The Scent(s) of a Woman

Most of my explorations here have been on the visual side of beauty: how the way we look and the way we choose to present ourselves shapes—and is shaped by—cultural forces, as well as who we believe ourselves to be. The other senses, I've neglected. Reading the following essay by Mary Mann has made me want to reconsider this accidental stance. Where I decorated my portal to womanhood with makeup, Mann marked hers with fragrance, exercising the most private of senses. Not that the elusive nature of perfume makes it any less quarrelsome from a by-the-book feminist approach, as you'll see. 

Mann's essays and criticism have appeared in The Believer, Salon, The Hairpin, The Rumpus, Bookslut and Ploughshares online, among others. She's associate editor of the forthcoming book Women in Clothes. You can follow her on Tumblr and Twitter.

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"Perfume seemed part and parcel of womanhood—its nature, invisible but sweet, sums up the expectations for women’s behavior through most of history—but the existence of cologne and aftershave blur gender lines. It isn’t just women who want to smell good. It’s people."

At noon on a hot August Wednesday, the Sephora on 34th Street is the most soothing store on the block. It’s as packed with lunchtime shoppers and tourists as the nearby Foot Locker and H&M, but the women’s faces in Sephora—and it’s almost uniformly women—have a serene cast that’s rare in Manhattan on a weekday. Fingers trail over tubes of color, eyes close trustingly as a carefully made-up employee bends over a customer’s face with a mascara applicator; toner is stroked over skin and perfume is spritzed on wrists. Feminine murmurs and coos wash through the room. It’s a sensory paradise, everything promising beauty, beauty, beauty.

“Can I help you with something?” the black-clad sales associate asks. He is a man, actually, young and acne-scarred with sculpted hair that gives off a cedar scent.

“Uh, yeah,” I respond, slow on the uptake—I hadn’t expected such slack-lidded serenity in midtown—and momentarily at a loss. But my mission has been long in the making and its purpose comes back to me quickly. His pungent hair is a good reminder.

“Where are your perfumes?”

*

An Egyptian named Tapputi was the first perfumer, circa 200 BC, and her blend was probably something powerful, as royals used it in lieu of baths. This was how I once thought of perfume: strictly for the wealthy, and outdated to boot—who needs perfume in the era of hot showers and shampoo?

“Who needs it?” was my approach to all the trappings of womanhood: lipstick felt clownish and heels made me wobble so I smiled palely and sped along in flats, cutting my own hair with the help of a YouTube video. Perfume was too fussy to even contemplate. This was all well and good for a few years after college—I had a Kerouac-wannabe boyfriend and a series of outdoor jobs—but by my mid-twenties, in the company of increasingly professional peers and a kinder, more adult, boyfriend, I started to feel…young.

And not in a good way. Not in an “I never get carded” kind of way. What I felt was more akin to middle school angst, when everyone around me got breasts and I remained boyish and boobless. Breasts eventually arrived, but the less innate transition from teen to grown woman was more elusive.

It wasn’t necessarily the lack of lipstick or perfume. Plenty of women seem self-assured without these things. But those women project the sense that they easily could wear them. For them, it’s a choice; for me, it wasn’t even an option. A bright smear of lipstick would have seemed artificial, gauche even. My boyfriend told me not to worry about it—“you’re great as you are”—but that didn’t solve the problem: I was inept at womanhood but it seemed shallow and unfeminist to care, so I didn’t do anything about it. I was paralyzed. Forever young. 

“The problem with a beautiful woman is that she makes everyone around her feel hopelessly masculine,” wrote Lorrie Moore. “You are praying for your breasts to grow, your hair to perk up.” It wasn’t beauty, but others’ easy womanhood—the unthinking swipe of lipstick, the easy gait in heels—that exposed my ungainliness.

It was as if everyone else had been to a womanhood seminar without me.

