I’ve spent some time here confessing my writerly sins, and I’m really not quite done. May never be, come to that. Bless me, reader, for here’s another…
Alice Walker writes in her collection We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For about keeping her mind empty and uncluttered with the ideas of others so that her own thoughts, her own words have space to grow. A nice concept, particularly for one given to meditation, yoga, and other woowoo pursuits.
But that ain’t how I roll.
My desk has a perpetual scrap pile, a rotating stock of slips of paper or napkins inked with other people’s ideas, quoted or paraphrased. They are my jumping-off place, the grease that gets the gears inside my head turning. I don’t own a book that isn’t underlined and dog-eared, each line and crease worked deeper every time I read it. It’s the whole reason I have a Wise Words category on this blog; the reason quotation dictionaries even exist. Someone has always said it well, before me–but that’s not to say that I can’t also say it, in my way. It isn’t exactly a collaboration, but it is part of the greater muse-artist-muse cycle that every thinking person is part of. “Wildly original” usually just means you dressed up the proverbial Same Old in an intriguing new outfit.
No, though the venerable Ms. Walker and I may have different opinions about how clean the slate should be when we sit down to write, my sin is not thinking too much on the words other people have written. It isn’t even that I lean too heavily on them when I put my own pen to paper. It’s that I’m prone to a special kind of hedonism, one given too much to incubation and not enough to propogation. I’m content to steep myself in other peoples’ words and ideas, rolling around in them with the enthusiasm my grandmother’s toy poodle reserved for fresh cow patties, thinking about where I might take them next. Thinking; not writing. Fragrant though the experience may be, it gets me no closer to clicking that “Publish” button.
My sin, more plainly put, is that I wait for the easy bits. I’ve amassed an impressive collection of notes, the zygotes of a thousand new pieces, but so often I only make time for the Venus ideas–those that emerge, fully formed and alive, lacking only the right accessories and a date to the ball. The task set before me, which I frequently push back like it was not what I ordered, is to take the sand in my own hands and diligently, attentively–arduously, even–craft the pearl. I gotta start with the seafoam, or the sunset in the background, not with the lady on the halfshell who comes with her own backstory and beaus, ready-built.
Walker does ask a compelling question, though: “Do you believe you can learn to trust a mind that isn’t always speaking to you?” While I cherish the quietude I cultivate, ever so clumsily, when I sit in meditation, it isn’t separate from the noise that always edges back in. If anything, the quiet mind lays fertile ground for the chattering mind–the words that fall into that space can grow into something rich.
I’ve turned the soil and gathered the seeds; now we’ll see what grows.
Mirror, mirror
I’ve long noticed that most of what a woman must do to herself in this culture to be considered beautiful or desirable has the dual effect of rendering her, to greater or lesser degrees, crippled. I doubt that there is some secretive cabal of dons in an underground bunker somewhere, twisting their mustaches and asking, “How can we oppress women next?” But I do find it interesting that we, as a culture, give our consent to these standards with our participation.
Personally, I see beauty most often in the capable, in people and things that can do and craft and create–tools and strong muscles and quick hands oh my.
And yet.
Girl power platitudes and Nike slogans aside, the woman deemed beautiful is the one who cannot move freely in her own environment, who cannot put her nosejob to the grindstone, cannot risk getting elbow grease on her silks. She is the one mincing about on stillettos, balancing her boobs just below her clavicles, keeping her coif out of the wind and her skin out of any conditions not perfectly climate-controlled.
You may think I overstate my case. But slip into a pair of even modestly high heels, and walk the dog or navigate your gravel driveway. Strap your girls into a push-up bra, then try any pace but languid; try bending over and tying your shoes without experiencing a wardrobe malfunction. Brave the fumes at Beauty Dream Nailz 4 U down at the strip mall, and try to type or cook or change a tire with your new mani. Brush, line, dab, and smooth color onto your face, then do anything that might result in sweat. Add volume, curl, bounce, and shine to your locks, and ride with the windows down or a helmet on.
I know we’re not talking bound feet here, and I don’t expect every woman should (or wants to) be ready to split cordwood at a moment’s notice.
But how is it that we’re only attractive when we’re hobbled, restricted, and afraid of getting dirty?
And if I think the average white lady’s got it hard, for black women, “beauty” is even more elusive, and more damaging to pursue. I blinked and missed it in the theater, but this week I rented Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair. Given my self-imposed and perfectly content exemption from most of the beauty olympics, I must admit I wasn’t overly familiar with this particular hirsute minefield.
Most of the black folk in my regular sphere of contact have natural hair, mostly in dreadlocks. Likewise, most of the white ladies I spend time with don’t carry eyelash curlers in their purses. I’m admitting the limitations of my perspective–I don’t always have the best handle on what the mainstream is up to out there.
I knew about the existence of relaxers and weaves, and I could have probably guessed a lot about their inherent dangers. No cosmetic is regulated, though millions of us apply them liberally to our skin (a most effective sponge) every day–why should relaxer be any different? Its active ingredient literally dissolves aluminum cans, yet women and men and even children risk chemical burns to Barbie-fy their tresses. And, as with so many other desirable material goods, the high price tag here belies the third-world source, and the underpaid (or, in the case of weaves, unpaid) creators.
But it was still a revelation to hear it, to see it, clearly laid out before me, and to think about it in the context of what I already have observed to be true about beauty, its standards and its products. And more so, poignantly so, that it was all started with Rock’s own daughter, his beautiful baby girl, asking why she didn’t have good hair.
How heartbreaking, for a girl to have internalized so, so young that she is not beautiful–especially since it’s untrue! How heartbreaking, for the women that girl and girls like her will become to spend time and money and energy engaging in a daily beauty regimen whose every step is a reminder that they themselves are not enough.
How much self-hatred does it take to steep oneself in chemicals, twist ones body into uncomfortable shoes and clothes, and censure ones every movement, all in the impossible pursuit of being deemed beautiful enough, good enough, either by others with the same pathology or by the very folks who are financially invested in keeping us chasing the unattainable carrot of physical perfection?
Can we stop breaking our own hearts?
Can we look in the mirror and be the ones we want?
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Posted in Commentary + Philosophy, That's Entertainment!
Tagged beauty standards, chris rock, good hair