On Beauty: 1000 (ish) Words
September 17th, 2009by Marni Grossman
WILMINGTON, DE-
My mother says that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. She says that beauty is only skin deep.
My mother says that I’m gorgeous. She says that I’m adorable. That I’m not fat, no, she swears, it’s the truth. My mother says I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.
Right, I say with a smirk. Through love cataracts.
My mother says there will be days like this. There’ll be days like this, my mother says.
* * *
We are one. An undulating mass of freshly shaven legs, glitter eyeshadow, cheap taffeta and hormones.
We are women. We are thirteen.
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones are playing. Or possibly Sugar Ray. “Bad Touch” or “Mambo No. 5.”
When a slow song comes on, people pair up. Pair off. Mary Nash with Roger, Anna with Alex. No one comes for me, though and “we” becomes “I.” Alone, I stand around for a minute, nervously picking at my dress. But I’m not stupid, not blind. I beat a hasty retreat.
I walk fast, with purpose, to the bathroom. In the mirror I can see that I am not what I thought I was. Under the fancy dress, I’m just me. Ugly.
I lock myself in a bathroom stall and hang my head between my legs waiting for the moment to pass.
I am, in fact, intimate with ladies’ rooms. With powder rooms and lounges, the loo and the john. In fact, sometimes I feel as though my life has been nothing more than a long line of evenings spent hiding in bathroom stalls.
* * *
My face is the shtetl. I am Galicia. I am the Warsaw Ghetto. I am Zabar’s. The new Woody Allen film. I am some tertiary Philip Roth character.
Because my eyes are dark and brown and heavily-lidded, they are often described as soulful. Or mournful. Sorrowful. There’s something of Susan Sontag in them. And there’s a bit of Rosa Luxembourg in my long, hooked nose. Or maybe Emma Lazarus. In my smile, there are echoes of Anne Frank.
I invite comparisons- not to movie stars- but to Holocaust victims and Ellis Island rejects.
Even my body is foreign: fleshy and puckered. Tits and ass and hips. I have unruly brown pubic hair. One part ChiaPet, one part steel wool. I have a faint mustache that I bleach faithfully. My hair gets greasy and my skin is dotted with fading pimples. I am neither svelte nor toned. It’s telling: there’s no English word for zaftig.
I am much too much.
* * *
I am not a pretty girl. I know this, but, at the same time, I’m hoping someone will come along to contradict me.
I’m not a pretty girl and the most I can aspire to is “striking.”
Striking. Or “unusual.”
In college, a friend asked me to be in her student film. “You have such an unusual face,” she said.
But everyone knows, of course, that “unusual” is the polite word for ugly.
* * *
Pretty is as pretty does, the saying goes. But the thing of it is, pretty does well.
Studies show that being attractive comes with plenty of benefits. Pretty people make more money, more friends. They get more sex and better jobs.
And while my mother would have me believe that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, science says otherwise. Beautiful people, they say, have symmetrical faces. Lithe bodies. Wide-set eyes and generous mouths.
Even babies know this.
In 1989, psychologist Judith Langlois found that infants have an innate sense of what is and is not attractive and act accordingly. The babies in her study stared significantly longer at attractive faces than at unattractive ones.
Which is to say that I am- and always have been- doomed.
* * *
Pretty is as pretty does, the saying goes. But women have always known this to be a fallacy. We know that all we’ve got is the curve of our ass. That a pretty face is worth more than a Ph.D. We know that when our looks fade, we will be irrelevant, obsolete.
We know this and so we spend our lives, our money, trying to be beautiful. We tweeze and we pluck and we shave and we wax. We curl our eyelashes and we host Botox parties. We starve ourselves or we corrode the pipes with our vomit. We go under the knife again and again. We buy, buy, buy.
And we never give up the hope, propagated by Hollywood and children’s books, that we will wake up one day and be- quite suddenly- transformed. A swan.
* * *
For women, looks matter. Pretty is pretty damn important.
* * *
I always knew this. And when I was sixteen, I decided that if I wasn’t going to be beautiful, I’d better be thin. If I was thin enough, I reasoned, no one would notice that I was ugly. Models, after all, are allowed to be unusual. To have crooked noses that meander leftward and asymmetrical faces. So I’d be thin. Yes.
Yes.
