Jacqueline Madrano, Retired Homemaker and Volunteer, San Antonio

Jacqueline Madrano has served plenty of roles throughout her 80-plus years: homemaker, civic volunteer, church pianist, occasional secretary, “kitchen musician.” It’s this life experience, combined with her unique historic role as military wife in the post-WWII years—accompanying her husband, Col. Joseph Madrano, throughout his career, she raised three children in U.S. Army bases around the world—that made me want to interview her. 

Rather, those are the reasons I’d want to interview her if I didn’t know her in the capacity I do. But it’s her role as my grandmother—my impeccably put-together grandmother, without whose influence this blog might not exist—that, obviously, has left the deeper imprint upon me. Not only has she led by example through being a fashion plate, she’s also given me morsels of wisdom on fashion, beauty, and self-presentation as long as I can remember. If you put powder over lipstick and then put on another coat, it’ll last all day, she told me when I was playing at her vanity table at age seven—my first-ever beauty tip, tucked away for years until I’d finally start wearing lipstick for real. Your hair is pretty, but it isn’t your best feature—let’s get you some bangs to show off your eyes, she said when taking me to get my first haircut that went beyond a basic trim. Every woman should have a little mad money, just for you, she said as she paid for that haircut by plucking a $20 bill from a hidden flap in her pocketbook. It wasn’t a beauty tip per se, but it was a signal to me that spending money on your appearance was a manner of self-care, a way to do something “just for you.” My mother—a beauty minimalist and second-wave feminist who sat me down with my first Barbie to show me the ways Barbie’s body and Mommy’s body were different—taught me one way to be a woman. Mimi taught me another.

That powder-over-lipstick trick is a keeper, and so are some of the other things we discussed: comfort versus beauty, vanity versus pride, and why the U.S. government cared what she wore when going bowling. In her own words:

Jacqueline Madrano and her husband, Joseph

On Fads and Comfort

I grew up very poor. I didn’t have a lot of clothes, but what clothes I did have I tried to make not the latest styles, but something that would last. As the years went on, we could afford a little more, but I’d learned what styles look best on me years earlier. So I just stayed with that style instead of whatever came in fads. I don’t care for the fads; I keep my clothes forever. Though I did have nice legs, so when the styles were short I wore them—not as short as a lot of them, some of the styles were just embarrassing! But since I knew what colors looked best on me, when I went to get new clothes, they’d go with what I already had in my closet. That really helped me in our traveling—I can take just one suitcase but have many different outfits.

I’ve had my colors done, but you really learn what works on you mostly by comments. When people would say, Oh, you really look nice today or That’s a good color for you, you pay attention. And you pay attention to what you’re comfortable in—I knew pastel shades worked for me because I was more comfortable in them. You do not have to sacrifice comfort for beauty. You have to know what is comfortable first, but then you can always fix it so it looks pretty too. I’ve heard people that you have to choose one or the other, but I’ve found it easy to do both. But the secret is knowing your style and your colors. And then if a fad works with that, well, that’s fine.

But some fads turn out not to be fads. Have you tried mineral makeup? I love it; that’s what I wear now. So much quicker, so much cleaner. It goes on so easily and you can just brush it off if you don’t get it on right the first time. I think it makes you look more like you. After 80 years you know who you are. You want to look like who you are. I don’t like to see a mature woman with a lot of makeup on. It makes me think they don’t like this age, that they want to look younger. And it makes them look the other way around.

On Pride

I took a ladies’ night out at a basketball game with our minister’s wife and my friend Carolyn. A handsome man—he wasn’t a young man but he wasn’t an old man either, tall, very handsome—came up to us and he put his arms around us and he says, “Ladies, don’t be frightened, but I just want to tell you that you are the best-looking women at the game tonight.” We weren’t dressed up, but we were neat. He said, “Most of the women here don’t even try to be neat, and to see somebody like you—I just had to tell you.” We felt honored because we were old women! Well, Carolyn’s not as old, but for him to stop and tell us that was really something. Then he just went on his way. He wasn’t trying to flirt or anything; he was just being honest.

But it’s true: People don’t care how they look anymore. It’s fine if you want to do that at home, but I think being neat when you go out shows that you’re proud, that you’re proud of living. And I think when you don’t make that effort, it means you don’t care. I’ve seen that more and more and it bothers me—people coming to church every Sunday and they’re not neat, their hair isn’t combed. It’s bothersome. I feel like it shows they’ve lost their pride. I look good, and I don’t want people to think I look good just to be looked at, or that I have to be looked at, but if it happens, it happens.

I probably have too much pride. I say that because so many women are happy without things I’m miserable without. I have to have a perm! Usually I’d go to the beauty shop once a week and get my hair fixed, and [my husband] Joe never complained about that. He complained about other things but he never complained about my going to the beauty shop. In fact, he said, Well, how are you going to work this? But when I was busy getting Joe well last year when he was ill, I hated to leave him so I couldn’t drive across town to have my hair fixed once a week. It got really bad. I didn’t let it bother me because I had to do these things, but after he got feeling better that’s the first thing I did, went out to get a perm, got myself looking a little better. It costs money, but I feel like it’s worth it, and Joe does too. It makes me behave better; I’m happier, so I’m not cross. And I don’t feel sorry for myself. But I’ve always been a little vain. Or maybe just proud—I do think of other people, maybe that’s the difference. 

Jacqueline and Col. Madrano, 1973

On Being a Military Wife

I think the military has a lot to do with my pride. When we were stationed overseas the first time, in Japan, not long after the war had ended, and the first time in Germany, there was military policy about how we could dress. If we went bowling, for instance, we could drive there in short short pants—we could get out of the car and bowl and get in the car and go home. But we could not stop on the way and get out of the car—they didn’t want us to be seen like that. The military wanted us to make a good impression on the people there—we wanted to show the Japanese that we were nice people after the war. And the same in Germany. But the second time we went to Germany it wasn’t like that. We were very fortunate to be in the States when Joe went over to Vietnam, because they didn’t live on a base where people really supported the troops. People would boo the wives. They had nothing to do with it; it was their husbands, but the wives still felt a lot of pain. But because we lived here we didn’t feel that as much. I never had anyone say anything to me. 

Joe was always the commander, and I felt that as his wife if I didn’t keep myself looking nice, how could we set an example? Not that the other girls had to look nice all the time, but I wanted—it’s nice when people care. I maybe felt a little pressure for that, but I enjoyed putting on a good front. I really did. I enjoyed being overseas and meeting people from overseas and seeing their style—it was all just so interesting. 

On How to Get Over Times of Feeling Unappealing

I grew up, that’s all! I’d think to myself, Okay, Jacq, this too shall pass. And it did.

Nicole Kristal, Writer and Bisexual Advocate, Los Angeles

Picking a title to introduce Nicole Kristal was probably the most challenging part of this interview. Screenwriter, sure—her short film, Do You Have a Cat?, has been screened at LGBT festivals internationally. (You can rent it for $2 at BuskFilms.com, and I suggest you do exactly that.) Author, yes—her (hilarious) book, The Bisexual’s Guide to the Universe, cowritten with Mike Szymanski, won a Lambda Literary Award. Songstress, check—her rock-folk CD manages to be warm yet biting, melancholy yet upbeat. Blogger, mais oui—you may have come across her piece "Watching a Friend Die on Facebook," which went viral last year, from her grief blog. And as it happens, her skills extend to my arena too: She edited the first piece I ever wrote about beauty, published in our college magazine. But it’s her expertise in one of her work’s recurring themes—bisexuality—that made me want to interview her here. We talked about what hair length has to do with sexuality, navigating the line between showing interest in women and objectifying them, and why bisexuals are terrible dressers. In her own words:

On Signals

You can't pass someone on the street, look at their clothes and say, "That person's bi.” You can do that sometimes with a gay man or a butch lesbian, though I like to avoid assuming someone's sexuality based on fashion and mannerisms—there are too many exceptions. In the 1920s didn’t men wear a red necktie or something like that to signal that they were gay? It would be great if bisexuals had something like that. But say bisexuals had a uniform and they could just walk around and people would know—that still might not help that much because I wouldn’t know what type of bisexual you were. You might be a disjunctive bisexual woman who sleeps with women but doesn’t fall in love with them. There’s just this extra element of sleuthing for bisexuals to figure out if what you have with someone is viable, and in what way.

