Feminism and Fashion

If there was a prize for the most feminine day possible, I think I may have just won it.

Let me explain: after a glorious extra half hour of sleep, I woke up to awful cramps.

But it wasn’t all bad. To continue with the femininity, we visited Wellesley College today. An all-woman college. And unlike the Connecticut College Catastrophe of 2010, our visit today was above and beyond.

My close friends (and heck, even acquaintances) could be heard describing me as “boy crazy.” If you told them I was interested in a woman’s college, they’d laugh and laugh until they couldn’t breathe.

But today some incredible women opened my eyes to a different college experience.

Usually the information sessions you go to are all the same. “We have a great study abroad program,” “our faculty have a great relationship with the students,” etcetera, etcetera.

At Wellesley today, a charming woman named Monica finally told me something new. She had me interested at the get-go. She told us all about the cross-registration program, where you can take classes at other colleges, including MIT!

Now if you know me, you know MIT is probably the farthest school from my interests. But after hearing her talk about a friend who took a creative writing class there through Wellesley’s cross-registration program, I thought, hey, maybe I can actually make at MIT, the bane of my existence.

Marisol and I often joke, because she’s a math and engineering girl, and I’m the writer. She wants to go to MIT, and I don’t. She’d sure get a kick out of me not only going to an all girls college, but taking probably the only creative writing course at a school famous for it’s engineering.

A tour followed our info session, and we got to see the beautiful campus, with greenery that reminded me of and surpassed that of Berkeley’s. The more our tour guide talked, the more she won me over!

Surprisingly, the non-male factor was the farthest thing from my mind. My only complaint was the construction, which our guide assured us would be done by the time we might apply.

A look at the course catalogue only solidified my interest.

And as if I wasn’t completely won over already, as we were boarding the train to get back, I struck up a conversation with two Wellesley students—one who had just graduated, and the other who had just finished her first year. Two completely different perspective from current students, and they were both glowing reviews. We actually exchanged email addresses, so that I could get in further contact with them, which I will definitely be doing.

Our visit to Boston College was unexciting and uninspiring compared to Wellesley, so I won’t bore you with the details of that. I couldn’t make that witty and interesting if my life depended on it.

The third and final portion of my day (and blog entry) centers around an ages old female tradition: sacrificing comfort for the sake of fashion.

Shall I elaborate?

We went to a lovely dinner (and ate some delicious food) with Mr. Ramsey and Mrs. Kronenburg. To this dinner, I wore a gorgeous black dress and a pair of four-inch heels; black and white Oxford pumps, the most beautiful shoes I have ever seen.

Now we were lucky enough to catch a cab to the restaurant, but not so lucky on the way back. Now I have worn these shoes before, and other than aching arches, they’re not a problem.

But in the humid Boston heat, even your feet can sweat, and mine sure did, leaving my feet sliding around in my shoes, my toes rubbing against the peeptoe. It left two of my toes completely raw—I had to use antibiotic cream and band-aids to cover it up, because it was not pretty.

So from feminism to fashion, I guess you could say I had a pretty girly day. And for the most part, it was a pretty great one.