I have a relatively “normal” appearance, by contemporary standards of heterosexual college-aged males. I prefer to wear pants and button-up shirts, I don’t have any tattoos or piercings, and my hair is currently combed-over and, arguably, professional.\u00a0This weekend, however, marks the 4th year of my involvement with a foundation that supports pediatric cancer research, where I will shave my head in support, but change my hair to a pink mohawk for the week before the shave. Compared to my current appearance, this is a big change. Upon telling my parents of the plans leading up to this year’s shave, the first words out of my mom’s mouth were “I hope you don’t have any internship interviews this week.”<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, she’s right. That’s something I initially was concerned with.\u00a0Maybe I could have gotten away with this haircut when I was in elementary school, but at this stage in my life, I am a college student and a pre-professional. I am expected to present myself in what society has deemed a professional way, and a pink mohawk certainly doesn’t fit that bill.<\/p>\n
Harvey’s conversation about postmodern space and time as written in Halberstam\u00a0argues that “…our conceptions of space and time are social constructions forged out of vibrant and volatile social relations” (6), while also stating that we envision that”… our time is our own and, as the cliche goes, ‘there is a time and a place for everything.’… thus people feel guilty about leisure, frustrated by waiting, satisfied by punctuality, and so on. These emotional responses add to our sense of time as ‘natural'” (7). Imagining that time is “natural”, along with the emotional responses that come along with functioning outside of “natural” temporalities, encourages me to believe that other aspects of our life, for instance our attitudes and appearances, should adjust in a natural progression just as time does. Time being “natural”, as it is used by Harvey, explains the emotion associated behind something functioning outside of heteronormative time or ideals. In this case, a mohawk and died hair are not “natural” under constructed normative appearance ideals as they function within the normative temporality of a pre-professional college student. As a\u00a0young child, a pink mohawk does not necessarily break societal norms to the same degree that a college student sporting the same hair-style would, as normative expectations vary depending on the time in which the action occurs. As Harvey reminds us, we only envision that our time is our own, not understanding that the choices we make are largely influenced by influences intertwined in normative temporalities.<\/p>\n
I’m definitely excited for my pink hair this weekend; after all, it’s for charity. I’m still hoping that my boss doesn’t see it though.<\/p>\n
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I have a relatively “normal” appearance, by contemporary standards of heterosexual college-aged males. I prefer to wear pants and button-up shirts, I don’t have any tattoos or piercings, and my hair is currently combed-over and, arguably, professional.\u00a0This weekend, however, marks the 4th year of my involvement with a foundation that supports pediatric cancer research, where … Continue reading Normative Appearance, Heteronormative Time and Everything Else<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2538"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}