I wish there was a womanhood seminar, actually. Something mandatory and solemn, a rite of passage that would firmly delineate the line between adolescence and adulthood. But, at least in the U.S. of today, we learn womanhood largely alone, taking cues from generous friends or stylish moms. My mom was a strident feminist who wore shapeless t-shirts from Goodwill and my dad’s deodorant. She’s uncomfortable with her womanly body, but she’s a great mom, and ideally my passage into womanhood wouldn’t be solely based on her tutelage anyway. Becoming part of a group—even one as broad as All Women—should involve a group. Maybe even a clubhouse, a safe space to learn, or admit to needing help. Someplace where I could close my eyes, trustingly, and let another woman tell me what eyeshadow looked good with my skin tone.

*

Wending his way through the aisles, the Sephora sales associate stops and points to a tube of lipstick in a young woman’s hand. She’s a wispy blonde, pale as milk.

“That one’s gonna be a little too orange,” he tells her. As he scans the shelves, one hand on his chin, it strikes me as appropriate that my guide through the temple of womanhood is male—we’re both outsiders here. The difference is, he really knows what he’s doing. Women trust him. In this female sanctuary, even dudes trump me.

“Try this one, here,” he says decisively, holding out a black tube with a dusky pink sticker on its base. “It’s called Obey, you’ll love it, I swear.”

Obediently, she takes it.

Some lipstick color names in Sephora: Pop Star, Private Jet, Tease, Palm Beach, Paparazzi, Tabloid, Fever, Catfight, Broadest Berry, Pigalle, Schlap, Melondrama.

We soon wash out of the color narrative (the life of Lindsay Lohan as told in lipstick?) and into the perfume section at the back left. Display cases enclose vari-colored cut-glass bottles, most done up with cursive script or bows or atomizers as big and brashly decorative as hood ornaments. These—the Marc Jacobs with the huge plastic daisies or the Versace with its crystal cap like a cartoon engagement ring—are not for me: I already know what I want, the result of months of research. But there’s no harm in smelling a few others.

“Can I try this one here, the Maison Martin?” I ask, pointing at a round bottle with an understated label, the name in typewriter font.

“Good choice,” says the sales associate. “Which one would you like to smell first? We’ve got Beach Walk, Funfair Evenings, Lazy Sunday Mornings…”

*

Long before I began to learn about it, I was attracted to the idea of perfume. Unlike lipstick, scent changes in contact with each individual, so finding the right one represents a real feat. This might be why people adopt a “signature scent”—it’s so much effort to find one that works with your body. (Michelle Obama apparently smells like cherries. Virginia Woolf is supposed to have smelled like woodsmoke and apples.) And unlike a pair of high heels, perfume doesn’t hobble the newbie (unless scent gives you migraines). Perfume seemed part and parcel of womanhood—its nature, invisible but sweet, sums up the expectations for women’s behavior through most of history—but the existence of cologne and aftershave blur gender lines. It isn’t just women who want to smell good. It’s people.

But while perfume was especially enticing, it was also particularly confusing. Sephora sells nearly 500 perfume varietals, while sites like The Perfumed Court stock thousands, an overwhelming array of choice. Niche stores like New York’s Bond No. 9—with less than fifty scents—weed out the objectively bad ones, celebrity scents made to smell like Jennifer Aniston’s childhood or Jennifer Lopez’s last love affair or largely reviled fragrances like Clinique Aromatics Elixir, described by one reviewer as smelling of “cats, mothballs, and fruitcakes.” But such selective stores tend to be wildly expensive and intimidating for the novitiate. You have to know something about perfume to even know they exist.

Needing a push, I mentioned my interest in perfume to one of my bosses, a stylish but intellectual woman whom I respect. It was awkward to talk about, but when trying new things, in the words of Grace Paley, “it’s as though you have to be artificial at first.”

My boss encouraged me to look into it, supplying links to a few perfume websites. I thanked her but told her I wouldn’t know where to begin: everything had too many reviews, all of which seemed conflicting, most written in a language I didn’t understand. What were top notes? What were bergamot and chypre? How was I supposed to know what constituted a long life, perfume-wise? 

Eventually, that same boss sent me an enormous book called Perfumes: The Guide, by scent experts Luca Turin (also a biophysicist) and Tania Sanchez. Their prose is acerbic and witty and damn good as they tour perfume history and basic terminology, reviewing almost 1,500 scents. A book like this was the ideal solution; allaying my fear that wanting some of the trappings of womanhood (sounding too much, to my nervously feminist ear, like “the trap” of womanhood) was a shallow, regressive goal. I read it on the train—surrounded by the far less pleasant scents of the subway—and felt saved: I was attending a womanhood seminar of one. 

