I feel like I was duped
How to sustain a positive relationship with yourself that isn’t totally mediated by a cultural, historical context that objectifies your body and defines what is and is not acceptable — through a filtered lens which favours — demands even — fake over nature? What is this human need to control and tame nature?
These were my first thoughts on waking that Monday morning. The sun was shining it was the first day of Spring and the air was full of potential. A few hours later, after a coffee and another lockdown walk on the beach I was closer to figuring something out. I kept circling back to thoughts around power and control. Who is it that gets to define reality? I was wondering — and how — when multiple realities and experiences co-exist, do some get suppressed, curtailed, diminished, disbelieved, belittled, hidden, contained and invalidated.
I was somewhat dishevelled. My brain was trying to stay with complex thoughts while my body responded with a full spectrum of emotion and I acknowledged the pull to dissociate. I felt light headed and sick. It would pass. This was known territory.
The idea …that the rules of engagement — with one’s self — mind, body and spirit are mediated via something other than oneself was at the same time so bloody obvious and yet mind blowing. A bit like having a baby. The most normal and pedestrian every day occurrence and at the same time utterly unique and phenomenal. What’s the word that describes how something can mean two contradictory things at once — Ah yes. Ambivalence! Almost an old fashioned notion these days.
Something was getting in the way of being able to have a straightforward relationship with my thoughts, feelings and even my own body. My thought processes were distorted and even hijacked at times — and I tried to stay with the feelings as they arose in my body (in the hope of learning something new and becoming clearer) and yet — also this strong pull to move right away. To float out into space. Then the inevitable self objectification kicked in — and my attention jumped to imagining how I might be seen, heard, or understood by someone else — an imagined other. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, shook my arms down to the side as if to try and slough off the feelings and gave out a long sigh.
“I feel like I was duped”
“How much time and energy over the years has been tied up in trying to make myself palatable and digestible for this imagined other? How many bits of myself had been discretely negated, cut off, rubbed out or dropped?”
Had I always made judgements about myself though the eyes of an imagined beholder? A critical foe, policing and censoring my freedoms and self expressions. Partly, it had to be said, yes — and was it really for my own physical safety? Because at some level, I knew and felt that I was always in potential danger. Of being consumed by the eyes of another — or worse. Potentially much worse. Always a threat lurking? So, perhaps the critical foe was an ally after all then? Perhaps? Sometimes. However — mostly it just felt like fear.
I was trying to deconstruct the various cultural narratives that I’d swallowed over my time on the planet; about how I should look, speak, behave, move. They were at once contradictory, confusing, limiting and hugely underestimated my power. Often so banal as to lack any imagination at all. And yet the mainstream. I feel like I have been grappling with these dynamics forever. For as long as I can remember.
Sometimes I think about doing an experiment. I would take a day trip to a large ‘beauty’ shop — maybe like Boots. I’d make an inventory of all the products marketed to women and work backwards from the product and what it claims to be able to do — in order to excavate the imagined woman behind the advert. As if — like Mary Shelly sculpting my Frankensteina from the projections of the products on the shelves. I’d start with vaginas.
A quick google to explore this further reveals the territory and confirms my suspicions. There were a range of products aimed at making vaginas smell good. The apparent narrative being peddled which I managed to avoid in my youth — maybe vaginas were different in the 80’s? — is that there is something wrong with every single part of you and your body. Including your vagina. But no need to worry - there’s always a product to address it — because your worth it! Create the fault, exploit the vulnerability and fuel the paranoia. Manufacture a need, market the solution to address that little embarrassing shortfall of yours and reclaim your freedom — one product at a time! Ooops. Shhhhhhhh. No — one need ever know. Discretion at all times. Assured.
“Most vulva owners have been taught that their vaginas are icky, gross, stinky, and weird. So, if you’re interested in changing the taste of your vagina, know this: A healthy vagina doesn’t taste like flowers, a fresh summer breeze, or vanilla. It tastes like vagina” (Healthline).
