Kelly Davio’s previous Waiting Room columns can be found here.
Many years ago, when I was a student studying in England, a young woman stopped a friend and me while we walked through London’s Covent Garden neighborhood. She told us that she was a fashion student and asked if she could photograph us for a street-style spread she was working on. We obliged, standing somewhat awkwardly in the middle of a busy sidewalk, perplexed that she was taking pictures of us rather than of the hundreds of more well dressed locals streaming by. He and I did our best to look fashionable and smiled for the camera.
At the time, I found the whole situation amusing. It was laundry day, and my friend and I were on our way back to the laundromat to change out a few machines full of clothes. We were wearing whatever was clean enough, which for me, if memory serves, involved a skirt too light for the late fall weather, compensated for by a pair of striped pink leg warmers slouched over red sneakers. I wasn’t exactly runway ready. For all I know, the spread we appeared in might have been called “Street Style Failures.”
Still—I admit it—I stored the experience up in a little chamber of my heart that I cracked open when low-self-esteem moments left me feeling dumpy and frumpy.
There was that one time, I’d think.
*
This past March, on my last day in London, I puttered around some old haunts in the city, looking at how much had changed and what little remained the same. I was so wrapped in my thoughts that I just about leapt out of my shoes when a strange woman approached me, stuffing a business card into my hand. It was difficult for me, between my jet lag and the street noise, to entirely make out what this woman was trying to tell me.
It could be the fact that I was only a few blocks from my old laundry spot—or it could simply be some absurd and lingering vanity—but I thought about the fashion student and her big clacking camera.
As the woman prodded her card at me, I caught the words “makeover,” and “free.” She gestured at my eyes.
“No, thanks,” I said, and shuffled away as quickly as I could.
*
Some days, my eyes look the way I remember them—the way I still picture myself in my mind. Other days, I look uncannily like Phineas Gage: when my muscular weakness takes aim at my face, my eyes change shape drastically. My eyebrows slouch down and my lower lids sag onto my cheeks. My right eye sometimes completely closes without my wanting it to.
What I ought to care about is the fact that my weak eye muscles give me blurry vision. It’s discombobulating at best, disruptive to daily living at worst. But what I often find that I care about is the fact that my face is totally asymmetrical.
*
We’ve all heard that symmetry is the basis of beauty; we’ve read the articles that tell us that the more symmetrical the face, the more biologically attractive the partner. Symmetry runs deeper, it seems, than cultural taste or fashion—it’s hardwired into us.
Failing to meet the obtuse beauty standards of a particular cultural moment is one thing. It’s another thing entirely to feel excluded from the most innate standards of the species.
*
It’s not worth questioning whether I can change the way my face falls in on itself. It’s also pointless to question whether I can change others’ perceptions of me (look, this is actually really cute!).
The question I find myself gnawing on is this: how does a person quit minding? How does a person quit feeling excluded? How does she quit reminding herself that there was that one time?
*
The answer, speaking for myself anyway, is that I can’t. I would like to one day achieve a state of radical self-acceptance (perhaps it shows how far I have to go that I originally wrote the word “love,” then replaced it with “acceptance”), but I don’t have any idea how to grow self-acceptance other than by a program of long patience and of getting older.
Perhaps a better question than the one I’ve been asking myself is how I can quit making other women feel excluded. I suspect that I’m as complicit in the business of exclusion as anybody. We women learn from a young age that there’s a payoff to making off-handed remarks about someone else’s appearance, someone’s outfit, someone’s hair; we learn that this group monitoring of other people gives us a quick, cheap jolt of self-superiority. But that momentary boost is at the expense of another person who hears our under-the-breath comments. She sees us look a little too long or with a smirk, and she stores it up in an unhappy little chamber of her heart that cracks itself open when she doesn’t want it to. She may not be able to quit minding it, but what if the rest of us chose to stop doing it?
Tags: kelly davio, the butter, the waiting room
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‘She sees us look a little too long or with a smirk, and she stores it up in an unhappy little chamber of her heart that cracks itself open when she doesn’t want it to.’
My wife and I have been trying to quit snarking on strangers for exactly this reason. It’s way harder than it ought to be, which makes me feel even worse about doing it; but you’re right: I still remember overhearing a comment about my ‘cankles’ that was made 15 years ago. I shouldn’t have cared then, and I certainly shouldn’t care now; but ugh. And the thought that some random woman would overhear my shitty ‘joke’ about her pants or her shoes or whatever and feel like I feel when I think about the cankles jerk… I just don’t want to be that person.
I’m doing my very best to quit snarking as well – even in my own mind, I try to correct myself when I see people on the street that prompt not-nice thoughts. It does feel good to not be that person, who needs to impose some sort of control on others.
As I grow older, I do find myself “minding” less, as the author talks about. Or if not less, then at least about other things. I used to mind my body shape/size a lot; now I try to mind my clothes more, because fashion is something I enjoy. Kelly, I wish you the very best in your quest for radical self acceptance, and hope that you are surrounded by people who love you and care for you, no matter how symmetrical your face happens to be.
