The Misleading Glamour of Artifice

I have caught a cold from my poor immunocompromised husband, and so I am not going to the gym. Instead I am going to bewail online my misspent youth. 

Well, not really. However, I am going to approve the choice of a young Catholic lady I know who said she didn't want to go to a dance club, thus causing a flutter amongst her peers. 

I heard this story at the sink of the tiny galley kitchen in the parish hall, the one place all week where I congregate with other women. It is also a locus for Real Trad Life, quite distinct from the bizarre impressions we get from Twitter (or, as we are presumably now supposed to call it, X). This slice of Real Trad Life was about, in short, partying, and one girl's reluctance to join the other girls in going to The Hive or whatever Edinburgh hellhole nightspot they had in mind. 

It will very much surprise my mother--to say nothing of friends who saw me dance many nights away on Toronto's Queen Street West--to hear that I came down firmly against le clubbing.

"Just because we misspent our youth doesn't mean [she] has to," I harrumphed at the other married lady around, which was a bit thoughtless. First, I out-age her by over 20 years and, second, instead of misspending her youth, she married young.* Frankly, the only person in that kitchen who no longer had youth to misspend and had thoroughly misspent it was me. But I digress. 

As a young teenager, I longed to go to dance clubs, and I didn't understand why my parents didn't go to such glamorous places, especially given my mother's growing collection of ABBA records. Now I can't understand my teenage thought process. I recall that I thought night clubs were full of excitement and adventure and very likely chaste and handsome young men with whom I might fall in love. If they weren't already chaste, I would surely inspire them to virtue with my virginal ways. Clearly, what I knew about real life as a teenager was almost nothing. 

Fortunately for me, the first time I went to a nightclub (in fear and trembling lest my mother find out), it was late one afternoon with my church youth group, and it was quite empty and although there was a glitter ball and loud music, it was boring. Later visits to other nightclubs were less boring, as they were downtown and involved the risk of being turned away at the door for being under-age. Also they were dark and crowded and shot through with the energy of dozens of people packed together dancing and sometimes singing away. They provided an excellent opportunity for my then-favourite hobby--daydreaming about love and adventure. The clubs were black velvet jewel boxes containing sparkling, leaping diamonds ... until the lights were snapped on.

In harsh electric light, dance clubs are unfinished rooms with wires hanging from the ceiling, holes gaping in the walls, and indescribably dirty floors. The WCs, never attractive, are unspeakable. The people still lingering about are tired and drunk--and often sad--with slack, pale faces. Clubs after closing time are the visual representation of the maternal proverb "Nothing good happens after midnight." 

In justice to my teenage self, the idea that I might find chaste and undying love with a complete stranger met at a dance club was imparted to the wider culture by Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose musical South Pacific promises: 

Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger

You may see a stranger across a crowded room,

And somehow you know, you know even then,

That somehow you'll see her again and again

Never mind that South Pacific debuted in 1949, and society is rather different now. (For one thing, you can't see anyone across a crowded dance club.) The idea remains, and now it is sad to think about all the primping at mirrors my friends and I did before going out to dark bars and clubs where we were just more woman-shapes. 

At the end of the day, if you want to meet marriageable and marriage-minded men, you need to go where that sparse brotherhood spends its few hours of sociability, and for Catholics that means church, Church events, Church-positive events, university/college Catholic clubs, Catholic singles conferences, Catholic dating websites (although they are a form--however mild--of human trafficking, if you ask me), and the smaller, friendlier pilgrimages.  

Alternatively, you could befriend Catholic men with no romantic interest in you (the vast majority of men you will meet at the above) and say, "Who among your friends ya got for me, pal?" This is how I first heard about the existence of Benedict Ambrose, so don't knock it. 

Meanwhile, I hold my waltzing parties not to marry off young traditionalists but as a form of rational amusement. They hold no dark glamour. They are firmly rooted in reality. The parish hall is never more nor less than a parish hall. The only artifice to be seen is my overly red last tube of lipstick--which brings me to my next theme.

Nailed it

As I mentioned, last week I went to the nail shop frequented by my blonde sister. I got the works: manicure, pedicure and OPI gel polish on fingers and toes. The polish is now peeling off in plastic-like slices, which inspired me to ask the internet if it IS plastic. 

And yes, of course it is. This kind of nail polish (like almost all nail polish) contains toxic ingredients and, although it falls apart on your fingers, it is ultimately not biodegradable. Thus, it creates microplastics. 

This is a bit tragic. At one point during my work event, I gazed at a number of sandalled female feet, and they all had perfectly polished toes. I felt pleased at the time that I had made the professionally- and (for North America) culturally-correct decision to "get my toes done" before displaying them to my colleagues. Now, of course, I think about four (perhaps five?) generations of women covering part of their epidermis with toxic chemicals that end up in the earth and drinking water. And for what? 

Thus, to continue my adult life project of becoming rooted in reality, I am going to give up even the occasional shellacking. The next time I go to a manicurist, it will be for a manicure or pedicure, but that's it: no polish. And I look forward to the time when young women are astonished that their ancestresses used such stuff, just as we are amazed that 18th century people covered their faces with lead paint.

*Of course, not marrying young does not mean you have misspent your youth. I shall have to write something about a "youth well spent." At the moment, I think a youth well spent could include marriage, but also (naturally) religious life, priesthood, child-rearing, learning and working at a useful trade, learning and working at a noble profession, evangelizing, volunteering, developing skills, developing athletic ability, and generally rooting oneself in reality.