Rex Reese as Peer Pressure.

Rex Reese is the boy at the party with the hair over his ears and in his face who doesn't look particularly sober. Rex Reese is the boy who drunkenly drives his car into a lake, escapes, but leaves his girlfriend in it to sink to her death. Rex Reese is the boy who eyes girls maliciously and blows smoke in others' mouths for fun. Rex Reese is the boy who makes us all believe that it's ok to do things you're not supposed to. He's the boy who said it was ok for Calliope and the Obscure Object and Jerome and him to go deep into the woods to "party". Who lit up Calliope's first joint and drove her to losing her virginity with a boy she didn't like "in that way". There's a Rex Reese at every high school, lingering in the corners of hallways and at the backs of classrooms. A Rex Reese comes to every house party and gets everybody worked up. There's a strong dose of influence that Rex Reese administers to all who cross his path, influence that makes us lightheaded and giddy and guilty when we come to.

We do forbidden things because some anonymous (or many times not) force tells us that it's ok, that one time won't hurt you, that it's no big deal, just go ahead because everyone else is doing it. I don't believe in peer pressure. In the end it all just boils down to you making your own decisions, and those decisions are based on a large number of factors - not only friends. But I do believe in the Rex Reese present in all situations. The lingering spirit that doesn't outright tell you to go ahead and do it, but has just been doing it all along itself that you must be sure it's ok. The spirit that makes you passionate and jealous and hungry for vengeance. That sly young creature that woos the one you love and draws you in with tactics that you barely notice until you've already done everything you're not supposed to. It's not peer pressure. In fact, it's the exact opposite. You're taunted by the subtle actions and almost unnoticeable things that the Rex Reese spirit performs, things that don't just jump upon you but snake their way gently into your life.

Calliope first discovers her "lesbianism" (if you can call it that - she's not exactly a "girl") when she encounters the new girl in her class, an unnamed redhead who goes by the alias "The Obscure Object", usually shortened to simply "The Object". Calliope hides in the shadows of her affection, admiring The Object from afar, making the occasional "risky" move, yet never venturing too far. One day at a party, The Object's brother, Jerome, brings along his friend Rex Reese, the handsome bad boy rumored to have driven his car into a lake, with his girlfriend in it. The Object is smitten with him as he makes eyes at her, and immediately Calliope picks it up and her jealousy radars start firing. Suddenly nothing is too risky. Calliope does what Rex does, trying to emulate his persona to win back The Object. One debauched night in the middle of the woods, Calliope follows the actions of Rex and The Object - smoking weed, inhaling someone else's fumes, drinking cans of beer, and eventually, in her drunkeness, lets Jerome, well, you know. It's a totally sudden shift in personality, caused in part by Rex Reese.

Now, the overprotective mothers of the world would place the blame solely on that Rex kid, the bad one who had a negative influence on the young'uns. But no, that's only the tip of the iceberg. Besides the whole aspect of willpower in people (or lack therof), there are a thousand other things we have to take into consideration about why we're driven to do the things we do. In Calliope's case, jealousy and undying affection for The Obscure Object was the biggest factor which made her do all those things. Peer pressure can take many forms, and in some cases it can't even be considered peer pressure because of its ingenious subtlety. Rex Reese's tactics were so effective and clever that he probably didn't even realize that he was doing them. It was his lack of pressure that drove Calliope crazy. It was the effortlessness with which he wooed The Object that made Calliope go crazy. Peer pressure, if it even exists, doesn't really depend on the verbal aspects, it's almost always the person who's saying them that matters. The most effective form of "peer pressure" is one that is so sneaky that it takes you over before you even notice. It's personified with actions, not words. Peer pressure takes the form of Rex Reese, the boy at the party and in the back of the classroom.

Please, Judge Me By My Cover. No Kidding.

When I was brainstorming ideas about Jeffery Eugenides' novel Middlesex, I found myself continuously straying back to the ever-popular last resort of a thesis - it's what's on the inside that counts. Yeah, this is really nice and considerate, I just feel like hugging fluffy bunnies when I hear someone say it. However - and I'm probably going to get a boatload of hater comments from you guys - this book is seriously making me change my thoughts about that theory - and yes, it is theory, not fact. Although our "inside" emotions and traits are what people try to focus on and care the most about, those "important" and "meaningful" factors of an individual's identity depend largely on outward appearance.

Take Calliope, or Cal, for instance, the main character in Middlesex. Born a hermaphrodite due to mutations on chromosomes and negative-two-generations-back incest, Calliope lives most of her young life as a girl before adopting the male sex, along with her/his new name, Cal. The first half of the book focuses on the lives of Cal's grandparents, from their inter-family romance, and then the lives of his parents, and then finally on the life of Cal himself, his transformation from one sex to another told in explicit detail. Clearly, this book focuses on the outward appearances of a person and how they affect life, so it's inevitable that that person's feelings are going to be almost completely controlled by his/her mutation. At times we forget about Cal's physical state, yet small tidbits sneak their way subtly into the text and remind just how important the middle sex actually is - Cal's doctor making a point of how she is a "beautiful, healthy girl" at birth, only reinforcing the fact that she in truth isn't; detailed descriptions of her boyish, adolescent body and frequent reminders of her "high testosterone levels"; her/his date suspecting that he is a homosexual. Without these reminders of Cal's body and mind, the story would lack the depth and discomfort that readers experience while reading it. He suffers extreme self-consciousness about his body as a teenager, especially when faced with potential sexual encounters. Those aren't really things that single-sexed humans have to worry about, but in Cal's case, his physical traits control his life. His outward appearance makes up so much of the story that you can't help but begin to believe that the outside counts more than the inside. In fact, it appears as if his hermaphroditism not only affects his view of himself and his own feelings, but the feelings and judgements of others.

Hermaphroditism seems like an nontraditional, somewhat awkward topic to write about, but Jeffery Eugenides actually made a smart choice in picking it. In a society where gender is as little thought about or pondered on as it is, Eugenides forces us to take into account our true identities that are controlled largely on our sexes. Gender in itself is to blame for countless limits and bans and unspoken rules that are placed upon our heads, yet they're molded themselves into our daily lives so seamlessly that we take little to no notice of them. Sometimes I believe that Cal's physical appearance affects so much of his daily life only because of his rare condition. I mean, it must completely consume your thoughts and subconscious when you're part of that kind of minority. But gender defines us, and it only amplifies that when you don't know if you're supposed to conform to the male or female sex. Our lives are built upon our genders - we've been brought up like girls if we're girls, so we think what girls are supposed to think. Cal has boyish thoughts, but he also mentions his feminine side reemerging through almost indiscernible actions, like a hair flip. All this is because of his double-sexed identity, and that's an outside factor.

There are some things that are so "normal" to us that we never notice them unless we look or think hard enough. We forget that those things shape our own identities, so we disregard them; make them something that we think doesn't matter or just seems wrong or silly. That's where this whole "don't judge a book by its cover" idea came in. We think that since gender is such a "small" part of our lives that it doesn't matter. What I admire so much about Jeffery Eugenides, however, is his insight to the importance of the outward appearances of people. He's completely changed by views about human identity through Middlesex, and made me see just how significant gender and a person's facade can be. I'm shaped on being a girl, and everything I do and say, down to the way I walk, is reflecting my feminism, just like Cal's often androgynous persona is a display of his being a hermaphrodite. So this is why I say, please judge me by the way I look, the way I dress, the way I act. I'm a girl, and that's the most important thing about me. So jump to conclusions, because it's only natural.