On the occasion of camping with women 50 and older

NOTE TO MY OVERSEAS READERS: New Zealand goes on holiday at Christmas. Everyone (I’m exaggerating for effect) goes to the beach. So read this essay whilst keeping in mind that the entire country is camping somewhere near one of New Zealand’s stunningly gorgeous and perennially empty beaches.

Being a few years shy of fifty myself, I can but marvel at the salubrious effect that passing this milestone has upon women. The bonds of convention chafe a little less, and a look akin to happy madness flickers in their eyes. Is it any wonder that I grasped the opportunity to camp with a pack of demi-centarians over New Years’?

I am not without camping credentials. As a child, I was a Bluebird, which is like being a Brownie, except that we identified with a soft, fluffy winged-creature rather than with a chocolate cakey slice produced by Betty Crocker. We sold chocolates instead of biscuits and our spirituality was vaguely Native American. Our merit badges came in the form of Indian beads – wooden in my day, though I’m sure by now they must be made of plastic in Chinese sweatshops by fourteen year-old girls who contract cancer from the noxious fumes.

The Indian name I gave myself was Koki Tawanka, which translates as Little Woman Willing to Try. Decades later, having run out of neuroses to contemplate but not yet ready to give up therapy, I pondered why I chose this moniker over all others. Why had I not become, Fierce Eagle Who Hurls Herself at the Sun or Mighty River Rushing over Laughing Boulders? Perhaps those names were already taken. More likely, I was expressing my inner blandness, fostered by a subculture that encouraged girls to cultivate houseplants and paint white buckets to stick them in.

What I remember most vividly about camping as a Bluebird was getting toasted marshmallow goo stuck on my glasses. I failed knot tying because I couldn’t see beyond the sticky white fingerprints smeared across the lenses. I was encouraged to quit Bluebirds soon thereafter.

At least twenty years elapsed before I took up camping again, this time as a new dyke eager to manifest butchness by tramping up mountains with a seventy kilo pack on my back. A very short phase that ended when I, accompanied by a woman with monocular vision who had difficulty registering changes in terrain levels, set fire to a hut on the Routeburn track while boiling pasta. (The ache in my joints that this activity produced prompted a mutation in my Indian name to Kooky Tantruma, meaning Bigger Woman Willing to Cry.)

Enter the Blessed Age of Car Camping. A most sensible response to the mature woman’s refined Comfort Index that includes blow up mattresses, tents, naps, pinot noir, and duvets. My inner Bluebird of Happiness trills again.

Camp
We arrived to find an already well-established tent city. The campers were busy doing what campers do, which are the same things they do at home, except here they were doing them out-of-doors without bras or combed hair.

We set up our site. Eager to begin my research, I cast about for a means of engaging my subjects’ attention and settled upon the method of opening a wine bottle. The cork-pop produced the desired result, and we were integrated into the community. Thus began my seven days of observation.

Here are a few excerpts from my extensive research journal. I pass them along now in no particular order.
While camping, women over fifty:

1.Like to be prepared for all contingencies. One specimen, a member of the genus, Campera Accessora, brought 2 hammers, 17 tarps, 112 tent pegs of different size and thickness, 7 kilometres of ropes, 3 cook stoves, a pink spatula, a pergola, a barbecue grill, 2 jars of capers, a packet of dried currants and sea

2. Don’t care if their grandchildren fail to brush their teeth.

3. Drink summer ale at 9.47 in the morning.

4. Regard ‘to nap’ as an action verb.

5. Have scotch-filet-stealing dogs in tow.

6. Put off doing the dishes until they are forced to weave plates out of pohutukawa branches and make cutlery out of cabbage leaves.

7. Forego getting their 10,000 steps in for the day.

 

Domestic Diva: Vicious Vacuuming

New Zealand’s Domestic Diva returns, and her motto is “I’m here to help”. In this video she tackles pesky cat hair while providing invaluable instruction on her patented method for vicious vacuuming.

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Aunt Bea’s out there…I think

I got new glasses last week and didn’t want to mess them up by wearing them when I went cycling.  I can see well enough but things get kind of interesting.  This morning I was sure it was Aunt Bea from Mayberry walking up the sidewalk.   

 

Dyke with a $100,000 Haircut

Okay, it really didn’t cost that much. But I’m used to going to the budget places where you spend more time punching in your EFTPOS pin number than you do in the chair getting your hair cut – the franchise salons where the hairdressers are sometimes one blade short of a scissors. (Like Jonno, who admitted he got fired from his last job because he spit chewing gum into a customer’s hair.)

