long live Luna Lovegood

The thing about living in New York is that no matter who you are, what you look like, or what you enjoy, there is somewhere in this city a community ready to welcome you. Are you a cross-dressing surf punk? An Eastern European animator-contortionist? Seasonally employed Zamboni-driver/Good Humor man? Sexually attracted to lichen? There’s undoubtedly a place for you here in Gotham, a place where your predilection is not merely accepted but expected. I may not know where, but I’m sure someone does.

The unsightly pallid underbelly of this acceptance is, however, the flip side that no matter who you are, no matter how conventional, no matter how “normal,” no matter how little you’d frighten little old ladies in a Skokee, Illinois beauty parlor, cause muttering in Swan River, Montana Grange Hall, engender hushed epithets at a Baton Rouge tea, or fisticuffs in Hollister a biker bar, there is always somewhere else that you’re completely offensive. Everyone offends somewhere. It’s a comforting kind of discomfiting equality.

If you believe Marlo Thomas, you and I are free to be you and me, but the truth is we don’t often avail ourselves of that freedom. Most people spend grand swaths of their lives feeling constrained to be one of the masses. This point that becomes especially ironic here in America where our Declaration of Independence assures us “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This is one country that likes to present conformity as the shortest line between us and that aforementioned inalienable happiness.

It’s too bad, really.

I can’t find much good in the trappings of convention. I can totally get behind systems of cultural order—I’m a big fan of traffic lights, politeness, personal hygiene, the judicial system and the Golden Rule, for example. These are the mechanisms that keep people feeling safe, and they are necessary and good. What I’m less in favor of are the showy cultural mechanisms that people kowtow to without much thought: gym class, standards of dress, marriage, Sex and the City, procreation, and the SATs, for example.

Which is one reason why I am particularly fond of Luna Lovegood, the Harry Potter character given to wearing radish-like earrings, abrupt honesty, and a serene, unshakeable belief in ideas that others brutishly condemn. JK Rowling, in her finite wisdom, blessed Luna “Looney” Lovegood with an alliterative flower-empowered name. It’s the name a hippie would pick, and as with most names in the Potterverse, it’s a tip-off to her character (Argus Filch both watches and steals; Albus Dumbledore is quite as white as egg white, quite as busy as a bee, and quite as British as Albion; Severus Snape divides and belittles, and so on). Luna is a moony, dreamy, benevolent character peacefully at sea in a world that can’t quite grasp her value.

Luna’s greatest treasure, aside from her wit beyond measure, is her endowment of a tranquil and unflappable steadfastness in her strange beliefs: the existence of nargles, crumple-horned snorkacks, and wrackspurts, and the truth of The Quibbler, which her father publishes. In the weird world of Hogwarts, Luna’s beliefs stand out, a testament to the depth of her strangeness. Luna is, of course, persecuted for her otherness; she is lonely; she is teased; her belongings go missing every year; and she is quietly overjoyed when she finally, after adoption by Harry and his crew, has friends. But despite her isolation and her martyrdom as St. Loony of the Strange, Luna remains stalwartly who she is. I find it hard not to burst with involuntary empathy for the character.

In the real world, people like Luna have a harder time. The social order is not so kind to non-conformists. The best that most strange people can hope for is finding some tiny island of society of people somewhat like themselves. Fortune’s few—Tilda Swinton, Russell Brand, Steven King, Salvador Dali—find ways to channel their bizarreness into fame, fortune, art and a following.  But most people who cheerfully stand on the hems of society find themselves, at least from time to time, shoved and told to stand closer to the center.

Last week a friend of mine invited me out to dinner with her and her boyfriend. I love my friend; I like her boyfriend. I see that these two people truly care for each other, and I am glad that my friend is made happy. I am not, however, delighted when my friend’s boyfriend feels the need to point out my failings in because, as he avers, he wants “to help” me. I am, he says, too sarcastic. I don’t dress to show off my physical assets. I need to loosen up. I am not letting the love in. I always wear baggy clothes. I need, he says, to enter his boot camp in order to become…something else, someone different, some person he’d like better, someone more like him.

Sitting at a table and listening to my friend’s supposedly well-meaning man rattle off my areas marked for improvement, I found it painfully hard to hold my tongue. I wanted to tell him to take his list and find some anatomically interesting thing to do with it. I wanted to light into him and explain as I would to a toddler that his roster of changes exposed much more about his failings than it did about mine. I wanted to tell him that I am quite fond of myself, and if he isn’t, it’s his issue, not mine. But since I love my friend a lot and want neither to make her unhappy nor to seem ungrateful, I said little.

But today in the harsh light of 48 hours later, I realize the weight of my anger. I also realize that the reactions my friend’s boyfriend has to me comes from his feeling threatened. We who don’t fit in—and we all don’t fit in somewhere because life will always, invariably, inevitably and eternally be some manifestation of high school—threaten those who feel they do. They do what they do, say the things they say, and take our belongings as they will, because we point out the failings of their conformity. Conformity is rubbish, and at the heart, everyone knows it.

