Give a little, take a lot

Photo: Morguefile

Yes. We should collaborate. I’ll help you out. We should have an academic discussion about the assignment in in groups. You glance through your group members and evaluate each of them as to how well they normally do in academic contexts. Are they A+? C’s?

And then comes the filtering of your best bets. Give a little, take a lot. Put out a point that they would most likely figure out themselves anyway, and then hope to get something from them that you hadn’t thought of.

You should give most to the A’s and not as much to the C’s, cause they can’t give the same back. The A’s are most likely to give you a point, you hadn’t thought of yourself.

But don’t say it out loud.

We know we all do it. If we found the jackpot answer, we don’t tell. We don’t share. We give away some other points. We just don’t say it, because it seems incredibly selfish in a way that is tabooed in today’s society.

We care about our fellow students or coworkers, and of course we want to share so we can all do well, cause that’ll give the best result for everybody in the end. But deep down we have this fear, that they will steal our thunder. Who doesn’t want to be the one dropping the gold at the meeting with the boss? Or getting and extra plus on the A for finding the crucial point in an academic assignment?

In school we learn that it s a mortal sin to cheat, so we have to guard our good work and not let others copy from it. We carry a heritage from the school system of trying to be the best individual. Even if we’re helping another student, we’re evaluated on what we produce, and only that.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of sharing and discussing and getting everybody to the best results. But I’m not a fan of people who don’t bring anything to the table, but instead walk home with a full notepad and almost get to copy whatever you had in mind to do. And it’s a taboo to wanna do better than others. It’s a mortal sin to be selfish.

We’ll have to move from an information hoarding culture to an information sharing culture.

Listen: It’s mine. 

Smelly feet

Route 66. Driving through the desert. 100 degrees outside. A/C full on. Bruce Springsteen on the stereo.

The landscape that is passing by is the same for miles and miles. Sand, mountains, rocks. Three amigos are roadtripping the US in the classic way. Me and two other guys. One is my really good friend, and the other one is his good friend. So I don’t know the last guy that well.

We spent more than 50 hours together in the car – me as the driver, my friend in the front seat and his friend in the back seat. 50 hours in our pretty white Dodge with so many cool functions we were almost blown backwards. There was no key, you pushed a button to start the car, you could control out of which speaker the majority of the sound should come, control the temperature for the driver, passenger and back individually and I could keep going. But you couldn’t control the smell in the car.

Several times, I was overwhelmed by a gross smell. The kind that takes you by surprise and can clear out a room – but there’s no escape when you’re trapped in a car on the highway in the middle of nowhere. At first, I couldn’t detect the source. But when I started to make sense of things, I figured out that every time the smell came, the backseater (the friend of my friend) had his feet up on the thing in between the two front seats and thereby closer to me. There was a consistent correlation between the two. So smelly feet was the issue.

But when you don’t know a person that well, it’s kind of a taboo to tell them that their feet smell. So instead of commenting upon it – which wouldn’t be very efficient either, since he couldn’t really do anything about it or get rid of it in the car (I suspect those old, worn-out shoes with lots of years behind them to be the real issue) – I would turn off the A/C and go with open windows for a little while. Only though when the air outside is about a 100 degrees, it doesn’t have a very cooling effect. But a change of air was definitely needed sometimes. Then when we did open the windows, my friend, sitting in the passenger front seat, put his arm in the frame, and the new, fresh wind that was supposed to clear out the smelly feet-smell, would be “poisoned” by the sweat odor from his armpit. Being blown straight into the car. Directly towards the backseat. Oh how it isn’t easy to be three in a car in the boiling hot desert and still keep it smelling like rainbows and flowers.

Maked up taboos

The first day at school. For work. When you meet with guys. All those times where you feel like make-up is required.

It’s kind of a taboo when you meet some of your guy friends or flirts (no matter how big or small a flirt) and you’re not wearing make-up. Just like it takes a while before you feel like you can go to school without make-up. And at work I don’t feel representable or ‘authorical’ enough if I’m not wearing just a liiiittle bit of make-up.

