Usually called the doctor. Or the caretaker.

No, wait, imma get another cup of coffee and then imma say something. So finish up while I'm getting coffee.

Okay, now we're ready. This is about appearance, and what's known as "trying". (Trying to look good, trying to be well-groomed, trying to dress nicely, trying to present an appearance consonant with societal ideals. I’m going to bold trying below when I intend this meaning.)

There are a couple of things encoded in this idea of trying, and one is that trying is inherently about the larger culture, and another is that trying is essentially cis, and a third is that trying is basically feminine. The first is absolutely correct, the second is evolving, and the third is wrong, but in a way that makes it seem true anyway.

There is another issue with trying as a concept, but I want to deal with the encoding first.

What do I mean by my statements about the encoding of try? Well, trying is, in fact, about a larger audience, because if it's all for your own benefit, there's no trying involved. You satisfy yourself because you are both architect and audience. Trying involves, to a greater or lesser extent, making observations about what is considered pleasing to some larger audience and doing one's best to present those things. Some aspects of this will always be difficult for any given individual, because individuals are highly variable whereas a larger culture's ideals are able to pick and choose the best features from its population as a whole. This is probably the root of expressing this idea, process, effort, mindset as “trying”--since most people do have to try to try.

Stemming from this is the fact that trying is generally in one way or another going to be about an appearance (sartorial and grooming-wise) that reflects cisgender norms. However, gender presentation varies enough that people who choose to try in a specific context can often subvert the dominant cisgender-appearance paradigm in a way that doesn’t actually make them read as either not trying (more about not trying later) or as engaging in gender presentation subversion, even sometimes when outside their chosen context. Also--if one is in fact cisgendered/cissexual, one’s cisgender appearance isn’t trying.

Trying is not the exclusive purview of women. Men try too, but male trying is mostly less overtly visible than female trying. There are a lot of reasons for this, some of which involve needing to wear fewer, less complex undergarments, and having one’s physical beauty judged along slightly different lines. (The foregoing is solely in my judgement as someone who has never dealt with the societal expectations facing a male person. If I am wrong generally or in your specific case, O male readership, I apologize.)

Trying also has profound racial/racist and socioeconomic connotations as well as sexist ones. Trying for a black woman is always going to require either choosing to try within a context that starts with her natural features as the ideal and so appearing to the larger culture as someone who is not trying (I promise, I will get to this), or trying in conventional ways, made horribly and stupidly difficult by baseline standards of European physiognomy. A woman of non-European descent trying in a white North American context has to work a lot harder just to acheive baseline than many European-descent women work to try.

Socioeconomically, beyond the obvious “how hard can you afford financially to try”, there are different standards for trying at different socioeconomic levels, such that a woman who succeeds in trying at a lower socioeconomic ideal looks almost but not completely unlike a woman trying at a higher socioeconomic level. The movie Working Girl is actually a really good example of the difference, for its time and place. Melanie Griffith succeeding in trying as someone in the secretarial pool and Melanie Griffith succeeding in trying as someone assuming a higher socioeconomic class are two very different Melanies.

Now, all of that aside, here is the real meat of what I want to talk about: the idea that "You shouldn't have to try."

As a general statement, this is true. You should never have to try, and I do not, absolutely do not, think anything about you one way or the other if you don't try, other than that you are not trying. And that's fine. Because you don't have to. Neither do I.

The problem is that, in some subcultures, like the geek subculture, the idea that you shouldn’t have to try has become a new mandate: You must not try.

What is not trying? If trying is presenting an appearance consonant with perceived norms, isn’t not trying just doing what you want? Well, no. Not trying is just choosing not to try. Not trying has as much encoding as trying--not trying is often about actively rejecting the things that people who try do, and about actively rejecting people who try. People who try are shallow, vain, materialistic, stupid. They accept their “pretty privilege”. They do not work to better themselves in any “real” sense (where “real” equals “acceptable according to geek subcultural norms”).

It’s an understandable backlash. People who engage in not trying often were persecuted during age-mandatory schooling for being different. Some of them tried in school but couldn’t achieve results that kept them from being teased or bullied. Some of them chose not to try, operating on the idea that at least they wouldn’t be putting all that work into looking like something they didn’t find that attractive just to be teased or bullied anyway. (There is definitely a diminishing return on trying in high school if you are also possessed of staggering intelligence, particularly if you are female.)

It’s understandable, but that doesn’t make it right.

Here’s the personal part.

I am really tired of watching the gamesmanship that goes on around not trying. It’s ridiculous and stupid and the people who engage in it are usually better people than that, except that they have this strange idea that they are morally superior if they’re unkempt and their clothes are full of holes. You may be morally superior, but it’s not because of your unibrow and your sixteen-year-old Grateful Dead tee, and when you slam attractive people just for being unapologetically attractive (“accepting their pretty privilege”), or your equally geeky female friends who like to shop at Guess as well as ThinkGeek and like to look pretty, you aren’t morally superior, you’re a dick.

Recently someone remarked in my vicinity that it’s okay if people have unnaturally-colored hair as long as the purpose is to make an artistic statement. The corollary there (unstated, of course) is that if I have blue hair because I think it makes me pretty, I’m trying. If I date a conventionally-attractive boy or girl because I think they’re pretty, I’m not only trying, I’m facilitating trying on the part of others. If I admit to being attracted to people because of how they look, I’m trying. If I like to buy pretty clothes and wear them, if I wear makeup to go to the store, if I care about putting together outfits, I’m trying. If I want to make a good impression outside of an interview situation, I’m trying.

And trying is not okay.

Well, you know what? I’m fine with that. Anyone who decides they don’t want to be my friend because I like bra-and-panty sets, because I dye my hair blue to be pretty, because I like to wear low-cut tops, because I think my tattoos enhance my appearance, because I have pierces that do nothing but look pretty, because I wear mascara, because I shave my legs, because I like it when people find me attractive, that’s okay. Maybe it does mean that I’m shallow and vain. Maybe I am materialistic.

But I’m not stupid. And I’m nowhere near mainstream. (Jesus christ, my hair is BLUE and I have visible Latin and Greek tattoos.)

So maybe you need to redefine your subculture to include people like me--people who like to look nice in general and not just in a Leia bikini at Comic-Con. People who have blue hair because they like how it looks, and not to fuck The Man. People who own more than three pairs of shoes. You know, people no one looks twice at (except for the hair) until we open our mouths and talk about the difference between καιρός and χρόνος for twenty minutes. People who sometimes like to try.

When I choose to try, it’s not a judgement. I do it because I like it. You don’t have to if you don’t. But in a world where it’s okay not to try, it has to also be okay to try, or you are what you say you hate.