But there seems to be a standard uniform for female bisexuals in the media: prominent boots—usually leather—tight skirts, also usually leather, and low-cut, revealing tops. Whether it's Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Haunting or Kalinda Sharma in The Good Wife, they’re effeminate, sexually aggressive and often narcissistic or mysterious—keeping their hearts at a distance and never falling in love. And this seductivity and emotional distance comes across in their clothes. But in real life, we don't wear this uniform. Many of us struggle to reconcile the male and female energies inside us, and it comes out in a sort of mish-mash androgynous look that is not quite effeminate and not quite masculine, which is why I joke that bisexuals can be terrible dressers. This probably doesn’t apply to bisexual women with a preference for men—their style tends to be more characteristically straight—but the bisexuals like me who lean more toward the queer side can sometimes resist fashion trends, to their detriment. 

For my film, we had an incredibly hard time casting the lead character. None of the actresses seemed bisexual to me—not their style or their manner. We didn't want to fulfill the stereotype but we didn't want to ignore it entirely either. We finally just chose the best actress we could find as the lead and hoped we could style her into a believable bisexual. On her date with a man, we went more girly in a black top with a simple silver necklace; we chose a gold hoodie for when she meets a potential female love interest for the first time. We threw in a black and red checkered scarf for her second encounter with the woman—an item that can read straight or gay. I think some bisexuals do that in real-life—we dress more masculine when attending gay events or going on dates with women, and we femme it up when we go out with our straight friends and guys. Whatever we did worked because people left the film thinking the actress, Samantha Sloyan, was bisexual when in fact she's straight. Then again, most of that can probably be attributed to the fact that Sam’s an amazing actress rather than to her clothes.

On the Male Gaze

I feel like I have to wear just as much makeup going to a lesbian bar than I would going out on a date with a guy. In fact, I might get away with less makeup with the guy, because I’m usually so sure that a guy wants to have sex. I don’t have to work too hard. But with women you can say one wrong thing and they lose interest. I really think women can look at your shoes and lose interest. I’m serious! I remember reading in Lori Gottlieb’s Marry Him about a study that there are really only a handful of reasons a guy wouldn’t go on a second date with a woman, but there are hundreds of reasons why a woman wouldn’t go on a second date with a guy. That pickiness applies to women dating women too, so that factors into my appearance: I don’t want the way I look to be one of the reasons a woman wouldn’t want to go out with me. So yeah, when I go to a lesbian club I’ll wear my high-heel black leather boots or whatever. 

I don’t think I cater to the male gaze. I almost rebel against doing that, because I don’t think it’s necessary. When you’re bisexual, it can be easier to have a detachment from straight men without doing it as a game. I’ve seen straight women play that game with guys, acting disinterested so he’ll be more interested—bisexual women might be more genuine about that. It’s like, “Yeah, we had sex, that was fun,” and then we’ll go hang out with our lesbian friends, if you’re the kind of bisexual woman who is more on the queer side. It changes the whole paradigm. I can be like, “I’m wearing makeup today, I might not be wearing makeup tomorrow. Deal with it.” You’re not asking permission.


On Hair

The thing with the queer community here in L.A. is that you have to choose a look. You have to be like, I’m butch, or I’m soft butch but am masculine-identified or whatever. And then if you’re femme you really rock the femme look and wear heels or some other sort of really girly shit. I wasn’t really enough of either of those—I wasn’t great at being super-effeminate, and I wasn’t amazing at being a tomboy or butch, so I sort of fell through the cracks. Until I figured that out I wasn’t really having much success meeting women. I remember a bisexual friend telling me that she wasn’t getting women when her hair was long. So she cut off her hair, and it started happening. She said, “If you want to get pussy, cut your hair off.” Because then you don’t just get all the gay women who are comfortable dating someone who looks gay, you also get straight women wanting to experiment, because they want to choose someone who’s “really” gay to do that with. But then, women I know who have gone for the androgynous look have a fuck of a time dating guys, getting guys to not see them as lesbians.

I’m dating this woman who’s got short hair and looks kind of butch, so for the first time I’m sort of like, “Okay, we look gay, and I have to deal with this.” I took her to the same restaurant where I’d been on dates with men and everyone was looking at us—she eventually took her glasses off because she got tired of people looking at her to figure out if she was a girl or a boy. It’s funny, actually: I’d dated this same woman before, years ago, and she had long hair then. And I don’t know if I would have dated her then if she’d had short hair. I was less comfortable with being queer, so I didn’t want to go out in public and be like, “Hi, we’re the gay couple.” I wanted people to think we were best friends. Now I don’t really care. And in a way I like that her hair is short now—she looks so different than she did with long hair. It was the woman with long hair who broke my heart, so it’s almost like she’s someone else now.

On The City of Angels

I think each region has their own thing as far as a queer look. The scene is very effeminate here in L.A.; there are very few women with short hair. There’s such a pressure to be femme that sometimes you’ll even have these butch women who have long hair but are otherwise so masculine. Honestly, I think what happened is that The L Word came out and it influenced the scene. There was this impact of, This is how you should be as a queer woman. Being a lesbian was seen as this hot thing where two effeminate women are together and everyone wants to fuck them. It kind of left butch women in the lurch. I mean, it’s Hollywood, you can be gay, but there’s this pressure to appear fuckable to men even if you’re a lesbian. And if you’re bisexual, you’re supposed to be double fuckable. You’re supposed to be this hypersexualized persona. At the same time, people in San Francisco, where things aren’t as shallow, aren’t necessarily groomed to the level of L.A. people, so L.A. can kind of ruin you for that. Like, pluck those hairs in your ears or whatever! Get your eyebrows done. I found myself getting kind of turned off by stuff like that in a shallow way after I’d lived here for a while.

These two butch women from San Francisco went with me to a gay night at a club here, and there was this game where you’d throw these sandbags trying to knock over Barbies. If you knocked over a certain number of Barbies you’d win a shot. And these two women were like, “This shit would not fly in San Francisco—literally knocking over women? It’s so offensive.” And then they were like, “Let’s do it!” They were excited that they could do this silly game and not be persecuted for it like they would be in San Francisco. Down here in L.A. people aren’t as offended by stuff that actually is offensive, as far as the objectification of women, because there’s such a high premium on being fuckable. I mean, I’m coming from the ’90s so I’m politically aware of objectification—and it can be hard for me, looking at other women sexually. I’m aware of how it feels to be objectified so I don’t want to do that, but I want to show that I’m still interested in women sexually. But when there’s this group behavior around objectification it’s like that becomes what’s expected.

On Women’s Bodies

My sister always gives me shit for this, but I always end up with big-breasted women. It’s not intentional! I just think there’s something when you have smaller boobs like I do, you like to date women with the opposite of what you have. I’m not really interested in women with the same body type as me—I’m disinterested in skinny women, so I always end up dating women that are kind of voluptuous. They hold you in their arms and they’re soft, and I just prefer that to some skinny chick like me. But my body tends to make that kind of woman insecure. They say stuff like, “Oh, I’m going to start going to the gym more.” I’m like, “Why? I don’t give a shit about that, just be healthy.” I like the way women put on weight. There are some shallow lesbians who would never date a fat woman, and they’re missing out, because there’s so much more to do. There’s so much more to explore.

I watched this friend of mine pick up woman after woman, and I was jealous because I couldn’t. I finally said, “How do you get so many women?” She was like, “I just figure out what they’re most insecure about, and I tell them I love that the most.” I feel like that’s dishonest—but this woman I’m dating now, she’s like, “I’m going to lose some weight,” and I’ve started doing that a little, telling her how much I love her body. And yeah, I think her body’s amazing, but when I tell her, “Your body is amazing, I think about it all the time,” that’s a bullshit line. Sometimes that’s what girls need to hear to feel comfortable, so I finally started saying these things to build a comfort level. I do love her body, I’m not lying, but do I sit around thinking about it every second? No. But it was funny because I said that to her—“I think about your body all the time”—and she goes, “Even when you’re pooping?” We cracked up. I mean, the main thing we have in common is our sense of humor. But that was her kind of calling bullshit on my line too.