The other day my friend was at the gym working out. No make-up. No hair done. Red in the face. Gym clothes on. Running away on the treadmill. Exhausted. And then along comes the guy she’s been hooking up with and having a little thing with recently. But it is still so fresh that you feel like looking your best every time you see him. And what happens? She sees him when she looks her “worst” (in her eyes).

You go grocery shopping, thinking that you can make it across the street in your jogs, messy hair and absolutely un-maked up face, through the dairy section to get the milk, through the cashier and back across the street and home, without meeting anyone you know. Should take five minutes tops. But of course that doesn’t happen. You run into your fling or something.

But some guys really think you look your best when you’re not wearing any make-up. When you’re all natural. It’s like they can see you, and the sexy thing about it is that they can see your confidence. A girl who doesn’t feel like she has to help her look on the way with make-up steems with confidence. And they know what they get – it’s like not stuffing your bra with extra socks.

But some girls feel more confident with that bit of mascara. Not because they’re comfortable with the way they look, but because of that little “lift” the mascara gives your morning tired eyes and that plainness the concealer gives to your skin. Either way, meeting your fling with no make-up un should be as un-tabooized as with make-up on.

What make-up and a little help from Photoshop can do:

Like it?

You put a picture on Facebook. Make a status-update. Share a new album. Leave a comment on something. Link to a video. And then you pretend ‘not to care’, but casually you check your Facebook page constantly to just see if there’s a notification. That red sign of shoulder pat. A little ‘like’ or a comment back. If you don’t get any response, or only just a few likes, the disappointment is great.

To get likes on Facebook is like getting recognition. Everything you do on Facebook is for it to be seen and liked by others. You design a status update so it will be liked. You put up a photo of yourself on a surfboard so everyone can see what you did for the day and like it (gave over 30 likes in no time). So if you don’t get any likes on whatever you put up, you kinda feel like taking it off again, cause then what’s the point? My friend put up a photo of a very high score in Tetris and didn’t get any likes on it for a while, and furthermore she commented on it, twice, as the only one. So she liked her own comments – sort of made it look like a good joke instead of bragging. And she also jokingly asked us to go like it.

Sometimes you’re surprised with who likes your things. And who doesn’t. Why does your friend from kindergarden, whom you barely talk to anymore, or the guy you talked to once in a bar while travelling that you know you’ll never see again, like your status or your photos or so? And why doesn’t your sister? Well, in my case, my sister is not that active on Facebook. So it very much depends on how often they are on Facebook and active they are when they are on.

It’s sort of a taboo if you don’t get any likes. And to be the first one to like something, cause you don’t wanna be the only one. There are certain things where you can tell it’s a safe liker. You know it’s gonna draw tons of likes and comments. So it’s safe to like it. And then there are some things where you are not so sure it’ll draw likes, so you hesitate to like it. To not be the only. That would be a bit of a taboo too.

Likes have elapsed in inflation though. It has even become a verb perfectly well integrated in a normal sentence. You like everything, and like is also a way of showing someone that you saw their comment, photo or so. If your dad comments on your photo, you like the comment just to show him you saw his comment. If you don’t it’s like leaving a high five hanging. Or at least that’s how it’s become. That is also why it becomes a tabooized thing to not get likes. Cause the it’s like your high five has been left hanging.

What’s your highscore in likes?

Tabooed sex dreams

”I have to tell  you something,” my friend says, breaking the silence in the car that exudes of morning tiredness. We are driving to school. It’s early. The night’s dreams are – for some – still clear in memory. “I dreamt I had sex with _” (he’ll remain anonymous, but he is a common friend of ours). And then the car burst out in laughter. It was a rather absurd image that popped up in our heads.

She had not intended to tell us this, she said. “When I woke up, I was like ‘no one will ever know this. I won’t tell nobody.” But then she realized it was kinda of funny and couldn’t hold it in anymore. The absurd thing is that she has never thought of him in this way, but in the dream it was pretty logic how she ended up in his bed. That is why she as well as the rest of us were a little bit surprised. Out of anyone that could have appeared in her sex dream, he would be the guy?

We laughed it off. Cause it was just a dream after all, and for the most part dreams are inexplicable. And yet we are afraid to tell when we dream something like this because we believe it matters, that it means something, that there is actually some truth to it.