Oh, this is insightful and true.
I still remember the time, about ten years ago, that I was slouching back home from the library in grad school with a backpack full of books. It was a summer day that had gone unexpectedly rainy and cool; I was wearing flip-flops, a short denim skirt, and a baggy, shapeless sweatshirt that someone had left in the student office, and my hair was wet and messy. I was exhausted and looked it. While I was waiting for the traffic light to change, a car full of asshole dudebros rolled past. The only word I heard from what they shouted at me was “ugly.”
It lingers. It really lingers.
Is this really such a common thing that people do, past an occasional internal ‘huh, I probably wouldn’t have chosen that outfit’? It’s genuinely not something that occurs to me – not in a sanctimonious holier-than-thou kind of way, but I just don’t pay that much attention to strangers on the street.
I have a couple of friends who are quite self-conscious about their bodies and clothes and whatnot, and last time they were moaning about not being brave enough to go out in shorts in 30-degree heat I told them nobody was looking at them, nobody cared and everyone was far too busy in their own lives and doing their own stuff. They looked really bewildered and I asked them if they spent their time in public mentally bitching about other people and their clothes choices, and I was really surprised when they said yes of course and didn’t I.
I am normally far too busy trying to remember what I came out for or whether I’ve got my wallet, wondering what I’m going to have for dinner, sexting the gentleman caller, considering weekend plans, singing along to the ipod and then remembering I’m out in public, etc etc.
That is a really good question, and I’m glad you posed it. Honestly, I don’t know the answer. I think about Jenny Trout and her wonderful essay “I Wore a Bikini and Nothing Happened,” in which she, well, does exactly that. Then I think about Marie Southward Ospina’s “I am a Plus-Size Woman Who Wore a Low-Rise Bikini to the Beach and This is What Happened,” in which she’s called a “cow donkey.”
I suppose in my head, I had thought it was more along the lines of catcalling and street harassment – a vocal and mean minority – and most people thought it was a rotten thing to do. I am sure most of us go through that Heathers-esque teenage thing of bonding over shared meanness and trying to be in the in-crowd, but equally I’m most of us have been on both ends of it and would hope we don’t want to perpetuate it into adulthood.
I really hope it is that and it’s not loads of people going round all the time in a seething state of miserable self-consciousness and pre-emptive bitchiness. And bloody good for the people who are recognising the impulse in themselves or others and trying to stop it.
I am sure most of us go through that Heathers-esque teenage thing of bonding over shared meanness
I can still remember when, in 7th grade, I realized that if my one friend talks trash about other people behind their backs, she probably does it to me when I’m not there, also.
I really relate to your philosophy, though. I don’t watch people (I’m too busy thinking about my own stuff and making sure I’m not going to run into/trip over anything) and I don’t think snarky things about the people I do notice.
I can’t help but notice what people are wearing. For me it’s less about people’s bodies, but what they have on. I notice clothes mostly, but also shoes, earrings (if they’re big), bags etc. I used to think She looks nice, he is badly dressed, that’s a cool way to wear that top but since I’ve started sewing, I find myself looking at the fit of clothes, and how easy/hard it would be to make them.
I think I just notice that stuff. My partner doesn’t AT ALL, so when I talk about the guy who just walked past with the exact same coat, he won’t have seen him. I can’t turn it off, so I try to be non-creepy (don’t look too long! don’t make it obvious) and complimentary, even if it’s just in my head.
I must be more like your partner! I think I’d notice if someone was walking down the street naked, but honestly I wouldn’t count on it. I do think though that peoplewatching in a neutral way is massively different from snarking/bitching.
I think that there’s a real difference between the self-consciousness that many of us (humans) feel about our “bodies and clothes and whatnot” and the self-consciousness that can be felt when your actual face is actually disfigured. I had Bell’s Palsy, a form of facial paralysis, and it affected every interaction with every person. When you just don’t look right, and your face won’t cooperate with forming normal facial expressions (like smiling), random social interaction can be fraught. It’s hard to overstate how much we use our faces for non-verbal communication, and how crucial that non-verbal communication is for day-to-day interaction with strangers. People do notice, and a lot of them seemed wigged out. Which isn’t a nice feeling to confront every time you leave your house.
I was meaning it more from the other direction – I can totally understand that having a visible ‘difference’ about your face would add pressure to feel self-conscious about it and be a hammer at anyone’s confidence. Definitely very different from the ‘womens-magazine-induced self-consciousness’ that some people have from not having stepped off a photoshop screen about perfectly normal things like cellulite.
What I was trying to say was ‘do the majority of people really stare and react negatively/not at lest try to hide it’ – it seems like basic politeness to me not to stare, or show your discomfort.