*

Perfume has a long history, but not a very celebrated one. In Perfumes, Tania Sanchez chalks this up to two things: (1) perfume’s literal invisibility (“How could something as shapeless and evanescent as a smell have a history and a culture?”) and (2) its current status as “girl stuff.” Comparatively, the study of wine—which shares a focus on smell and descriptive language—has a well-documented history and broad appeal: People buy wine magazines, go on wine tours, and make movies about wineries. Perfume doesn’t have that kind of cachet. Perhaps that’s because wine gets you drunk.

The first man-made scents were cones of incense worn by ancient Egyptians, followed by essential oils and an herbaceous tonic called “Hungary Water,” but according to Turin the first real perfumes—alcohol-based blends of natural and synthetic fragrances—appeared in 1868, when a guy named William Perkin (who also discovered the chemical dye that produced the color mauve) synthesized a “sweet-nutty, herbaceous, tobacco-like” smell called coumarin. By 1909, synthesized scents were so popular (not to mention profitable) that the perfume counter was front-and-center in the very first Selfridge’s.

Although the many perfume blogs can be overwhelming, Sanchez and Turin explain that the internet has been good for the perfume industry. Online review sites make it harder for perfume companies to monopolize the industry, and more companies means both more innovation and lower prices. It’s democratizing: Just as everyone should be able to wear and eat what they want, everyone should also be able to smell how they want. Perfume sample sites are one of the best examples of this scent egalitarianism.

While Sanchez and Turin provide wonderful descriptions, they’re also adamant about the need to smell before buying. Ideally you’d be able to wear the same scent a few days in a row, see how it changes on your skin, get comfortable in it—like new shoes. Which makes perfume sample websites ideal: They decant a week’s worth of a scent into a vial for about $2 and ship it to your home.

But sample sites tend to provide salesy perfume descriptions, so cross-referencing is key—I made a list of good-sounding scents from Perfumes and repaired to a sample site, The Perfumed Court. I also started a word doc to record my findings, in the hopes that treating it like research would help me ease into my first womanhood experiment.

*

As I was selecting samples based on Turin and Sanchez’ write-ups, I realized my choices were aspirational—these were perfumes for a much more ladylike, put-together version of myself. Wood and leather scents, which I chose in droves, seemed to belong to someone who goes to the dentist regularly and doesn’t ever fall while trying to balance on the stiletto point of her heels. I added some slightly lighter scents to my cart, just to make sure I wasn't buying for, say, Katharine Hepburn instead of myself, then I made a dentist appointment while I was thinking about it.

This is one of those projects that should be inexpensive but could easily spiral out of control, as internet shopping tends to do. So I set some rules: no samples over $3, and the whole kit and caboodle had to be less than $20. I fiddled with my list, looking back and forth between the book and site, before finally settling on: Bulgari Black, Bulgari Pour Femme, Paloma Picasso, Cartier So Pretty, Missoni, and Guerlain Mitsouko. The total was $17.98. I’d receive them in 3-7 business days. 

When my perfume order arrived, the packaging was as many-layered—and therefore as mysteriously elegant—as a Russian doll. Within a box was a padded envelope, within the padded envelope was a cloth sachet, within the sachet was a heavily taped mass of bubble wrap, and within the bubble wrap were six tiny vials. Because they were all touching they emanated one smell, reminiscent of my godmother's house. My boyfriend smelled it. He kind of wrinkled his nose and shrugged, “It just smells like perfume, in general.”

I placed them on our shared dresser, in our shared studio, and began what I’ve been calling “the trials.”

Day 1: The trials began with Cartier So Pretty. My boyfriend wasn't crazy about it when I put it on first thing in the morning. “You just smell all woman-ey” he said, by which I think he meant old. I told him that it changes over time on the skin and he should hold off on a final verdict until evening. In the meantime, though, I agreed with him. Still, the novelty of wearing a scent was exciting, and I kept bringing my wrists to my nose. I hoped I was wearing it right.

