1. “You need to be pretty.”
(Part 1 of 5 of the “Mirror, mirror” series)
“I wish I could hold you tight and tell you it will be ok” (2021), drypoint print on paper
When she was about 4, her nana took her to a local funfair. The air was filled with the sweet smell of sugar, taunting her nostrils with visions of doughnuts, popcorn, and toffee apples. All around were the bings and whizzes of rides throwing people into the air, laughing, and screaming. It was a lovely day, and she tilted her face to the sky to let the sun gently bake her skin.
They were sat on a bench so her nana could rest her swollen legs; she was stiff and heavy-footed when she walked; perhaps she had arthritis, the girl never had the opportunity to ask. An old man sat down next to them, and they exchanged pleasantries. He looked at the girl, and she gazed at the floor. She was a shy, quiet child. "She will be beautiful when she grows up," he said. And thus, it started. The age of the label, the pursuit of the pretty. That memory stayed with her all her life – it felt like a mythic prophecy, the definition of the woman she was going to be, everything she should aspire to.
Of course, she already knew that she should try to be pretty. The Disney princesses in her favourite films were praised for their beauty – alabaster skin, ruby lips, thick black lashes rimming doe eyes – and she so wanted to be a princess, to be special. Her mum had a whole box of make-up which she would let the girl play with. When she opened it, she could smell the dusty sponge applicators. She learned to love the feel of pulling the old, stiff lipsticks over her lips, dragging the skin, leaving traces of metallics, leftovers from the disco era. When her mum and stepdad went out for the evening, her mother had a whole routine of sunbed, hair, make-up, clothes, and heels. A preparation ritual for facing the world.
And so, when she was about 10, it was natural for the girl to want to buy a lip gloss with her pocket money, and glitter gels for her hair and skin. Then Sun-In for the chunky highlighted look that was all the rage - a vast improvement, she thought, on her mousy brown hair. It was supposed to mimic hair bleaching naturally in the sun but inevitably left her with orange streaks the colour of days-old stale Fanta. When she was about 15, she had her first professional highlights. The hairdresser forced a perforated bald cap over her head and then pulled strands of hair through the holes, using what looked like a crochet hook. It was agony, and it took hours – an early indicator of what she might expect from many so-called beauty procedures.
She was in her early twenties when she started watching YouTube make-up tutorials. Over time the content changed from people experimenting at home with minimal tools and colours to full coverage, rainbow-hued, photographic quality, perfectly lit make-up, heavily influenced by drag culture - designed for the stage but promoted for the street. She was in a race to catch up. If she wanted to wear red lippy, she needed white teeth because god forbid there was a hint of yellow. So, laser whitening followed. Her bleached blonde hair just wasn't full and bouncy like the girls on "The Hills," and so there were clip-in extensions and the occasional agonising weave. Regular facials became regular Botox, shaving became waxing became permanent laser removal. Tinted moisturiser became heavy make-up over layers of fake tan. Hours and hours of appointments, hours and hours of maintenance, hours and hours of "self-care" without any of the so-called "self-love" Thank goodness she was nearly 30 before Instagram was introduced.
I didn’t mean to tell you that you looked pretty. It slipped out of my mouth. Years of conditioning to believe that was the ultimate compliment for a little girl took over. I tried to correct myself – “smart… I mean you look smart”. But even that emphasised my approval of your external appearance. We try so hard to focus on other things about you, your father and I – your bravery, your kindness, your remarkable grasp of language. “I have a spark in my sniffer”, you told me once, when you were about to sneeze. But we still mess up. And we have so little control over what others say to you, like your wonderful grandmothers who take pride in your sweet face. They see no problem with drawing attention to how lovely it is.
And there are other things I do, inadvertently, which I know will work their way into your subconscious and link your self-worth with your appearance. The other day you were looking at photos and came across one of me as a child. “Is this me?” you asked. “No, it’s me,” I replied. “But the hair is the same colour as mine,” you said. “Well yes, my hair used to be the same as yours”. “But now it’s yellow?” “Yes” I replied, “I dye it”. You started to cry, and it took me by surprise. “Why can’t we be the same?” you asked. And I didn’t know how to respond without somehow implying that there was something wrong with you, something that needed to be changed. We look so alike, you and me. I wonder what signals I send to you every day with the choices I make about my body.