Miyoko Hikiji, Soldier, Author, and Model, Iowa

“I feel obligated to educate anyone that doesn’t wear a uniform about what military service is like,” says Miyoko Hikiji, a nine-year veteran of the U.S. Army whose career began when she joined the Iowa Army National Guard in college, eventually leading her to serve with the 2133rd Transportation Company during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Her recently published book, All I Could Be: My Story as a Woman Warrior in Iraq (History Publishing Company, 2013), goes a good ways toward that obligation. And when I found out that the soldier-turned-author also began modeling upon retiring from the military, well, how could I not want to interview her? Beauty is hardly the most crucial aspect of a soldier’s life, but it’s an area unique to female soldiers, who make up 15.7% of active Army members—and who, in January, had all military occupational specialties opened to them, including combat units previously closed to women. Hikiji and I talked war paint, maintaining a sense of identity in extraordinary circumstances, and Hello Kitty pajamas. In her own words:

On-Duty Beauty
Military rules about appearance are pretty strict. Your hair has to be tied back in a way that doesn’t interfere with your headgear and that is above the collar of your jacket. That pretty much leaves it in a tight little bun at the nape of your neck. Once you get your two-minute shower and get out soaking wet, you just braid it together and it stays that way all day. After a mission or training, most of the women with longer hair wore their hair down, because having it in a bun under a helmet is really uncomfortable. In Iraq I might have had eyeshadow, from training and preparation before we actually got to Iraq. When we’d be in civilian clothes I’d have a little makeup for chilling out. But once I was actually in Iraq, I was more focused on sunscreen, moisturizer, vitamins. I just wanted to be healthy. And I had a stick of concealer. I wore that for some of my scars—there were a lot of sand fleas, and I had bites all over my body. I couldn’t really approach trying to cover them well and look nice when I was there; I just needed to be clean. When I came home I did microdermabrasion for months to get rid of the scars. And I couldn’t wait to get regular haircuts. I also got my teeth whitened—we took daily medicine to protect against infection and malaria and stuff like that, but it makes your teeth turn yellow. 

In Kuwait I think we got a shower once every three days. We took a lot of baby wipe baths. Those lists that say, Send this to the troops—baby wipes are always on there. I did try to get my hair washed as often as I could. A lot of women would put baby powder on their hair and brush it out, to absorb the oil and the dirt. I’d just dump canned water over my head if that was the best I could do. If I was up by the Euphrates I would shave in the river if I had a chance, but that was something you didn’t get to do very often.

On War Paint
The idea of makeup as war paint is interesting. Actual “war paint”—camouflage paint—is like a little eyeshadow pack, so in camouflage class or in the field, you’d have a woodland one that has brown, two shades of green, and a black. You’d put the darkest colors on the highlighted parts of your face so they’re subdued, and then you kind of stripe the rest across your face. It’s extremely thick, almost like clay; you wear it and you sweat in it and it’s just there. It’s kind of miserable! But if you look at yourself in the mirror after doing these exercises with the camouflage paint on, it’s hard to look at yourself the same way. There really is something to putting on the uniform or the camouflage, or just the effect you have when you’re holding a loaded weapon. All that contributes to your behavior. So I definitely feel different when I wake up and put my regular makeup on. I approach the world differently, and the world treats me differently. What is it that we’re fighting? That’s hard to say. On some levels, I feel like when I wear makeup I’m buying into the whole thing of what a man tells me looks pretty, or that I’m kind of giving up part of my natural self. But then I justify it by saying, Well, it works, or Well, I’m getting paid to do that right now, with modeling. There is a lot of conflict there. It’s sort of a war on self, sort of a war on womanhood.

On Modeling

There was a tactical gear company filming some commercials at Camp Dodge, where I trained. They were going to have the actors go through an obstacle course I’d been through, doing everything at the grounds that I’d been training at for years. At the audition they said, “We’d like for you to have weapons experience, because we’re gonna shoot some blanks out of M-16s.” I thought, There’s no way I’m not gonna get this part. And then I didn’t. They picked people who were bigger, probably a little gruffer. People who looked the stereotype of what you think a soldier looks like. To be fair, I don’t know all their criteria, so it’s easy for me to say they thought I was too pretty, too feminine. I don’t know that. But I do know that people who were picked for that modeling job didn’t have more experience than I did. Certainly none of them had weapons experience like I did. I think that they just didn’t believe that I fit the bill of looking like a soldier. 

My experience in the military couldn’t have been anything but a benefit to anything I did in the future. Whenever I have a modeling job I always show up on time or early. I always have everything I’m supposed to have—not only do I print it out, but I check it just like a battle checklist. I look at every project like a mission. When I get there, I always have enough of whatever is needed to take care of somebody else who’s not prepared, which would be a squad leader’s position. I’m used to all that, and the people I work for are usually kind of surprised. In the middle of a job, if something happens, I’m okay with cleaning it up, whereas maybe other models or actresses might feel like that isn’t what they’re being paid to do, or that it’s a little below them. But you do so many crappy jobs in the military. You burn human poop! You have a bar for what you’re willing to do, and mine is all the way at the bottom. Things just don’t bother me or gross me out.

My great-grandmother was born in Japan, and my grandmother and my father were born and raised in Kauai. Being part Japanese adds another element to modeling, especially in Iowa, where the population for minorities is so low. There’s a Colombian model and a Laotian model here, so it’s kind of a joke among us when the call goes out for these jobs—which minority are they going to pick? And for scenes with couples, there are people they’ll always pair together and people they never will. Last commercial I did, I was paired with a guy who was just Mexican enough. They’ll pair me with a black man, but they don’t pair a black man and a white woman together—I’ve never seen that for a commercial shoot. I’m half Czech also, but they use me for the Asian slot, and then they try to Asian me up. They’ll tell the makeup artist, Can you make her look just a little more Asian? It’s like, I know we’re filling the Asian slot, but we’ve got to make sure it actually looks like she is. 

All I Could Be: My Story as a Woman Warrior in Iraq, Miyoko Hikiji,
History Publishing Company, 2013; available in Barnes & Noble bookstores and online

On Uniformity

One thing I thought was funny was pajamas. All the guys slept in their brown T-shirt or just their boxer shorts, because it’s not like guys wear pajamas; that wouldn’t be acceptable in that world. But all the women had pajamas! And it was always something funny, like Rainbow Brite or Hello Kitty or something. At that point in the night we just wanted to be girls.

On active duty, if it was a three-day weekend, you could wear civilian clothes to the final formation before being cut loose for the weekend. The guys looked basically the same—they’d wear jeans and a T-shirt, but they wouldn’t really look different. But if I showed up in a dress, they just couldn’t believe it! Women can have a lot more faces than men can have—men can’t change their appearance the same way women can, especially in a situation where they all have short hair. But a woman really does look a lot different in her civilian clothes, and I was one of only a few women in a unit that had just opened its ranks to women when I first joined in ’95. So the guys kind of looked at me like, Is that really the same person? I think it confronted them a bit about who exactly I was.

There was also a conflict around presenting a different face to myself. When I was wearing a uniform I felt a little tougher, like I was blending in better with the guys. I didn’t really look like them, but at least I looked more like them than when I was wearing civilian clothes. And when I’d be in a situation where I’d look nicer, sometimes I wouldn’t even tell people that I was in the army—sometimes I would, if I was in a mood to challenge stereotypes. But the two identities don’t seem to fit well because of the stereotypes we have—tough people are supposed to look gritty and dirty and cut-up with tattoos. And then people who are attractive—well, that’s not supposed to be tough at all. The movie G.I. Jane was a terrible depiction of that. Even though it tried to be a girl power movie, in order for Demi Moore to be one of the guys, she had to look like a guy. She had to shave her head because that was how she could reach that level. I think that’s a real issue in the military—and in our society—about beauty and gender stereotypes, that pretty can’t be tough. It became kind of a side mission of mine. Whenever anyone entered the room and said, “Hey guys,” I’d say, “Wait, what about me?” They’d say, “Oh, you know we mean you too.” Well, no, not really, because I’m not a guy. I wanted to point out that I’m doing the same job, but I’m not really one of you. That’s okay, we’re different—as far as the mission is concerned we’re basically equal, but we do do things differently. It’s not a bad thing! But let’s recognize who is it that the women are, because a lot of times I think we feel women have to be assimilated into manhood as a promotion into soldierhood, because we don’t think about soldiers as being women. We just think about them as being men.

In the beginning I was so eager to assimilate and be accepted. I was okay with losing a bit of identity because I was becoming this new and different and better person—I was going to be a soldier and that was more important to me at the time than preserving some sort of identity as a woman. But by the time it got to the end of my military career I looked at things differently. In Iraq, on laundry day there would be clothes hanging out on lines that people would just string up wherever you could find a space, and some women had Victoria’s Secret underwear and lacy bras. At first I thought, What in the world? I don’t need a wedgie in the middle of a mission. But by the end it made sense to me, because we lost everything while we were there. We lost our privacy; we lost a lot of our dignity. We were asked to do things that people probably shouldn’t be asked to do. So if you can hang onto something that is meaningful to you—whether that represents your femininity or your strength or your individuality, which we lost also—then what difference does it really make? It means something to them. Everybody has to find their thing to help get them through. You know, men don’t have to drop a lot of their stuff when they get deployed, but there’s a lot of pressure on women to change, to fill those soldiers’ shoes. The military uniform takes away women’s body shape; you don’t really have hips anymore, or a bust. It makes you realize how much just being a woman and being seen as a woman, let alone being attractive, plays into your life, because suddenly all that’s kind of gone.