Day 2: Going in order from left to right, I plucked Missoni EDP from the dresser. It smelled like a really old prom corsage, plus something else, maybe dried apricots. Easily deterred (“It’s only day two,” I kept grumbling), I started to feel a little exasperated with myself. Is searching for a good scent a waste of time? Will I finish this experiment by deciding that I should just shower more frequently and buy fancier shampoo? Until then, our dresser smells like a cathedral of womanhood, and I smell like fruit and alcohol.

Oddly, when my boyfriend met me out for dinner, he actually liked the Missoni. Maybe it had faded enough by then. I asked how it smelled and he said “good” and then “it's hard to tell because it's also like you,” but then he said “fruity.”

Day 3: This morning I put on Paloma Picasso and asked my boyfriend to smell it, both in the bottle and on my wrist. “Yesterday's is still the best,” he said. “This one just smells like perfume. Like a perfume store.” And it does—it smells like the idea of perfume.

Day 4: Today I wore Bulgari Pour Femme; it's my boyfriend's favorite so far. He smelled it and said: “That one smells soft. I like it.” We went to a baseball game on Coney Island and a few times during the afternoon and evening he leaned over and smelled it and again said he liked it, unprovoked.

I’m not sure about his presence in this experiment. Recording these trials makes me more aware of the repetition: my boyfriend, my boyfriend, my boyfriend. This is in part because we share such a small space—two people sharing a Manhattan studio is no joke—and we bump up against each other a lot. And sure, I want him to like how I smell. I also think he has good taste. But it seems like relying on his opinion is a flat, boring way to come to a decision about how I'm going to smell all the time. I did like Bulgari Pour Femme, a lot actually, but I think I should try it again on a day when I'm alone just to be sure, so I can get to know it on my own.

Day 5: I put Bulgari Black on in the morning and let myself smell it for a while before my boyfriend did. This meant I had to go for a walk while he was waking up and getting ready, but that’s something I should probably do anyway—I like the city best in the early morning. I liked Bulgari Black, too, even better than Bulgari Pour Femme. It doesn't smell like flowers or fruit or even very much like perfume. It smells like cologne and like nighttime, so it felt incongruous with the sun and the summer weather but I liked it anyway.

Day 6: Last perfume. Six seemed like a lot when I ordered them but actually “the trials” don’t even last a week. Guerlain Mitsouko is an unfortunate one to end on, smelling like flowers in formaldehyde. Frankenstein flowers. 

Day 7-14: Ever since I finished sampling all the perfumes I've just been using and reusing my little tester tube of Bulgari Black until finally there wasn’t any left. It smells good to me, and I've been getting more comfortable wearing it. I practice by putting it on around the house and now it feels good elsewhere too. It feels like a good secret, like when my boyfriend and I said we loved each other for the first time—I walked around town afterwards looking at strangers and thinking: “These schmoes have no idea this great thing just happened!”

*

I used to want to ride a motorbike. It looked so cool, but also scary, so I put off learning. Then a few years ago, while living in San Diego, my old boyfriend and I split up, he got the car and moved to Arizona with it, and I had no way to get to work and no money for a car of my own, so I bought a knock-off Vespa. Then I really had to learn. I took a class and practiced around my neighborhood. I ran into a dumpster once and got on the freeway once by accident, but nothing really bad happened, and by the time I left San Diego I was great at riding my fake Vespa and also really loved it. Partly because it had been scary to learn. It represented a triumph.

Once I read an interview with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. He wrote all the famous surf songs but he never actually learned to surf. In the interview he said he didn't want to learn now because he’s too scared of getting hurt or dying. He's old now.

Perfume is something I hadn’t been trying because I was (a) scared of failing and (b) embarrassed to put energy into learning something so, well, girly. Perfume isn’t physically dangerous, like tearing around on a motorbike or being in the barrel of a wave, but admitting that I wanted to learn about perfume and allowing myself the time to do so was an emotional risk. Being able to say “it’s research” gave me license to try things. 

It’s also helped that this has all occurred during baseball season: the excesses of masculinity balancing those of femininity in the studio I share with my boyfriend—the crack of a bat and a whiff of Bulgari.

*

Back in Sephora, I smell a few things. Perfumes meant to evoke walking on the beach or strolling through a flower garden, eating candy or being French. 

