My life as a mutant

Saturday afternoon, a terrible thing happened. I was shaving my legs (that wasn't the horrible thing) and I spotted something on my right foot. There were a few little hairs, right on top, between that flinty little bone that runs down the top of my foot and the little slope that trails off to my pinkie toe. I tried to brush them off, but no doing. I even put my glasses back on and put my face as close to my foot as it would go. But they were attached. There were exactly three on my right foot, in a little triangle-shaped cluster that said, "Ha, you think there's only three of us, but we have plans to colonize and re-forest your entire foot. Your days of wearing sandals are over, Kehla, they're over!"\nIn a mild panic, I checked my left foot. The situation was dramatically worse. There were four hairs here. But they weren't even in a recognizable shape. They didn't even have the decency to be organized about their takeover.\nAt this point, I'm breaking out in cold sweats. Was I turning into a hobbit? What did these seven little hairs mean? Was my body turning against me? Was I going to be relegated to that class of girls that can only wear close-toed, substantial, matronly shoes? Dear lord. I'm a girl. Girls don't have hairy feet. Boys don't even have hairy feet. Not even the gross boys. Only fictional characters have hair on their feet. Fictional characters and woodland creatures, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to be either of those things.\nI realize that this is a rather unorthodox topic for an opinion column. The other writers on this page tackle heavy topics, like politics and religion.\nBut I think my panic was the manifestation of something a little deeper. I'm invested in my image, but no more so than anyone else is. I'm not particularly vain. My looks are nothing to write home about but I don't feel the need to wear a bag over my head. I'm of average height, I have brown hair and I'm proud of the fact that I've managed to shake off the horrible posture of my early teenage years. \nThese little hairs were something that challenged my self-image and few things are important to us as functional social beings. And as a society, we have a weird thing about hair, don't we? I understand it, I embrace it but it does seem a trifle out-of-whack. Girls especially get weird about it, but it goes back to the self-image thing. I was flipping out because a trait generally associated with masculinity (hairiness) had unexpectedly popped up, literally, in my girly life. \nIt made me think about some of the other challenges I've had to my self-image. A trip to Spain in the wake of Sept. 11 made me challenge my image of myself as an American. Working a blue collar job this summer has made me challenge my image of myself as a driven, hardworking person. Getting older has made me challenge my image of myself as a friend, sister and daughter. \nSo why did this one little thing set me off? Because it challenged my assumption of the one facet of my self-image I've never challenged. I'm a girl. It's that simple. As a girl (living a relatively mainstream lifestyle), there are things about me that are set. But this little event challenged my assumptions that I'm a static being. The way I view myself has to change or I'll stagnate. I'm leaving the little hairs alone. Like so many other lessons, this was a good lesson in a weird package. \nBut until it's fully sunken in, I'm wearing tennis shoes.