If she dreamed she had sex with him, does it mean she wants to? Was it harmless fantasy or does she have some hidden desire to be with him? Or does it simply mean she wants to have sex? And he was the guy for it because we have been hanging out with him and the other guys so much lately, that they are indeed very present in our consciousness? Only she can tell I guess.

Sex dreams are still tabooed, it’s not something you yell out over the breakfast table. And it’s very personal, which is probably also a reason why you don’t just talk about it over a glass of milk and a bowl of cornflakes. We put all sorts of meaning into our dreams, but oftentimes we can’t remember then. That’s probably why we’re so baffled when we do remember. And dreams are often so illogic and yet logic that it makes no sense to retell them if you in fact remember. Cause either we’re embarrassed by the choice of guy that appeared in the sex dream (had it been Zack Efron as he is in “The Lucky One,” she would have rushed to tell us) or we can’t make it make it sense. But hey – it’s just a dream.

 

Run over the taboos

Competition. Motivation. Fun. There are a lot of good things about doing sports with others. Having a running-buddy might make you get up and get going instead of taking the easy way out, which is leaving the running-clothes in the closet and dating the couch instead. It can make you go that bit further, because you’re pushed by your running-buddy – no one wants to be the first to stop. It might also push you to take less breaks. It’s fun to have someone by your side. You might even get to catch up on the weekend’s escapades.

But it’s also kind of a boundary to cross to start running with someone. Cause you don’t wanna do worse than the other. Run slower, demand more pauses, not be able to go that far – that’s kind of a taboo. How well you do in sports, how fit you really are. It’s sometimes nicer to run alone and then be able to just enclose yourself in your own world. Put music in the ears, feel the beat and run in your own tempo. That’s why, to me, it’s a big step to take to go run with someone for the first time.

One of my friends have been “off” the sports wagon since almost forever and finally bought all the right outfit-parts – running pants, running top, shoes, everything. And she used it once. I’ve offered many times that she could go run with me, but the first time she was going to use those brand new sports clothes had to be alone, so she could figure out her limits on her own, without pressure from a running-buddy and without having to feel like a failure because she couldn’t keep up with the running-buddy. But ever since she’s had a hard time getting back into those running shoes… So maybe a running-buddy is exactly what she needs.

It is a sensitive subject to run together. At least for how you feel about it yourself. Same goes for other types of physical exercise, say like spinning, you have to have the same amount of pressure on as your neighbor, and you definitely can’t get caught taking some off or not putting on extra when the instructor says it. It’s as soon as someone else’s eyes are on you that you become consciously aware of how you’re doing compared to others. I imagine this keeps someone away from fitness centers too. But it’s probably more important to just be true to yourself and not care about doing worse or better than running-buddies, spinning-companions or the like. Run over these types of taboos. Work-out buddies are there to make it fun.

Shopping taboos

So you know the drill. You wanna go shop with your friends, cause it’s fun, you don’t look like a loner, you can act more crazy and go to all types of stores because it is seemignly more “legal” when you’re not alone. But then again… At times you just wanna go by yourself. So you don’t have to wait while others go in stores you have no interest in (I think we all have been in the man-waiting-for-the-woman-role, even if we’re women). Don’t have to hurry when you’re taking your time in a store the others have no interest in. And you can try things on without worrying about having to show it off to your friends when it doesn’t fit or look good.

Take, a pair of jeans. The worst thing to have to shop for many. It takes a lot of time, you never know which size you have to get, you are afraid to grab the actual size you have to get because the number in the jeans may be a little bit higher than you wish, and god forbid your friends should see that. Then when you get in the fitting room, you struggle to get those suddenly very, very tight jeans on that you have ambitiously taken in a size smaller than what you think you might need. And you struggle. And you manage to zip them. And you look at your  love handles, and think to yourself “won’t work.”

But if you are in fact shopping with others, they will highly likely ask to see them on. You hear the knocking on the door. “Are they on? Come on out and show us!” So you have to flash the poor result. And make someone go get another size while you hear (or at leats think you hear) the slight sigh from the seated, waiting friends. Some are of course very patient – but you will always feel some amount of guilt when keeping people waiting if they haven’t found anything to try on in the shop.

