Today’s interesting scientific curiousity via Boing Boing: an Health Medical” href=”http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article1768833.ece”>Independent Online Edition >article about the releative length of women’s fingers posits that women whose ring fingers are longer than their index fingers tend to be more athletic, possibly from having been exposed to more testosterone in the womb.
As it happens, I’m one of those few, those happy few, those band of sisters with a longer ring finger in relation to the index finger. And I’ve always been a tomboy, with very little interest in girly fashion, girly behavior, or girly preoccupations like dolls or babies.
Also, not so much with the girlish figure, either. Although not particularly athletic, I did do some ungirly things from high school age on, like lift weights and jog, and play a little softball as a post-collegiate adult. I feel ridiculous, literally as if people will laugh at me to my face and behind my back, if I attempt to dress up or “prettify” myself. There is no dressing up thick and heavy hips, thighs, calves, and ankles. I have no waist to speak of (another marker of the amount of estrogen a female human shows is a narrow waist – never had one). Unfortunately, I don’t have wide shoulders and narrow hips; very much the opposite. There is nothing that flatters my shape, and I have no good features to show off (as in makeover shows like “What Not To Wear”). There is not much you can do with a moon face, a heavy but underslung jaw, thin lips, a sharp nose, small eyes, and a fat chin with a big dimple. I’m not a smiler, although I was constantly nagged as an adolescent to “smile! You look angry all the time!” I don’t have a big, bright, transformative smile. I look like I’m grimacing uncomfortably in photographs. If I wear makeup, I look better, but why bother? I’d rather not draw attention to myself.
As a pre-adolescent, I was regularly chased home by other kids and humiliated. As puberty struck, this changed to being chased home by packs of barking boys. After adolescence had had its cruel way with me, males my age stopped barking at me, which was an improvement, but then after a while it dawned on me that other girls seemed to get a lot of favorable, non-barking attention in some mysterious way that I couldn’t fathom. I struggled helplessly for years in high school and college, before pretty much giving up. David and I happened to meet the week after I declared I wasn’t going to worry about the way I looked anymore and just try to be happier in my own skin. The last few years, though, I’ve backslid into my post-adolescent “there’s nothing I can do” mentality; middle age and adolescence are pretty much the right and left side of the bell curve of my self-image.
My poor mom did her best to help me when I was a girl, but her fashion sense was decades out of date, and was based on the premise that a girl had to have big boobs, a small waist, a delicately formed face, and shapely legs to be considered attractive. I had none of these, and Mom had no other template for me other than an outdated pre-feminist one of “be passive and wait for someone to come along.” In retrospect, I wish it had been “throw yourself into some kind of sport and find other interests to keep you busy.” She always said I could be whatever I wanted to be, but what I wanted to be at the time was attractive and popular (and not barked at), and that wasn’t possible with the hand I was dealt. Literally, it now seems, in light of this research.
There was a study a while back showing how women were judged to be more or less attractive, and how this could be correlated with where they were in their monthly cycle, because hormonal changes made subtle changes in their faces. Oh, and look, there’s that ring-finger correlation again, along with some more rather depressing findings:
The relative length of the index to ring finger – which is linked
to exposure to prenatal sex hormones – was found to be associated with face
shape by the team in an analysis of more than 100 people.
Exposure to early testosterone, as indicated by finger length
patterns, causes male and female faces to look rugged with wide jaws and strong
cheekbones whereas exposure to high oestrogen levels makes them appear less
robust. This may be because prenatal hormones correlate with levels found at
puberty
I’ve suspected for a long time that my difference from other women, and my lack of interest in the sort of things women’s magazines waste endless amounts of trees and ink on, might stem from some sort of hormonal basis. Now it appears that there’s nothing I or anyone could have done at the time of my pubertal agony, other than give me female hormones in a highly unethical and potentially dangerous way. And I’m not sure I would want to be an artificial construct like that, anyway. I’ve always taken a certain amount of pride in being different from other girls and women, and I wouldn’t want to be some Stepford Wife-like fembot, either.
I’m hopelessly hetero, but have absolutely no patience for people of my own sex who effect a hyper-feminine way of speaking or presenting themselves. The sort of woman who talks in a high, babyish voice and walks like she’s got a stick up her butt absolutely drives me up the wall, and I know quite a few of them. I can’t understand why someone would want to go through life being so… fakey.
Hmm. Well, at least David disagrees strongly with me on my musings regarding my self-image. And that’s all good.
So I bought a new tube of ginger-brown mascara today, and will attempt to get beyond my “second adolescence” and get back some measure of self-acceptance that I’d managed to achieve about the time David and I met. I’ve ordered a new pair of shoes that should help me feel more like walking and less like grumbling about my feet or back hurting. I’ve been eating better all month (case in point: more salads for lunch). In a short time, we’ll be on vacation, another relaxing road trip with plenty of opportunities to walk and hike. I’ll make more of an effort (although I still reserve the right to stomp out of clothing stores in disgust).
We’ll see how this goes.
