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sorcyressI can't stop staring at this picture.
It's Racheline. She linked to it on her blog, saying this is me as a man1 and this is me as a woman. The one I am fixated on is her as a woman. It's a photograph I've never seen --I am semi-obsessive about saving pictures of people I find friends, interesting, attractive, far-away and foreign3-- and was not in all honesty the one I was expecting. The one I was expecting is her as a dancer, red dress sharp against the walls of the subway station, strong and vivid and quite utterly in control of herself.
This is a photo of something different. This is, as she says, a photo of her as a woman. And I'm fixated, on the eyes, on the hands, on the curve of her lips and tilt of the neck.
Racheline has achieved something I simply can't seem to grasp.
She is able to be beautiful. Traditionally femininely beautiful, and quite utterly a woman.
Obviously there is only so much a photo can portray, and I don't have her on IM to ask terribly prying questions about gender and mindset and comfort in ones skin. The sideways glance could just as easily be a way to hide feeling lost, unsure, but I don't think so. She defined the photo as her as a woman. And thus it is.
During NoSuchConvention, I found myself struck with one of those decisive moments in which I suddenly know who and what I am. I wrote about one not too long ago, on my most recent Erik day. That day I knew solidly that I was not my normal absence of gender, I was decidedly male.
At the con, I knew suddenly that I was not my normal absence of gender, I was decidedly female. I was female, and I wanted to be delicate, and flirty, and pretty. I wanted ruffles and lace, a proper skirt, to try on a corset and see if I too could have breasts spilling out of my top. I wanted(want) to be traditionally femininely beautiful and quite utterly a woman.
The initial problem was that I was ill equipped to achieve that at the con. I did try --let down the hair and turn my coat back into a dress-- but at best, I could hit "barefoot hippie goddess" which is not at all the same thing as pretty woman, no matter how you view gender identity. In all honesty though, I could've had access to my entire closet and not known what to wear.
The problem, the real problem, is that I do not have the talent or the security to take clothes and hair and make-up and turn myself into a woman, into a real woman who is beautiful and can smile and mean it, who understands what it's like to be feminine, and how to turn your head and move your hands. I never learned. I have watched with fascination as my sister taught myself, as Jannyblue made posts about how to appear normal, but even following their advice, I am not sure I could achieve anything more impressive than faking it, and becoming very very quiet.
I know too many real women, women who know who and what they are, and who hold themselves with ease and understand what to do and why to do it. I have seen enough examples to know I'm not right.
The moment that feels most right from prom was getting dressed, dropping the leatherman into my purse. Just in case. Maybe you can be a woman with a leatherman, but not I. It was defiance, a tomboy's toy, a geek's little weirdness. It was pulling myself away from the femininity, from the pretty dress and well-braided hair. It was giving me something solid, usual, to latch onto.
The moment that felt most right from the Highland ball, another time wearing another pretty dress, was when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
adfamiliares latched on to how lost I looked-felt-was and gave me subtle instruction. Now we go choose a table, now we put our purses down, now we go mingle, and talk with friends until you can forget that you are dressed wrong. It was a gift, from someone I admire, and it helped enough that I remember it distinct, ten months later.
I'm sure I can look like a woman, like a beautiful and feminine thing. But it comes at the cost of my voice, as I become no longer myself. Trying femininity takes effort enough that I must close myself off, hide behind eyes that are a little too wide, a little too scared. Curl to the edges of the crowd, because I can't sustain the illusion otherwise, and well, what's the point of being pretty if I ruin it by speaking?
Maybe someday I'll figure it out. I'm getting better at the boy part of things, about realizing today I am masculine and I will behave like thus. There must be similar switches to pull, things to learn (and I laugh as I wonder if maybe I shouldn't start lurking on the edges of the internet devoted to helping good little boys become lovely little girls, in whole or in part.)
I can't help but expect flames from this post. How dare I suggest all women must be feminine, be pretty (I don't think I did), that all women must be confident and self-aware and strong. And of course, I am such a lovely girl, and so beautiful and why would I think myself ugly (I don't and I'm not). Or perhaps how dare I want such a thing, why would I not embrace my body-as-is, revel in unshaven legs and unarranged hair, aspire to be a hippie goddess more than disney princess (I have always been a princess, my very name was chosen in part to let me have that identity. Children should have princess names, said Neva to my mother, and so we did, Katarina and Nikolai, and Alysandra.)
