Can I ask you something? Do you think you’re pretty?
Sometimes.
Not all the time? You’re so pretty. I mean, really, you’re so beautiful.
Sometimes, I think I’m really beautiful. Other times, I can’t stand to look at myself.
What changes?
I hate to admit this, but a lot of it has to do with how I imagine other people perceive me. Or my emotional state. And often my emotional state is a reflection of how I imagine other people perceive me.
I guess sometimes I think less of the way I look when I’m feeling shitty, too. But not drastically. Most of the time, I think I’m fairly pretty.
For me, it’s broken down into two separate issues: the face and the body. The face is much less complicated than the body. I’m much less dramatic about my face. It takes more emotional strife to make me feel bad about my face. My body, on the other hand, is a mine field.
What makes you so insecure about your body? I think you have a great body. I mean, you fit pretty well into society’s standards of attractive body size and shape.
I’ve struggled with body image issues since puberty, I think I’ve told you that before. I never felt thin enough… I went through a long phase of anorexia, which felt so great and so awful at the same time. The sad thing is, for a long time it felt like the only thing I was ever really good at. Then I finally got healthy, got to a good place with my weight and felt good about my body for a few years. And then I gained 40 pounds from medications that I was taking, that I needed to take to live a normal life. I’m only five foot three. 40 pounds is a lot of fucking weight. I went from wearing a size extra small to wearing a size large. It was shocking… it changed everything. I couldn’t bear to look at myself naked anymore. I was scared to have sex because I didn’t want anyone else to see me naked. I didn’t go back to anorexia, I was still far beyond that, but I was struggling with these issues again that were so pervasive that they affected every aspect of my life.
And you still feel that way?
No, not all the time. These things still affect me, but I’m in a much better place now. I’ve come to accept my size more. I know intellectually that being a size large does not make me unattractive. I also know that being attractive is not the ultimate goal. It’s just that when I’m emotionally vulnerable, my body is the first thing I take it out on. I start to hate my body all over again. It’s always a roller coaster ride.
I’ve always been so lucky to have a mother who loved her body so much. She was always overweight by any standard, but she never cared, and she never showed any insecurity. I think that’s why I’ve always had such a positive view of my own body.
You are lucky. I definitely think my mother’s attitudes played a big role in my own insecurities when I was a young girl. But it’s so easy to blame our parents. I used to blame my parents for so many things… my poor mental health, my perfectionism, my inability to maintain healthy romantic relationships, my intellectual insecurities… but at some point, you have to take responsibility for your own life.
Right… Hey, I have a question.
Sure.
This is something I think about for myself a lot, so I’m wondering what your take on it is. When you get dressed, do you do it for yourself or for other people?
You mean, do I wear things to make myself feel good or to attract other people?
Yeah.
Definitely both. I’d like to think that making myself feel good comes first. In fact, the evidence for this comes from the fact that when I was dating Christopher, he complained that I always wore loose clothing, that I rarely showed my bare legs, and that I wore dresses everyday and never wore jeans. These are things I do to make myself feel comfortable, and I’m not willing to change them just to attract someone else. But I’m definitely hoping to look attractive to others when I wear certain outfits. What about you?
Well, it’s complicated. To look at me, you’d think I don’t care what anybody thinks. You know me, I wear things that other people find a little crazy sometimes. But the truth is, sometimes I do care. Or, at least, I’m well aware of what other people think. I think about it all the time.
Is attractiveness the goal? In what you wear, I mean.
I guess a certain sort of attractiveness, yes.
Why are we so obsessed with being attractive all the time?
I really don’t know.
Being attractive is so much less important than so many other things. Like being happy, being healthy, being productive, or feeling accomplished. Yet we obsess over it as if we owe it people, whether they be our partners or random men on the street.
You’re so right… But then again, whether people find us attractive or not affects us in tangible ways.
That’s true. I remember when I used to wear big sweatshirts all the time because I was trying to hide my body, nobody found me attractive. I had the same face as I do now, but nobody took a second look at it. But I think that was more about how I felt than how I dressed.
But it was also about your performance. This idea of what’s attractive is about the whole performance of how someone looks, how they dress, how they act, etc. And you fell outside of the ideal on more than one count.
I was shocked when I started to dress differently and realize that men actually found me physically attractive. Then I started to play into it and use my looks to get things that I wanted, like sexual attention just for the sake of attention. The whole thing was so new, so exciting. But it quickly became dangerous, and I felt dirty and vain.
I think we’ve all done that before, at one point or another.
I got such a high from it. I had never gotten sexual attention before in my life.
Yeah, see, I was showered with sexual attention since I hit puberty. Sometimes, I relished it, but sometimes, it just felt like such a burden. But I always had boyfriends, so my relationship with it was probably different than yours.
I get that. In recent years, attention has sometimes come to feel like a burden for me, too. There’s wanted attention and unwanted attention, and you can’t have one without the other.
True.
Do you think that many men feel the same way about attention?
I have no idea. I know Adam doesn’t. For him, sexual attention is almost always positive. But I’m sure other men feel differently. But you have to remember, men don’t usually get catcalled on the street. And they don’t get all that “smile, baby, you’re too pretty to look so sad” bullshit.
Oh, the “smile, baby” thing is the worst. Why the fuck should I smile for you? I am not here to look pleasing for you, to give you pleasure with my appearance, to arouse you, to make your day.
I know, right? God, that pisses me off. No one would ever say that to a man.
Or if someone did say that to a man, it would still be offensive, but not the same case of systematic sexism.
Right… You know what I worry about? Do you ever feel like you contribute to sexism yourself? I worry about that a lot.