Tizz Wall, Domme, Oakland, California

Interviewing Tizz Wall under her guise as a professional domme was a delight, but she actually has a panoply of guises that would have made for excellent beauty chat. A speaker (she’ll be speaking at the upcoming Catalyst Con on how to ally with sex workers), sex educator (she assisted sexuality author Jamye Waxman with her most recent book), writer (including her Mistress Manners column at Playpen Report), and erstwhile advocate for survivors of domestic violence, Wall’s working lives appear diverse but all surge toward the larger goal of making the world a better place for women of all walks of life. In fact, she’s currently completing her San Francisco Sex Information Sex Education certification. She currently does her domme work independently (though when this interview took place she worked out of a BDSM house). We talked about assimilating to—and literally blinding—the male gaze, the pressures of being a physical worker, and the similarity between BDSM houses and slumber parties. In her own words:

Photo by Lydia Hudgens

On Looking the Part

Some of the women show up for work looking cute, but most of the time everybody shows up in their sweatpants and don’t have makeup on, or they biked there so they’re all sweaty. No one’s showered. They’re in states of comfort, almost like, “Oh, did I manage to put on pants today?” In the morning we have kind of a ritual—there’s opening chores to get things going for the day, and then we’ll sit down at the kitchen table. There are a bunch of mirrors we pull up and put on the table, we’ll have our computers out, listening to music and talking and gabbing about whatever. That’s when we’ll all put on our makeup and do our hair. If we’re struggling and can’t get our hair right it’ll be like, “Can you please do the back?” It’s the female bonding over grooming at its max, I guess. Almost every day that you’re there, it’s part of the process. It’s like having the slumber party makeover every morning. It turns into one of those tip-sharing things that happens at slumber parties: “I got this new concealer, do you want to try it?” or “This color doesn’t work for me but I think it’d look great on you, do you want it?” We’ll do that, cook breakfast, make coffee. You all want to get ready in the morning because you want to have someone available in just a few minutes. If I need to, I can put on full makeup in probably 20 minutes tops, 10 if I’m really hustling. 

I’m very aware of my looks, specifically as a sex worker. Personally, I’ve wondered if I’m attractive enough—I can get very self-conscious. I feel confident in myself, and I did when I first started too, but back then I was like, I’m definitely not the tall, thin, blonde, model-esque type, and obviously you have to be that to be in this line of work, right? So I wasn’t sure I’d get hired. Then, it’s funny—being there, there’s kind of a transformation that happens. So it’s particularly interesting to see the getting-ready process in the morning, because everybody is gorgeous—and the particular house I work in has a wide variety of body types and ethnicities and different types of beauty, it’s really varied—but you see everybody show up in their normal-person outfits, and then you see them do all this and it’s a whole transformation that happens. 

I had no idea what this world was like when I got into it. I remember asking, “How much makeup should I put on?” My boss said, “Whatever is going to make you feel comfortable and make you feel like you’re going to personify this character”—which is an extension of yourself but also still a character. You’re kind of amplifying a certain part of your personality. Whatever will make you feel like that character, that’s how much makeup you need to put on.

On Bodily Labor

A lot of our client base is older straight men, and that means on some level we are catering to the male gaze. We keep that in mind a lot. The people who have tattoos will hide them; I have a septum piercing, and I tuck it in my nose. I have a coworker who has a mohawk, but she has long, pretty hair in the middle; if you’re not paying close attention when she wears it down, it passes for long hair. When I first started, I’d been dyeing my hair blonde. I changed it because when I was at work I couldn’t have big old roots.

You show off your body in a certain way. One of women has lost a ton of weight since she began working, and that has helped her get more work. I know I’ll get more work if I do certain things that are more traditionally feminine. It becomes a business decision. There are definitely sex workers who don’t cater to that. But our particular community, the particular house that I’m in, that’s something the person running it gears toward. That’s what our advertising is geared toward. So that regulates a lot of our choices for our physical presentation.

I’ve actually gained weight since starting this work; when I first started I was doing roller derby, skating 10 to 12 hours week, and I’m not anymore. So now when I’m not getting work, I’ll be like, Oh my god, is this because I’ve gained weight? And I know that’s not it—I mean, I fluctuated just one size, it’s not this massive difference. But this feeling of the possibility that my looks are tied to my income can really hurt my self-esteem. Being financially independent is really important to me. In this work, everybody has slow weeks, and then you’ll get a rush with lots of work; it’s a back-and-forth. But when that happens, I can start to think that I’m actually putting myself at risk by gaining weight. Rationally I know that’s not the case—even if I were a supermodel, there would be an ebb and flow no matter what I do. But when I gain weight it’s more than just, “Oh, I’m having a bad day and feel so ugly and bloated.” Body stuff takes on a different tone. It’s less destructive in my personal relationships and my personal interactions and personal self-esteem, but with this financial angle there’s this feeling of, If I don’t lose this weight, I’m not going to work again. 

On Being Seen—or Not

When I first started I had a lot of self-consciousness about leading a session by myself. I wasn’t yet 100% on my domme persona, so I would use a blindfold. When I was really new I had a three-hour session booked, and I just hadn’t gotten the timing down and I still didn’t really know what I was doing. One of the things we learn to do is negotiate what to say and how to elicit what the clients want to do, and match that up with what our interests are. What I want to do is, you give me your money and leave, because really what I want is to just read my book and still have the money, you know? So it’s not really what you want, but they say that, so you have to be good at asking the right questions and proposing things. So during this three-hour session I kept getting bored and not really knowing what to do and needing time to think, particularly because at that time I was so green—I had no clue what I was doing. I’m very expressive, so if I’m confused or thinking about what I’m going to do next, it’s all over my face. Blindfolding him was great, because then when I was sitting there thinking, What am I going to do next, he’s not really being responsive and I don’t know what to do, I didn’t have to pretend like I wasn’t having those thoughts. Now that I’ve been doing it a while and feel like I’ve hit my stride, that amount of time would be a great session and it would be fun.

Clients will often request that I have them only look at me when I give permission. I mean, that’s very submissive! In a playspace, not making eye contact can represent submission and reverence. It can become about asking for permission, or earning that privilege in some way. If a client is coming to see a domme rather than going to a strip club or going to see an escort, they’re going to a domme for a reason. They’re seeking out that dominance. Saying “Don’t look at me” is a subtle, effective way of establishing dominance, of making it clear that this is my room, this is my space, and you need to respect that.

That applies outside of work in some ways—not to that extreme, of course, but in terms of self-presentation. It makes the argument of how you present yourself in a certain way to control how people look at you in a fair or appropriate way where you have some degree of control over it. Women are so judged by their appearance that making certain choices about how I present myself becomes a way of controlling how people view me.

On Commanding Attention

Being a sex worker has made me recognize power I can have in everyday interactions. Before, I was much more self-conscious about things, even if I was dressed up or whatever. Everybody talks about how confidence is something you can do, but I don’t think I understood that until I started this work. I mean, I’m incredibly clumsy, so I’ve fallen in front of clients. But being a domme is a lot like theater in many ways, where the show just keeps going. You drop something, you trip over your words, you trip over your feet, your garter comes undone—whatever, you play it off. And when you’re a domme, you can play it off like, “That’s not even my fault. Why did you do that?” I’ve had the CD skip and I’ll be like, “Why did you make my CD skip? It wasn’t doing that before you got here.” “I didn’t touch it.” “It’s still your fault!” “I’m sorry.” One of the stories that gets told around the house is that this woman had a client who basically wanted humiliation; he wanted her to punish him. He was very tall, and she was a shorter woman. So the minute they got into the room she said, “How dare you be taller than me?! Get on your knees.”