It’s not a bad thing in and of itself to wear clothes from the Gap, work a 9-to-5, marry a person of the opposite sex, have 1.8 children and own 2.4 cars. It’s only a bad thing if a person chooses to do those things solely because culture tells him or her to do them. I’m not knocking informed choices. I’m not knocking mistakes—because as Sesame Street tells us, everyone makes them. I’m knocking the blind acceptance of whatever your culture—Surf Punk, Mennonite Polygamist, Second-Amendment Absolutist, Clothing-Optional Trailer Park Fanatic, Born-Again Pagan Vegan, or some combination thereof—tells you to do. And I’m knocking the continuing to uphold those culturally mandated values when you realize that they are at odds with what you really want.

Conformity for comfort’s sake is boring, a cop-out, and inimical to the Declaration of Independence. Moreover, it makes people act in thoughtless, hurtful ways, and it also apparently makes them tell me I need to wear more make-up more often. Be yourself, I say, and let others be themselves. It is our inalienable right.

Feel free to be. And while you’re at it, mind the wrackspurts; they can make your brain go all fuzzy.

Comments

[Svasti]

Awesome post...
Validation. Everyone wants it. Well, most people do. Others of us, we just want to be left to do our thing. Its nice if someone likes what we do and/or us, but really if they don't... not a problem. Sure, there might be lonliness on that path, but for mine, its still a better path than what I perceive to be the vapid need for acceptance and sameness.

Haven't really read much Harry Potter, although I appreciate your description of Luna and J.K.'s brilliance in creating such a wonderful model of 'differentness' for all kids out there who feel that way.

I feel your pain with your friend's boyfriend. In my world, that sort of thing comes from my own family. I'm sure there are plenty of people in that boat - the odd one out, the one that doesn't do things like the others. That's me. And that means I'm always the butt of slightly cruel jokes, or y'know... asked those embarrassing questions no one really has the right to ask, but they do because they're family.

Its true - people don't know what to do with people who 'aren't like them'. Sadly ofcourse, the worst bit is that we're all like each other, but no one wants to admit that. So what, if our external expressions are different. Essentially, we're made up of the same materials, and if there's anything the blogging world has taught me... we share the same emotional experiences.

But yes, everyone is threatened and feels the need to reduce that threat, especially when they can't make sense of the person standing in front of them.

If those 'fixer-upper' type people, would just look inwards instead of outwards to resolve their own conflict, the rest of us 'freaks' could breathe a sigh of relief and get back to whatever it is we were doing...

[Raj]

I couldn't agree with you more.

I also appreciated your thoughtfulness in not turning it in to an unpleasant 'scene' for the sake of your friend.

I think of people like your friend's bf as flatlanders; they have never experienced other dimensions of life and don't even have an idea that there are other dimensions in life. All they deserve is a little chuckle and sympathy for their shallowness.

[mc]

CG;

Long time reader, first time commenter. Imagine my joy this morning when I found that you captured my thoughts and feelings on this subject and put them to (e)paper in your oh-so-articulate way. I intend to share this post with many, many people.

Awesome job. I'm glad you kept writing.

[Alessia Brio]

Your friend's boyfriend and my mother have a LOT in common, as do your and my response to them.

[chelsea g.]

Thanks, people.

When I was in middle school, I used to ride the bus to and from immersed in the dreamscape of an Utopian world where everyone was quietly creative in their own idiosyncratic ways and where everyone tacitly accepted one another's benevolent madness. I still like to visit that place from time to time. It's way better than indulging my inner homicidal lunatic and its eldritch fantasies.

Thank you for enabling the former pastime.

kissykiss,
chelsea g.

[MJ]

Yep, yep, yep, I get the BF treatment from my mother too - "I'm just trying to be your friend here, but why don't you wear more makeup/wear more jewellery/wear pretty colored suits with heels/wear a pretty dress/grow your hair long and pretty and feminine..."

The older I get the more that "because this is what is done/because everyone else does it" conformity seems like the total sham that it is. What a bunch of chumps are those who buy into it mindlessly out of fear.

Of course, I also tolerate in silence, as you do, because arguing makes the nonconformist the bad guy - we just shut up and take it in silence.

[Paul Davis]

the core problem, CG, is that "being yourself" implies knowing what you are. "Conformists" and "non-conformists" alike face a monumental task when it comes to this knowing, and I warrant that there as many iconoclastic edge dwellers as comfort-seeking-conformists who have ignored messages from the bigger part of themselves. its just too easy to do.

and lets not get started on "The Dice Man" conception of what "being yourself" really means...

[cody]

Knowing thyself takes community, which involves some sorts of conformity, lest there is no community.