Because I am young, and still learning myself. It has not been so long since I could admit satisfaction with the shape of the meat-sack I inhabit, and I still exhibit the tendency to be unsure of that satisfaction sometimes. The mind is such a grand and glorious and more complicated organ, why would it not take me longer to come to terms? I love myself, as is, but there is an ideal that I may never reach, and it hurts to remember that, just like it hurts when I remember I will never put a rocketship on the moon.
And besides all that, the difference between attractive and charismatic is very sharp sometimes. Do not lie that I am more of the former. Prettier than average, of course, but I was trained by the best from a very young age to warp people to my will. I have more power than Buttercup ever did, but still, sometimes I can't help but wish to be the most beautiful woman in the world.
And I suppose, the only closing thought I can share is how unfair it is that Racheline has two perfect red dresses, and I haven't even got one.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: this post, and here is the man2 picture
2: It's interesting how I intersect with gender and words. In that photo, he is self identifying as a man, so I will call him a man. But I wanted so bad when writing this to soften the word, to say "boy" instead. Sometime I should look at the world, and analyze the why I call you boys and girls, why I so often abandon the words man and woman.
3: I guard and treasure every photograph I've ever found of my clone. Of Thorog. Of Rackle and Harena, of DrummerDude and Jarne. Of all the people who for so long were just avatars and text, who I connected to so much easier-stronger-better than my "real life" friends.
The internet has changed since then, and I've aged enough that I've changed too. I wouldn't necessarily go back to when pictures were a treat and a phone call unimaginable delight. But I am nostalgic for then.
It's Racheline. She linked to it on her blog, saying this is me as a man1 and this is me as a woman. The one I am fixated on is her as a woman. It's a photograph I've never seen --I am semi-obsessive about saving pictures of people I find friends, interesting, attractive, far-away and foreign3-- and was not in all honesty the one I was expecting. The one I was expecting is her as a dancer, red dress sharp against the walls of the subway station, strong and vivid and quite utterly in control of herself.
This is a photo of something different. This is, as she says, a photo of her as a woman. And I'm fixated, on the eyes, on the hands, on the curve of her lips and tilt of the neck.
Racheline has achieved something I simply can't seem to grasp.
She is able to be beautiful. Traditionally femininely beautiful, and quite utterly a woman.
Obviously there is only so much a photo can portray, and I don't have her on IM to ask terribly prying questions about gender and mindset and comfort in ones skin. The sideways glance could just as easily be a way to hide feeling lost, unsure, but I don't think so. She defined the photo as her as a woman. And thus it is.
During NoSuchConvention, I found myself struck with one of those decisive moments in which I suddenly know who and what I am. I wrote about one not too long ago, on my most recent Erik day. That day I knew solidly that I was not my normal absence of gender, I was decidedly male.
At the con, I knew suddenly that I was not my normal absence of gender, I was decidedly female. I was female, and I wanted to be delicate, and flirty, and pretty. I wanted ruffles and lace, a proper skirt, to try on a corset and see if I too could have breasts spilling out of my top. I wanted(want) to be traditionally femininely beautiful and quite utterly a woman.
The initial problem was that I was ill equipped to achieve that at the con. I did try --let down the hair and turn my coat back into a dress-- but at best, I could hit "barefoot hippie goddess" which is not at all the same thing as pretty woman, no matter how you view gender identity. In all honesty though, I could've had access to my entire closet and not known what to wear.
The problem, the real problem, is that I do not have the talent or the security to take clothes and hair and make-up and turn myself into a woman, into a real woman who is beautiful and can smile and mean it, who understands what it's like to be feminine, and how to turn your head and move your hands. I never learned. I have watched with fascination as my sister taught myself, as Jannyblue made posts about how to appear normal, but even following their advice, I am not sure I could achieve anything more impressive than faking it, and becoming very very quiet.
I know too many real women, women who know who and what they are, and who hold themselves with ease and understand what to do and why to do it. I have seen enough examples to know I'm not right.
The moment that feels most right from prom was getting dressed, dropping the leatherman into my purse. Just in case. Maybe you can be a woman with a leatherman, but not I. It was defiance, a tomboy's toy, a geek's little weirdness. It was pulling myself away from the femininity, from the pretty dress and well-braided hair. It was giving me something solid, usual, to latch onto.