Fit or no fit, it’s always easier, at least for me, to try new types of clothes on, other styles than you’re used to, more outrageous models, and things out of your usual element when you’re shopping alone, cause no one is there to witness if it doesn’t fit you or doesn’t work on you. Cause if it indeed doesn’t, it is kind of a taboo (in your own eyes, but probably not in the eyes of others, it’s just another misfit. And sometimes you really need the eyes of others to help you in shopping-decisions!).

If I’m shopping with others, I tend to buy less and try less on. If I go shopping with others, I go for the fun of it, not to do determined shopping. If I go shopping alone, I go to do some serious shopping.

Another taboo-unlocker

My interest in taboos led me to this unique columnist with McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Dani Burlison. Read the following interview and discover new types of taboos, how to write about them and how to become a succesful writer:

 

A non-stop-writing taboo-unlocking armchair anthropologist

“Don’t stop writing and don’t try to be something you’re not.” Columnist Dani Burlison stopped writing once during her young adult years, because a boyfriend read her work and told her it was “awful.” When she started again, she felt embarrassed to show her work to anyone. In spite of now receiving six rejection letters over the past two weeks, she learned her lesson and will never stop writing again. 

Burlison began her obsession with reading at the age of 4. She shamelessly labels herself as the “nerd” in the advanced reading classes she took in school. When she ran out of books in between visits to the library, she would write her own stuff. This evolved into a passion for writing poetry in her teenage years, until the boyfriend made her stop writing for several years. Getting back on the horse wasn’t easy, but many years and ups and downs later, in the fall of 2011, she became runner-up in the annual column contest with the publishing company McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Mid-life crisis turning into a columnist career

At the time she entered the contest, Burlison’s life was at a crossroad. “I guess since I am in my late thirties you could call it a mid-life crisis,” she says. She was urgently looking for a way to improve her chances of making money as a writer and was considering going back to school for an MFA (Master of Fine Arts). When she became runner-up, she thought to herself, “F*** more grad school and more student loans! Writing for McSweeney’s is better than any of that.” And that was the beginning of an unlocking of social taboos through the written word.

Dendrophilia and other social taboos

Burlison is fascinated by “the weird s*** that people are into.” Talking about these things that might be too “odd” or “uncomfortable” to talk about is exactly the idea behind her column, which she describes as a brutally honest, humorous anthropological study of people.

The column “Dendrophilia and Other Social Taboos” is named after one of the oddest and most painful taboos, Burlison can think of. Dendrophiliacs are people who have sex with or are aroused by trees. “I’ve actually met a few people who have done this, although they were on LSD or something,” she says.

Humor as an essential ingredient

Burlison emphasizes the characteristic humorous edge that she wraps around the social taboos. She describes herself as a humoristic armchair anthropologist, self-taught herbalist, closet singer, soon to be beekeeper, and a hippie with a pagan-leaning outlook on life and a penchant for indie rock, hip hop, tattoos, good beer and gossip. In one of her columns she refers to herself as a feminist and also recently tweeted a link to a video discussing females’ roles in the Oscar movies.

Above all though, she sees herself as a single mom having a blast with her two daughters. “The other day I was banging away on deadlines and one daughter was working on her novel or drawing and the other was working on an incredible sculpture for an upcoming art show and we were all singing along to Elvis Costello and Built to Spill. It was one of the happiest moments of my week,” she recalls.

Inspirational voices

Other than finding a great deal of inspiration in her daughters, she finds the greatest inspirations are the voices of songwriters. “Tom Waits lives nearby and whenever I see him I try to brush up against him to snatch some of his creative energy. I know it sounds creepy but he’s like this magical creature,” she says.

She also subscribes to writer Nick Flynn on Facebook, and when she questions if her writing is too much, she often finds herself thinking “What would Nick Flynn do?” However, Burlison weighs evolving her own style of writing and encourages others to do the same: “It is great to have writers we look up to but we should never, ever try to write like them. I really believe that each person has his or her own voice.”

She believes the best way to find your own voice is to never stop writing and that her own written voice is still developing – and probably always will be. Therefore, Burlison will never stop writing, regardless of what her boyfriends say or the number of rejection letters she receives.

 

——-

Burlisons column can be found here.