And for a while, I was. I was very thin. I was 95 pounds and then, for a moment, 88 pounds.
But I was also starving. I was puking in the shower and cutting my stomach with razor blades. And I wasn’t any prettier.
* * *
My friend Lacey recently tagged this awful photo of me on facebook. I detagged it. Because I’m vain and I’m insecure.
“I look hideous,” I wrote on her wall. “And fat.”
In the picture, I’m in the midst of a story. In full flow, prattling on about something or other. I’m clasping my tote bag. Emily Martin’s The Woman in the Body is poking out. Maybe I’m extolling its virtues.
My breasts look enormous and so does my nose. I look heavy and cow-like and the photographer has, unflatteringly, shot me from below. Also, it’s my bad side.
And so I detagged the picture. Of course I did.
But I’m giving the picture a second life here. Because, when it comes down to it, this is what I look like. Living and breathing and reading and yes, eating. This is what I look like. Caught up in the moment. This is what I look like.
It’s not pretty, but it’s the truth.
Tags: bad photos, beauty, insecurity, sexism(?), vanity
A well-reasoned and eloquent argument, Marni, and quite persuasive…but I still hold with your mother: your writing is gorgeous and so are you.
You’re the best Greg. In fact, one might say you’re…wait for it…totally killer.
Marni,
I can’t help it. I feel just like your mother does. I wish you could see you through my eyes. I don’t have love cataracts. Your words are painful to read.
Painful in a good way? Maybe?
Your writing is impeccable, don’t get me wrong.
I just feel bad for you as a little girl not knowing how wonderful you were
and instead feeling so unworthy and imperfect.
Marni - Your writing is brutally honest - heartbreaking, really. You many not feel physical beauty but it is there - you have captured it in a pitch perfect rendering of emotions. Beauty, such a subjective word, isn’t it?
You’re too kind.
I do think beauty is a subjective word. Interestingly, in one of the studies I read, they found that women find beauty in many different types of people while men have a more narrow and traditional view of what’s beautiful.
Marni - what your mother says, the skin-deep thing, is true. In my experience, it’s easy to behave that way towards others, but it’s hard to do it towards yourself. In other words, I learned long long ago that women who were worth admiring, loving, talking to and being around didn’t necessarily inhabit beautiful bodies. I think any thoughtful person figures that out somewhere between 20 and 30.
But it takes a lot longer to accept that about oneself. I’m still saying to myself, shit, I’m bald, shit I weigh 30 pounds more than I did when I was 30, and my belly sticks out, shit I’m this and shit I’m that. I’m certain that no one I care about, or would want to care about, gets hung up on that stuff about me. I’m hoping to get over worrying about it before I’m 70.
Seems to me that putting your truth out there is a pretty good start.
Isn’t it funny how, when you were 30, you probably felt like you were past your prime too? I remember being 15 and thinking that I was fat- so fat!- and when I look back now, I see that I was tiny.
Marni, the self-loathing you articulate here may be the thing which, ironically, makes you a stunning, beautiful person. It’s so vulnerable and open and relatable. And profound. Hot abs or high cheekbones are nice, but.
Your struggle to reconcile what you think, what others think, what society thinks about feminine beauty is noble and so painfully relatable.
The part about moments in bathroom stalls is such a great line. So is “part Chia Pet,/part steel wool”.
Megan- I really loved your latest piece, so I’m excited to hear you say such nice things!
My dear. If you are the new Woody Allen film, you are either Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson or Penelope Cruz.
And if you’re the newest Woody Allen film, you are Evan Rachel Wood or Patricia Clarkson.
(Even if you’re the ‘Old’ Woody Allen film, you’re Diane Keaton or Mia Farrow or Mary Steenbergen)
And when I prattle off those names, it is not because I am contesting you, dear Marni. It is because I agree with you. You undeniably belong in that pantheon of beauties.
Kimberly- you’re sweet. But I was thinking more along the lines of Shelly DuVall.
And yet - you’re *SO* wrong.
And I just got my prescription checked yesterday so I know I’m right.
Hey man, I fucking LOVE Shelly DuVall. I think she is righteous looking. And that is way better than pretty.
There’s “pretty” and then there’s “beautiful”. Which your writing, and by extension as far as a stranger is concerned, you, are.
