If my eyes didn't scan each picture for fat pouches, my gaze was set upon the acne scars, which not only stain my face, but my self-confidence as well. Why was my reaction so negative? My husband gasped and filled the night air with complimentary superlatives: "you were the prettiest," and "it was the happiest moment of my life," he said, trying to cajole me into seeing the photos as a visual rendering of our love. But while he was genuinely pleased, and sincere in his sentiments, my eyes -- those damn, critical enemies to my sense of beauty -- fought his logic with infantile despair.
I HATE that my initial reaction was, more or less, an adult tantrum; I HATE that my grievances were centered on extrinsic self-loathing; I HATE that instead of joining my husband in the light of true beauty and awareness, I opted for the dark caverns of insecurity; and most of all, I HATE that this pattern of, well, hating my looks creeps up on me during the most inconvenient of times. When I divulge feelings such as "my acne scars are why I’m so ugly," or "I'm such a chunky monkey," I debase my core-values, and hold the same self-deprecating opinions that I chastise other women for having. Thus, I morph (argh!) into what I dislike the most -- a hypocrite! (double argh!!)
These emotions catapult me back to Simone and David’s Twilight zone party that I attended last Saturday. During the marathon I saw the thought provoking episode, “number 12 looks just like you,” involving a culture’s compliance towards standardized beauty.
In response to the same episode, Simone writes in her blog:
i just watched an amazing episode of the twilight zone, written by charles beaumont, that illustrates precisely how oppressive and damaging our society's looks-centric values can be…a young woman unsuccessfully attempts to resist a culture in which the unavoidable rite-of-passage is "the transformation"-- a process by which each person loses their individual looks and personality in favor of a physical and psychological makeover sanctioned by the government. Simone’s response to the storyline, “while our day-to-day interactions with the pervasive concepts of mainstream beauty might not be as dramatic or intense as this storyline, they can be just as brutal and devastating to the core of a woman,” encapsulates the plight that most women I know endure. Everyday we are fed information that is tainted with the objectification of the female form; whether it’s through music, movies, commercials, ads, etc., women are subjected to, as Simone puts it, “the tyranny of mass conformity to mainstream american/western standards of beauty."
Recently, for me, such idealized images of beauty came via bridal mags. Thus, my internal dialogue reads something like, “how can my wedding photos not be seen through a distorted lens of self-doubt, and how am I not expected to compare myself to the images of the beautiful women I witnessed in bridal magazines?” Truth be told, I am reasonably pleased with my looks, but truth also be told, I can be reasonably critical of myself too. I need a mantra that stabilizes my sense of self, and I need to rise above mass media’s harmful, latent effects. What that mantra is, however, I must ultimately decide; I think it’s different for everyone.
So, in the end, my hub went to bed content while I remained awake, and hated myself for hating myself. The next night, I suddenly snapped out of my delirium and, with a cup of chai tea in one hand and the hope of a self-revelation balancing in the other, I popped in the DVD for a 2nd showing. With a fresh outlook, I saw past my insecurities and felt nothing more than the deep love, which emanated among close family and friends. Smudged eyeliner or a goofy smile was second rate to the rich quality of a couple who chose to spend an eternity together. Again, in the end, I opt not to photo-shop or doctor my pictures because the importance of these photos was to give a tangible testimony to the intangible, authentic feelings of a cherished love -- NOT to document me as some reigning beauty queen. If media was more realistic, and I wasn’t so pessimistic, then maybe I would have realized that point much sooner.
Anyway, why worry over hyped up "dilemmas" when I should be concentrating on my new copy of M. Goodman's, The Anti 9-to-five Guide. Escaping the cubicle is where my mind should be!
