Thoughts On Emo Kids and Matrimony

Just wanted to share something I wrote in my (brand spanking new!) journal the other night.

Hey New Journal,

According to Buddhism inanimate objects have souls, so communicating with you does not make me insane (let’s just keep the tapping, the superstitions, the obsessive rituals and the little voices a secret, okay?)

It’s back to school on Monday and, oddly, I’m way less terrified than I thought I’d be. This is in spite of the fact that I have an additional Year Nine class and have been bumped up a work faction (0.8. Whee.) Said class is an interesting bunch too, full of freaky-looking Emo kids with these wild outfits and piercings. And make-up: One girl has this full-on, Amy Winehouse-inspired bat-wing eyeshadow—the left eyelid is fluoro pink and the right one fluoro green. Another is like a living breathing Emily The Strange doll. I know some of their names already: the Emily Strange one is called April, and there’s another one called Jasper. The one with the lip-piercing is Hayley. I taught them once when I was asked to do an internal relief—walking into that classroom was like wandering onto the set of Children Of The Corn. I’ve christened them The Future Undertakers Of Australia. Their other teacher is going on a one-term hiatus to Spain, so they’ll be all mine. Based on what I’ve seen of them so far, they’re way less gormless than their dark creepy subcultural attire suggests. They’re actually surprisingly warm and humorous. Well, the girls are anyway. The boys are just your typical dunny-brush-haired surfer types, only quieter. They’re far less interesting, sartorially speaking.

Hmm, what else? Oh, an old friend of mine recently got hitched. Shawna Kane is now Shawna Rosetti. She’s married ‘a nice Italian boy.’ I don’t envy her—I know that Italian boys can be nice—nicely wedded to Mum’s apron strings. The whiny, nasal, weaselly little demands of Ray Romano that his wife cook, clean and screw according to his whims is basically what you get in a ‘relationship’ with a Man-Child Spaghetti-Muncher. But enough with the stereotypes; you can probably guess from my tone I’ve been thoroughly soured on the whole institution of marriage. I just don’t like how it squashes perfectly good friendships into two ticky tacky little boxes, one marked ‘m’ and the other marked ‘f’, and the one marked ‘m’ involves the fun stuff like having a sense of humour and rough-housing with the kids, and the one marked ‘f’ involves boring stuff like breastfeeding and nappy-changing and nurturing, and the one marked ‘m’ is the eternal kid who the other kids love and the one marked ‘f’ is the humourless disciplinarian who they all hate even though she does everything for them...yawn. I’ve seen this dynamic happen with even the most liberal-minded, well-intentioned of couples. Once they walk down that aisle, they enter an institution that has been remarkably resistant to over three decades of feminism, and any valiant attempts to break with tradition are usually strangled by the brass ring noose.

Cynical bitch, aren’t I?

But still, I congratulated my friend on her nuptials , and meant it. Hey, it’s not for me, but she’s happy with it so live and let live, right? (and she did look fucking amazing in that white dress.)

What bothers me about the whole marriage thing is not my friends’ willingness to rush into it (though most of the gang seem to be hurtling toward the alter with all the foresight of a pack of lemmings), nor their unquestioning acceptance of a frankly fossilised institution (though it occasionally pisses me off), but simply the fact that the way I live is viewed as being infinitely inferior by those soon-to-be slotted neatly away in the nuclear family filing cabinet.

When I wrote to Shawna about her wedding, she responded with: ‘Yeah, I’m married! FINALLY.’ (Finally? Finally!? Hon, you’re twenty-three. For heaven’s sakes: Is screwing around not a priority for today’s youth? Lord oh Lord, where did it all go wrong?) I must admit, sometimes us single chicks perpetuate desperate Brigid Jones stereotypes as well: another friend of mine, Kelly, when she heard about Shawna’s wedding, responded with: ‘Oh, you’re so lucky to be married! I’m not doing much of anything—just mid-way through an International Politics & Justice degree at uni. And you’re married, living the real life.’ (What is the world coming to when a twenty-first-century gal dismisses her personal ambitions and supremely intellectually-stimulating politics & justice degree as ‘not much of anything’? And what’s with this ‘real life’ shit? Someone pinch me quick, for I am a single woman and hence unsure of the reality of my existence).

Wake up, girls! It’s 2008! Drop the 1950’s bullshit already. It’s an ideology that sucks now, sucked then, and seriously makes your arse look fat.

Well, that’s enough for now. More fascinatingly tedious life-chronicling to come!