It’s amazing what can happen once you stop having the expected male-female interaction, since women are so socialized to be nice and really cater to men—even if you’re a staunch feminist, even if you’re really mouthy, like myself, before this job. I still have some of that tendency to apologize profusely if something goes wrong. I’m gonna be like, “I’m so sorry, I messed it up, I’m so sorry.” But I think having this job made me really realize the power I can have over a situation. I mean, personal accountability is important, and you should apologize when you mess up. It’s a matter of not overdoing it, not feeling really bad about it. Something went wrong? It’s fine, we’re moving on. Having that sort of presentation has a lot of power.

Doing the “I’m pretty but I have no brains” thing is not my goal. I don’t present that way, even as a sex worker when I’m trying to appeal to that male attraction, even though the presentation is definitely vampy and really conventionally feminine. And we definitely have clients who come in and think we must be stupid. My goal is that my presentation will command your attention—but now that I’ve got your attention I’m going to use all the other things in my arsenal. My brain, my sense of humor, being okay with myself and with what happens in that situation, communication skills. That definitely crossed over into dating: I’m going to use a certain presentation, and it will command your attention, but the other things are what’s going to hold it together.

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Lexie Kite, Ph.D. Communications Student and Co-Editor of Beauty Redefined, Salt Lake City

The minute I found Beauty Redefined, I knew I’d found a site to take notice of. Giving active points about media literacy, cultural messages aimed toward women, body image, and beauty ideals, every post on Beauty Redefined went beyond merely stating, Hey, folks, there’s a problem here, instead presenting airtight breakdowns of scripts we might take for granted. More important, the site gives active points for readers on how to begin to reject the messages we’re surrounded with. The Beauty Redefined team also gives one-hour visual presentations to arm viewers with tools and countermessages about harmful media ideals, beauty, and health.

When I learned that the incisive, dedicated, laser-sharp minds behind Beauty Redefined were not only two communication Ph.D. candidates at the University of Utah but also identical twins—well, how could I not want to interview them? Today we have Lexie Kite, whose dissertation focuses on women and self-objectification. (Read the interview with Lindsay, the other half of Beauty Redefined, here.) We talked about internalizing the male gaze, twins as mirrors, and prime-time pornography. In her own words:

Photo by Matt Clayton Photography

On Self-Objectification 

When you grow up in a media-oriented world, like we all have, you grow up with the male gaze: the look of the camera, the look of the spectator viewing the object of the gaze on film. It’s the way the camera pans up and down these bodies, the way the dialogue revolves around that woman. It doesn’t happen with men—it happens with women, for the most part. That has become so normalized that the male gaze is now internalized by women. It’s not even something we question. So what’s happened is that now it’s desirable to not only become the object of the gaze—I mean, we’ve been talking forever about this idea of objectification—but also to be the subject too. To be the one who gazes and the one being gazed upon at the same time. I think it really comes down to the fact that when we see this many images of women’s bodies signifying sex and power, we are cut down to our bodies—and somehow we begin to believe that’s true. Self-objectification is just the natural next step—the most harmful natural next step. When we are consumers of women, we are consumers of ourselves.

One of the areas where I see self-objectification playing out—and one that I think is so frustrating—is Victoria’s Secret. Five billion dollars a year! It’s powerful. I got interested in the industry of Victoria’s Secret because I was a shopper there; the semi-annual sale was very appealing. But then I’d get those catalogues in my mailbox, and I started seeing images that were pretty jarring. Then I caught wind of the fashion show they have twice a year on CBS, so I looked into how many people are viewing this show, how popular and powerful Victoria’s Secret really is. I found one other scholar who has really talked about this, and the stuff she said about Victoria’s Secret in her own historical and critical analysis was that those images were women’s pornography. Images of women, marketed to women, packaged and sold. It comes right into your home. It’s kind of like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, in that it’s the most popular, credible sports magazine, and then once a year we get this other thing that is packaged in this way and sits on your coffee table. So you think it’s safe, but it might not be as safe as we think. In terms of Victoria’s Secret, I see that playing out, this idea that it’s just lingerie, but you’re really getting something else.

The Victoria’s Secret mission statement has said that these images are about women feeling good about themselves. They are not for men to look at. But if you look at the images, it couldn’t be anything more than what the male gaze is. It’s as graphic as anything you would see in soft-core porn—it’s just women pulling at their underwear or being naked. They can be completely naked some of the time and they are wearing thongs that say “All-Night Show.” But Victoria’s Secret says this is not for men to look at, this is for you to feel good—and we believe that. Maybe we don’t even think of it as a contradiction, like this is for us to feel good about ourselves, but that says self-objectification to me. To me self-objectification is the idea of taking some beauty thing—let’s say breast implants—and saying, “This isn’t for men—this is for me to feel good about myself.” I see that as the literal embodiment of self-objectification, internalizing that male gaze so much that you can’t even break apart the fact that being gazed upon is your greatest desire. You’ve internalized that male gaze, so that’s how you feel good about yourself. It’s crazy stuff. 

On Pain 

I was very confident in my abilities in high school—I was class president every year, was nominated for homecoming queen, I was always running assemblies. I was confident in what I could do and what I wanted to say. But somehow I lived this contradiction: I could do a lot, but for some reason I thought I couldn’t be everything that I was supposed to be, and couldn’t look good doing it. That was internalizing the male gaze, right there: I learned that it was all about how I looked and not about what I could do. So I was confident in who I was as a person; it really did just come down to the looks thing. All those messages that I heard from the media were telling me that if I wasn’t hot enough, I wasn’t good enough. And if I wasn’t going to get to that place of feeling like I really was good enough, nobody can. It’s unattainable, and I don’t think I really knew that. You’re never going to be pretty enough. You’re never going to be skinny enough. Because the whole point is that these messages are telling you that you need to be someone you’re not. It creates a void. I didn’t even know that I had that void, not until I took a class on media criticism my freshman year of college. We were looking into pop culture and how powerful those industries are and what kind of messages they are putting out. I felt my heart beat more rapidly because I was hearing stuff that resonated with what I’d come to think about myself in really harmful ways. For the first time I started being able to critically think about the messages I’d heard. They didn’t necessarily pertain to my reality—but I wanted them to so badly.

I’m a body image activist and I’m so passionate about this stuff, but it’s because of the pain I’ve felt. I know that pain brings progress. I can’t do this work without having been privy to intimately knowing the reason it resonates with people. They feel this pain too. I internalized this gaze, and I didn’t know how to articulate that—maybe that’s just because it’s so normal and so lived. It’s how most of us live our lives. But our research has helped me profoundly. I had been walking through life picturing myself from an outsider’s perspective. I’d taken less time to enjoy what was around me, yet it looks like I’m enjoying what’s around me. That division is so harmful. 

On Being a Twin 

Most of us view ourselves from an outsider’s gaze. But I don’t even really know how to think about that, because—maybe it’s the same thing as viewing myself from an outsider’s gaze, but in ways I view myself as being like Lindsay. Lindsay and I are especially hyperaware of competition. We’re such similar people—you know, identical DNA, as similar as you get!—and people put us in competition against each other, in conscious and unconscious ways. In terms of our looks—in terms of everything else too—but it definitely made me aware of my own features and my own looks, because I feel like Lindsay is a reflection of me to the world. I know she feels the same. I feel like I want Lindsay to represent me well. Because Lindsay could easily be me to people; we get called by the wrong name still, even in our own program at school. So I want her to be a good reflection of me. And yeah, that part of me is really aware.

Whenever I’d picture my face, I never thought Lindsay and I looked the same. I know the intricacies of my own face and what makes me different from her. Plus, being twins, people point out that stuff like crazy. So Lindsay looks different to me, but I get how people know we’re twins, especially when I see pictures of us. With the body it’s different. When we look at ourselves in the mirror we’re kind of seeing this two-dimensional image of our bodies; we’ve never getting the full feel. It’s why when you see a video of yourself it can be intriguing—you want to know what you look like from all those angles. So I can see Lindsay’s body—I can see her from every angle and it’s normal. She’s right there in front of me, in every dimension. It’s sort of a mediation of my mirror image and myself, and I can’t get that body perspective any other way. And then of course we have identical DNA, and people tell us we look so much alike—so even though I think our faces look different, I can internalize her body as my own. Sometimes I’ve pictured my body how Lindsay’s is; my body image becomes what Lindsay looks like. When her body changes, it can actually change my own image of my body, because she looks how I picture myself. And having someone else sort of be your body image can be a struggle.

