Three Sexes
There’s this part in Kathy Gannon’s excellent book “I is for infidel, J is for Jihad, K is for Kalashnikov” detailing her experience covering the fall of the Taliban in the 2000’s/rest of Afghanistan in which she’s interviewing a Talib commander and he tells her basically that there are men, and there are women, and there’s her..a female journalist who, due to the things she’s doing and questions she’s asking fits into neither of his catagories and effectively making her into a third sex… female journalists
A friend recently wrote about packing tips (http://www.jetsetzero.tv/2010/02/03/top-10-packing/) all of which are great ideas, but the thing that interested me was his observation about fashion trends around the world. It’s true, the US is the least fashion conscious country in the world. Even in Afghanistan, country of poverty and war, every one is very fashionably dressed at all times. The women wear full makeup, colorfull dresses and high heels, even in the snow.
I can’t wear all that (not that I want to, letsbehonest), I have to work. My fixer hates me, he says that I’m always getting dirty and covered in mud. My previous fixer kept trying to bring me to a ladies tailor when all I wanted were mens clothes. When I’m working here I look Terrible. I wear cargo pants from 5th grade that looked frankenstein-ish till my amazing turkish tailor fixed them up, my dad’s snowboots and a L.L. Bean All Weather that is supposed to be small but looks much larger on me. These items are basically always wet or caked in mud from shooting in a cemetary or under an afghan carwash. Because of this, when I am asking permission to shoot, or going on interviews I always get this nasty look of disapproval from ministers and lady secretaries. Though this is soon dismissed because I am a foreigner, and a member of the third sex.