I spritz on test strips, which both the sales associate and I smell. “Hmm, no, not you, right?” he says, growing more familiar as we sniff together and make the appropriate faces: pursed mouth and wrinkled nose for not so good, raised eyebrows and downturned mouth for surprisingly not bad, gritted teeth and wide eyes for really, really bad. Having smelled as much as my nose can take, I ask the sales associate if they carry Bulgari Black.

“Oh of course,” he says, scanning the shelves until his eyes fall on a bottle the exact shape and color of a hockey puck with a silver lid. He picks it up reverentially and displays it like Vanna White.

“Would you like to smell it?”

“Yes, please.” Though I know what it smells like, it seems rude to tell him that after trying so many scents. 

He sprays. It smells like night and cities and figuring things out.

“How much?” I ask, crossing my fingers. I should have checked the website first.

“One hundred, plus tax.” He says it apologetically. Though I’m wearing heels—another thing I’d taught myself while learning that it was okay to care, and to try, and to not get it right the first time—they are thrifted and scuffed, my bag overstuffed.

“Uh…” What is your womanhood worth? I wonder, and then, in the voice of my mom: If your womanhood has a price, then it’s not yours. And then, also: You’ve worked in retail. Ask the important question. “Do you work on commission?”

“No.”

“Oh good. I have to think about it. Thank you so much!”

Out of the store and onto the street. Heat. Halal. Tourists. Construction. Ambulances. I’d left the sanctuary.

Like the grown woman I am, I waited patiently. Sure enough, a week later I found Bulgari Black marked down on a perfume website: $35. I bought it, and use it sparingly, like holy water.

Fat and Happy—and Loved

For the second installment of a series on bodies and relationships, I'm pleased to be able to share the work of Emily Timbol, a blogger and author who writes faith, life, and humor essays. Her work can be found on the Huffington Post, The Burnside Writers Collective, xoJane, Red Letter Christians, Christianity Today’s Her.Meneutics, and RELEVANT magazine online. She’s also been a featured guest on Moody Radio’s Up for Debate, the Jesse Lee Peterson radio show, and the Something Beautiful podcast. Her first book, Two Words: Why Hearing “I’m Gay” Changed My Straight, Christian Life is available now on Kindle, and paperback. You can find links to all her published works on her blog and on her Twitter, @EmilyTimbol. She can also be reached by email, at emily.timbol@gmail.com

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One of the stupidest quotes I’ve ever heard is, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” If you’re someone who buys into the dichotomy of being thin or being well-fed, taste is the last thing you care about. When I was at my thinnest, nothing tasted or felt good. When your body is the enemy, “good” isn’t something you feel.

Now, I’m fat. To Kate Moss, the originator of that quote, I was probably fat at my thinnest too, at 160 pounds, and I’m currently inhuman, at well over 200. To me now, the word fat is simply a descriptor, like blonde or tall, but back at my thinnest it was the worst combination three letters could make. Fat was to blame for my poor self-esteem, my lack of dates, and my typical teenage melancholy that I mistook for depression. It was all fat’s fault.

From the ages of 10-25, a good portion of my brain was devoted, at all times, to thinking about food. It never occurred to me that it was not normal, or healthy, to spend 18 hours a day thinking about peanut M&M’s. Or Cheetos, or that cheeseburger on the menu I wanted to order instead of a salad. If I wasn’t obsessing over food I couldn’t eat, I was obsessively hating myself for having eaten it—usually in a frantic, euphoric nighttime binge that would leave me feeling sick.

If my brain then was a pie chart (pie being a food I couldn’t eat) it would look like this: 

The “Other” section represents the things that made me who I was, “on the inside.” Things like books, humor, politics, friends, and a passion for social justice. None of which mattered as much as food—or guys. It was them, really, who fueled so much of my youthful self-hatred. Always loving to hang out with me, always complaining about their girlfriends to me, sometimes even trying to sleep with me, but never, ever wanting to date me. This was never their fault, or my fault for liking them. It was fat’s fault. If I just could get the fat to go away, then these jackasses would magically like me back. That maybe guys didn’t like me because I didn’t like me, not because I wore a size 18, never crossed my mind.

