About pride and prejudice

Watch out for some serious referencing into academia tomorrow!


Yes, I know. This entry is way overdue. In fact, I am a whole week late. But since I am the One Who Gives The Marks, and since I am doing this only to empathise with you guys, the Ones Who Needs To Pass, please forgive me. From now on, I will do a proper job every day.

I actually already started dressing this past Wednesday. So I will re-cap from Day Three, which is Day One for me. At least in this regard, I will join many of you. I notice that some of your blogs (only a few, though!), although existing in name since the beginning of time (Blog-Time), have not been updated with a single iota.

But I digress. Let me get to my own story. Imagine a little girl, raised strictly Calvinist. She saw life only 11 months after her sister. To this day, she still thinks that her sibling, the glamour girl, depleted the (glamour.. and brain?) resources to such an extent that it has not grown back into her mother’s body yet. Her mother, a seemingly cute and perfectly built Calvinist Barbie Doll, was raised with enough manipulative resources and cunning that she could outsmart any hot-blooded man who possessed some feeling of responsibility. More about this curious creature will follow in the next entry.


So the girl was born into a family of suppressed hostility. The negative vibe was not really personally directed onto her. Nevertheless, everyone knew that she was the cause of it. The grandmother furiously blamed the responsible hot-blooded Calvinist Hunk of ‘making her poor daughter pregnant within a very unfashionable time’. Images of her mother ‘lying back and thinking of England’ has dogged the Unglamorous One since she became aware of some facts of where babies originate.

The up-side of having two daughters of nearly the same size (the +11month glamour blonde just appearing to be a tad cleverer than the dark-haired one), was that they could be dressed in exactly the same garb daily – up to the panties! And that would make people go oooo and aaaaa, and comment on what a good mother the Dainty One is, since she is also industriously sewing everything with her own ten nail polish-clad little fingerlets. So, she was redeemed, even elevated, in the eyes of her Dutch Reformed Church community as well as the colleagues at the school for special children where she taught. Mainly, the whole family regarded her in extreme esteem. That also pleased the grandmother.

The chubby, dark-haired youngster always knew that she was the sibling without the electric windows or air conditioner. Some models are just utilitarian. And she did not really care for the frilly (always shades of blue or pink) dresses coming forth as fruit from the Petite One’s sewing machine. Then again, girls were not really allowed to wear pants in the Sixties. Jeans were straight from Hell, and I think the Dainty One simply did not know how to make a cute pair of pants. Maybe in the back of her consciousness, she was still reminded of how unpleasantly atmospheric the second pregnancy was, what with the breach of properness and all. After all, she was raised with the mantra ‘wat sal die mense sê?’ (what will the people say) uppermost in her mind.
So, with this scant background as life story, I will start my Body Blog. I do not like to wear make-up, or high-heeled shoes, or to stink of various perfumes hidden in countless beauty products making up this ‘look’. For the next week, I will repulse myself. I will think of my mother not only daily, but every second of the day. The lipstick, aching feet and sickeningly properness of Calvinism and female wile will dog me like the smell of formaldehyde that drenched my sister’s hands when she dissected corpses in her second year medical class. Let the rot begin!