* drawing by Elizabeth"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
-Eleanor Roosevelt
They say that we alone are our harshest critics. I don't know who they are, but I definitely think they're onto something. Much of my blog thus far has been focused on our society's views regarding beauty. Almost always unattainable and often absurd, we are made to feel as if our entire self-worth should be based on how close we are to achieving such standards. A more than valid point that absolutely needs to be addressed. But given that one of my main goals with this project is to get people talking about their own personal views on beauty and its relationship to self-worth, I find it ironic that I've somehow managed to neglect just how much of our feelings on this very issue can be brought on almost completely by ourselves. A couple of posts touched on this aspect, but it took Elizabeth's responses to get me to realize that that's not something that is being addressed, or even admitted to, all that often. The majority of the interviews I've conducted have centered around the insecurities brought on by the people and circumstances around us. Virtually every insecurity seemed rooted in an outside source....until now.
Elizabeth has been a coworker of mine for a couple of years now, and it was actually my initial ideas that eventually surfaced as this blog, that got us talking a little more openly with one another. From our experience chatting and eventually becoming friends, I've become aware of her true individuality, as a human being and as a woman, marching to the beat of a drum that is uniquely her own. She has her own way of doing things and doesn't seem to give much thought as to whether you approve. She dresses in whatever intelligently whimsical way strikes her as appropriate, speaks freely when she feels a need to do so, carries out tasks the way she feels is best, and makes no apologies if you don't agree. This is simply who she is. But the interesting thing is that despite this confidence with regard to others, there is one person whose opinion matters more than anything, and that would be her own. I feel that she and I know each other well enough to admit that I noticed this tendency to have rather lofty expectations of herself, shortly after she joined my workplace - and quite frankly, it bothered me. In hindsight, I realize that the reason it bothered me had little to do with her, and much to do with how similar this behavior was to the unrealistic standards I so often set for myself. And how very much I hated to admit it.
It has been an ongoing struggle for me for as far back as I can recall. Case in point - my parents being summoned for a meeting with my elementary school principal, to discuss the unrealistic expectations of perfection they were placing on me. Imagine how they must have felt when my 7 year old self had to confess to both the principal and mommy and daddy, that it was all me. I was putting this pressure upon my myself because I pretty much felt like as much of a failure as a second grader can, every time I fell short of perfect. And of course, my battle with anorexia was teeming with so-called perfectionistic rituals. Comparisons with other anorexics were often nearly as anxiety ridden as the prospect of eating itself. I'll never forget how I felt that bitter cold February day in 1999, when the head of my medical team came into my hospital room and told me that there wasn't much else they could do, and I would probably die within two weeks. Instead of the incomprehensible fear and despair one would expect to accompany such a talking to, I was immediately on the defensive, thinking that I was finally becoming one of the best anorexics, and that he was simply trying to trick me into gaining weight and becoming average again. Yes, much of that was my illness talking, but I can't help but feel that there was a big chunk of my true self in that thought as well. To this day, I feel that that is the reason why I am so sensitive to the need to control, the need to be better than expected - because deep down, I'm aware that it's that so-called control that nearly killed me and has left me continually struggling with physical repercussions and health issues that I probably wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
But the interesting thing about observing Elizabeth and getting to know her better, is that I've seen that tendency in her change. Where I feel my recent struggles have perhaps led me back towards a greater desire for control, I have noticed a subtle, but definite change in her. That nagging drive to be " better", that she has so eloquently written about in the Question & Answer below, has slowly morphed into a true sense of self-confidence. From my view as a somewhat objective observer, it seems that in the process of recognizing and accepting those driving desires, she has developed an ease with which she approaches the same situations - still very much wanting to be quite exceptional at the task at hand, but recognizing - this is who I am , and I'm gonna do what I can do and see what happens. That ease has not only been refreshing to witness, but it has also been a comfort and a gentle reminder to me, that it might serve me well to practice the same.
Perhaps one could assume that Elizabeth's choice to write out her answers - as opposed to a tape recorded interview - and to use a sketched self-portrait, rather than a photo to go with it, might be an extension of that need for some sort of controlled perfection. But in actuality, this particular topic is one that resonates very deeply with her, and I feel that knowing she has some very strong and valuable opinions on it, she simply wanted to do it justice and give the best she has to offer, as a guesture of how much it matters to her. And that is not only okay - it's admirable and inspiring.
What is beauty to you?
To me, beauty is living one's fill. My Great-Aunt Dee loves to remind me of my great-grandmother, Muriel, who lived in a cottage in the woods and liked to draw and paint. One day, Dee showed Muriel a picture of the writer, Isak Dinesen, in a magazine. Ms. Dinesen, a pale-skinned Danish woman,lived in Africa for decades - before sunscreen. When the photograph was taken, she was a very old woman. Her face crinkled in some places, wrinkled in others, and furrowed and trailed like an elaborate rivulet run map. Muriel took a glance. "Oh!", she said. "What a beautiful face! What I wouldn't give to have the chance to draw that face in person!"
Name a body image hang-up that you have overcome or are working on overcoming. How did you do it, or what are you doing to try to change the way you feel about it?