My perception of my body image doesn’t have to do with size necessarily. Despite compliments I might get from people, it’s really about what I’m saying to myself. Body image is an internal thing. Lindsay has been able to brush off the negative messages better than I have, despite our similar appearances. To hear Lindsay value herself and not engage in fat talk, and just really refuse to be preoccupied with these notions about our bodies—it’s really helped me, just seeing her be positive. We don’t talk a lot about our bodies to each other—there isn’t a lot of that “Oh my gosh I feel so gross,” talk, and we don’t even do a lot of building each other up, because we’re such a unit that it feels weird. Like, I would never say, “Linds, you look so good!” I mean, occasionally, but that’s just not my first thing. I’m not going to just go to her and talk about her appearance. I don’t even know how to explain that because I’ve never known it any other way. Twins are weird!

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Lindsay Kite, Ph.D. Communications Student and Co-Editor of Beauty Redefined, Salt Lake City

The minute I found Beauty Redefined, I knew I’d found a site to take notice of. Giving active points about media literacy, cultural messages aimed toward women, body image, and beauty ideals, every post on Beauty Redefined went beyond merely stating, Hey, folks, there’s a problem here, instead presenting airtight breakdowns of scripts we might take for granted. More important, the site gives active points for readers on how to begin to reject the messages we’re surrounded with. The Beauty Redefined team also gives one-hour visual presentations to arm viewers with tools and countermessages about harmful media ideals, beauty, and health. 

When I learned that the incisive, dedicated, laser-sharp minds behind Beauty Redefined were not only two communication Ph.D. candidates at the University of Utah but also identical twins—well, how could I not want to interview them? Today we have Lindsay Kite, whose dissertation focuses on physical health and the ways media distorts our perceptions of what health and fitness entail—and ways to help people of all ages recognize and reject those harmful messages. (Check back tomorrow for an interview with Lexie, the other half of Beauty Redefined.) We talked about the limitations of academia in applied work, laboring to change beauty ideals as God’s work, and the number-one question she’s asked about being a twin. In her own words:

Photo by Matt Clayton Photography

On Rapid-Heartbeat Moments 

My very first semester of college, I was sitting in a journalism and media criticism class. At that time I didn’t really identify as a feminist or care about media messages. My professor criticized gender and violence and how those messages are perpetuated through the media, and how that affects our lives. When my professor was talking about advertising, particularly in women’s magazines, my heart started racing. I just felt it had affected me so much without me realizing it. It was a happy feeling. It wasn’t a feeling of fear or of, Wow, I’ve been so controlled by this. That was part of it, but I think I recognized there were strategies we could use to combat this. There are real solutions. So from there I was very much a feminist. I’d never quite known that; my mom always was but she didn’t know it either. We didn’t really have the name for it. 

I still take in plenty of media, but to be able to recognize why the women in TV shows and movies look the way they do is liberating in itself, because you have a critical view and recognize that it’s not real, that it’s meant to make me feel a particular way and I don’t have to feel that way if I don’t want to. That’s where the rapid-heartbeat moment came from, this feeling of: Yes, this has affected me, but I don’t have to be affected by it anymore. I don’t have to be brainwashed to believe that this is normal and natural and beauty has always looked this way and men would only want women who looked this way. My heart continues to beat rapidly every time I read books like The Beauty Myth and read scholarly articles about media criticism and feminist work that is trying to counteract these ideals. All these things make my heart beat just as fast and make me feel extremely excited about work that’s happening to liberate women from these restrictive cultural ideals. I love it.


On Accentuating the Positive 

It’s a lot easier to criticize things than it is to find concrete actions we can take. It’s easier to get research on how women are affected by certain things—and these are sensational topics. The media likes to focus on dangerous things, the scary big shocking things we hear about women and their bodies and self-esteem and all that. But it’s harder to help people than it is to take apart media, or to take apart the way women feel about themselves. That stuff is easy to document. It’s harder to break out a strategy to combat those feelings and document the way women feel afterward. If people feel bad about themselves, it’s this normative discontent where basically every woman is unhappy with her body and that’s something we all share, so it’s normal and taken for granted. We need to destabilize that. We need to recognize that this feeling isn’t natural. There are ways to do that; Lexie and I created our one-hour visual presentation for our masters project, showing the ridiculousness of beauty ideals and how money is behind all of it. We need to prove the effectiveness of that, but it’s hard. You try to get approval through review boards at colleges and universities, and that’s mandated by the whole academic system. It’s a process that takes time. So I’m working on how to actually measure the effects of our presentation. It’s hard, but it makes me so happy to see how it is used by other people, for them to rethink the way they think about appearance.


On Being a Twin 

Our entire lives, people have been trying to find differences to tell us apart by appearance. So we’ve been picked apart our entire lives by strangers—we’ve received some comments that people don’t recognize are totally insulting to one of us. We’ve gotten really ridiculous comments, like, “You’re the twin who does her hair” or “You’re the twin with straight teeth,” things like that. People think they’re complimenting one of us, but really it means the other one doesn’t have that particular positive attribute. Being compared to your twin sister your whole life can make you a competitive person from day one. It’s led both of us to be like, I don’t want to be the one who gets all the comments from strangers. It’s not fun to be the twin who doesn’t do her hair. 

It’s funny how much I get the exact same twin questions over and over again. The number-one question I get is: When one of you goes on a blind date do you switch in the middle of it? All the time people ask that! I swear they got that from some movie, either the Sweet Valley High kids or Mary Kate and Ashley or even Tia and Tamera. That’s where people are forming their questions for us, based on media. The whole twin comparison thing has really contributed to our ideas about appearance and its importance, and how free people feel about commenting on other people’s appearance. 

I just noticed this recently: I don’t necessarily have to look in the mirror to see certain things about myself. I’ll see it in Lexie and just assume I look the same way. I’ll see certain characteristics and think, I never noticed that about myself—but I’m not looking at myself, I’m looking at my sister. Looking at another face that looks so similar to mine can affect how I would be objective about what I look like. Sometimes I see things on Lexie where she has made a complaint about what she looks like, and I recognize that I look the same way or have that same characteristic, and I’m able to stop and think, Well, I don’t feel that way about it, so there’s no reason that she should. We can keep each other in check and not take certain feelings about features or appearance for granted. 

I find myself getting offended when she says something rude about herself. Like, if she talks about how she feels so fat, I might feel insulted by that, particularly if at the time I know for a fact she weighs less than me. And I should also turn that the other way around: I should feel more of a responsibility to Lexie to not put myself down. Maybe subconsciously I have—I don’t often say very negative things about myself, just because I’ve found that I feel better about myself when I don’t say mean things out loud.


On Keeping the Faith 

Lexie and I are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and the church is very against pornography. We view that as something degrading that takes a sacred act between two people who are hopefully in love and hopefully married and causes the people in it to become objectified, dehumanized. So that’s framing our perspective. When we watch TV shows and movies that are just daytime TV—things that are rated PG, PG-13—and we see things that reflect pornography, that’s something that should be eye-catching, but it’s become normal. We see this normalized pornography all the time, and we’ve become immune to it. We’re numb to seeing women half-naked, or almost completely naked bodies at every turn; it’s not something that’s a big deal. Most of the time the men near the women are fully clothed, and the camera isn’t panning up and down their bodies, zooming in on their parts, and other characters are not necessarily looking at them or commenting on their appearance. If we look at pornography in its strict definition as imagery that is engineered to cause arousal in people, then all of these images of women who are being objectified and stripped for no reason—that’s exactly what they are. We want to help people realize what pornography is—not something that’s acceptable for network TV during the daytime or the Victoria’s Secret runway shows that are a huge moneymaker for a family station like CBS during prime time. It’s not just present on dark corners of the Internet; it’s not something you have to seek out. We have to recognize that in order to escape the harmful consequences it can have on our self-perception and how we view other people. 

My faith has been the driving force behind everything I do related to this work. It’s something that fits in perfectly with my religion. I was actually pretty shocked to figure that out. I thought recognizing gender roles and ways women are held back but men aren’t was going to challenge my faith, but it actually strengthened it. In my religion, we view people as more than just what we are on the surface, more than just bodies. We view people as being able to go on and live forever and have eternal life, not in our own bodies but in a more perfected state. So when we’re so focused in this life on what our bodies look like, that’s actually a huge waste of time and holds people back in every possible way. Doing service for others is a big part of living a Christ-like life, and when we are so focused on what we look like, that’s actually something pretty selfish—and that’s not helping people who really need help in more ways than we need to fix our hair or do these short-lived things that aren’t really making anyone all that happy. My faith has led me to honestly believe that I can do something to help other women feel better about themselves, so they can then go on and focus on more important things than their looks. If we can get women to accept themselves—and not necessarily just for what life they’re currently living or whatever state they’re in—well, women who feel okay about themselves are much happier and more productive, and they lead more successful lives in any way you want to define it. Beauty obsession stops all of that. 

