Beautify Yourself

Beautify Yourself ... 

... a Facebook quizzish thing, so I tried it.

With tech magic the program instantly smoothed out my wrinkles, slimmed down my face, plumped up my lips, applied eye makeup, and minimized the bags under my eyes.  Gee, I do think I look better!  I think I look sexier in the made-over image.  Younger, too.  I wonder if I could get away with using the image as my Facebook profile picture.  If I wasn't partnered and I had a dating site profile, I'd sure think about that:  but I should think about what might happen if did that then I met someone in person who had judged my attractiveness based on the makeover ... hmm ...  I'd have to wear a LOT of makeup to try to carry that off!

And, I could spend a lot of time thinking about improving my appearance.  In truth I do, actually.  I rarely go out in public without tinted moisturizer, some eye makeup and lip gloss.  For evenings I might add mascara and a bit of contouring blush as well.  Once I wore a LOT of makeup with a costume for a party and a low-cut leopard print top and won an award as "sexiest" in their contest; but I was embarrassed by that.  I was over 60 already and I assumed they were making fun of me.  It was a relief to get home and wash my face.

I don't think I wear makeup to look younger (I am who I am) but just to look a bit better than otherwise, but all the above calls the question: 

Why do I think about how I look so much?

In Chapter Three of his book, Ways of Seeing (1972), John Berger explores this question.  I read the book in my twenties (shortly after it was published) and although his ideas had a profound impact on my thoughts and intentions, I've now lived in this culture for 67 years so I am not immune to our society's conventions and expectations of women.  You may have read it too, or you might have seen his BBC show related to the book.  https://youtu.be/m1GI8mNU5Sg

You can read Berger's entire chapter at http://waysofseeingwaysofseeing.com/ways-of-seeing-john-berger-5.7.pdf but I'm just going to pull out some quotes here to share.

Berger shares his ideas about how we see things, and in Chapter One (page 9) he states:  "Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen.  The eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are part of the visible world."  

In Chapter Three he considers differences between how men and women present themselves and are seen: 

Men

"According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man.  A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies ... The promised power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual - but its object is always exterior to the man.  A man's presence suggests suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you ...  always towards a power which he exercises on others."  (Berger, pages 45 - 46).

Women

"To be born a woman has been to be born ... into the keeping of a men.  The social presence of women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such a tutelage within such a limited space.  But this has been at the cost of a woman's self being split in two.  A woman must continually watch herself.  She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself.  ... From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.  And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman." (Berger, pages 46 - 47).

Men Act; Women Appear

"One might simplify this by saying:  men act and women appear.  Men look at women.  Women watch themselves being looked at.  This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation between a woman to themselves."  (Berger, page 47).  

He continues on the same page, "In one category of European oil painting women were the principle, ever-recurring subject.  That category is the nude.  In the nudes of European painting we can discover some of the criteria and conventions by which woman have been seen and judged as sights."

From here Berger (writing as an art critic) examined these concepts via reproductions of paintings of nudes, many looking back at the artist looking at them ...

 

Our Generation

Writing as a woman born in 1950, coming of age in the late 1960's, and learning to be a woman during that time, much of what has changed in me has been intellectual as an adult.  But I know despite my considered and consciously developed thoughts about how I want to be a woman in the world and a person in the world, I think my early conditioning is well expressed by what John Berger wrote as excerpted above.  I also experience a split between a fuller self who does not give a rip what others think about how I look, and a more limited self who can be easily distracted, distressed or sometimes even silenced by a sense that I might not "look good enough".   This is not only age-related, but still a deep and often un-noticed struggle within me as a woman.  So, it affects me at every age.  

What are your thoughts about this topic, dear reader?