Marni, thank you for writing this. So much of it is familiar. It feels very - is this strange? - comforting to see those feelings represented.
I’d be interested in learning more about the studies on beauty you’ve read.
Meghan-
Here’s a fairly accessible one from CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/Careers/07/08/looks/
WOW! I’m sure the rest of your readers will agree, this hit home. As “beautiful” or “ugly” as anyone may or may not be, they question their appearance. It’s human nature. I hate it, but it is fact.
I loved that you were confident enough to list what you believe to be your worst features. It must feel liberating. Then, you posted a picture of yourself that you do not like. That is amazing to me!
As much as I hide it, I’m extremely self conscious. Like, it keeps me from doing things, accomplishing goals, being myself, everything. It truely holds me back.
I admire your bravery and to show my appreciation, here’s my list. I’m overweight. I’ve been sitting here for ten mintutes trying to decide how to word that. You would think it’s simple. It’s not. I’ve thought of myself as “fat” my entire life. I wish I could just embrace what is. I have, what people like to call, puppy dog eyes. They make me appear to be either sad or high at all times. I also have facial hair. I think my lips would be pretty if they were not dry all the time. I have stretch marks. No matter how many sit ups I do, I will always have extra skin on my belly from my son. If there are abs there, they will always be hidden. Because of medication, I sweat a lot. My chest is large. Huge. This was ok in high school but now things are heading south. I’m starting to get wrinkles under my eyes and forehead. I don’t know how to fix that. My once flawless skin, now has pores. Like, I can see them walking past a mirror. My ass is going flat and my thighs seem to be expanding. I can keep going but there is no need to depress myself or bore you. I just wanted you to know that I applaud you!
Oh! And with all of that, my husband says I’m perfect, my son told me I look like a princess, and a few of my lady friends recently compared me to a young Cindy Lauper, which, I still haven’t decided if it’s a compliment or not, but I’m taking what I can get.
My point, start making lists of the things you do like about yourself and surround yourself with people like your mom. No one is perfect. I think a woman’s beauty is in the way she presents herself, anyway. For example, Angelina Jolie=Beautiful, Megan Fox=Ugh. Now, ask that question to a million other people and you will get many different answers. Angelina just exudes something that Megan Fox will never understand much less, replicate. it goes deeper. Maybe the eyes are the “windows to the soul”.
Anyway, I think you are beautiful. Inside and out.
I’m so happy that you have a husband who thinks you’re perfect. That’s what everyone deserves, I think. Someone who looks at them and sees perfection. Which, undoubtedly, is what you are!
A friend on twitter sent me your way. I read your story several times, amazing. Thank you. Thank you for your writing, for the reality check, for allowing me to find myself in you, for giving me a view from the other side, for allowing me to hear what you hear when a parent says what we say to our daughters, and how it is heard. The question of pretty, beautiful, attractive, sensual, I cannot cover. We are all guilty of judging the beauty of another. I do it every day. The human supermarket that is match.com provides a near perfect venue for making snap judgments on what is pretty or handsome. We delete before we read the words. I have always felt I am interesting looking and that my “gift of gab” is what garners what attention I get. Hearing ” Your such a good looking boy”, most of my early days, has had no last effect. Just today, I de-tagged a photo, a profile shot in which I seemed to be vying for the runner-up spot in the Pinocchio look alike contest. Maybe I will re-tag.
Someone twittered you my piece! That’s so exciting!
And yes, you’re right. We all judge based on looks. I try my best not to because that’s not how I want to be viewed, but most of the time, it’s automatic.
A wonderful and honest and heartbreaking piece. Thank you for writing it.
Beauty occurs in the mind. In your mind and the mind of the beholder. And it seems the more we believe ourselves to be beautiful, the more others find us to be so.
The irony is how often those who believe themselves to be beautiful people are not very beautiful as people.
You said what I was trying to say…only yours makes sense.
Richard- thanks so much for being so nice. A true compliment from a great writer.
Wow, Marni.
I think every female can relate to this piece. Your brutal honesty is refreshing and makes me so sad and angry at the same time. Sad because I constantly think all of these all things about myself and sad because the world is so wrong to project these false ideals on children and women.
Thank you so much for being you. You are a classic and true beauty.