I believe I’ve been led to this work by God, and as cheesy as that sounds, I really do believe that through his help I’m able to reach other women who are working for liberation from these painful circumstances. Every time I see somebody relay a positive experience of thinking of herself as more than just parts, as a whole person, I get that rapid heartbeat moment. And I think for women who can access that, it’s the happiest form of spiritual experience. As many times as I can help that happen, I will do it.

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Kjerstin Gruys, Ph.D. sociology student, Bay Area

When I initially met Kjerstin Gruys online, my first thought was: There’s another one! Several weeks before I did my own month without mirrors, Kjerstin had launched a project going a full year without them—the same year in which she was getting married, incidentally. (No, she didn’t peek on her wedding day.) A Ph.D. candidate in sociology, Kjerstin has focused much of her academic work on body image and eating disorders. But her years in the fashion industry as a merchandiser for Abercrombie & Fitch, and then GAP Corporate, were hardly an aside: Her dissertation on the shifting standards of clothing sizes merges her passions of body image, cultural body imperatives, and fashion. The best way to get to know Kjerstin’s work is following her blog, Mirror Mirror Off the Wall—and reading her upcoming book chronicling her yearlong adventure, slated to be published by Penguin in 2013. But she also took the time to share some candid thoughts with readers of The Beheld. We talked about the creative self, the role of trust in body image, and what singing alone in the car has to do with mirrors. In her own words: 

On Scales vs. Mirrors
I first really became conscious of body image and women’s issues in late high school to early college. I had anorexia, and in going through the physical and emotional elements of treatment, I had to carve out an understanding of how our culture kind of shaped my experience. Having an eating disorder, you’re always aware of your own body image, but it’s not until you’re recovering that you’re really forced to take a step back and realize that you have to question a lot of assumptions.

In recovery I had to gain weight and I couldn’t get on the scale, couldn’t know the number; if I got on the scale I’d have to check in with my physician or whatever. But I just had to trust the process. I had to trust that I really didn’t feel comfortable with the numbers going up, and I had to trust that the process of recovery was at some point going to get me comfortable with a larger number. In terms of recovery there’s a lot of self-monitoring and constantly asking myself whether my behavior is in line with my values or with my disease. And luckily the past four or five years the values have won out over the obsession.

So when I started this project I had to consciously think: How am I going to do this in a way that I know is healthy? I didn’t want it to make me feel more symptomatic and paranoid, so I actually had to make the decision to get back on the scale more frequently to make sure that my paranoia that I’m constantly gaining weight has a logical answer. I’ve had to get back on the scale, and I felt kind of ambivalent about that. But now I’m very pleased because it’s not worse—it’s better. In one sense the project has made me say, You know what, good enough is good enough. And that is actually a shift of my values. I’m still very perfectionistic at times, so there’s been a step back from perfection, which is great. But there’s also a sense of trying to find something else to quiet my questioning mind that’s scared about not knowing what I look like in the mirror. It’s possible that I still have some dysmorphia about what my body is, and avoiding mirrors sometimes allows my imagination to run wild. And getting back on the scale has helped me not be dysmorphic about that. Getting on the scale most days of the week keeps me more in tune with what’s going on with my body, which is important if you have a history of ignoring your body!


On Vanity and Pride
At some point I looked up the definition of vanity. It isn’t caring what you look like; it’s caring too much about one part of yourself. The definition actually had “too much” in there, which obviously is subjective. An outsider can decide that somebody is vain based on their own ideas, but the person herself might not actually feel that way. There’s no one way to figure out what is too much, although I think that people who are particularly vain are often not very fun to be around—vanity causes one to be very self-absorbed. Not intentionally, but that’s what vanity is. Vanity can be totally destructive to intimate relationships.

I can say without apology that an eating disorder is one of the most vain things you can experience. I’m in no way saying it’s a choice. But an eating disorder totally warps your whole sense of priorities, even in people who hide it very well. I don’t think someone can feel fully recovered if they’re only eating properly. Behaviors can change, but if there’s this thing—like weight or food—that is the most critically important thing for them to monitor in their lives, that’s where vanity comes in.

But vanity itself should be distinguished from pride. Having pride in your appearance is a wonderful thing. I wish all women were “vain” in that sense—in taking pride in their looks and enjoying what they see in the mirror—without that subjective idea of putting your appearance higher on your priority list than spending time with your loved ones or being flexible with your routines, whether that’s eating different foods, or trying a different look with your makeup or whatever. I have friends who won’t go camping because they’ll feel so humiliated wondering what they look like without makeup and mirrors. And I myself have a little mini mirror and cosmetics that I usually take with me camping, so I can try to look like I’m not wearing any makeup when I really am. I guess you could say that my no-mirrors project isn’t an attack on vanity itself. But it’s definitely an attack on mine.

I’m a little worried that I’ll be disappointed in what I see when I look in the mirror again. [Note: March 24 will be Kjerstin’s unveiling—if you’re in the Bay Area, check out the “First Look” party she’s throwing with media literacy group About-Face to celebrate body positivity.] I was like, What if I develop this really positive sense of what I look like, and it’s not actually what I see when in look in the mirror for the first time? So I’m scared about that—that would be a little bit sad and scary to go without for a whole year and finally look in the mirror and be like, Oh, I liked myself better before I was looking in the mirror again. But my hope is that I will kind of be in a good place when that happens and even if I look in the mirror and I’m like, “Eh, it’s not really what I expected or wanted,” I’ll at the very least feel like it isn't the most important thing in my life. That, and I know I’ll be excited to finally experiment with makeup again, and I’ll certainly do some shopping for new clothes. No amount of research or activism will ever dampen my enthusiasm for a shopping trip!


On Existentialism
Sometimes there’s almost a sense of numbness when I’m all by myself, without the mirror. It’s this sense of: Who am I, what am I? What is this experience? I’m thinking, I’m conscious, I can see my hands and feet, I’m typing on the computer, I’m petting the cat—whatever it is. But what am I? I can’t look in the mirror to see what I am. It’s made me realize that I used to use my reflection as a form of companionship and validation. So having moments when I think of these questions have been very bizarre.

One solution for those times (of feeling existential) has been to use something sensory, like scent, to signal one of my five senses to really experience the world instead of just being there. That’s helped me feel a little bit less like somehow I don’t exist. I’ll talk to myself, I’ll sing along with Pandora. I’m someone who doesn’t mind being alone a lot, and I really love driving in the car, listening to music on the radio, and singing at the top of my lungs. And I’m like: Okay, before I started being conscious of not looking in the mirror, being in the car and singing by myself never felt like an existential crisis. So I tried to kind of bring some of those things back, whether it’s feeling my toes on the carpet or smelling perfume or tasting chocolate. It’s like: Okay, I exist. I’m experiencing something sensual and I have an opinion about it. I’m not just a computer giving input and giving output. It’s weird realizing that simply seeing my reflection in the mirror was, in some ways, very grounding.

At one point I had a head cold, and I had no sense of smell. It was depressing. I’d figured out how to put on makeup without looking at myself, but being able to smell the product had actually been pleasurable for me, and not being able to see myself or smell the products left me feeling numb. I get a lot of pleasure about using scented products in the shower; if anything I found that since giving up mirrors I’ve become a bit more snobby about wanting to use more luxurious products, even though I try to avoid spending too much money.


On Trust and Self-Expression
So much of my issues with body image and not being a certain weight or certain size had to do with refusing to believe anyone who loved me when they’d say I was beautiful. I distrusted everyone, and I had my own sense of standards and disappointments for approval. It’s like if someone said, “I think you’re beautiful,” I’d be like, “Well, you’re either lying to me or you have bad taste.” That’s such a selfish side of yourself, and it’s interesting to see how difficult it is to give that up. I think most women struggle with this a bit. We’re supposed to be modest and not boastful, especially about looks—heaven forbid you say that you have a bangin’ bod! Normal women, if you compliment them, it’s like, “Oh, this old thing?” or “Well, maybe I look nice today but I’ve gained weight lately” or stuff like that. But with the mirror project I’ve really had to trust people, and myself. You start realizing that maybe this vision you have in your head about what you “really” look like—this idea of, “Oh, you might love me and think I’m beautiful, but really I’m not”—is faulty. Giving up the mirror is giving up the idea that your own image of yourself is the only image that’s real or even meaningful.