From the age of about 14 I had started to play with the prerequisite black eyeliner to go with the equally uniform black dyed and crimped hair, back combed and sprayed to within an inch of its life. Sure it was a cool look. But I remember intimately a moment of choosing which presented itself — one day peering into the mirror as I carefully applied the black line across my upper eyelid. This was difficult as I was already short sighted and had to get up so close to the bloody mirror to see anything at all, let alone master a steady hand while using a shit product from the chemist in the village.
I remember witnessing the change in my appearance as I applied the black eyeliner. A before and after. I liked the result and the look I created with the liner. But in that moment another thought sneakily squeezed its way under the radar… “I am actively creating a new normal. My eyes without this line will be seem bare, weird and naked. My face and my acceptance of it will depend on it. I will be forever tied into drawing this line on my eyelids day in day out just to feel ok about myself. I am colluding with something here and I’m not even sure what it is… but it stinks!” And with that realisation I decided to stop doing it in order to avoid the risk of developing a dependency on a manufactured version of beauty that I knew even then that I would not maintain.
At 14, I could never be bothered enough with the effort and time I’d have to dedicate to this task of self maintenance — and I wasn’t about to trap myself into repetitive actions with no net gain. “Best to see my eyes as they are… normal, beautiful and desirable … there’s less labour involved” — I figured. It took a bit of effort to resist all the social pressure to regard leaving my eyes alone as somehow lacking, lazy, dull, boring, unattractive, different, deficient and wrong. Quite a lot of effort actually.
So, alongside this I worked diligently at generating an air and mastery of Not Giving a Shit (NGS). And as with anything… you fake it to you make it. Low and behold I found, that by the time I got to 50 — I really genuinely Gave No Shits (GNS). Almost all of the time! Partly it has to be said, because I am just too knackered. Ditto my approach to other cosmetic labours. Shaving legs, underarm hair removal, waxing of any body part, eyebrow management beyond the barest of tidying up, holding in tummy, manicures and pedicures (I’ve never had either ever — was I the only one?). Hair dying and cutting for some reason are not included in these ‘efforts of labour’ conscientiously not being made. I cultivated privately gestures designed to stick two fingers up at social expectations and conventions. I was trying to navigate what it was to be a socially acceptable female. I was also weirdly and perhaps unconsciously — trying to stay safe.
Now as I relate back to this youthful activity and the strange standards I set for myself — I can smile. I am proud of my younger self’s rationale. I get her. She had an instinct about not setting herself up with habits and attachments to particular versions of herself that would require being propped up by a product. A damn savvy cost and time saving option! But I do wonder about whether I had perhaps been taking things a tad too seriously at such a young age? Not for the first time has this crossed my mind (and for the record I do take life rather seriously!).
Squinting into my hand held mirror now to pluck a couple of stray (greying) eyebrows from my face (quite frankly what’s the point!) I am sure of my instinct about the products on the whole restricting my freedom rather than supporting my self expression. I am prepared to risk a lack of playfulness and frivolity. Sacrificing potential ease and lightness for something somewhat more intense. Frivolity then as now — just wasn’t my forte! Perhaps because, in truth, there was always something more sinister lurking beneath these choices. I was struggling to fully connect to it because it made me feel sad and depressed. Because I know it was fear. I had simply not wanted to draw attention to myself as a teenage girl. My instinct had been to master the art of invisibility as a safety strategy. Wearing glasses had also assisted my in this endeavour.
I am a mother of a thirteen year old now, who just this week started wearing black mascara to school. My daughter is not in the slightest bit interested in hearing her mums thoughts about anything much these days — and quite rightly so. But, I can’t help myself from brooding about where we are at right now, and about how our current cultural and social norms and rules — are creating the context — within which my daughter will continue her own journey mediating her relationship and connection with her body and sense of self? How safe will she feel doing this. How much power will she feel she has to create her own reality on her terms?
What is your experience dear reader..?