Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves
Jan. 30th, 2011 11:59 am![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emilygilmanDora gets another mention here (hi, Dora!) because she’s been posting about Seanan McGuire’s song “Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves” so much that I finally listened to it and fell in love.
A few quick things I love about this song, before I get to my real point:
1) It’s both catchy and stirring, both angry and joyful, as all calls to arms should be.
2) It’s properly literary, tackling characters from my childhood and young adulthood in a way that’s both respectful and critical of the texts from which they come.
3) Even as it laments the choices and fates of these fictional girls, it laments them because it celebrates them and their potential, and is inviting them (or girls like them) to join, or re-join, the Lost Girls: “Dorothy, Alice and Wendy and Jane,/Susan and Lucy, we’re calling your names,/All the Lost Girls who came out of the rain/And chose to go back on the shelves.”
Okay, now what I wanted to get into. The first line that drew me to this song (before I ever listened to it) was one Dora quoted: “And the rules that we live by are simple and clear:/Be wicked and lovely and don’t live in fear--” It’s a rule that appeals to me, but that I feel I rarely live up to. In fact, it’s the reason I got my first tattoo (Li’l Bear, in the picture that appears with these entries). I’ve always liked tattoos visually, but until I drew Li’l Bear I’d never expected to find a design I loved enough to make it part of my body. Once I drew her, though, I kept coming back to her.
I actually had to draw her on my arm with Sharpie marker for a week or two before I got her. Partly this was to make sure that I did like her, but really it was to make sure I could deal with people noticing or commenting or asking questions.
And I made it into a rite of passage (as I think many students at my school did and do): the day I completed my life as a student, preschool through undergrad, was not graduation but the day I turned in my senior project, and so that was the day that I got my tattoo. I had completed the task that was the culmination of everything I’d worked for for 22 years. I felt like an adult. And, as an adult, I needed not to be afraid. I needed to get my tattoo to prove to myself that I could do it, that I could make that choice and be okay with it even if my mom wasn’t thrilled or it was likely to draw a different sort of attention than I was used to.
So I turned in my senior project, and I got Li’l Bear. A while later I got my tree, and I have others planned. I expect there will probably be more I haven’t even thought of yet, and that’s good too--I love my tattoos, and I want more of them, but I also want to add them gradually. If nothing else, they are my (really rather small) way of being the kind of girl Seanan McGuire is singing about: a girl who has her own adventures and who is not afraid to let them mark her; a girl who insists on turning her life into art and making art an intrinsic part of her life; a girl who is not afraid to be wicked and lovely.
And you know what? I’ve noticed two things about having tattoos. First, I’m more comfortable admiring other people’s tattoos, because I worry less that people will think I’m staring or criticizing. And second, most of the comments I get on my own tattoos, especially my tree, are compliments.
A few quick things I love about this song, before I get to my real point:
1) It’s both catchy and stirring, both angry and joyful, as all calls to arms should be.
2) It’s properly literary, tackling characters from my childhood and young adulthood in a way that’s both respectful and critical of the texts from which they come.
3) Even as it laments the choices and fates of these fictional girls, it laments them because it celebrates them and their potential, and is inviting them (or girls like them) to join, or re-join, the Lost Girls: “Dorothy, Alice and Wendy and Jane,/Susan and Lucy, we’re calling your names,/All the Lost Girls who came out of the rain/And chose to go back on the shelves.”
Okay, now what I wanted to get into. The first line that drew me to this song (before I ever listened to it) was one Dora quoted: “And the rules that we live by are simple and clear:/Be wicked and lovely and don’t live in fear--” It’s a rule that appeals to me, but that I feel I rarely live up to. In fact, it’s the reason I got my first tattoo (Li’l Bear, in the picture that appears with these entries). I’ve always liked tattoos visually, but until I drew Li’l Bear I’d never expected to find a design I loved enough to make it part of my body. Once I drew her, though, I kept coming back to her.
I actually had to draw her on my arm with Sharpie marker for a week or two before I got her. Partly this was to make sure that I did like her, but really it was to make sure I could deal with people noticing or commenting or asking questions.
And I made it into a rite of passage (as I think many students at my school did and do): the day I completed my life as a student, preschool through undergrad, was not graduation but the day I turned in my senior project, and so that was the day that I got my tattoo. I had completed the task that was the culmination of everything I’d worked for for 22 years. I felt like an adult. And, as an adult, I needed not to be afraid. I needed to get my tattoo to prove to myself that I could do it, that I could make that choice and be okay with it even if my mom wasn’t thrilled or it was likely to draw a different sort of attention than I was used to.
So I turned in my senior project, and I got Li’l Bear. A while later I got my tree, and I have others planned. I expect there will probably be more I haven’t even thought of yet, and that’s good too--I love my tattoos, and I want more of them, but I also want to add them gradually. If nothing else, they are my (really rather small) way of being the kind of girl Seanan McGuire is singing about: a girl who has her own adventures and who is not afraid to let them mark her; a girl who insists on turning her life into art and making art an intrinsic part of her life; a girl who is not afraid to be wicked and lovely.
And you know what? I’ve noticed two things about having tattoos. First, I’m more comfortable admiring other people’s tattoos, because I worry less that people will think I’m staring or criticizing. And second, most of the comments I get on my own tattoos, especially my tree, are compliments.