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.