To sound a different note in the conversation, I LOVE people-watching, and I love it when all kinds of people are rocking all kinds of different styles. If someone is odd-looking, but owning it and having fun with their style and enjoying themselves, it gives me a warm smiley feeling in my heart. When I expand the range of things I consider “cute” and “stylish”, then there are cute and stylish people everywhere I look, which makes life so much more enjoyable. People are beautiful if you’re open to seeing that beauty. And the more you practice enjoyment of other people’s idiosyncrasies, the more capable you are of accepting/enjoying your own idiosyncracies.
I hope that doesn’t sound smug–it took me a very, very long time to learn this, and lots of heartbreak before I did.
Haha, I just posted this waffly comment, and here you have expressed it much better than me.
Totally agree. A few years ago I made a policy of not saying anything negative about women I do not know, including celebrities. There’s this whole industry around commenting on famous women’s clothes and bodies and lives and people like to have opinions about whether or not they’re good people. And people enjoy participating in that and I get it, but I think the habit of commenting on women who you know cannot hear you spreads to commenting on real women around you. But when you change your mind set and you go out and look for women who look great or who are rocking bold looks or whatever, it’s really really fun. Complimenting people on their shoes or lipstick or whatever else is fun and makes them feel happy, usually.
Full disclosure lest you think I am being holier than thou, I do still make snarky comments about men and enjoy doing it, partially because I enjoy the feeling of nitpicking men for their appearance instead of women. So I am not really a great person, just a vengeful feminist.
I really like that way of phrasing it as a policy! That industry and theose horrendous women’s magazines give me such massive rage.
I too like this policy! It’s a wonderful practice to cultivate.
I think you’re brave for pointing this out. I don’t like having these thoughts. One, for what’s in them, and two and three, for the embarrassment of having them at all, and a lot. I’m too old for this. And apparently, I’m not.
You’re asking a practical question: how do I stop, or we stop? When I find myself criticizing or judging someone, I think of some causes of why that person is acting/looking/sounding like that. Invariably it makes me realize how little it would take for me to be in that person’s shoes.
One of my blind spots is age-ism. All my life I could distance myself from aging. From poor eyesight, memory loss, fatigue, on and on…it was easy to think, well, I’ll never go THAT far. Of course, I only know now that I even had those thoughts because I can hear those judgments of mine ringing in MY OWN ears when I can’t focus my eyes or remember a name or bring myself to show some effort. Such a din. My own din, made by me, for me.
Entertainment and media are touch points. The way entertainment feeds our fantasies is the same whether we’re happily following one or miserably clutching it. I’ve found I’m unhappy watching most shows about younger, cooler, gorgeous people having great sex..but I can definitely enjoy Roxane Gay’s review of Outlander episodes. So I have put myself on an entertainment diet.
Something about having children actually makes it easier for me to let go of being young. I see the beauty in youth, now, instead of a social comparison to make. It’s a proprietary kind of joy, in the way of a proprietor or a caretaker watching something lovely appear after a lot of hard work. Not that I make beauty, of course, but that I am reminded that the youth and beauty of my children are the same as youth and beauty everywhere. Plus, if someone else weren’t beautiful or funny, I wouldn’t get to enjoy beauty or humor. There are two ways to enjoy the good things, and I am not sure that the emotional high of a soaring ego is the better way. But I also will never know what the people actually displayed on the screen feel are the good things in their life. Maybe being that cool or gorgeous really is better than observing it.
Anyway, I like that you tackled something so unnerving about being a person. I suspect people ask themselves these questions only in the most remote bathroom stall of their mind afraid anyone would know their despair in asking.
I am sure most of us go through that Heathers-esque teenage thing of bonding over shared meanness
I can still remember when, in 7th grade, I realized that if my one friend talks trash about other people behind their backs, she probably does it to me when I'm not there, also.
I really relate to your philosophy, though. I don't watch people (I'm too busy thinking about my own stuff and making sure I'm not going to run into/trip over anything) and I don't think snarky things about the people I do notice.
I too like this policy! It's a wonderful practice to cultivate.
The main thing that helped me to ease up on my attachment to markers of health (symmetry, posture, ease of movement, youthfulness) was realizing that the vast majority of my brain’s fascination/disgust response to those markers was rooted entirely in fear. Fear that I would lose my own health, that I would someday die. (And since we all eventually lose our health and/or die, pretty much everyone has that same fear).
I no longer have visible markers of illness, so I don’t have to contend with being on the receiving end of double-takes and concerned eyes anymore. I don’t know how much of seeing people’s discomfort as fear would help with the day-to-day of it, but I know it helps me when I look at my own scars.
The main thing that helped me to ease up on my attachment to markers of health (symmetry, posture, ease of movement, youthfulness) was realizing that the vast majority of my brain's fascination/disgust response to those markers was rooted entirely in fear. Fear that I would lose my own health, that I would someday die. (And since we all eventually lose our health and/or die, pretty much everyone has that same fear).
I no longer have visible markers of illness, so I don't have to contend with being on the receiving end of double-takes and concerned eyes anymore. I don't know how much of seeing people's discomfort as fear would help with the day-to-day of it, but I know it helps me when I look at my own scars.