The moment that felt most right from the Highland ball, another time wearing another pretty dress, was when
adfamiliares latched on to how lost I looked-felt-was and gave me subtle instruction. Now we go choose a table, now we put our purses down, now we go mingle, and talk with friends until you can forget that you are dressed wrong. It was a gift, from someone I admire, and it helped enough that I remember it distinct, ten months later. I'm sure I can look like a woman, like a beautiful and feminine thing. But it comes at the cost of my voice, as I become no longer myself. Trying femininity takes effort enough that I must close myself off, hide behind eyes that are a little too wide, a little too scared. Curl to the edges of the crowd, because I can't sustain the illusion otherwise, and well, what's the point of being pretty if I ruin it by speaking?
Maybe someday I'll figure it out. I'm getting better at the boy part of things, about realizing today I am masculine and I will behave like thus. There must be similar switches to pull, things to learn (and I laugh as I wonder if maybe I shouldn't start lurking on the edges of the internet devoted to helping good little boys become lovely little girls, in whole or in part.)
I can't help but expect flames from this post. How dare I suggest all women must be feminine, be pretty (I don't think I did), that all women must be confident and self-aware and strong. And of course, I am such a lovely girl, and so beautiful and why would I think myself ugly (I don't and I'm not). Or perhaps how dare I want such a thing, why would I not embrace my body-as-is, revel in unshaven legs and unarranged hair, aspire to be a hippie goddess more than disney princess (I have always been a princess, my very name was chosen in part to let me have that identity. Children should have princess names, said Neva to my mother, and so we did, Katarina and Nikolai, and Alysandra.)
Because I am young, and still learning myself. It has not been so long since I could admit satisfaction with the shape of the meat-sack I inhabit, and I still exhibit the tendency to be unsure of that satisfaction sometimes. The mind is such a grand and glorious and more complicated organ, why would it not take me longer to come to terms? I love myself, as is, but there is an ideal that I may never reach, and it hurts to remember that, just like it hurts when I remember I will never put a rocketship on the moon.
And besides all that, the difference between attractive and charismatic is very sharp sometimes. Do not lie that I am more of the former. Prettier than average, of course, but I was trained by the best from a very young age to warp people to my will. I have more power than Buttercup ever did, but still, sometimes I can't help but wish to be the most beautiful woman in the world.
And I suppose, the only closing thought I can share is how unfair it is that Racheline has two perfect red dresses, and I haven't even got one.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: this post, and here is the man2 picture
2: It's interesting how I intersect with gender and words. In that photo, he is self identifying as a man, so I will call him a man. But I wanted so bad when writing this to soften the word, to say "boy" instead. Sometime I should look at the world, and analyze the why I call you boys and girls, why I so often abandon the words man and woman.
3: I guard and treasure every photograph I've ever found of my clone. Of Thorog. Of Rackle and Harena, of DrummerDude and Jarne. Of all the people who for so long were just avatars and text, who I connected to so much easier-stronger-better than my "real life" friends.
The internet has changed since then, and I've aged enough that I've changed too. I wouldn't necessarily go back to when pictures were a treat and a phone call unimaginable delight. But I am nostalgic for then.
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no subject
on 2011-02-25 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-26 08:14 pm (UTC)~Sor
no subject
on 2011-02-25 11:41 pm (UTC)You want to know why I identify that other photo as man? Because I was standing ON A (very rickety) TABLE, ON A ROOF, ON A VERY WINDY DAY, with what I felt was very much not an adequate safety wall. I really, really hate heights. And the only way I could do it, was to set my jaw (I know my facial expressions based on how I feel my teeth connect -- I memorized them all in the mirror, because that's my job), and thought "goddamn it, look like Jack."
I'm ridiculously pleased with that photo, but IT WAS TERRIFYING. Nothing boy about it, no matter how soft my skin. Because that was entirely like PACK OF WILD DOGS SCARY for me.
no subject
on 2011-02-25 11:47 pm (UTC)One thing I noticed and didn't write about because that wasn't the point is very much the difference of the gaze in the two photos, which may or may not have been conscious or intentional. The man picture is directly meeting the camera while the woman one is decidedly not, which I found interesting. Were I more prone to big words and actually figuring out things, I would link it to traditional portrayals of femininity and masculinity or something.
Also, you're very brave. And holyshit that is the blur of a city behind you isn't it, oh wow. You're cool!
