charms, beads, and amulets are so critical
emotions girlishly expressed
emotions are physical. why shouldn’t we use touch and sight to connect with our feelings? we calm ourselves with music, so why shouldn’t listen to the soft jingle of our butterfly charms while we walk, or catch sight of a dangling amulet while we run our hands through our hair and down over our bare shoulders? we cry into our pillows, so why shouldn’t we flutter our fingertips just against our bracelet beads? we look at ourselves in the mirror wanting to feel good about what we see, so why shouldn’t we look down at our wrists and see colors that connect with us and make us feel a way we want to feel? we pray to gods and goddesses, so why shouldn’t we feel the energy that comes from knowing and connecting with the color of the hair tie in our pony tail? We want connection with others, so why should the norms of “professionalism” “adulthood” “seriousness” and “maturity” (all concepts made up or blindly accepted and re-taught by people who, like us dear diary, know utterly nothing about the true nature of our mysterious reality) prevent us from showing other Beings a bit more of our true authentic selves, from manifesting new opportunities for real connection?
why shouldn’t we deploy amulets and charms, bracelets and scrunchies to stir up something inside of us or to calm down our own troubled seas? or simply to be able to look down at ourselves and see ourselves? Supposedly these precious tools are “girly,” and the girly is “unserious,” the girly is “immature,” the girly is “unprofessional,” the girly is “something a 12 year old girl would do”
why is the overtly girly so suppressed among the professional classes? why is the overtly girly so feared and so condemned among “adults”? the patriarchy allows the “boyish” to thrive among grown men. meanwhile completely made up concepts of “adulthood” “maturity” “professionalism” and “seriousness” seem to determine the lives of many so-called and self-styled “mature adults.” and these concepts so often express themselves as being diametrically opposed to open expressions of girlyness.
i asked a mature friend critical of my butterfly bracelets to explain himself. he clarified that his critique is supposedly not about gender: he would have the same thoughts about a “36-year-old woman” wearing such bracelets: hence his criticism of my aesthetic choices is about “maturity” and “adulthood” (my god)
somehow i am now less “mature”, somehow i am now less of an “adult,” somehow i am now less “serious,” certainly i would never claim to be a “professional”
i am sorry that so many people are so controlled by these empty but tightly defined concepts that, when adjusted just a tiny bit, make me seem like even more of an adult than they are. but what i know in my heart to be true is that the girly trinkets my mature adult friends frown upon are the charms which keep my inner colors swirling outward from my being. they are the means by which I manifest my most authentic and most genuine and most compassionate self. my butterflies, turtles, dragonflies, bracelets, hair ties, pink and purple butterfly tattoo, and soon-to-be hot pink hair streak are the physical means by which I gaze out directly into my immediate world and have a way i can use my eyes, fingers, stubble, lips, hair, and skin to connect freely and unabashedly with my emotions. if the world sees these emotional expressions and trinkets as “girly” and if the “girly” is condemned as “immature” or even as “insane”, then i must be sorrowfully at peace with that, because sadly the world is composed of many empty concepts that control and oppress people, and i only hope that one day everyone will be free.
p.s. speaking of worlds, please someone induct me into the world of friendship bracelets!!!!!
thank you so much for reading my diary! please scribe and… i’ll let you kiss my scrunchie….? yes! i’ll let you kiss my scrunchie! <3
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