October 11, 1999

Danger, danger Will Robinson! This entry is going to be heavy on the girly stuff! Just don't say I didn't warn you.

Yesterday Keith was off gaming for most of the day, so I went shopping. The ostensible purpose for the trip was to get other people Christmas presents, but once I got to the mall, all my high-minded principles went right down the tubes.

What did I get? I got jeans and a skirt and tights and shoes and a sweater and nail polish. That's what I got. You may notice that none of that stuff sounds like it was purchased with other people in mind. I couldn't help it, though, it's been so long since I really went all out and bought myself new clothes. Besides, the skirt was really cute and for once they had it in my size.

I had a moment of distress in the department store when I realized that I was standing at the cosmetics counter about to buy some really expensive nail polish. Oh dear Lord, I thought to myself, what am I doing? Aren't I betraying my principles? If I buy expensive nail polish doesn't it mean that I'm a superficial and shallow person?

I gave this some serious thought. And what I finally came up with is that if I decide to buy expensive cosmetics, or wear makeup, or look pretty, it's not selling out to The Man. It's just looking the way I want to look. Nobody is forcing me to wear it. I'm not wearing it because I think that without it I look ugly. It just makes me feel girly and pretty, and I like taking care of myself.

I suppose that it might sound like I obsess way too much over my appearance, and this whole makeup issue. I think it's because I was so scarred in high school. In high school, I DID wear makeup because I thought that without it I'd be ugly. I did the same while I was dating John in college. When I finally chucked all my cosmetics and went proudly bare-faced into the world, I felt much more self-confident and better about myself.

It's taken me a long time to get past the issues that that feeling produced in me -- I felt so happy once I quit wearing makeup that for a long time I thought that wearing makeup, or even wearing nice clothes, was a sign of weakness, of insecurity, of SELLING OUT. I wasn't gonna do it, nope, not me.

I think I'm finally at a point in my life where I can put on lipstick without worrying that it means I'm a loser who cares about my appearance more than anything else. I think this is a good thing.

Keith liked the new outfit, by the way. Of course, he never objects when I wear a skirt.

In other news.If there are any men still reading this entry, I apologize, because I'm pretty sure you have no idea what I was talking about up there. You can start paying attention again now.

Keith and I saw Three Kings this weekend. I was really expecting it to suck, because 1) it's a Desert Storm comedy, what the hell is that about, and 2) it has George Clooney in it. Mind you, I fully respect George Clooney's acting capabilities, but it seems like all the movies he's in suck really hard.

THREE KINGS SPOILERS COMING IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH

I was really surprised, because not only is Three Kings NOT a comedy, it was a really excellent movie. Am I the only one who thought it was going to be a comedy, based on the trailers? It wasn't. No way, no how. It had some pretty serious things to say about American involvement in the Gulf War.

It was funny (not funny ha-ha, funny interesting), because early in the movie there's a scene where four American soldiers are taking a Humvee out into the desert, and they're racing along, and the American flag is flying, and they're playing "I Get Around" on the soundtrack, and you're like, "Whoo, America! America rules! Whoo!". I thought the whole movie was going to play it up like that.

Then, later in the movie, they show you Iraqi freedom fighters who are fighting against Saddam Hussein, but who are being slaughtered by Saddam's troops, because the promised American support never came. George Bush told the Iraqi people to rise up against Saddam, and many did, thinking that Bush's statements meant he would give American support, but he did not.

This gave me an entirely different feeling about America.

Three Kings also made me think about how we elect the President. Bear with me here. So many times in the movies, we see American soldiers who will do anything they're ordered to, even if it's apparently wrong. Hell, not just the movies, in real life as well. Look at all the civilians that were pointlessly murdered in Vietnam. Look at My Lai. Why did American soldiers do these things? Well, because they were ordered to, I guess. Or because the war did something to them that made them less than human. I don't know, I don't really understand it.

At the end of Three Kings one of the characters was shot, and to help him breathe, another soldier inserted this needle thing with a valve attached into his chest, which relieved the pressure and allowed him to breathe. He was informed that every 15 minutes or so, he'd need to adjust the valve, until they got him to a hospital.

A few hours later, when those characters were attempting to help Iraqi rebels escape across the border into Iran, military police showed up to prevent them, and handcuffed all the men, including the guy with the tube in his chest. A few minutes later he needed to adjust the valve, and he started wheezing and gasping and curling up on the ground, which went mainly unnoticed by the people in charge, who were preoccupied yelling at the other soldiers.

So the soldier who was in charge of the handcuffed guy looks to his superior, who isn't paying attention, and looks back at the guy on the ground who obviously can't breathe, and looks back at his superior one last time, obviously hoping that the guy will give him the order to undo the handcuffs. Except his superior just isn't paying attention. So the soldier takes the initiative and undoes the guy's cuffs on his own, so that he can adjust his valve and breathe again.

I thought that was a really powerful moment. It showed a soldier doing, not what he'd been ordered to do, but what he knew was right. And I was thinking, it would be nice if one of our Presidential candidates showed that same quality, that quality of sticking to his principles in the face of criticism and possible political downfall. In other words, it would be nice if the President were a man of principles.

I don't think our current President is a man of principles. I'm not sure if there's a way you can tell if someone is, before he's elected. I'm actually not sure if you can tell if someone is, at all, considering that the American public probably doesn't know most of what goes on in the White House.

I guess I'm just daydreaming.

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