The Law! Or, how my time on the internet became a lot gayer recently. With added roller derby.

I've been rubbish about updating both this blog and my shiny new picture blog. I have an excuse however: I've 'sold out' and come down to London to do work experience at a city law firm. In the financial services department no less. You don't know the meaning of fun until you've proof-read a contract with phrases like 'funds of funds', 'draw down period' and 'master-feeder relationship'. Sadly that last one has nothing to do with kinky sex. Anyway, originally this was just to persuade law school to accept me for a post-grad law conversion course so I can be Elle in 'Legally Blonde' / a gay rights lawyer/ feminist lawyer /a lawyer on the side of the 'good guys'. 'Look I want to be a lawyer SO MUCH I'm working for a city law firm', is what I was trying to suggest. Only it turns out I'm quite good at law-ish stuff. even when it involves the aforementioned weird dialect.

Sadly, although I 'get' law and can 'think like a lawyer' (hint: people will try to screw you over unless you make ABSOLUTELY SURE you've covered you ass), I cannot 'be like a lawyer'. I have been wearing HEELS and SKIRT SUITS and KNEE LENGTH DRESSES.

All of which I would normally wear be highly unlikely to wear of my own free will, but that's ok, it's a job, it's a uniform, this is all going to get me somewhere and one day I’ll be a highly respected partner in a radical law firm and wear whatever I damn well please. What I can’t really cope with is the highly hetero-normative culture: men open doors for me. I stand looking confused for a minute, then realise what’s going on and have to say thank you. I am not allowed to get out of the lift last (the men will stand there, waiting for me and the other women to get out first). It’s REALLY weird. Really weird. Or the fact that I can’t be even a little bit gay at work. Or, I’m not brave enough. Case in point: the man who sits next to me and the man on the other side of the partition were talking about ‘Girl With A Dragon Tattoo’ I LOVE GWaDT, I LOVE the Swedish film of GWaDT, I LOVE Noomi Rapace aka Salander in the film. I went to see the film the day it came out. But instead of joining in with the conversation (‘I know! How awesome/hot is Salander? And such a nuanced portrait of women’) and gaying out over Noomi I was sat there, pretending to read ‘How The City Really Works’ (I am going to understand how feeder funds work if it kills me), and they were whispering in case it offended me (‘Oh that book’s so violent towards women’).

Noomi, being attractive:

So today, after two weeks of this weird environment I went a little bit crazy on Google images. And I found so many swoon-worthy pictures, like pictures of Ellen ‘Babe Ruthless’ Page

....with the rest of the cast of Whip It!:

(Which, by the way we’re going to talk about IN DETAIL but not tonight because it’s late and I have work tomorrow)

And pictures of women in suits,

a perennial favourite theme of mine

(of everybody’s, surely)

(above is 'Pip' of Ladyhawke) but particularly because I’ve been seeing men in suits every damn day and women just pull it off better.

See?

and with that, I feel I've fully indulged my gay, and can go to work in a dress tomorrow (and Doc Marten heels - vive la resistance...) and not explode.