I think that the “angry” part is important. Because what is this bullshit we teach girls? We tell that, in this day and age, they can be whatever they want to be. But at the same time, every ad, every movie, tells girls that their worth is wrapped up in their pretty face. It’s schizophrenic and it drives us crazy, too.
I read your piece because I was a round, unpopular kid and thought the two things were related. When I was 15, my mom told me I’d be a knock out if I lost weight. I did. She was right. Nothing changed. Though I am pretty, I don’t feel it. I look in the mirror and see that I am thin, blond, blue-eyed, beautiful. I am 38. I look 25. I am also unemployed, single, and spend most of my time with my dog. It’s true that the way I look helps me get jobs and attract men. It doesn’t help me hold on to either. Beauty may be necessary, but it sure as hell isn’t sufficient. My guess is that what really makes life easier isn’t so much looking beautiful as it is believing and insisting that you are beautiful. Some of the most effective, inspiring, best loved people I know of aren’t pretty at all.
Well said, Erin! I wanted to say this and I was trying to figure out how and then Erin went and said it first.
But there’s the other side of it, too, that we don’t hear about as often, which is that plenty of women do enjoy their bodies, regardless of what they look like. I know we’re all obsessed with how things look, and that’s hard to get around, no matter how PC we are, because, you’re right Marni, we’re all programmed to enjoy looking at pretty things. The intellect doesn’t remove that biological fact.
But looking at things/how things look is just a small part of human experience! It’s not no part, I’ll grant you that. But it’s certainly not everything.
I’m not even going to try to make the argument I’ve made before, which is that you are beautiful–every picture I’ve seen of you, including that one you seem to think is so hideous, you’re beautiful. The fact that lots of other women are beautiful too doesn’t change that.
But let’s just set that aside for now, because you’re clearly not convinced. You think the problem is how you look, but it isn’t (as Erin and some others have said). It’s how you feel. And looking at yourself some more isn’t going to change that.
Instead, go give yourself 10 orgasms. I’m serious about this. Go give yourself 10 orgasms–I don’t care if it takes 10 minutes or 10 years, but don’t look in the mirror again until after the 10th. Then go look in the mirror. I think you’ll find that you’ve suddenly gotten better looking.
Then go do it again.
Then again.
The more you do it, the better looking you will get, and the less inclined you will be to hide in the bathroom at social events (which is, after all, a characteristic of a shy, introverted person, not an ugly one), thus increasing the likelihood that you will stick around and talk to other people who will want to give you orgasms, too.
If you need fodder to get started, you might try this story by Larry Smith at Exquisite Corpse. I think it’s a wonderful story, and I think Smith writes great women characters, and about them with great empathy; but I should offer the warning that this is a very sexually explicit story, so if you don’t want that in your comment stream, please just go ahead and delete this comment, with my apologies.
http://www.corpse.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=149&Itemid=1
Good luck! We’re all rooting for you. But if you’re going to move on from this, you have to stop talking about how ugly you are. Seriously.
It does get redundant, doesn’t it?
I think my point though, was that it’s society’s narrow standards that fuck women (and men) over. And that nothing is worth more than a life lived fully. These are not novel ideas, but still.
You’re right, I think. The reality is that beauty matters less and less the more you get to know someone. After a fashion, you begin to think of all your friends as beautiful because you love them. And they are. But it’s that initial first glance. That superficial five seconds that makes us crazy about our thighs and our gray hair, etc.
I am Galicia. I am the Warsaw Ghetto.
These words hurt me, the whole piece so heavy
and honest.
Writers tend to be oversensitive
we want to fix things with our words
we want to make it better
we want to say something so profound
it sets the captives free.
But so rarely are we able.
Breathe, live, begin.
Something here is dying
another
being born
“we want to fix things with our words
we want to make it better
we want to say something so profound
it sets the captives free.”
Yes! That we so often can’t is incredibly frustrating.