Not that my mother would have approved of my cheap haircuts, if she knew. I grew up in the American South where going to the beauty parlor was like going to church. You went once a week and if you were lucky had a religious experience. Mom went to Laverne for years and years. Laverne and Alice had a shop across the road from the drug store. They wore white uniforms and crepe-soled shoes. Every once in awhile Alice disappeared through the swinging doors at the back and returned with metal bowls filled with a mysterious Coca-cola coloured goo that gave off a faint hazardous waste-tinged odour. I can’t remember what the goo was used for; perhaps it was only hair dye, but I liked to imagine that Alice was a mad scientist seeking a cure for dandruff.

The best time was when I was eight and Laverne gave me a hair-do just like my mother’s. She washed and set it, then teased it into a beehive, finishing off by firing her twin bottles of hairspray at my head like a gunslinger. See a hair out of place? Shoot to kill. Later I rode my bike around the neighbourhood. Bugs got stuck in my hair.

My girlfriend doesn’t approve of my predilection for cheap haircuts either. She’s had the same hairdresser for twenty-eight years. They’re planning a commitment ceremony. Although she never said anything, I could read her mind, and it was saying unkind things to my shaggy hair. So in the interest of relationship harmony, I made an appointment at ‘The Salon’. Actually, I jumped off the bus, rushed in and asked if they had a cancellation. The Receptionist told me to come back in half an hour.

When I returned, she sat me down to explain how lucky I was to get an appointment. In a low murmur she impressed upon me how their stylists were always booked weeks in advance. Maybe she was afraid I’d start a trend; the denizens of Grey Lynn would mistake them for a walk-in $10 haircut bar and freak out the Remuera matrons who trekked down the motorway for their services.

The Receptionist also wanted to make sure I knew just how much this haircut was going to set me back. Something about my ratty blue trainers, mismatched socks, and jeans with pink ink spilled on the left knee failed to inspire confidence that my wallet could handle the load. If I’d had any spine, I would have fled. But an apparition appeared in the mirror – it could have been Alice holding a metal bowl – beckoning me to the chair.

I must admit I was curious about what kind of a haircut I’d get for this amount of dosh. How would the experience be fundamentally different from the ones where I sat squashed in a plastic chair between eleven year-old goths playing video games and McDonald’s shiftworkers complaining about hat hair while awaiting my turn with Buffy the Split-end Slayer?

Curiousity didn’t stop me, however, from doing the math in my head: I could have bought health insurance with this money. Or a cell phone. How many African villages could have been saved from famine? How much interest would I have earned if I put the money in a superannuation fund? How much will the cat food cost that I’ll be eating when I’m 80 and broke?

The chair The Stylist sat me in for my shampoo reclined on its own. The basin was padded, so it didn’t have the usual rolling-pin-grinding-the-back-of-your-skull-to-pulp feel. “Yes,” The Stylist purred, “it’s very important to us that you’re comfortable.”

Oh, didn’t the moral dilemma self talk start then? How far down the slippery slope have I fallen? What’s next, buying frocks from Trelise Cooper? What if I get addicted to expensive haircuts? Everybody knows they only last 34 minutes and then you’re back needing another one . . . and another. Is this what we fought for, is this what feminism is all about . . . the freedom to give our money to institutions that make women slaves to image in order to please men?

The Stylist offered me the choice of water, coffee, or wine. I chose water, which was Laverne’s fault. She and Alice quit the beauty parlor business, went upscale and opened a women’s clothing store. One day Laverne offered Granny a glass of sherry while she waited to try on shoes. Granny spilled it all down her bosom. She tried to laugh it off, but I was embarrassed. (Mom worried about Granny’s drinking anyway. When she went out on dates, Mom insisted on driving her and her gentlemen friends.) I guess from Granny’s experience I developed a fear of drinking in the presence of hairdressers. You couldn’t say what it might lead to.

The chatter in my head started up again as The Stylist gently razored through my locks: When in history did haircuts get outsourced from the home to these Temples of Fru-Fru? Why wouldn’t it be socially acceptable for me to go home and take the garden shears to my head?

In my mind’s eye I envisaged a different self. One covered in fleas treating the sick and malnourished in a health clinic in Bhopal. I pause between administering vaccinations for dread diseases and remember the frivolous days when I used to get $100,000 haircuts on the cusp of Ponsonby. I sneer; that other me isn’t worth a second’s more consideration.