Yeah, well we all do in some ways. We have to be really aware of it to try to move away from it towards a healthier way of living. Like, for instance, one thing I decided on a long time ago was to delete the words slut, whore, and bitch from my vocabulary. All they do is reinforce this dynamic of women hating women, and they say that women’s sexuality is an inherently bad and dangerous thing, and they take the power of women’s sexuality away from women and put it into the hands of men. I mean, we can’t take sexism out of the world, but we can do little things to try to shift the experiences of people around us in the right direction.
I never even thought about how much I use the words slut and bitch. They really are awful words when you think about them. I’ve always taken issue with the way we use words like pussy, and dick, and suck, and blow. I think suck and blow are particularly interesting ones, actually. Because what we say when we say something sucks or blows is that it is bad. This association of badness with the act of a woman performing oral sex on a man is an interesting association, no? I mean, where does that come from? The fear of women’s sexuality. And suck and blow essentially do the same thing that slut, bitch, and whore do: they shame women for being sexual beings.
Most people don’t even realize how simple language choices like that contribute to a sexist culture. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I don’t use the word suck just like everybody else does. I do. I use it all the time. But I do think about what it means, and where it comes from. It’s just that, there’s only so much you can change, you know? Our language is our language. Like, I’m outraged by the fact that the word hysteria comes from a word meaning “of the womb” and that it has come to mean “excessive or uncontrollable emotion.” But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop using the word. It’s part of our language, and I can’t change that.
I never realized that about hysteria… Oh, I guess it has the same root as hysterectomy, that makes sense.
Yeah.
Anyway, this whole question of language is interesting. It’s one of these things that can seem sort of insignificant, but I think it actually plays a huge role in systematic oppression. If the language changes, the whole dialogue changes.
That’s why I try to be careful about what I say, particularly about other women. I think the second you start to degrade other women, you open the door for men and society at large to degrade women.
You’re so right. I think sometimes I can be judgmental without realizing it. Sometimes jealousy plays a part in it, too, I hate to say.
I know, jealousy and competition are major problems among women. We have to move past them if we’re ever going to make progress.
Competition is the worst. It makes us insecure, angry, vindictive. Men must get competitive with each other, too, though, right? Or do you think it’s just women?
I’m sure men feel competitive. But I don’t think they’re taught to tear each other down the way women are taught to. I think the way it manifests itself is different. The name-calling – bitch, slut, whore – that doesn’t happen with men so much. There aren’t even equivalent words. I guess men call each other dicks and assholes and douchebags when they don’t like each other. But there are different connotations and none of them have to do with sexuality.
But you’re forgetting the most important one.
I am?
Fag.
Oh my god, you’re right, how could I forget fag? I take it back, fag is all about sexuality.
Right, I mean, fag is probably the biggest insult that straight men throw around at each other. And what it really does is call into question the very definition of what it means to be a man. It sets up these rules about manhood. It says that a man is only a man if he desires women, if he objectifies women, if he sleeps with women, if he sleeps with many women, etc.
It’s amazing how many layers there are to the word fag. It shames men for having sexual feelings towards other men, or for not having strong enough sexual feelings for women. It shames men for not being interested enough in “manly” things, like sports. It shames men for having qualities generally associated with femininity, like sensitivity or timidity. The list goes on and on, but just like with slut and whore, the key tactic is always shaming.
Still, isn’t it interesting that women get shamed for promiscuity and actually being sexual in the first place, whereas men get shamed for not being sexual enough, as long as their sexuality is being expressed towards women?
So interesting!
To go back to the whole thing about attractiveness and beauty for a minute… do you think that the reason we’re so obsessed with looking attractive all the time is because of this sense of competition with other women?
That’s probably part of it.
I know I’ve said this before, but I think I’m going to shave my head. I really mean it this time. I want people to look at me differently. I want to look at myself differently. I’m sick of looking like a vanilla Barbie.
I know what you mean. Sometimes I feel like cutting all my hair off, too. But I really like my long hair, and I’d rather subvert my gender performance in other ways. Like not shaving my legs. But I don’t think subverting gender performance has to be the goal anyway. There’s nothing wrong with performing your gender in a typically feminine way or wanting to look attractive. It’s just that you have to be aware of why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Well, I’m gonna shave my head! Ahh!
I think you totally should!
Oh, I almost forgot. Adam wanted me to ask you, what did you think about his friend Eric from the party the other night?
He was nice enough. Why?
He thought you two would hit it off.
Really? Eh, really not my type. I mean, he went to business school.
Yeah, but he’s not your typical business school student. He’s into camping and stuff.
Okay, but have you met me? When was the last time you saw me in the woods?
That’s not the point, though. You’re so quick to judge.
No, I just know when I click with someone, and there was no chemistry between us. He wasn’t my type.
Well, what is your type?
You know the kind of guys I go for. Like Christopher. Or Dan, if he hadn’t been sleeping with other women, obviously.
Right, you like the whole artsy, sensitive, long-haired musician thing, right?
Well, that just makes it sound like a terrible cliché.
Maybe that’s your problem.
I don’t think I have a problem.
Okay, I’m sorry, I was just trying to help. Adam thought you might like Eric. We just get worried about you being alone sometimes.
Look, sometimes being alone is hard, but Eric is not the answer. I know you two are really happy together, and I look at you, and I want that, too, but I’m okay for now.
That’s good to know. I just want you to be happy.
Thanks, hon. Listen, I should really get back to work on my paper.
Yeah, I have a ton of shit to do, too. Let’s do dinner tomorrow?
Definitely.