posted November 21, 2009 03:25 PM         

i picked up a couple and was gonna get one more until my friend insisted that i buy the boxes with the cutesy cartoon animals on them. he practically shoved the box in my face and said, here buy this one! why did he want me to buy that one? because it's got penguins on there. the boxes i was carrying were just plain colored boxes.

it was as if we were in a store looking for clothes and he was trying to pick out something that matched my personality. in his mind, the boxes with the cute cartoon animals dressed in winter clothes should be the ones i buy.

i wasn't offended by his recommendation because i know he's one of those friends i have who think of me in this way. like i'm still a little kid and don't know what boxes of kleenex i should buy that reflect my personality. but still...it was just boxes of kleenex. why wasn't i allowed to buy the random plain ones i chose first? i actually bowed down to his recommendation and exchanged my plain boxes for the cute ones. i don't know why i did that either. it's just kleenex who cares about the boxes they're in!!!

i don't mind being thought of as a little kid because it doesn't hurt me or make me feel any less. the irony is that i'm very independent. i lived alone in different countries and cities, often travel alone, do most everything alone, am highly educated, etc. and i'm very much physically a grown woman. but then i still get pegged by a lot of people (not everyone) like i'm a needy dependent kid or something.

posted November 21, 2009 06:34 PM         

Kinda funny, though, once when the new Pope ascended, and a Russian Orthodox I knew criticized the choice, I joked that maybe he'd apologize for what Crusaders did to Constantinople and she laughed and talked to me as if she thought I was Orthodox myself. Hmm, though some believe I'm a worshiper of demons, a Pentecostal neighbor (at least a neighbor until recently) also assumes I'm Christian, though I get the impression she knows better than to dig too deeply and limit herself to rare invites to me to go to church with her.

I think the funniest one was back when I had short hair dyed black, dressed like a tomboy, and zipper boots and studded leather belt (IIRC, I was 19). And I had no idea why this guy who was more than 10 years older came up wanting me to whip him with my belt, and seemed confident that I would. Talk about baffled! I personally don't care what people do behind closed doors as long as it's fully understood & consensual by all involved, but it was weird to have some guy who looked more like someone's father than anywhere close to my age trying to persuade & cajole me into using my belt on him. (Sharing this with friends I eventually heard about how the local S&M subculture had the studded belt as a sign that if you wore it the way I did then it meant you were either into being whipped with it or whipping others with it.)

No, wait, THE funniest (if also one of the saddest) was when I'd just turned 14 and living in an East Texas Bible Belt small town. This was where some believed (with glee, I believe, not that they'd admit it) I was a satanist, and one older boy on the bus turned to me and asked, almost in a whisper, "Do you really worship the devil?"

You know what they say about asking stupid questions. I gave him a severe look and harshly said, "Yes. And I cast spells, too, so shut up."

He about gave himself whiplash from turning away from me. He never even dared look at me again and forever kept his distance.

posted November 21, 2009 11:25 PM         

i think it was just extremely odd that my friend, who's an alpha like man, wanted me to buy the cartoon kleenex box because it fits me more. it's like oh that's how a man sees me like? that's not a good thing is it?

posted November 22, 2009 01:37 AM         

oh yes understood those were extreme examples but still so extreme and mind boggling.

for myself, i understand everyone has perceptions of everyone. and people subconsciously or not do have certain personas that they present to different groups of people that contribute to misperceptions. and it's good to understand or figure out okay why do so many people think this way about me? am i responsible for putting a certain message out there that i don't want to? i understand why people look at me the way that they do and it's not as if they're 100% wrong or right, it's just oftentimes they take it to the extreme exaggeration.

the only times i feel that misperceptions of me become negative is when i need to assert myself or that darker side of me comes out. i think i spoke before on here about how i lashed out at someone for lying to me and how i accept a lot of things and craziness in people but don't lie to my face or i will punch you in the face. i rarely show extreme emotion or emotions that are not positive. i laugh a lot but you rarely see me cry or be angry in public. i just don't break easily in that way.

posted November 23, 2009 11:30 PM         

And no, I didn't like Kill Bill either. I know many do, and I can recognize a twisted, satirical genius to it, but I still don't like it.

Though one accidentally got me a good gift: Mortal Kombat II. I don't know anything about that mythos (at the time I'd just had some gross images from a video game at a pizza place to think of for it), but it was so unintentionally hilarious (and I liked the soundtrack for it) that I liked it anyway. And I liked the Charlie's Angels movies, but that's because they're so silly & ridiculous (and sometimes very clever).

But my favorite movies tend to be satires & parodies (like the South Park movie, or Shrek 1 & 2--didn't like the 3rd as much, though it was ok), and fairy tale qualities like Stardust, Coraline, Labyrinth, or even Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

I'm not against violence in movies, mind you, it's just that such rarely, if ever, interests me. I have to really care about the story & characters before such scenes can interest me at all (or it has to be hilarious, on purpose or otherwise).