Wow Marni,
When I first started reading your piece I thought “oh, she must be beautiful and she doesn’t think it matters” because “beauty is skin deep.” How said, a beautiful woman with no beauty value because her mom took it away…but no I read on and you value beauty as we all do. You want to be a part of the beauty world. A card carrying member of beauty. Most people writing to you want that for you and I relate to them. All i could think about and what is making me write to you is my 10-year-old daughter who doesn’t think she’s beautiful and that kills me because she is beautiful. She doesn’t look like Barbie but she has amazing green eyes that see right through to your soul. She doesn’t have big cheek bones but she has the smoothest olive skin I’ve ever seen. She has perfect teeth that smile and light up my heart when she smiles at me. She’s tall, thin, stunning, soulful but she doesn’t see herself in commercials or on doll’s faces but she’s beautiful. I want her to feel beautiful. She’ll grow up to have an amazing body and a stunning face I know. But I want her to value herself, her intellect, her intuition, her integrity, yes her beauty too. I want you to feel beautiful because only a woman who appreciates it as much as you and sees it as much as could actually be beautiful.
Marni - you’ve said what every woman feels. Even the pretty ones. I hope you’ll send this to 16 magazine. Girls need to know that they aren’t alone in the way they feel. Our alone hope as a gender is to lift the younger generation out of this marketing nightmare.
Marketing nightmare is right-on. Companies, advertisers encourage our self-hatred because it sells shit. They need us to be insecure. And they’re doing a terrific job keeping us that way.
That should read:
“our only hope…”
weird freudian slip, huh?
Marni, This is a fine piece of writing and your photo looks fine to me. All my life I’ve been average to poor looking and it has been a blessing. Good looking people are all so, ‘all of that.’ But over time they’ll age and become just like the rest of us. Being plain makes one work harder to get noticed and that’s why, I think, writing has become embraced by homely people like myself. In the privacy of our homes we can craft prose that is beautiful while the best that attractive people can come up with is to type things with their thumbs like, U WAN GET JGY 2NITE? Personally, I think attractive people should be banned from writing. They already have Hollywood and have made some inroads in Washington. Best!
This made me smile. Thanks for the laugh-
Such grace.
Thank you so much! I do hope that this piece doesn’t look like one big trip of fishing for compliments…
It doesn’t look that way at all, Marni. As usual, you write beautifully — precociously so — and this post is, as others have said, brave to boot. Only a few days ago, I removed a tag from a photo someone had posted on my Facebook page because the photo embarrassed me, and it would never have occurred to me to repost and use the photo as the basis of a TNB piece.
I arrived at TNB in April, and you were among the first to comment on my inaugural post (about Elliott Smith), and I was instantly struck by how pretty you were. But even if that weren’t the case — and it was — you’re consistently one of the best writers at TNB, and I know I’m not alone in thinking so: I hear it time and again.
You have many admirers. If you don’t realize that, I hope this goes a little distance toward convincing you.
Facebook is totally both blessing and curse. Particularly the photos. I have this tendency to see friends’ photos and think that their lives are ones of non-stop parties and total happiness. Which makes me vaguely depressed and competitive.
Thanks so much for being so completely and utterly sweet. Coming from you, it means much.
This might be weird coming from a perfect stranger, but I feel compelled to comment on this.
I think you’re beautiful. Your photo icon is fantastic. You’ve got a lovely smile and eyes that laugh and an easygoing grace that people like myself just can’t achieve in photographs. I really, really hope that one day you find someone who tells you this and that you believe him.
And I definitely feel you on the Facebook photo tagging. I hate when people tag photos of me that interrupt my delusion that I’m pretty and fit and generally nice looking. Curse you, reality, for interrupting my daydreams.
My profile picture was a happy accident of good lighting and careful cropping. I used it as for my college yearbook photo and, under it, an Anne Sexton quote which undoubtedly outed me as melodramatic, and far too self-serious.
Thanks so much for commenting. This sort of thing tends, I think, to hit home for girls. However much we like to pretend otherwise, Barbie got in our heads and she’s harder to exorcize than the devil.
Even if you were looking/fishing, damn it, I don’t care. Love it!
Pretty - who needs it? Soulful and real and even asymmetrical is beautiful. And that’s you.
You do know that when Renoir painted women, he looked for the flaw - and that’s what made his women so beautiful.
I read this a couple of days ago Marni and to be honest, I still don’t know how to adequately respond.
I think you are beautiful. I really do.
But more importantly, I think you’re strong and brave and full of courage that is matchless.
I would love to give you a mirror that would reflect to you what everyone else sees when they look at you. I wish I could. I only hope that in time you will see your beauty and that it will make you smile broadly.
