Date: 16 Aug, 2001
To celebrate the end of exam week, me and my friends went resto/bar hopping just last night. Although it was a school night, we owed it to ourselves to seize the day, or in this case, seize the night/dawn. One of the bars that we went to was full of people in their 20s, full of booze, loud music, and most of all cigarette smoke. We were all dressed casually since it was a spontaneous thing and boy, were we shocked when we saw the dresses they wore! Actually the dresses that they did not wear! I felt like an old woman with my conservative baby tee and bootleg pants. I mean next to them, i felt like some one coming from the fifteenth century. They were almost naked! That, is the girls were almost naked... the men looked good (and comfortable) in their rolled up long sleeves and slacks (ala ricky martin). Those girls must have felt cold considering they were almost in their underwears and that the aircons were on full blast. While my eyes were absorbing all of this, my mind ( which i must say, likes to think and rationalize all the time) was enlightened as to why women have more subcutaneous fat in their body than men do...(drumroll please) - so that they could be insulated from the cold temperature when they wear next to nothing clothes!
One would rarely see a guy adopt a minimalistic attitude towards clothes, this is because they couldn't tolerate the cold! Hmmmm. I guess i should submit this to the Psychiatry department. I might win a nobel prize or something for this. What a great day for mankind. :)
Seriously though, why can't men be the one who are forced to wear make up and tight tight tight next-to-invisible clothes? Why does society have to put such a premium on perfectly coiffed women? Men have the option to have good bodies, while women are supposed to have good bodies and perfectly made up faces. Of course if you don't want to go against such dictates, one is welcome to do so and you would be branded as an individualist... an ugly individualist that is. :)
So this is where i find myself - trapped in a society whose ideas i find ludicrous but at the same time, i can't help but conform with some of these not-so ideal ideas.
In an ideal world, people won't be judged by how good they look outside, they wouldn't worry about wrinkles because they would believe that "wrinkles are not acquired but are rather earned", that these wrinkles tell others of your story, how much you worried for your sick mom, how much laughter this world has given you and how much sadness it has caused you... So goodbye retin-A, goodbye collagen masks and other anti-aging devices... In an ideal world, people would give premium not on men who could lift a thousand pounds, but on men who could bear to lift other's burdens... that people would give premium not on tall cosmopolitan people but on men and women who are tall even when they are on their knees praying... i could go on and on with this list but i am afraid that it would take forever. :)
I hope there's an easy way to see people for who they are, but there is just no shortcut for this. You have to invest a lot of time, effort, laughter and tears in order to dig up their character, and you have to have a lot of courage in order to embrace them even with all their flaws... Life ain't a bed of roses, but i wouldn't have it any other way.
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