This piece on beauty--specifically about being honest about it--leaves out the very important fact that [conventional] beauty may be power, but it is an uneven, unreliable, unwieldy form of it.Which I'll pair with this Ask Polly wisdom from a while ago:
The reason the beauty-industrial complex kicks up an acidic taste of contempt in so many of our mouths is that it can never quite capture the intoxicating magic of real-life intrigue and attraction and romance... Real-life beauty is a blur of motion, a flash of disbelief, an assured gesture, a long sigh that sings with intelligence and self-acceptance. We can't capture in two dimensions, or reduce to a series of numbers, the feelings that real human beings experience in the company of a woman with the confidence to own exactly who she is, to show where she's been, to listen closely and understand completely. A woman who loves her life, who can laugh at herself, but whose head isn't crowded and noisy. A woman who can focus and make room — real space — for you, and bathe you in her generosity and her compassion...
The guy who won't sleep with you because you're overweight is not a far cry from the guy who will only sleep with you because you've got a hot body. Either way, you feel like the main event, the REAL YOU, is a footnote... Everyone wants to be seen and loved for who they really are...
...You're looking for someone who is turned on by YOU — your charms and your flaws and all of the magic inside of you. Maybe there are only a few people out there who can really appreciate YOU.***
I didn't discover the male gaze for myself until I was 35--that age where you're to stop wearing skirts above the knee--and I wasn't sure what to do with it. In my early 20s, I couldn't be bothered to manage my appearance in any way, until, in my late 20s, I observed how much more seriously people took people who looked put-together. I started dabbling in the put-together look and pulled it off until, around 30, I put on weight.
I'd never thought I would care, but I hated being not-thin; I'd rolled my eyes years earlier when I'd heard Oprah say that losing weight was her most cherished achievement (or something to that effect). How could someone who accomplished so much, care about her weight? I came to understand the answer. Mom made my situation worse, but I was profoundly uncomfortable in my own body, in spite of "knowing better." I had it easy; I agonized, but I never hated my body. No one should hate her body.
I'd spent my 20s at around 110 pounds--I wouldn't really know, because I didn't own a scale then. didn't care enough. I weighed myself, when I remembered, at the gym. Sometimes I'd gain weight (eg. my first year of grad school) and then lose it without a thought (eg. the summer afterward, in Nicaragua). Mom nagged me in between, and I dismissed her nagging. At 30, I got up to 115 pounds, and Mom nagged more relentlessly than ever. I started to obsess about losing the weight. Which got me to 118 and then 120. And eventually 125. And I stayed in those latter ranges for years. I weighed myself compulsively every morning; I'd wake up and my first thought was, how much do I weigh? I wasn't proud of this, but it was the way it was. I set smaller goals: forget getting back to 115, much less 110; just see if you can get back to 118. The harder I tried, the more I was stuck.
Then I accepted myself. I just got to the point where I was done suffering. I'd gotten to this point intellectually many times in the preceding 4 years of agonizing over my weight, but for whatever reason, this time, it stuck. And I lost a little bit of weight--just a few pounds, just down to 120 or so--which made it easier to not obsess and to have a healthy relationship with food.
I'd see men write about how they prefer women with meat on their bones. I didn't care what anyone else preferred. I genuinely preferred myself thin, for me. I just saw a picture of myself from January 2011; I looked visibly tubby.
My weight stayed about constant until that fall. I lost a few more when I met F., my ex-bf. For the seven or so months we dated, I lost a pound or month without trying or even really noticing. I weighed myself out of habit and intellectual curiosity. I was happy with my body. When we broke up, I lost 3-4 pounds in a week, down to 107. I loved it. Being back to "normal" for me made me legitimately happy.
I found myself at 105 pounds, then 103. I loved it. I loved it entirely for me. More importantly, I loved the healthy relationship with food with which it endowed me, which in turn made weight a non-issue again.
***
I noticed men noticing me. This was a completely new phenomenon, and I wasn't sure what was happening or what to do with it. Could I use my newfound power for good, or was the male gaze the ring of power--does it destroy you if you try to wield it?
