Week 08/2025: A quieter week
Week of 17 February 2025
This week was quiet. I was home by myself without Kramstable, who’s busy starting uni life, and Slabs, who was away for family and work commitments.
A hairy situation
I was super super excited on Tuesday night to see the show A Hairy Situation with comedian ALOK.
(To clarify, this is Alok Vaid-Menon, the American comedian, not Alok the Brasilian DJ.) Alok describes themself as “a non-binary transfeminine person” and they’ve been touring A Hairy Situation in Australia and New Zealand this month.
The show was at the Theatre Royal’s Studio Theatre, which is a lovely venue for performances like this.
The show was described on the Theatre Royal website like this
Being trans and Indian is a textbook hairy situation, but since textbooks are being banned all over the US we are no longer at liberty to say that.
In their new standup show Alok keeps finding themselves in hairy situations: being mistaken as a mega-famous Brazilian DJ, botching TikTok makeup tutorials and signing up for an appointment at the European Wax Center (AKA Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department).
The opening act was a gorgeous musician, Elsz. Elsz is from Sri Lanka, and they sang five songs, including one about their grieving for their father. It was really beautiful, especially their harp playing.
A cool thing about this tour is that Alok has engaged local designers to provide outfits, makeup and photography for their shows – here’s a post with some photos – so the fab coats you can see in that post are from Elsewhere, a Tasmanian-based upcycled clothing store.
The show begins
Alok’s show ran for about an hour, and it was as fabulous as I had hoped it would be. I’d heard some of the gags before because they’ve posted snippets on Instagram, but there was a great many more that I hadn’t heard, as well as some very good impressions of people from certain groups.
A lot of the show was about Alok showing up as themselves in a world that is often hostile to trans, non binary and gender-nonconforming people (especially in comedy).
We journeyed into the men’s bathroom (a vision which I cannot unsee) and, while there were a lot of funny moments, there was also underlying hurt. Along with some gentle mockery of people like me.
Something I especially admire about Alok is their refusal to lean into hatred that others express towards them by hating back. I’ve seen it on their Instagram too, where they express love and compassion even for keyboard warriors who abuse them and say terrible things about them. I guess it’s because responding to hate with hate just keeps the hate/fear cycle going. No one wins from that, and it makes everyone involved smaller.
I’m paraphrasing a bit here, but one of Alok’s messages was that a lot of the hate stems from many cisgender people feeling constrained by having to be who society expects us to be and having to conform to the gender norms we’ve imposed onto ourselves. So when we see joyous expressions of non-conformity, and people expressing their true selves, we get angry and upset because they’re not showing up and behaving in the way society demands.
If we have to conform, why don’t they?
Some people lash out and it really is ugly. And hurtful and cruel. And, Alok said, it takes away the haters’ joy.
The issue lies with the haters, not with the non-conformers. How someone identifies and how they present themselves is absolutely nothing to do with anyone else, yet it still upsets some people.
Reflections
I thought about this for a long time after the show.
I can relate to what Alok said in the ways I respond (mostly internally) to some people who do things differently from what’s expected. (This is more general than gender expression here—it could be people doing simple things like singing joyously while they’re walking down the street.) While part of me loves this and celebrates it, another part of me labels the people and judges them because they’re giving no fucks and showing up exactly how they are.
And I think that part of me, which keeps me small and bitter, is jealous they can do this and I can’t—by which I mean I won’t let myself, because it’s not something mainstream society approves of or accepts.
I’d never say anything to the person, but I might judge them internally or complain about it to someone else. However, my annoyance and non-acceptance is directed at them, even thought they’ve done nothing wrong.
But the thing is, it’s what’s going on in my head—having internalised the expectations of society that they aren’t conforming with—that’s stopping me living the zero fucks life like they are. It’s nothing to do with them at all. It’s all about me and it’s all in my head.
Humans are messy, aren’t they?
I think that’s what Alok was getting at when they said that much of society’s non-acceptance of trans and gender non-conforming people comes from hating that we feel obliged to conform to societal expectations—and do so—whereas they don’t.
Perhaps if there’s one takeaway it’s that we/you/I/they get to identify who we are as individuals; society does not get to do this.
I really enjoyed this show. I’m glad I went and I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on what Alok said. If there’s ever a time we need to support the LGBTIQA+ community it’s now, and it was great timing for the show to land in the middle of Pride Month.
If you want to see some of Alok’s work, their show Biology is available on YouTube.
Summary of the week
Habit tracker
- Go outside & exercise first thing (7 days): 7/7
- 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 4/7
- Hip exercises (5 days): 6/5
- 2 walks or bike rides or a combination (6 days): 6/6
- Long walk (1 day): 1/1
- Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 7/7
- 9.00 shutdown & dim lights (5 days): 5/5
- Evening routine (7 days): 6/7
What did I learn this week?
How to insult people
We had a great time in acting class this week, and ended the class with insulting each other via the Shakespearean insult generator.
It’s hilarious, and you should check it out, you gorbellied, flap-mouthed ratsbanes.
Hot flushes begone
The Australian Menopause Centre reports on a study carried out in the US (Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN)) in 2015. It found that menopause symptoms such as hot flushes and night sweats will last between 7 to 11 years. If you start to have these symptoms before you reach actual menopause, they will average more than 11 years.
Eleven years.
Eleven. Years.
Eleven.
Years.
That is a beslubbering sheep-biting scut of a piece of news.
Eleven years.
I also had a theory on why menopause takes away all the health advantages women are supposed to have over men earlier in life.
Apparently this is a thing.
Women have lower risk of conditions like heart disease until they reach menopause, at which time their risk changes up to be similar to men’s risk. I figure this is because pre-menopause, nature needs women to be alive to have babies and care for children, whereas for the purpose of reproduction nature sees men as more expendable. But when women stop being able to breed and the kids get older, nature doesn’t care as much if they die, so the protections women had as breeders and mothers stop.
Brutal.
I’m working on a couple of conspiracy theories too, if you’re interested.
What did I notice this week?
Friday was bug day!
I was sitting on the bus and one of those not-ladybug beetles landed on me. I didn’t want to hurt it so I was hoping to scoop it up and put it somewhere safe but it ended up on the floor. I really hope no one stepped on it.
Outside at home, I saw a Christmas beetle and went inside to get my camera.
By the time I got back it was gone, but I noticed a katydid on a stalk of grass that I was able to take photos of instead.
Cool.
What was the best thing this week?
Realising that I can do the sit-to-stand test that I haven’t been able to do without pain since my gluteal tendinopathy reared its head.
If you’re wondering what that test it is, cast your mind back to January last year when I wrote about the Built To Move challenge, based on the book of the same name. One of the tests is to sit cross-legged on the floor and get up again without using your hands or anything else for support.
It used to be easy.
Then it became painful.
I could still do it but it hurt, triggering my visit to the hip physiotherapist in October. Since then I’ve dutifully been doing my exercises five times a week (mostly), and has it been helping? I wasn’t sure until I was sitting on the floor on Tuesday and I wondered if I could do this . . . turns I could.
I am very happy.
What am I reading this week?
- The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott
What am I watching this week?
- Doctor Who ‘State of Decay’
- Alok: A Hairy Situation
- Kate Forsyth: Plotting and Planning course
What am I listening to this week?
About The Author