Zara! I can’t believe you’re in the US and I missed you! Next time, East Coast please-
Okay. Next time East Coast! Just for you xx
It’s very brave of you to speak all this. Very brave and necessary…
And can I just say that I hate the word pretty? I don’t know what it means anymore. I am going to write about that for you.
Can’t wait to read it!
marni-
well, those smart brains above me said it all. and i’m floored because of it. honesty. gutsy. beautiful. i wish i could write like this. but i can’t. i simply don’t have the guts. your writing is very meditative. they always read with measured steps. you. can. write. period.
thanks, marni. you are beautiful.
so there.
okay,
r
Sorry Marni - I wanted to get to this sooner, but I didn’t. I’ve been off the internet for a few days.
Colin Farrell said something once about the attractiveness of people being defined by who they were, not what they looked like, and it was a really good point. I think the big problem with photos is that they don’t capture that, instead giving people a static image that they can pore over and pick apart, one piece at a time. I know I do that, and I’m not yet rich enough to have a professional photographer follow me everywhere I go.
Hi Marni–
I am 41. You are very young, I think. I used to be you in some ways–in many ways (the eating disorder, the ethnic body hair, the being-told-I-looked-”unusual” and reading that as a code word for “ugly”) for many years. I wish there was a way for middle-aged women to convince young women that this shit is not worth their time. I wish there were a way, but there isn’t, and part of being older is realizing that we all have to live that journey ourselves, and by the time we realize what time we wasted, it will be too late.
I don’t know you in person. Your TNB photo is adorable. You look extremely cute. I don’t know if you are, from a strictly physical perspective, “beautiful” or not, because I think much of that lies in a person’s animation and is hard to capture in a static photo. But I can tell that you are not “ugly.” Another of life’s immense ironies is that most of the people/girls who worry so much about how hideous they are are actually on the up-side of “good looking.” I don’t know if this is actually true, but girls who are really–truly–conventionally ugly don’t seem to obsess about it as much. It’s the girls who exist on the lower side of the beauty spectrum . . . but still within it . . . who seem to be hardest on themselves. These girls tend to have many beautiful friends who are just that tad more attractive than they are. They tend to want to date the hot boys, but those hot boys are going for their gorgeous friends. Dare I suggest that the girls who truly can’t compete in that arena at all have already recognized it for the self-destructive, hopeless cycle it is and found themselves a nice nerd, and a group of smart, mousy girlfriends, and have let that shit wash off them in its hopelessness. Whether they like it or not, they can’t play the game, period, and so they have to find another game–and in many cases they may then realize their game is in fact a much better one. Whereas the girls who are “kind of pretty” but not “gorgeous” develop eating disorders and self-loathing and aspire endlessly to wake up the swan that–superficially at least–they may never be. They cannot let go of the game no matter how perpetually they find themselves on the losing team.
Ironically again, these girls, despite their own insecurities, usually don’t end up befriending the smart mousy girls or dating the sweet, brainy nerds and quitting the game. They continue to chase after the unattainable, beautiful people and aspire to be among them. If the beautiful people are occasionally cruel, rather than deterring them this only spurs them on further. Ah, the luxury of being beautiful enough to be cruel! This, to young, sort-of-pretty girls, is simply proof of the superior lives of the beautiful.
Marni, I hope you will step out of this cycle. I’m afraid to try to convince you here–as so many others have–of how beautiful you really are, because I’m afraid that is not really remotely the issue. The real issue is why it matters to you, and to so many of us. The real issue is the way so many young women . . . and a number of older women too . . . truly believe that love and romance and sex and excitement and adventure and Meaning are all somehow reserved for the beautiful, and that the rest of us are not privy to those things, or that our versions of them are somehow lesser.
So, flash forward to me at 41. I have been married for 16 years to a man I adore and have 3 amazing children. I have more friends than I know what to do with (both beautiful and plain, both women and men), and a career that makes me tick on an elemental level . . . albeit it pays like shit, but that was my choice, I could have pursued something more lucrative, but chose instead to surround myself with work I love. I have traveled a great deal and I love fashion and I love to cook and I am still, at 41, rather a girly girl. I have never been conventionally pretty. I don’t mean in the way models are not “conventionally pretty.” I mean in the way you describe. I have always had problematic skin, and thighs too thick for the rest of me, and the large ethnic nose, all of that. While my husband might disagree, I think most of my friends would admit, if really pressed off the record, that I am not a “pretty” girl. Eleanor Roosevelt once famously said, when asked if she had one regret, that she wished she had been born beautiful. Who doesn’t? But I can honestly say that I would not trade LIVES with anyone I know or have ever known. I love my life so much it blows my mind. I can honestly say that I don’t know any other women, of any age or any physical appearance, who I believe are more loved, more fulfilled, or happier than I am. I look back at my teen years and early 20s, and the time I wasted on these insecurities makes me ill. But that time also made me who I am, and made me appreciate what I have.