A few years ago, in a gallery (of sorts), I turned around from looking at a photo to see a mortified man looking at me, apologizing profusely; I realized, only from his reaction, that he'd been staring at my ass. It hadn't crossed my mind before that moment that that was something anyone would be interested in doing. When we met again, that same phenomenon--his gazing at me, and then reacting with embarrassment, and my not realizing that that's why he looked horrified--made for a bad situation. And yet, I was drawn to the idea that this man couldn't keep his eyes off me. Also "And yet," I was aware that this dynamic, while flattering, was problematic. The power of physical attraction has its limits and traps.
The months went by; more men--it was impossible not to notice--noticed me. I came to take it for granted and even sort-of resent them for it. Where were they when I was the same person, twenty pounds heavier? For the reasons Polly describes above, I wasn't interested in someone who was only physically attracted to me.
***
This morning, I weighed just under 100 pounds. I wish I could say I didn't care, but it works for me, which is not to say that I'll do anything to try to maintain it. I love the way I look at this weight, but there is nothing I love more than being free from agonizing about my weight. That is a hell I never want to revisit.
What comes first: the decision to stop agonizing, or the dissolution of the source of agony? Is it that easy to tell yourself to let something go? Why do we hold on to things and people that don't serve us, that make us miserable? After my last breakup, I wrote about how I'd come to appreciate "Manon Lescaut" and "Bonjour, Tristesse." I'd come to appreciate, years after reading those books in high school and college, respectively, and just not getting it, how being in love makes you prone to stupid, maladaptive behaviours. Being weight-obsessed does, too. I've also learned that you can't distract your way out of agony or attraction; work and fun help some, but they don't get to the root of the issue. Remember the media and public reaction diaper-wearing astronaut who drove to Texas to kill her romantic competition? They were shocked that an astronaut would do that. I'm shocked anyone would do that, but her being an astronaut doesn't take away from the fact that she's human and being in love makes you stupid. Love-induced self-destruction isn't just for losers.
I remember exactly where I was and who was staring at my ass three years ago when the Petraeus scandal broke, and my reaction as the salacious details emerged. I couldn't believe the mistress threatened the perceived competition, or that the general would sacrifice his career and reputation over an affair. I still can't, even as the concept of doing stupid things for love is less foreign to me now than it was before. It makes me even more determined--knowing it could happen to me, because I'm human--to never let it. That my personal integrity, my completeness as a human, is worth more than any man.
I make a point to keep this in mind because I do obsess about men, carry them around with me. I wasn't fully "over" F. when I met the next guy I let into my head and heart. I was and wasn't: I was entirely done with F. the person, but still wounded. I'd recovered from the breakup, if you will, but not from the relationship itself. So the guy helped kick F. out of my consciousness entirely, because I had someone to replace him with. But that didn't get at the root of the issue, which was that I was unilaterally holding a man in my consciousness, as if I needed one. I'd not learned to be without one.
Replacing one addiction with another doesn't cure you. Replacing one man living in your head rent-free with another doesn't clear your head. It only reinforces the habit of having a man living in your head, and makes it very difficult to evict him, even as you know his imaginary presence isn't serving you.
I identified with the woman who has done "so much holding," from Modern Love:
And why is it that the placeholders we choose — the dozen red roses, the fragrant white lilies, the long-stemmed French tulips — are so fleeting? Hold on to them for too long and you end up with a mess of petals, pollen and foul-smelling water...I've held on to men, carried them around in my head for far too long. Long after I decided to let them go. It takes work, practice, commitment to really kick them out of your consciousness. I'm so much more careful now about whom I let in, because it's so challenging to let them back out.
What is it about the time you decide to stop agonizing for good that it works? I tried to stop agonizing about my weight many times before it stuck. I had to go through the process. I had to be truly done. And when I let go, I made room for Something Even Better. I prayed to shed a few pounds, decided to stop agonizing, and eventually lost 25. And the victory is just as sweet absent the agony; in fact, were the agony still with me, no weight would satisfy me.
Not to put too fine a point on it: weight matters (to me) and men matter (to me). I love, love being 100 or so pounds, and I love being in a (healthy, loving) relationship. But as much as I love being 100 pounds, I love not
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