Like when I put on make-up.Sometimes you will sit on the floor next to me, your face screwed with concentration as I get ready in the morning. I have given you an old eyeshadow palette of mine. I tell you that you can do whatever you like with it and watch with admiration as you cover your entire face with gold or splotch copper on your nose.
For you it is an extension of your creativity. You understand the idea of “decoration” and I pray this idea will hold fast. Self-decoration is a sacred art in some cultures (Estés, 2017) undertaken by both males and females, a way of characterising the external self in-keeping with the internal self-image. It’s an integral part of our humanity[1]. But in our modern culture make-up has become a way to create a façade, a pretence. It is marketed using words implying the inferiority of our natural state. We need “full coverage” foundation to “even out” our skin tone. We need “concealer” to “smooth out” lines. We need “plumping” lipsticks and “lengthening” mascara. Our self-esteem is battered, and we paste over the cracks. If decoration is “something that adorns, enriches, or beautifies”[2], make-up today is for repair – “to restore by replacing a part or putting together what is torn or broken”[3]. And we are fortunate really, being white, that at least the adverts we see resemble us – imagine if we were people of colour, what would you think, my child, if all around you idealised beauty was characterised as having lighter skin? How long before you would be tempted to lighten your own?
I remember trying to hide from you the puncture marks from my last Botox appointment. I knew if you asked what they were I couldn’t lie. It would have been like lying to myself. So, I stopped having the injections. I’m glad. As with all such procedures they can become a slippery slope – I had already started to enquire about filler for the marionette lines between my nose and mouth the Aesthetician had flagged to me. “Marionette”, “a person who is easily manipulated or controlled.”[4] Do you know a marionette’s puppeteer is called a “manipulator”? He tells us our skin must be smooth, full, plump – carved from wood, no hint of the effects of a life well-lived. Words matter. “Filler” – what are we really trying to fill? “Coverage” – what are we really trying to cover?
Then there is “filtering” (“holding back elements or modifying the appearance of something”[5]) introduced to us by Instagram. Now with the touch of a button, we can give ourselves a new nose, bigger eyes, different skin. Although the mirror will still present reality, creating a cognitive dissonance that we can only avoid by living in the virtual – or permanently altering the real. We present an edited version of ourselves for judgment on social media, hoping for the sweet hit of dopamine[6] when somebody “likes” our image. But dopamine is addictive, one hit is not enough. We seek constant affirmation and are willing to cosmetically, surgically, and digitally alter our appearance to claim it.
How do I explain to you how insidious these processes are? The advertising, the magazines, social media? When will you be grown enough to understand this whole framework has been created for a purpose? Will it be too late then? Will you already have bought into the idea that you must measure yourself by a standard created solely to commercialise the weakening of your self-esteem? I wonder how we got to this place – I feel so suffocated by it, as much as I may try to reject it. Perhaps your world will be more diverse than mine, so it is worth me reminding you now that when these structures were created it was men who made the rules. Freud described the “propensity for the male gender to debase the object of their love” (Horney and Kelman, 1993)[7]. Not all men of course, not your father, but seen as a kind of species of their own, coloured by their experiences at an individual level in the same way that it is often mistreated dogs that bite. By making woman lesser, requiring enhancement to be of an appropriate standard, man can protect his self-regard from rejection. And so, while these structures remain, women will be made to feel inferior. Perhaps you can help change that.
Extract from short film “Free Flow”, accessed here
Footnotes
[1] In “Adornment” author Stephen Davies argues “our commitment to adornment is at least as distinctive of us as a species as are the more elevated behaviours that are often mentioned as touchstones of our humanity”.
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decoration
[3] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/repairing
[4] https://www.definitions.net/definition/marionette
[5] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/filtering
[6]https://medium.com/swlh/likes-on-social-media-87bfff679602
[7] Reference origin in “Contributions to the Psychology of Love,” Collected Papers ,Vol. IV, Freud
Link to bibliography here
