ahhh, the pursuit of polished and shiny womanhood. is there anything more grand -- or more annoyingly time consuming?
here's the scoop: i have a *major* presentation tomorrow morning. i need to be at a colleague's house across town at 8 am to get a ride out to the client's office. then i will present about 120 slides worth of information, as well as probably chime in on the part that my boss is presenting, and cover any questions that come up about the case studies in the appendix.
i'm not nervous about presentations. i mean, i get nervous about putting them together (especially beasts like this one, where the role of each of us that was helping on this project wasn't alltogether clear and we were working on it off-and-on for three months!), but i don't get nervous about the actual presenting part. i do fine in front of a crowd if i know what i'm talking about.
what kills me is that i'm up late now waiting for my nail polish to dry so that i can look polished for this damn presentation. (yes, i am typing very, very carefully!).
you see, i have come to realize that my warmest winter gloves, which are lined with fur (yes, real, but i didn't think that they were when i got them for $20 at j. crew), tend to leave nasty black hairs behind the tip of my fingernails. which make my hands look really nasty dirty and ruin any semblance of polished-and-professional ladyhood.
now, i have plenty of other issues trying to look polished and professional: i pick my nails, my hair does whatever it wants, i can't wear nylons for more than an hour without developing a run, etc. but this problem is easily enough fixed if i just try to find the time to keep my nails polished in winter.
so here i am, at midnight, smugding up my nails while typing and trying to keep from being irritated at the silly things us ladies do to look lovely. (i could go on quite a bit here on waxing, but it's probably not appropriate).
wait, no... i need to go on about waxing. do men realize that when women get waxed it's not a soothing spa experience? dudes, we get hot wax put on very sensitive parts and then it's yanked off like a hardcore band-aid! yipes! what are we thinking?
i realize that a lot of my friends, especially those in ann arbor (as opposed to LA or NY) probably don't get waxed (or maybe don't even shave) and would be appalled at the anti-feminist tendencies that i've developed over the years. for example, the amount of makeup that i have acquired (i will shamefully admit here that during her visit last week erin said i might have more makeup than she does, and she's an admitted junkie).
i have struggled with my feminist beliefs about all kinds of beautification efforts, including hair removal, makeup, and self-tanning (which i have done). in the end, if i can afford it, it appears that i have fallen hook-and-sinker for anything that i think "helps" me out.
is it some sort of evolutionary tendency for me to endure all of this stupid shit for some sort of small "edge" that i can get (even though i'm happily married, and none of this sort of thing is *supposed* to affect our stnading in the business world)? or am i just really, really susceptible to greater marketing minds than my own, which have convinced me that i need to do these things?
i have no idea.
i just wish this damn nail polish would dry.