“Emily, men are visual,” a close family member said to me. “That’s how they’re attracted, and I worry that if you never lose weight you won’t find a husband.” This was told to me more than once.

My best friend at the time once replied, after I revealed the name of the guy I had a crush on, “No, guys like that don’t go for girls as big as you.” She said it as matter-of-factly as if I had asked if there was food in my teeth.

It was settled. I had to lose weight in order for guys to like me. Not once did it occur to me that my body, as it was, any guy could like.

After my fourth week of The Master Cleanse, the last and craziest attempt I’d ever made to lose weight, I finally gave up. While gagging on the mere suggestion of drinking one more sip of maple syrup and cayenne, I thought, Why the hell am I doing this? Maybe it was the hunger (or cayenne poisoning), but all of a sudden it seemed like there was no reason to keep trying to force my body to be something it wasn’t. 

Being thin wasn’t worth it. Having all of my thoughts consumed with food, exercise, and what I looked like suddenly seemed pointless. I wasn’t the kind of woman whose looks were her most important feature. I didn’t value attractiveness more than intelligence or wit. I wasn’t unhealthy in the slightest, according to my doctor. And damnit, I loved food. 

The shift of priorities was surprisingly easy. It was as if I suddenly realized that the game I was trying so hard to compete in—the one where your social and romantic value is based on your looks—wasn’t mandatory; I could walk away from it at any time. I realized something else too: When you spend your entire youth and adolescence benched from the game because you're too fat to play, you see that the sidelines aren’t such a bad thing.

On the sidelines is where my personality flourished. Where my love of words grew, where I learned to make people laugh, and where I found some of the friends I hold dearest—friends who didn’t care that I was fat. The sidelines were where I learned to like who I was, something that wouldn’t have been possible if I’d stayed so focused on what I looked like.

I thought that leaving the game and giving up my near-lifelong quest to be thin meant making a choice between being attractive and hungry, or fat and happy. It wasn't so much that I chose to be fat; it was that I chose to be happy. I knew the work it took to be thin(ner). I spent years counting every calorie, writing down everything I ate, trying every new diet, and doing the math to make sure that nothing put between my lips was left unpunished. But choosing fat and happy wasn’t a choice made out of laziness; rather, it was a choice made because I was tired of hating my body—something I did no matter what the number on the scale said. What never once crossed my mind was that I could be fat, happy, and attractive. Like many people, I thought fat was always ugly, especially to men. I cared less about men, though, once I stopped hating myself. A great side-effect of learning to love myself was feeling less of a need for another person’s approval.

This didn’t make me any less shocked when a man I found attractive asked me out, a month after I gave up. I was skeptical of him at first. Tempted to write him off as a “chubby chaser” or some freak who found fat chicks amusing. An attractive man wanting to date me didn’t fit anywhere into my understanding of the rules.

It was after a couple dates with him—when my walls were still up, but I was feeling tempted to let them down—that I decided to go searching for his flaws. I started the place everyone does: Facebook. What I was most afraid of were the pictures of his exes. Not because I was threatened by them, but because I was afraid to be like them. A “them” I feared would look as hideous as I had previously felt. But as I clicked on their pictures, I was shocked to see that though they were all around my size, they were…pretty. The first woman I figured was an anomaly, or just took flattering pictures, but the second woman was equally attractive. Seeing them in succession made me realize that men exist whose type is “fat and pretty.” Those two things together was not something I’d believed in before. It’s not that I’d never seen a pretty, fat woman, it’s that I’d never thought one could be just pretty, not pretty*—the asterisk standing for, “if you weren't so fat.”

I started to look around me, and for the first time, instead of hyper-focusing on body parts I thought were attractive—flat stomachs, thin thighs, solitary chins—I saw whole women. Women who, at a size 12, or 18, or 10, were happy, loved, and content with their lives. These were not women who had “let themselves go”—they were women who chose to embrace their bodies at whatever size they were, instead of fighting to make them smaller. I wanted to be one of these women. I was one, as it turned out. 