It makes you think about what purpose your appearance really has. If my relationships are healthy and the people around me are treating me well and telling me that I look good enough for them to love me, and respect me, then why is my own critical vision of my appearance so important? I’m still struggling with that question. I do think it’s important to have a sense of self, but I’m starting to see my sense of self as being more about self-expression and creativity and less of a status thing, or about being too much of this or not enough of that. And in a way it’s a little bit constrained right now because of not being able to look in the mirror—I mean, right around the time in my life when I had started to think that my sense of self was an expression of my own creativity and sense of fashion and play, I’m not as able to do these things. But it’s something I’m looking forward to enjoying again when the year is over. It’s such a great thing to miss! It’s totally different from being paranoid that I don’t look good enough; it’s that I miss something expressive and creative, and I know that this is a really great step in the right direction for me.

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Leah Smith, Public Policy Ph.D Student, Lubbock, TX

The first time Leah Smith saw a little person, she turned to her mother and said, “So that’s what I’m going to look like when I’m an adult?” Her mother said, “Yeah,” to which Smith replied, “I think that’s okay.” Now vice president of public relations for Little People of America, a support group and information center for people of short stature, Smith works to let others know what she intuited in that moment. (Smith is speaking here on her own behalf, not in her public relations role with LPA.) She’s also working toward her Ph.D. in public policy, with a focus on disability policy, including discrimination and employment policy for people with disabilities. Her first love, however, was fashion design, in which she earned an associate degree. We talked about redefining fashion to include little people, the division between feeling beautiful and receiving romantic attention, and pretending to be Julia Roberts. In her own words:

On Pride
I know that people are looking at me all the time, and you have to find a way to process that somehow. When I was 7, I kind of pretended that I was Julia Roberts. I mean, obviously I don’t do this now, but as a kid I’d read or heard somewhere that every time she would go out, people would stop and stare because she was so pretty. And I was like, “That’s what I face every day, so it must be because I’m pretty.” In my little 7-year-old mind that’s how I processed it. That kind of shaped who I am, and I started dressing to fit the part. I’m not saying I’m any Julia Roberts; it’s just that I wanted to dress in cute or nice-looking clothes, so when people do stare I can be like, Oh, they’re looking because they like my outfit, or they think I’m cute, or whatever. People are going to stare either way, so you’ve got to bring some sort of confidence to it.

Dressing well has been huge in my life. The comments and the stares could have been really easy for me to internalize if I weren’t careful. I feel like my clothes are a way of putting up a shield against that, of saying to the world that the things people might believe about LPs aren't true. That's not who I believe I am—this is who I am. There’s a level of pride in being able to wear a cute outfit, wear my hair cute. It says that I’m proud of this body, and that it’s not something I want to hide or cover up. Because I am proud of my body—I’m not ashamed of it in any way, and I don’t want that to ever be something I portray with how I present myself.

My style is pretty feminine—dresses, cute sandals. There are very few days when I don’t dress up, and people joke that my hair is my biggest priority in my life, which obviously isn’t true, but I do pay a lot of attention to it. I’ve wondered if I would give my appearance as much thought if I were average-sized, or if it’s just a part of who I am. Sometimes I have to remind myself, “Leah, it’s okay if you don’t fix your hair every single day.” I consciously stopped styling my hair on Sundays—I still shower and whatever, but I just don’t fix my hair, to remind myself that I mean more to people than just what I look like. If you’re going to feel beautiful you’ve got to feel beautiful when you’re naked too. It can’t just be all about your clothes or what your hair looks like; it has to start from somewhere else.

On Speed Dating
It can be hard for LP women to navigate male attention. LPA has an annual convention, so you go from having never been hit on by a guy, and then you go to convention and all of a sudden all these guys are thinking you’re really attractive. How do you figure that out? What do you do with that attention once you have it? I almost feel like it’s a bit delayed for us, whereas most people kind of grow up learning those things. As soon as the girls are about 16, suddenly it’s like, “Whoa, these guys think I’m hot—what do I do?” As a part of the leadership at conference, you get to see the ins and outs of what’s going on, and one year there was a guy who was hitting on this girl, and she didn’t really do anything to stop it. He continued and continued, and then all of a sudden she was like, “Wait, I’m not comfortable at all,” and he was like, “Well, you never said no.” She said, “Well, yeah, because I liked it!” Everyone has to learn to deal with those situations, but it happens in a concentrated way at conference. You go from holding hands for the first time to kissing within a week. She had to learn: Okay, I can like this but still have limits here. For me, watching it was like, Oh, man! It was like seeing my own teenhood.

Feeling beautiful and getting male attention were two very separate events for me. Male attention was a once-a-year expedition for me, whereas looking my best was an everyday thing. At convention I’d get dressed up and be thinking about meeting a dude, but that was more of a mind-set shift; I was already dressing in clothes I thought were cute. I started paying attention to my clothes and fixing my hair around seventh grade, so about the same time as most girls, but dating didn’t factor into it like it might have for someone else. Dressing up was just who I was, and it had nothing to do with guys. Maybe if I hadn’t done that and had started being active dating-wise later, the two would have become linked—I don’t know.

There’s this epiphany for some women when they come into LPA, like: “Oh! There’s LP guys who like this body.” There are some women you talk to who have repeatedly been given the message that they are or should be asexual. You hear, “I can’t imagine a guy ever wanting to be with me,” or “I’ve been told my whole life that I’m not what guys want—I don’t have long legs, and an average-size guy would never want to date me.” But then on the flip side of that there are times that LPs have been hypersexualized and some women who take that to its extreme: There are groups of people who have a fetish with little people, specifically LP women. You see some LP women who have internalized this idea and believe that they should take this idea as their role. Sexuality can be very tough for someone who has seen these two extremes. On the one hand, we should be asexual, and on the other hand we are a fetish object. There’s a fine middle line somewhere in there.

On Being Little and Badass
Clothes are such a hard thing for LPs, because so often you have to buy a pair of jeans for $100, and then you have to go get them altered for $150, so that really limits your ability to buy a number of outfits. You’re spending twice as much on one item rather than getting two or three items. I actually do all my own alterations. With achondroplasia, the type of dwarfism I have, our torso is basically the same as an average-size person’s, so I’ll buy clothes that fit my butt and breasts and just alter the arms and legs. For most LPs, I’d say it’s about half and half—some do their own sewing, and the rest get it altered.

I went to fashion design school in Dallas. I really wanted to create a line that allowed LP women to express their inner beauty. At the time a lot of my friends in LPA were dealing with the same thing I was: We were young adults in the world, and asking ourselves what it meant to not be at home anymore, protected by our parents? How do we be adults and be little at the same time? So I started trying to design clothes that expressed the feelings I wanted to express at the time. If I felt badass, I would try to create a badass outfit. Even if nothing about the outfit shouted badass, if I could associate that feeling with the outfit, that’s what mattered—that’s kind of where I was going with my designs.

Going to fashion design school was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I was studying fashion design and trying to redefine fashion at the same time, and it really made some people uncomfortable within the school. I experienced a lot of discrimination there that I’d never experienced before. At the time I thought it was because I was little, but looking back I don’t know if it had anything to do with me being little so much as it was I was questioning the paradigm.

For example, we had to create our own line for our final project and do a whole business plan. I wrote that my goal was having a fashion line that would help LPs feel beautiful in their own bodies. My teacher marked that out and wrote on my project that LPs were not beautiful, that they’re not tall, that they don’t have long legs and this is an impossible thing for you to be trying to pursue or to try to make them feel. I was furious. This was after other things had happened—for example, I’d asked for a stool because some of the tables we worked on were really high. They were like, “Well, I guess we have to offer it, but we can’t promise it will be here every day. It’s not our fault if someone steals it.” I was like, “It’s my stool, I’m here all the time, everyone knows I use it, and I can’t imagine why someone would steal a stool.” And every single day it was gone. The other students were the ones who suggested I have a stool to begin with, and I couldn’t imagine any of them would be that vicious. It was that kind of thing that kept going and going, and that comment on my final project broke the camel’s back, I guess. That’s when I started going into policy and the legal side of it. This is a much bigger problem than what we’re wearing, or even what we can legislate. This is a societal problem, that women who are short-statured aren’t seen as beautiful. That’s what we’re up against. When you’re 22 and you’re out to change the world, nobody tells you the world is not an easy place to change. I mean, I’m still out to change the world. Maybe I’m just a bit more realistic with the ways that’s going to get done.