~Sor
no subject
on 2011-02-25 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-26 12:03 am (UTC)Actually, I mostly just recommend Holly Pervocracy without reservation.
http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2011/02/gender-smorgasbord.html
[like]
on 2011-02-26 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-26 08:15 pm (UTC)~Sor
no subject
on 2011-02-26 01:18 am (UTC)My point is that if sometimes you want to play the role of "pretty, feminine woman," you shouldn't let yourself be held back by the feeling that you're "just faking it," because that's all anyone is doing. Be held back instead by the red dress problem, which sounds serious and should be rectified forthwith.
no subject
on 2011-02-26 08:16 pm (UTC)You are wonderful. I'm glad I know you.
~Sor
no subject
on 2011-02-28 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-26 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-26 04:37 am (UTC)...ideally with an actual mallet in at least a couple of cases... *evil*
no subject
on 2011-02-26 02:26 am (UTC)Actually that was Barbara Lanza, and she was right.
no subject
on 2011-02-26 08:17 pm (UTC)~Sor
reactions
on 2011-02-26 03:09 am (UTC)2. On "boy/girl" vs. "man/woman": I think, in my head, "man" and "woman" are roles (how people see you from the outside and how you act) while "boy" and "girl" are something more innate (how you actually are, physically and/or psychologically).
That's just my immediate take, however, and it may sound more useful than it eventually turns out to be. Maybe this is why I've never been comfortable thinking of myself as "a woman trapped in a man's body" -- because I have no interest in taking on the woman-role, at least not wholesale. [further caveats, qualifications, and speculation deleted for the sake of clarity]
3. One of my big frustrations, before Figuring Things Out, was that I always wanted female-bodied people to act out my gender-expression for me, since I couldn't do it. (The closer they got to what I wanted to be like, the stronger the wish was; if someone was just too femmy, or too masculine in the wrong ways, it wasn't worth worrying about, and I could just deal with them as who they were instead of as almost-proxies for myself. This was, I think, the main source of my bad behavior regarding Jenny (http://wiki.hypertwins.org/File:CFS_1982_Mar_029.jpg), who was about 9944/100% my inner gender and body-type.)
The reason I mention this is that I often wonder how much of this sort of "frustrated self-expression" is behind people telling other people how they should and shouldn't dress, act, etc. Person A whose hard-wired self-image is nothing like the way s/he looks but is very similar to how Person B looks might feel a very strong urge to modify Person B's behavior, clothing, or whatever so as to look more like Person A's hard-wired self-image -- and this might hold just as true for two people who appear the same gender as for people who appear to be opposite genders. If it happens at all (and isn't just some weird side-effect of my particular cross-wiring), I suspect it's quite common.
4. Having learned to... control? divert? suppress?... that frustrated self-expression, I have no real problem with any female acting however feminine or masculine (or any combination thereof) they want to, nor with varying such behavior according to mood or circumstance.
4a. That said... when you say "But it comes at the cost of my voice, as I become no longer myself.", I have to wonder: what is the gain? If you're not being yourself, what are you being, and why can't you be only the parts of it that you like? I'm guessing that this is a question not easily answered, and I'm not demanding an answer. It's just a question that you don't seem to address, so I don't know if you've thought it or not.
4b. That question is important for me, at least, because it took another length of time (after discovering my dysphoria) to sort out that I didn't need to be the whole package -- for some threshold minimum percentage of my mentality to be in accordance with conventional feminine mentality -- in order to be "really" dysphoric (and therefore genuinely in need of real-world external changes of some sort, as opposed to being able to solve the problem internally e.g. "get over it" or "cure myself" or whatever).
Even knowing this, however, I still find myself thinking that I don't "deserve" femininity -- so it may be that this is a difficult idea to escape from -- the idea that you have to take on the whole package at once, or else the individual parts are invalidated.
For what it's worth, there are many masculine traits in my ideal version of what I think of as "femininity"... and of course "femininity" is just an arbitrary label to refer to some volume in multidimensional gender-space (http://wiki.hypertwins.org/Gender_identity), for which there is a sort of culture group-consensus but considerable variation between individuals.
Re: reactions
on 2011-02-26 08:20 pm (UTC)2) That's an interesting way of looking at it. I don't know. I do know I use boy/girl for myself at least in part because from man/woman I infer a level of adulthood I haven't reached. But the idea of identities-vs-roles is intriguing.
3) I'd like to think I don't do this. I don't know. I'm not conscious of ever being upset with my ideals for this reason.
4a) The gain, or rather, the hope, is that someday I'll be able to affect that ideal-femme self without losing my voice. That I'll learn my place, myself well enough to be able to feel more like it matters, like I am not just playing pretend.
