Perfect Vision: How We Look is Becoming Who We Are
I’m a woman and I like pretty things. When I hesitate in front of a Nordstrom shoe display of a white table bordered with pink fluff holding up a bedazzled pedestal beneath some shiny black pumps, I get a little lady hard-on that says, “I WANT TO BE IN YOU”.
I am all for a pair of sleek heels that make me feel like a Russian spy sent to seduce the President and eventually impale his heart with those very spikes that led him to me. (I guess I wouldn’t be Russian if the target was the sitting president, but you know what I mean!) Pair those with a matte, red lipstick and bouncy, cascading curls and I will walk around like I own the place. (Better throw a dress in there too, because in this fantasy I am just accessorizing in the nude.) My heart soars at the prospect of donning an expertly colour-coordinated outfit that accentuates my shoulders, pairing it with a hairstyle that captures the mise-en-scene. Once it’s all put together I want to strut outside and yell (with my eyes, like a lady) , “GET A LOAD OF ME!”.
Eager as I am to get dressed up for an event and prove to everyone just how beautiful I can be (one hour and a disaster of a room later), the fact remains that these are all just things that I adorn to look a certain way in one instance. These shoes, that make my legs look lanky as a newborn foal’s, are not me. This cheek shimmer, that makes me look like I was just pooped out by a unicorn, is not me. These beachy waves, that took much longer and much more effort than I will admit to you, are not me. However, in our increasingly image-addicted world that is beyond rehabilitation, we are often unable to see past the product picture. As Diane on Cheers once said, “We don’t love books, Sam. We love people. We own books.” And while the sound of Diane’s pretentious enunciation and feathery condescension is nothing to aspire to, this is how I feel about our appearances. We have an appearance, but we are not our appearance.
As much as I want to blame Instagram for all of this, it’s the inevitable effect of digital identification. To most people who know me, I am more my online Avatar than I am a physical human that they interact with in the real world. They know my face by my profile picture, but not necessarily the one they would see on the street. They know my body from the angles I carefully select to post, not necessarily the one that sits hunched in my chair as I write this. They know my style from the special events I document, not necessarily the Costco sweatpants and 2013 cheerleading competition sweatshirt I wore to the grocery store today. Every person is made up of a thousand versions of themselves, so the problem lies in showing, and relying on, only one version.
Being a girl now involves scrolling through photos of Bella Hadid or a random chick in Australia who has 200K followers, and feeling an overwhelming sense of despair because we don’t look like her. The photos show slender arms, concave stomachs, round butts, highlighted cheekbones, contoured noses, and outlined lips. All of a sudden, making yourself look as close to this picture becomes more important than anything you have ever wanted. If you’re a dude, wanting the woman in this picture becomes an insatiable desire. The woman in the photo becomes larger than life, a God send, a freak of nature who is so beautiful she can’t possibly be real.
Which, actually, is half true. This is Aussie-babe in a position at one hundredth of a second at a particular angle in this exposure of light at this point in her life on this day in time. It’s a great shot! To us, Aussie Babe is frozen in this image, and the image takes on a life far beyond that moment. However, the woman lives on. She can’t continue in this grasped moment until she attempts to capture another. And so, what about all of those moments in between?
Aussie Babe’s feed may continue with posts similar to this: beach, bikini, booze, body, bum, brunch, bliss. Posing, smiling, and deciding what moments are going to reach the surface. We receive whatever she wants to give us, the version of herself that is: perfect.
That word has ruined / is ruining / will ruin my life!!! An overused, dumb-ass word. Perfect is to people what pineapple is to pizza — offensive and absurdly inept. (Yes, I know there are some deeply disturbed people who like Hawaiian, but this comparison works very well from my vantage point, so just replace with something else equally as outrageous.) We’ve done a pretty good job of making perfect look achievable online, which, in turn, has magnified its significance. Remember: the goal is not to be perfect, just to appear perfect.