The advice about having orgasms is good. Really. One of the great myths of life is that only model-gorgeous women are sexy and entitled to hot sex. Go find some hot sex. Smart women, really, have the monopoly on that, and smart men know it.
When you’re 40, I suspect you may remember this TNB dialogue and realize that all the people here who love you and see your beauty–both inner and in your actual photograph–were speaking the truth. But I wish for you that you will let it all go long before then. I don’t mean letting it go by being pissed off, and enraged at society for brainwashing women. There is truth to that, but even that truth continues to buy into the system to some extent. Our anger is a form of pain, and that pain continues to rule and drive us. What I mean is: let it go. You are perfect just as you are. You can have the life you want. Fuck those studies about how beautiful people have better lives. I know a LOT of people, and I have not found that to be true. What I have found is that confident, assertive people have better lives. People who do not hide in bathroom stalls. Some of these confident people are downright unattractive. Where they find their confidence may be a mystery. But if they can find it, the world is their oyster.
So go forth and conquer. And for god’s sake, untag any FB photo you don’t like with impunity. Fuck people tagging us anyway–it’s annoying. But bravo to you for posting the photo yourself. May your passionate dialogue of that day, and the way you were too caught up in the moment to notice the camera, live on forever in the TNB 1,000 Words book project. May you live in such passionate moments forever, and never live life as though a camera is following you again.
Jesus, that was a good comment.
Gina-
Thanks for putting so much time and thought into commenting on my piece. You are, of course, right. Most of this stuff- the pretty stuff- doesn’t matter. We all have friends and lovers, regardless of how attractive we’re deemed by society. And sure there are perks- as illustrated by the studies cited above, but beauty doesn’t guarantee happiness. Everyone knows this. Just as money doesn’t either.
That said, knowing these things are true for other people doesn’t make it any easier to believe it when it comes to ourselves.
I’d like to one day not give a shit about this. Because it’s petty and narcissistic and awfully awfully boring. Maybe it’ll happen.
But I don’t think I’ll ever stop being angry. Because I do believe- with all my heart- that our society teaches women to hate themselves and that the beauty industry (the diet industry, the media, etc.) play a key role. And I can’t shut up about it until something’s done.
Yes, you’re right about society and misogyny, of course. And I think it’s far deeper than the beauty industry. I worked for years as a counselor for battered women and sexually abused girls, and it seems to me that violence problems are epidemic across almost all cultures, even though obsession with thinness or particular beauty aesthetics are not inherently constant, or always equally prioritized. In the United States (and probably Europe), the obsession with women as “beautiful objects” is just an extension of the worldwide, historical obsession with women as “objects” period. Objects to desire or to abuse, and sometimes those are one and the same, both in our culture and elsewhere.
I guess what I mean by this is that I think women were taught to hate ourselves–and that men were, on a key level, taught to hate women, long, long before the particular manifestation of fashion magazines and weight obsessions, and that tragically all cultures find ways for this eternal mistrust and Othering of the feminine to express itself.
Many of the abused girls and women I worked with were very blue collar or in poverty, and they had very little interest in or obsession with weight. Many were overweight and didn’t give a shit, because among the poor that is far more a cultural norm. But it didn’t make their lives better to be less obsessed with dieting, or not to have eating disorders. Instead they had drug problems and boyfriends or husbands who beat them. Across town (I was out east at the time) near Dartmouth College where the rich kids lived, all the girls were bulimic and rupturing their stomachs and ending up on feeding tubes, but many were originally star athletes and straight A students who didn’t use drugs. I don’t know . . . “beauty” it’s a symptom of the problem, I think, and the real problem is far wider and deeper.
