Different Plumage

As I’m sure we’re all aware, women come in a variety of packages.  From our plumage to our nesting habits, we are all very much birds of a different feather.  I got to thinking about this topic a while back after a discussion with my younger sister.  My sister is what I would describe as a girly-girl.  She loves playing with hairstyles, makeup, clothes; the whole deal.  In other words, she likes to feel and dress pretty.  Her mother-in-law, on the other hand, is not a girly-girl.  As an example, my sister’s father-in-law accompanied her to the store one day when she went to pick up some nail polish remover.  The comment from her father-in-law?  “I’ve never been shopping with anyone who bought nail polish before.”  My sister loves getting her nails done; her mother-in-law went for the first time when my sister married her son.

Now, the rest of the ladies in my family aren’t quite as girly as my younger sister (she just has a better flair for it, and no young children around requiring her attention), but we do (mostly) care about how we look and dress.  Therefore, it was a bit of a shock, on both sides, for my sister to marry into a family that hadn’t one girly-girl in the bunch.  It was very much a mixing of disparate styles.

I don’t think my sister thought too much about it, until a rather small incident took place.  Now, ladies, we all know what it is like to find someone to do our hair that we trust and depend on.  At least, many of us do.  When we find that special connection, we are willing to make the concessions necessary to keep working with that individual.  Such is the case with my sister.  Over this past summer she was working an internship in SLC, about three hours away from her school-time home in southern Utah.  Her stylist, however, was still back down south.  It reached the point where my sister needed a haircut, but trying to make time to get back down south, especially since at the time she and her husband were sharing one car, and he was working weekends, made that very difficult to arrange.  When she tried expressing her frustrations with her in-laws, their response was to ask why she needed to go back to her regular stylist.  Couldn't she just find someone local?

 I can honestly say I think my sister was flabbergasted.  She had been going to see the same girl for a couple of years now, and would be returning to her once the Fall semester resumed.  Yes, if she was in SLC permanently she might have sought a local stylist to see, but it was one haircut to start the summer off.  And after all, you don’t trust your hair to just anyone.  Fortunately, due to a cousin’s wedding in town, she was able to get in to see her preferred stylist.

What I think I got from the second-had experience is that we, as women, need to be a little more forgiving of each other.  A short while ago I posted about how men need to treat women on a date, but I think, all too often, women treat each other worse than men ever could.  A woman’s personal style is the outward expression of her personality to only a small extent.  Think about how we stereotype each other.  Girly-girls are snobby, preppy, flighty, air-heads, etc.  Women who choose to go less girly or feminine are butch, dowdy, unattractive, etc.  What we need to keep in mind is that a woman’s worth isn’t in her clothes or makeup, it’s an inherent part of her being.  We each have in us an essential, infinite worth that no one can take away from us.  Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but our value is something that is intrinsic in each of us.