You do deserve femininity, in whatever parts you would like or need.
~Sor
Re: reactions
on 2011-02-27 02:19 am (UTC)So now I'll say this (a much shorter disclaimer) with regard to #1 specifically:
Please don't ever think that I would rather you didn't do such things (dressing male) or talk about them. I have my jealousy safely captured in a little emotion-terrarium, where I study its behavior and try it out on different types of foliage to see what it likes to eat. Sometimes it bites me, but it can't really hurt me because I'm much bigger than it is and I have a safe place to leave it when I'm doing other things.
2) Interesting that there's a level of adulthood you feel you haven't achieved. I frequently come across evidence that this is also true for me -- some circumstantial, some more innate and a bit TMI-ish. The more TMI-ish ones make me wonder if it's a side-effect of the dysphoria, or at least exacerbated by it.
3) I can't picture you doing it (telling someone else how they should look because you subconsciously want them to express your identity for you), though I can picture other people doing it to you, and putting pressure on you as a result of that -- which you might then react to, whether or not you were aware of its origin. (Though the idea of you being unaware of something like this strikes me as unlikely and kind of not-Sor.)
4a) Meaning that you will have... expanded the range of (metaphorical) dances you're comfortably familiar with, to the point where you can feel comfortable and confident doing the ideal-femme dance along with the others you currently know? (This is probably a terrible metaphor...)
---
I should have made it clear that "not deserving femininity" is one of those negvox things. I know it doesn't make sense to believe it, but my knowledge of arguments against it is still kind of... "lame", in the sense that it needs a great deal of rehab in order to become effective (as opposed to the colloquial sense of being useless and a waste of resources).
no subject
on 2011-02-26 04:51 am (UTC)There was a time in my life that I would literally run out of the room screaming if I were to hear a recording of my voice.
I absolutely hated it. It was deep, in a low register and not particularly "pretty" by Disney princess or movie star standards. It isn't babbly like a brook, nor does it remind people of birds singing. And, though I used to be able to stretch my vocal cords to reach an "A above high C" it takes a LOT of warming up for me to do that. (I'm naturally a tenor or high alto... TOTALLY not a female voice according to many, I guess it's since I don't sound like Minnie Mouse on helium.)
I always saw it as just more "proof" that I wasn't feminine enough to be considered female... even though I desperately want to be. Everyone ELSE was dating in high school... except me.
(Fortunately, my previous complete lack of makeup-using has seen some abatement, and I've finally developed something of a sense of style...)
But I still have trouble listening to a recorded version of my voice unless I'm doing some sort of accent or modulating it to a frequency that's very different than my "normal" voice.
I still don't know how anyone can stand to hear it, and I don't know how to change it...
(...and they wonder why I won't sing...)
no subject
on 2011-02-26 08:23 pm (UTC)I think of my voice as "deep like my mother's" but of course, I haven't come close to that register yet. I know I can't sing well, but I also know I can sing --if there's something backing me to reference-- and so I take the opportunity when presented. I don't typically sing to people though --I sing with things.
I can certainly stand to hear it. I like that you get a slightly higher pitch when hyper or excited --full of coffee or bouncing at con. Voices are not a thing I think about a lot, so I really can't summon any other concrete thoughts about yours. I wish I could offer more help though.
~Sor
no subject
on 2011-02-27 02:34 am (UTC)I used to have the same reaction to my voice, though -- even before adolescence, when gender wouldn't really have made much difference. I guess I've come around to thinking of it as an instrument and trying to get the widest use out of it, which includes both singing deep bass parts where they seem called for and keeping up with Kate Bush or Goldfrapp (without sounding too falsetto-ish). Here's me trying to sound female and not really succeeding (http://media.hypertwins.org/woozalia/ci-dctd-demo.mp3) despite coming fairly close. (When you keep coming close to the target but always falling to one side of it, it becomes clear that there's something in the way that may not be solvable with mere practice... which is kind of distressing.)
no subject
on 2011-02-26 06:31 am (UTC)Nobody but nobody ever reaches their ideal. Mostly because the ideal, like the self, like memory, is constantly changing to reflect experience and ideal and self and memory in a recursive loop. Also because people almost invariably promise ourselves we'll be better in the future while focusing on easier, more fun things in the perpetual now (see: anyone who has ever watched TV instead of doing schoolwork, etc. etc).
I'm sure I can look like a woman, like a beautiful and feminine thing. But it comes at the cost of my voice, as I become no longer myself.
