Oh...to be a boy.
Michel Foucault-a problematic but much loved theorist writes about men and women and the way that they are socialized. The way that they move. The way they understand their bodies--move their bodies. Men, he argues--transcend their bodies. Women are immanent in their bodies. If you ask a man to walk across a floor he'll walk across the floor. If you ask him to describe that--generally, he'll have no idea how he did it. He simply walks. Women by contrast and by virtue of the pressures placed on a woman's appearance are locked in the moment--immanent in their bodies. Walking across the room for a woman is often a conscious task. She is conscious of the way that she moves, the way that she appears. She makes conscious corrections and adjustments in her carriage-she thinks about the way that she looks and carries her self as she moves.
I buy this...I get it. I am immanent in my body. I move and adjust and adjust myself despite my best intentions. I consciously square my shoulders, lift my chin and push out my chest when walking to get an air of authority, I sway my hips because it makes me feel womanly. I smooth my shirt over my hips and often walk with a deliberate expression on my face that I have decided is both non-threatening and strangely alluring.
There is only one thing that I do in my daily life where I transcend my body. It is when I teach.
It's a weird conundrum. For an hour before every lecture, my body rails against my mind. I feel a knot in the pit of my stomach-I am nauseus and head-achey. My feet feel too heavy and my head too light. It is more than nerves, it is a sense of dread. Whether or not I am prepared, whether or not I am comfortable with the material--I am sure that I will make a horrible fool of myself, expose myself as too young, too inxperienced, too silly to be there.
I feel all of this until I walk into my classroom. The second I enter a class--I am free. It's a feeling unlike any I have felt before. I walk into the classroom and the knot unfurls and I smile and say hello and start to speak with students and I am calm and excited but not anxious. I write detailed lecture notes but invariably leave them lying dejectedly on the podium as I move about the class speaking to and with students more naturally than any notes could have let me.
I wander the class...venturing up the aisles and back and forth around the front of the chalk boards. I wander especially when there is a good discussion going. I find myself in little corners of the front of the class with chalk in hand while talking with students, or moving between overhead projector, the chalk board and the aisles of the class while I try to make a point. I couldn't tell you if I sway my hips or flip my hair or adjust my posture while I do it. As a matter of fact....I suspect I don't do any of it. I transcend my body. I find freedom from my body at a time when the most attention is centred on me and my body. I didn't realize I roamed the class--didn't realize how freely and comfortably I moved until I caught myself doing an impromptu dance while trying to explain something about globalization, pop culture and Sean Paul. I only noticed because the students laugh. I love it when they laugh.
I teach and I think that I am good at it. My students tell me they enjoy my passion. They tell me that they like the class. I know some of them are blowing smoke up my ass...I know others are sincere.
When the class is over--I talk to students- arrange appointments, answer questions about the 'lecture' and leave the classroom. I make it about a hundred yards, heading back toward the building that houses my office--I find myself running a hand through my hair, glancing at my appearance in the reflection of windows and arranging my face and trying to look natural.
It's the weirdest frigging thing.
9:39:38 PM 
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