If a woman walks down the street and no man looks at her, does she really exist? - Zen koan
In the 2004 philosophical comedy I Heart Huckabees, the petite bombshell character played by Naomi Watts inadvertently stumbles into an existential crisis that suddenly calls her entire life into question. No longer enamored with her privileged status as iconic beauty queen - the face of big box superstore Huckabees, the trophy S.O. ornamenting Jude Law's meticulously manscaped arm - she begins to see the absurdity of her vapid life. In a clumsy in vivo experiment to determine her intrinsic worth, she trades in her skimpy wardrobe for baggy overalls and a Laura Ingalls Wilder bonnet. Not a big hit at her photo shoot launching the store's new spring collection. Nor with her stodgily corporate boss. Nor with her rising star boyfriend.
At one point, our cover girl seizes the beautifully blown-out locks of the new belle de jour slated to replace her and spews her agony for all to see. Locking her competitor in a vice grip by the chin with one hand and pulling the bonnet over her face with the other, she wails in desperation, "Oh, stop! Don't look at me! I just want to be left alone. I'm sick of this. I'm sick of you all looking at me!" Then, just as suddenly, she uncovers her face, positions the bonnet like this season's hottest headwear, and snootily sticks out her chin to demand in a needy whine, "Look at me. Please, please, please, everybody. Everybody look at me now! I am so pretty. I. Am. So. Pretty. Look at me. Everybody just wants to be me. I'm pretty." She knows she can't go back to that spiritual wasteland. But the way ahead looks even bleaker. Either way, she is fucked. Unless she leaves the road entirely and bushwhacks a whole new path.
I am fascinated by the above scenario, and the larger theme of Being Looked At vs. Being Seen, for many reasons. The first of which is that there's no getting around it. We as a species are biologically wired to be drawn to beauty, which to our animal brains signals health and reproductive viability, and we live in a visual age that constantly reinforces this wiring with ever-narrowing standards. The second of which is that I am a woman of a certain age, and I'm fast approaching that threshold across which I may forever step from hypervisibility to invisibility. The third of which is that - we interrupt this program for a secondary trauma alert - someone took some exploitative photos of me when I was beyond underage. The only thing I'll say about that is that I hadn't yet had a double-digit birthday, the adult behind the camera was someone I knew and trusted, and it was horrible.
So, like you, I know a thing or two about objectification. How we objectify ourselves. How we objectify others. How we allow ourselves to be objectified. How we take ourselves out of the game entirely rather than risk rejection or worse, invisibility.
My inquiry here is not about placing blame on either side of the camera. Or at all of us as third party voyeurs to countless splashy pages of Photoshopped opulence, which, let's face it, can be great fun. It is about thoughtfully questioning that which so many of us, including myself, may take as gospel truth. What happens to our worth as youthful beauty fades? Does our value drain out of us like the once abundant collagen under our eyes? Do we pass our merit onto the next crop of perfectly ripe fruit like a baton in a mad mating relay, or do we keep some for ourselves? And who determines whether we have retained our desirability and, more importantly, our lovability?
I don't care who you are or where you come from, if you are a woman, you have surely contended with the power and pain of feminine beauty. If you are a man, perhaps even more so. Whether veiled beneath a burqa or flaunted in a thong, whether being debuted at a quinceañera or cloistered in a nursing home, there is no doubt that in countless societies, feminine beauty has been mistaken for human worth. (As has masculine earning power. But that's for someone else to write about.)
Because of my own early trauma around this theme, coming of age was an ongoing nightmare for me from which I feared I'd never wake up. Hitting puberty at 9, I looked dangerously older than I was. Creepy old men started following me around the neighborhood in their creepy old cars. Boys started snapping my bra strap in fourth grade. Girls started calling me a slut. I was emotionally immature and clumsy as hell in my new form, but that didn't stop people from assigning me with all sorts of erotic attributions. I wondered if any male would ever look me in the eye again. I hated being a woman. I hated my body for betraying me so early. Already? Couldn't I have just a few more years of innocence after everything that had happened?
So I spent my teen years doing what I could to make it go away. I went on crazy crash diets with torturous exercise regimens to shrink my curves. I went on hibernation-worthy food binges and gained enough weight to disguise my hourglass shape. I ate as little as I could until ribs and hip bones protruded from my neutered figure. Sometimes I wore clothes several sizes too big and acted like everyone's kid sister. Other times I dressed provocatively, simultaneously craving and resenting the attention, putting the power (so I thought) back into my own hands, trying to take control somehow. At the time, of course, I had no idea what was motivating my behavior. I finally got the help I needed for that particular aspect of my crazy, and it has been the best thing I've ever done. But looking back, it makes total sense to me why I - why we - might do that to myself/ourselves. It is just too much fucking power to handle at such a young age. And it's not real power. It's a projection, like the phantasm of Oz screened from behind the curtain.
The therapeutic support I received - we're talking years here - offered me a miraculous turnaround. I slowly came out of my shell shock and began celebrating my femininity in tiny increments - an understated manicure, a flirtatious giggle, a dress every now and then. I grew increasingly bolder until I was back to the alchemical alloy of girly girl tomboy that I'd always been inside. If you saw me today, you might not guess what a big freakin' deal it is for me not to hide the fact that I am a woman, ridiculous as that sounds. I am once again free to feel safe in my environment in most circumstances.
And then something happened that took me by as much surprise as adolescence did. It wasn't too long ago that middle age jacked my former young adult body in the night. Seemingly out of nowhere, the round booty and flat tummy I had grown accustomed to for much of my reproductively mature life did a 180, and my physique became it's diametric bubble-belly-board-butt opposite. And I got pissed at nature again. Already? Couldn't I have just a few more years of enjoyment after everything that had happened? I thought I deserved a special extension on fertility after denying it for its first decade.
If you're anything like me, you think this will happen much later in life than it actually does. You think that you won't start peeing a little when you sneeze too hard until after you're old enough to collect social security. And that those helpful young men at Home Depot and Jiffy Lube will always go out of their way for you, even as they try to rip your girly ass off with unnecessary purchases. Or that the invisibility of aging won't happen to you because you've been exercising since you were 10 and you eat your veggies and you never nursed a baby. You think maybe because you've come to peace with being a reasonably attractive woman that you get to stay that way. Because you worked hard for that shit. Because you fought for it. Because you conquered it and reclaimed it and planted your fucking flag. You think maybe people are making excuses for their menopausal body changes and just drink too many damn Frappuccinos extra whip extra syrup because why bother. You think older women are too preoccupied with aging until you become one. It's easy to love your body when it looks like what society tells you it should.
But it will happen to you, to all of us, no matter how organically you eat or how much fish oil you ingest or how many times a week you go to the gym. As the Buddhists tell us, everything is impermanent. In the words of one proverb, "Good health is simply the slowest way a human being can die." And there is some grieving, as well as confusion and relief, in all of it. It would be lovely, as the joke goes, to start off life as really old and decrepit and then get progressively younger and better until you end in an orgasm. But that is not the human condition.
So if you meet me, and you size me up as a shallow fashionista because I go ga-ga for glitter lip gloss and bias-cut dresses and am not in any way aging humbly or gracefully, walk a mile in my shoes before you submit your verdict. You might find these platforms can be tricky on uneven ground.