But I’m not in Bhopal, am I? I’m in Auckland where run-of-the mill homes cost a million-two, Range Rovers ferry tots to kindy, and baristas charge $3.50 for fifty cents worth of coffee. Are we all crazy? Are we? Or am I just so out of touch I should slap myself and get over it?

Yesterday’s newspaper said the world’s going to run out of water in twenty years. When that happens, will it matter how much I spent on a haircut in 2006? I don’t know. But the good news is, I woke up this morning and hated my new ‘do. It’s kind of the rat’s-nest-meets-mud-wrestler look. Definitely not me. So maybe this means the problem will solve itself. I can peel my conscience off the rack and go back to the $10 hair cut bar in peace.

Just don’t mention it to my girlfriend.

 

Bat is a Feminist Issue

Batwoman’s a lesbian, so says the New York Times. Now tell me, are we surprised? She rides around on a motorcycle, shows off her muscles and beats up bad guys. Sounds pretty butch to me. Which leaves us with the real question: why did it take her so long to come out? I suspected a case of internalised homophobia. (Just take a look at the high heels she’s wearing. They’d only be practical for crimefighting if she were called on to skewer evil slugs and jellyfish.)

Batman said I could use the Batphone, so I rang her up to ask about it.

“Hi Batwoman, this is Lisa.”
“Lisa who?”
“Oh sorry. Lisa Williams. Dykes in New Zealand only have one name.”
“Gotham City’s a little different. We got thirty-thousand Lisas in my zip code alone.”

We chit-chatted for a few minutes, comparing feats of derring-do. I told her about jay-walking across Ponsonby Road to get to the Women’s Bookshop. She mentioned almost being blown up in a meth house explosion. Then I gingerly broached the subject:

“What the hell’s the story with that costume?”

Even through the phone I could hear her manicured fingernails tapping in frustration on a hard surface.

“You think I wanna dress like this?” she said. “You try kick-boxing in a skin-tight body suit and see where you don’t chafe by the end of the day. Not to mention how far my underwear’s crawled up my crack.”

Obviously she’d never heard of Thunderpants; they never crawl up your crack.

“Then why wear it?” I asked.

She sighed. “The writers of my comic book – they’re all men. Four of ‘em.”

The significance of her words sunk in. It wasn’t internalised homophobia at all. I flicked through the news articles I’d printed off the Internet. There they were – Geoff, Grant, Greg, and Mark, the whitebread names of the quartet of “acclaimed writers” who scripted Batwoman’s every move.

“I get it.” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” she answered. “You seen the drawing of me that went with the story? The long auburn hair? It’s a wig. I’m really a bleached blonde with a crew cut and sidewalls. The boobs aren’t real either, in case you’re wondering. Mine went south after the baby was born.”

“You’re a mother?!” An image of Batwoman cradling a little bat came to mind.

She laughed. “Would spoil the male fantasy if word got out I had a daughter, wouldn’t it? And no way they’ll mention Sugar’s father is a turkey baster.”

Batwoman poured out the rest of her lament. She couldn’t get her nose pierced. She couldn’t drink Stella any more because a beer belly wasn’t a good look for the batsuit. She had to keep her mustache bleached. And most of the time she had to fight crime she wasn’t really interested in.

“Personally, I’d rather be working for the SPCA,” she said. “Or making a difference where it really matters – battling domestic violence, child abuse, and poverty.”

“Then why do it?” I asked. “Why not give up your secret identity, be plain old Kathy Kane, and raise Sugar in peace?”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

And neither do I.

SIDEBAR

Batwoman marks 50 years as a male fantasy

A bevy of Batwoman facts culled from the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.com:

Batwoman first appeared in July 1956. While Batman wore a utility belt, she got to carry a utility purse. The comic book cover shows her motorcycle racing ahead of the Batmobile. Robin cries out to Batman, “Hurry Batman, the Bat-woman is beating us on this mission!”

Batman often urged Batwoman to give up crimefighting because of the danger it involved.

In 1961, Batwoman’s niece, Bat-Girl, became her sidekick. They were designed to be Batman and Robin’s romantic interests. Bat-Girl wore a red and green costume to “flatter” Robin.

In the 1970s, Batwoman retired and became the owner of a circus.
In the Batman TV series, Batgirl was a librarian. She opened a secret door in the library to reveal her Batgirl closet so she could transform herself from a dowdy bookworm into a sexy super heroine.

The TV Batgirl had to fight like a girl. She could only kick and throw objects at criminals, which made her easy to capture. In the 27 episodes in which Batgirl appeared, she never captured the crooks all on her own.