I became very brainy to compensate for limitations I felt as a cute, female child. I needed an identity in which I wouldn't be posed as everyone else's inferior - a head to be pet and an outfit to be commented on. I wanted to be smarter than the girls, boys, teachers, and most of all, my parents. It was painful to pretend that my body didn't exist. In fact, night after night, from when I was twelve to when I was eighteen, hives scrawled out across my face, back, bottom, and legs, and tucked in between my toes and fingers. The pink, raised itch, cried out for attention and rioted against too much control happening in me and over me.
As a near grown-up in drama school, I took three years to defrost and enliven my body. It took a lot of patience and practice - through Afro-Haitian dance and modern dance - to connect to my lower body, to embody primitive impulses like joy and rage - from head to toe, and to literally stand on my own two feet. I was also lucky to struggle with and practice breathing, speaking, and singing, in Linklater, Roy Hart, and Embodied Voice work.
As an adolescent, I used to think, " They'll have to lobotomize me before they turn me into a grown-up woman." I envisioned myself as a grown-up. A petrified ideal toppled into my head, as if from TV : I would wear a dark business jacket and skirt. I would have a beautiful hairdo. I would be perched on an enormous gray flight of stairs, like those in front of government buildings. I would be stuck, neither coming from nor going anywhere - the stairs symbolic of my stuckitude. And I used to think, "What will become of me-the-real-me?"
Today I sometimes worry that I'm not the brightest belle at the ball. But more often, I am glad to be able to influence my own experience of myself, and to live more and more, on my own terms.
What do you consider to be your most beautiful attribute, and why?
Okay - I'll go out on a limb and say my breasts, torso, belly, and vagina are my most beautiful parts. These parts hold and release instincts, impressions, pleasures, and pains, that are not so easily controlled. They offer fight-or-flight responses and real access to the emotional and irrational.
I have been recently looking at a huge picture book of artifacts from the prehistoric Goddess religion in Europe. A figurine carved from bone, found in what is now Romania and dated at about 8000 BC, comes to my mind. It has no limbs and no head; it has carved out breasts and an abstract, diamond shaped womb. V-shapes dart above the womb, skyward. Inverted V's reach below the womb, toward the ground - as if to portray energy coursing between heaven, earth, and womb. Breasts and wombs meant life, and interestingly, also death, in the oldest European religions. Prehistoric people built temples shaped like female bodies and underground tombs shaped like wombs. The patriarchal systems of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam fought tooth-and-nail to turn Goddess centered, life and death symbolism on its head, to support new power paradigms.
Today many women fear feeling fully and living vibrantly in their bodies. I first flinched at the sight of the figurine I described above. " It's a naked body! If I acknowledge my body, will I become just my body and nothing more? " Then I let myself see what I saw of the Goddess figure, and I found it to be beautiful.
If you could make one change regarding our society's current standard of beauty, what would it be?
I read the labels on my make-up: My lipstick - brown/red opaque- is labeled, Beauty. My mascara, Black Ruby. My "industrial strength" concealer is labeled, Boi-ing! I also sometimes dab Alabaster on my face, and circle my eyes with Night Essence.
If I could change one thing about society's current beauty/ myth set-up, I would shake the stories and accumulated dumbness out of the labels that whiz by us day after day. Labels appeal to notions we women have been taught to believe about ourselves. The division of make-up into "day" and "night" wear, corresponds to notions of female archetypes. Day make-up is advertised as light and virginal, while Night make-up is dark, dramatic, seductive, whorish. From the 1800's to the 1920's, prostitutes and play-actors were the only Americans and Brits permitted to make up with gusto. Notions of sin and "female-bodies-for-sale" are palpable in today's make-up marketing. Also, make-up is labeled "industrial strength" to appeal to women who aspire to succeed in a professional world, an industrial machine. Manufacturers market the societal prescription of making up, as an exciting job to be done.
A quest for real beauty, the quest countless fairy and folk tale characters embark on, involves losing, finding, and fighting for what one values. Manufacturers mimic this process in their make-up labels. They offer us Black Ruby and Alabaster - gems and pure treasures - for our faces. We are so soul starved, words like "gold dust" sometimes invoke possibility and value, even when applied to a slab of powder, mass produced. Night Essence eye shadow appeals to a lost engagement with nature and magic. The subterranean "night" knowledge and seeing abilities of women, long repressed and reviled, can be resurrected for a night out.
Above all, make-up labels appeal to our desire to consume special, symbolic foods. Many paints and powders are named Buttercream, Strawberry Fudge, Mocha, Muffin, etc. Manufacturers neatly circumvent the practice of selling make-up as "virginal/natural" or "whorish/seductive" with these labels, but they do not avoid myth or sexuality. Beautiful desserts hold a mythic status in many modern women's lives. They came to signify idealized domesticity, motherhood, childhood, parties, and holidays. One-third of American women are reported to have eating disorders; we struggle in our attempts to ingest matter needed to nourish ourselves. In marketing make-up as dessert, companies evoke the sweetness and satiation we may compulsively reject or compulsively consume in everyday life.
The terminology of making up is rather psychological and immaterial. We wear "shadows", "foundations", "mascara", often thought to be a mutation of a Spanish word for "mark" , that may have stemmed from an Occitan word meaning "witch". Archetypes, soul symbols, and nostalgic nods towards nature and the extraordinary, writhe beneath make-up labels. If I could change one thing about today's beauty/myth set-up, I would peel away the emphasis on getting and spending, and seek the jumble of ideas about the way we live, that lies below.