You’re right to feel angry and to own your anger and want to change things. Of course you are. What I meant is that anger can eat someone and rule her life, and I hope you won’t let that happen, even as you strive for changes. Because while it’s essential to work to change the world, the thing we have the most power to change is ourselves, and allowing yourself to find happiness and peace IS a change, and a beautiful one–one you may someday spread to your friends and sisters and daughters, and that will keep rippling outwards.
Ugh. I just wrote a response to your comment and the internet ate it. Let’s try this again, shall we?
You’re right, of course. Body image issues are only one example of how the patriarchy (oh that word!) affects women. Misogyny is neither solely western nor is it new.
I hope you don’t think I’m so tone-deaf that I believe eating disorders to be the only problem- or even one of the most important problems- facing women. Most women in this world don’t have the luxury of starving themselves or the food with which to binge and purge. It’s just that I’ve always felt comfortable talking about it because I’ve experienced it and I feel like I can say something useful without being completely stupid or patronizing. Anorexia was actually sort of my gateway to feminism. When I started gaining weight again, I started getting angry and from there, I began devouring Naomi Wolf. And when I finished that, I moved on to Simone de Beauvoir.
Interestingly enough, eating disorders don’t discriminate. Studies show that they cut across all races and classes in spite of the pervasive view that they’re a rich (white) girl phases. (http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm, http://the-f-word.org/blog/index.php/2008/09/08/new-book-debunks-white-girl-eating-disorder-myths/).
Have you seen the articles about eating disorders in Fiji? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/347637.stm
Not sure how I’ve drifted so far afield. In any event, I so admire the work you did with abused women and girls. I spent three years in college volunteering at a local battered women shelter and it’s hard, hard work. And so very important.
I’m eager to read that study, Marni. I was a poor (albeit white) girl in the early 80s with an eating disorder in the ghetto, and no one around me had ever heard of anorexia. While my work in NH/VT did sort of support the rich-white-girl’s-disease model, I myself was obviously a counter-example, and I’m interested to know there is a study about it and what it has to say. Thanks for the link!
I loved my work as a counselor–but man, it was a high burn-out field. I was in my early 20s, from a fucked-up environment myself and in therapy for an eating and anxiety disorder, and dealing with things in my clients that would make even a seasoned, fully-self-actualized 60 year old twitch. It was rough work, but very rewarding, very real, very immediate. Yet in the end I left it to chase my own dream of being a writer, and there are many days when I really second guess myself for that choice. There are days when the choice feels narcissistic, even though I believe in the importance of literature and art–and personal fulfillment, too, which writing gives me. But there are just days when I feel I bailed, that I did not give back enough, and I dream of sometime returning to that line of work. Who knows? Hopefully life will prove long enough that I don’t yet know where it may lead.
I don’t think ANY of the things you say you hope I don’t think. I don’t think them at all. I think you’re an awesome writer and a very honest woman. I loved your piece, even though it is in my nature to want to “help” younger women who remind me of myself at their age. I hope for my part that this desire to help did not sound lecturing. You are more than smart enough, that’s clear, to find your own path.
There are days when I think I would like to go to grad school in social work. But I don’t. Partly because I think it’ll be too hard and partly because I haven’t fully given up on writing.
I almost did AmeriCorps. I’d applied to a program that I felt really passionate about. Working in different public agencies- shelters, DAs office, etc.- with victims of domestic violence. After a multitude of interviews, I was accepted. But I didn’t go. There was a catch. The program was in rural New Hampshire. I’d be completely alone, working with abused women. No friends, no family. Just me and my extremely low-paying, depressing job (they encourage AmeriCorps participants to apply for food stamps) in New Hampshire. I knew I’d be unhappy. I’m not good with new places. I’m not good with being alone.
I still think maybe I made a mistake. That maybe it was selfish to put my own happiness ahead of doing something good for the world. And I still worry that writing in and of itself is completely selfish. Which is to say that I completely understand what you mean when you say that the choice feels narcissistic.
But for you, I think, it’s something else. You did good work. And after so many years, you couldn’t be expected to do that same difficult work with the same energy or drive. And I believe- maybe it’s just self-justification- that writing does good too. That at it’s best, good writing articulates what we all feel and makes us less alone.
Marni,
Hell. I love your work. And know that I’ve been obsessed with tertiary Roth characters since puberty.