I’m not even talking about modelling, because social media has taken us far past that. Girls aren’t even aspiring to be models anymore, it’s just about looking “the right way” for anyone who happens to click or scroll by. It’s not about walking the catwalk for a top designer, it’s about taking a little sip of a latte while looking coyly down at your immaculate outfit. It’s not about building a portfolio for future brand participation, it’s about making sure that you’ve done some squats during the week leading up to your beach day so that you can wear the swimsuit that gets fully lost in your butt crack. It’s to make sure the only version of yourself that is captured is perfect. And perfect seems to live in one little, segregated cul-de-sac that only houses the Hadids, Baldwins, Kardashians (Khloe was only recently extended an invitation to re-join the community), and their doppelgängers.
The New York Post quoted Dr. Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, who said, “For teens [in particular], looking good (as defined by norms of one’s social group and the rules of social engagement) is almost always a priority. It used to be a question of not wanting to get caught out in public not looking good; the reach of what’s public has shifted.”
That’s why our appearance seems to be valued now more than ever. We’re at the point where my appearance can have a life without me in it, and that’s scary. It creates an army of obsessed young girls and women who take to their phones like an addict to her needle. Every day has the opportunity to get them closer to perfection.
In more great news, this goes hand-in-hand with the goals of the diet industry, which despite the body positivity movement is woven into our society so seamlessly that the deprogramming involved is almost insurmountable. Magazine headlines and advertisements can’t be seen as anything other than ironic:
(I’ve made some handy highlights)
“LOVE YOURSELF! But not too much or else why would you diet?!”
“How to Get a Round Booty That Will Actually Land You a Husband”
“The New ‘Fit-It-Girl’: She goes to the gym twice a day, never does the readings for class, and spends so much time looking up fitspo that she legitimately has no idea what’s going on in U.S. politics!”
There are moments when I tune into the collective energy and truly believe that everyone is on a weight machine, or at Sephora, or on Kylie Jenner’s Instagram, or following Kayla flippin’ Itsine’s program AKA, “How to spend so much time and effort hating your body in order to become the exact same shape as me until you realize that biology is a thing and a flat stomach will not solve your problems” Okay, well, that’s my name for it. Women actually believe that this is our higher calling, that this is the absolute end by whatever means necessary, that this represents the best they can be, that if they’re not doing this, they’re a waste of a woman. I am not exempt! It pulls me in like an aggressive undertow. It’s not until I tap open Instagram and see a photo of a girl from school in her bra and underwear, flexing her newly minted abs, sprawled on her perfectly crumpled white sheets, with a full face of makeup, gently tousled locks, and slightly parted lips that say ,“Slide in fellas, I’m empty,” that I say to myself “Oh my god, drop what you’re doing, drop what you’re eating, go to the gym, buy a new skirt, get some better quality foundation, and for the love of God take a photo of your ass to reassure everyone that you have one.”
And you know what? It’s okay to get swept up sometimes. I’m only human, and these ideologies can be distracting, tempting, and intoxicating. But this thinking needs to be interrupted and evaluated. Otherwise it’s a terrifying ghost possessing us and overriding our ability to make choices for ourselves.
I know that our appearances are an integral part of who we are. It’s the most obvious element that distinguishes one person from another. It is also very random and fluid. If I was reduced only to the face I was born with, the genes that dictate my muscular arms and short calves, and the winter months when I gain a layer of softness, then what is the goddamn point of the rest of my life? The life that this body experiences everyday would be irrelevant, and if that were the case, I would spend much more time sleeping and much less time reading self-help books (even though I thoroughly enjoy them).
Someday soon we’ll probably be sending holograms in our place, and you’ll be able to edit your features, and men will be able to mute women, and the superior race will constitute the visually elite who have the strongest ability to depreciate self-esteem in others, but until then I’m going to try to care a whole lot less about looking perfect. Not just in terms of myself, but everyone else. That means the next time I see a featured photo shoot with J-Lo in GQ, instead of staring open-mouthed, as my gaze slowly follows the outline of her silhouette until I realize I’ve been tensing my shoulders and chewing the inside of my cheek until it bled, I’ll go, “Huh, that’s cool” and move on. It’ll take time, but practice makes perfect.