a student would be to have a man buy a copper rod. Which seemed to be the understanding of all those people. One of which offered to buy me coffee. But he was drunk, so there’s that.
Generally, yes, I think it best to just disregard gender-conformity, but in a non-obvious way (for example, many women have backpacks, and many women do think handbags more feminine, and I have been advised to have a handbag, but nobody really would go to the trouble of making me do it. I had thought that small task would be just as neutral.)