Which, I think, was/is the entire point of the Classical-ish-period style femininity you seem to be speaking of. Women as decorative objects, things to be looked at, no deeper than surface sheen.
no subject
on 2011-02-26 08:27 pm (UTC)I make a hell of a perfect tomboy when I want to. And I make a hell of a perfect slut.
***
*chuckles* Yes, but I want my voice. Other femme ideals have theirs, they can talk in lilting tones about whatever springs to mind. There's a thread I noticed near the end of the essay of femininity paired with strength. I know some extremely stubborn and strong willed folks who are also absolutely what I'm trying to achieve. My unreachable femme ideal involves laughter. I don't think there's a self inside me that doesn't.
~Sor
no subject
on 2011-02-26 08:12 am (UTC)Also, as a seamstress, I could totally hook you up with a gorgeous red dress, with a clevage-inducing corset, if you like, in the event that we are ever in the same meatspace. Feel free to message me about this.
no subject
on 2011-02-26 08:31 pm (UTC)Most of the time, I'm pretty happy being genderneutral, or hell, just plain queer.
Performative femininity's a cool term for it. I'm gonna have to think about that some I think.
***
*BIG WIDE COVET EYES*
That's all I have to say about that. I will message you. Because yes covet yes.
~Sor
no subject
on 2011-02-26 04:01 pm (UTC)If I were to attempt to put your experience into my categories, it sounds like you were feeling4 female, and as a result wanted to appear (and feel?) feminine, but that this runs into your more overarching sense of your gender identity. So it doesn't match, even if it ought to match your current sense of gender. If I am wrong, feel free to tell me, I'm just curious as to how you think about it.
Anyway, I suspect you're right that if you work at it, feeling and appearing feminine will get easier. I think it's a matter of comfort—if you can convince yourself that what you're doing is right, then it will feel right, because there certainly isn't anything external preventing you. And then perhaps you can incorporate that into your general sense of self, and it will stop feeling other.
1. The first one least frequently, but it does happen.
2. Augh, I am putting footnotes in a comment. I entirely blame you. :-)
3. And, of course, all of those categories again, replacing female and feminine with male and masculine, with somewhat different frequencies.
4. I use "feeling" because that's how I tend to think of it, but of course "being" is also a perfectly reasonable thing if that makes more sense for you.
no subject
on 2011-02-26 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-26 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-28 02:41 am (UTC)femininity + responsibility = womanhood.
I don't wear makeup. But I always wear skirts (or the occasional dress), and the hair that I present to the world is always styled, because that's how I bought it.
It's kind of funny, how I came to have my first shaitel. I met with the shaitel macher3 once or twice before the wedding to look at wigs to basically see what would look good against my face, and what I did and didn't like. They also took my head size and we talked about color. I gave them a down payment, and they got something shipped in from NY for me.
What I received was a shaitel that was a shade lighter than my natural hair color (which slightly annoyed me, but it was the closest they had in my size, and it didn't look that bad), but the style was like nothing I'd had before. It was approximately shoulder-length, styled, and layered. My haircuts for the past several years previous had been basically in the mid-back to waist range. Basically, it looked like the shaitel of a rebbetzin4. Pretty, but not me, and I was intimidated by it. I actually hated it, at first, though mostly because the bangs got in my eyes constantly, and so the shaitel macher trimmed it back for me.
A week later, I loved it. "Yeah, I could be that person."
It's also pretty darn convenient.
As for the whole responsibility thing... marriage did it partially, but being pregnant and caring for a baby really kind of forces you to grow up and get your act together, otherwise nothing gets done.
---------------------------------------
1 Shaitel is yiddish for wig. Observant married Jewish women cover their hair, and in Chabad (the organization in observant Judaism I align myself with), we cover our hair in public with a shaitel. In private, it tends to vary - some always wear shaitels, others wear various forms of scarves/snoods/wraps/turbans2/hats.
2 Though I don't think I've actually seen Chabad women wear turbans, come to think of it... not sure why. It seems to be a Look that other Chassidic women do, but not Chabad Chassidic women. Despite this, I've recently purchased a turban for sleeping, and I'm currently waiting for it to arrive.
3Pronounced SHAY-till MA... the "ch" sound is the yiddish sort of clearing-your-throat sound... -er. Anyway. In "free translation" it means "wig lady", though "macher" is often translated as "big shot" in other contexts.
4 Rabbi's wife