 

No naked butts

The other day I was watching Sex and the City. The episode where Harry moves in with Charlotte and leaves his teabags all over the place. And walks around naked. Even though I can’t remember the episodes scene by scene, something was wrong with this episode. Something was missing. Harry’s naked butt. It had simply been cut out.

(from approx 2:00)

When I was driving home from school with some friends, the song “Young, Wild & Free” was played on the radio. And so, 4 girls in a car, we of course sang along. But at a certain time we song solo. We belted out “So what we get druuuunk, so what we smoke weed” – but apparently they get *beep*, not drunk, and they ‘sleep’, don’t smoke weed, at least as long as they’re on the radio.

Same goes for the song “Rack City” that on YouTube is Rack City Bitch and in the radio is Rack City Chick. Kind of a difference.

Watching the Hangover was also a perforated experience. Waiting for the epic scene where the bride’s brother, Alan, turns around in his sexy thong (or lack of same), we could keep waiting, cause apparently Alan’s naked butt had been cut out – just like Harry’s.

The things is, I notice these scenes have been cut out because they are in fact memorable due to the controversial in seeing something as private as another person’s naked butt. You notice the words have been changed because of the controversial in swearwords. We notice things that stand out or are different. So we notice when they’re missing, because we exactly noticed they have been there before.

Since I, as mentioned, am not from the US, I have a different perspective on things. It seems like in the US it is still a taboo to show things that are kind of sexual (or just plain naked things), and play certain words concerning alcohol, drugs, sex or swearwords. Where I come from – this is not the case. We don’t have nearly half as many “beeps” in our songs. And we definitely do not cut out the naked butts in tv-shows or movies.

Although it might spare some kids’ ears and eyes, if you grow up not seeing these things like naked butts or knowing they’re cut out or words are changed because it is a “taboo,” the things might actually become more tabooized. You could think nakedness is ‘wrong’ and singing about getting drunk is not allowed. Although there are so many aspects of this, which I will not bring up here, I believe general openness to these things is the way ahead. Show it all, play it all, and trust people for their better judgment.

Kilos of taboos

You look at the calories burned-counter as you continue to push yourself on the treadmill. Burning calories is a big motivation factor for not ending the run, but it’s seems like it counts so slowly compared to the amount of sweat dripping off your body.

As you finally give in and press the red “STOP” button, you pat yourself on the shoulder congratulating your inner fighter. Now, in the fitness center at my school, there are a dozen of students as well as elders. They tend to clutter at very unfortunate times – just when you don’t want them to clutter.

There is a weight at the gym, both out in the area where people exercise and in the locker rooms.

Now, these weights are often very lonely. It’s like they’re surrounded by an aura of discomfort and people don’t want to step on to them. Sometimes you can see how people circle around it, gaining courage to step on to it or waiting for the right time where no one is looking. They drink some water, pretend to have business to do in the area where the weight is placed and when someone does see his or hers chance to step on to the weight and check up on the kilos, that’s the moment where all of a sudden you think everyone clutters around you, lining up to refill water bottles or whatever.

The flow of people in the area is probably as normal as always, but because you’re so conscious about who is looking while you’re weighing yourself, it seems like suddenly the eyes of the entire world are focused upon you and the number on that weight.

Cause seemingly the number on the weight is one of those small taboos you don’t want to talk about. A lot of people nearly constantly walk around with the idea of having a few pounds extra on the sides that you want to drop, so they feel embarrassed if people know their weight.

However, this is because the number on the weight is associated with the idea that it supposedly tells you everything about how thin or not-thin you are. But there’s a lot more to it than just numbers. Muscles weighing more than fat, height, clothes you’re weighing (everything counts, right?).

The other day a friend of mine was ecstatic about how she lost weight. When my other friend asked her how much she weighed now, she said that “I won’t tell you my weight, but I’ll tell you how many kilos I lost.” It illustrates perfectly well how we feel like this number on the weight determines such a big part of how others will perceive us. To many people, it is so personal that it is to be kept a secret. Only you know that number. And even if people presume they know your weight, you’re the only one who knows the real number. Cause let’s face it – if you do get caught in a “Well how much do you weigh”-question, you always say a lesser number – regardless of whether you take off only half a kilo or five…