Allowing myself to accept that women could be attractive and fat allowed me to trust my (now-husband) when he complimented me. There’s nothing wrong with him either, and he’s not alone—there are men out there who find women of all sizes attractive and desirable. Attractiveness is subjective, not something you can point to on a chart. To claim that “all” men only find one type of body appealing is both myopic and offensive. Men, and women, are allowed to deviate from the standards of beauty society says is best. They’re allowed to be attracted to women who look like me.

Still, my fear was that if I allowed myself to eat what I wanted, I’d not just be fat, but gain hundreds of pounds. I was scared that if free to eat anything, I’d eat everything. Get so big that my husband would be equal parts turned off, and concerned about me. But this didn’t happen. My weight has been steadier in the five years since I stopped dieting than it was during the 15 years prior. That’s because when food stopped being “good” or “bad” and became simply food, it lost its power to control me. There’s no need to obsess over peanut M&M’s all day when you can eat them whenever you want. And being able to have them, made me want them less. 

I didn’t lose any weight when I stopped obsessing over food. That didn’t matter. What was worth so much more than being able to fit into a smaller size was being able to go an entire day without the constant soundtrack of calories reverberating through my head. I was free to enjoy myself while cooking dinner, or going out to eat with my husband. It was just the two of us—not dieting meant there was no third entity present in our relationship, encroaching on my attention and time, demanding to be acknowledged. Being able to exist as a person who cared more about who I was, than what I looked like, allowed me to find love. Both with my husband, and myself.

I might not ever have a body that most people find attractive, but I have something more important—happiness. Happiness with myself, and with the man who loves me. All of me.

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This is the second of a series on bodies and relationships. For more entries, click here.

Comfortably Worn: Review of "The Worn Archive"

There are plenty of aspects of women's magazines that may be cause for earnest concern. The most visible of these is, of course, the whole skinny models/airbrushing thing. By "visible" I mean exactly that: It's a phenomenon observed with the eyes, making its supposed fallout—dissatisfaction with one's own non-professional, non-retouched appearance—seem somehow more important, more visceral, than whatever our more intellectual quibblings might bring to the fore.

But for my $4.99, the larger problem is one of tidiness. Something you hear time and time again in the office of a ladymag is the need for a "takeaway": What do we want the reader to take away from this piece? What value do we want her to derive from it? It's good editorship to keep the question of reader value foremost among one's concerns when developing any part of a magazine, of course, but what the term "takeaway" too often means is this: What hopelessly simple, tidy, boiled-down bit of wisdom/advice/how-to/glimmer of worldview can we offer readers? I'd like to think that's changing, and certainly some magazines are more guilty of this than others, but as I've written before, many of the problems of women's magazines are inherent in their structure, supported as it is by mainstream advertising. My wish for women's magazines has always been to find one that presents a mix of genuinely helpful service, thoughtful explorations of "women's" issues—including fashion and beauty—that goes beyond a feminism 101 take, and that has a sense of humor. Throw in some gorgeous photographs—preferably those that address the first problem outlined above, that of impossibly thin models—and lady, I'm there.

Enter Worn. The 10-year-old Canadian periodical refers to itself as a fashion journal—which, in its scope and depth, is accurate—but I prefer to think of it as the fashion magazine so many of us have longed for. A signature mix of practical information, fashion histories (the evolution of stewardess uniforms, the Frederick of Frederick's of Hollywood, Victorian—and contemporary—hair art), personal essays, and stunningly imaginative pictorials, Worn reads like a dinner party where the guests are smart but not smarmy and the food leaves you feeling truly sated. 

Which is to say, you should be subscribing. But for those who prefer to receive their reading in bulk, Worn has produced its first collection, The Worn Archive, anthologizing its first fourteen issues. True to its ethos that our wrappings can transform us into something simultaneously recognizable and utterly unique, the book, edited by Worn founder Serah-Marie McMahon, is more than a bound chronicle of those issues: Divided into thematic sections ("Fashion Is Personal," "Fashion Is Design," "Fashion Is Fun"), even the pieces regular Worn readers may have seen before take on a new meaning in the anthology. In "Fashion Is Object," for example, Worn walks us through that quintessential fashion object—the shoe, specifically the prototypical 1940s pump as well as the vast shoe archive of a collector—alongside a fashion history of the safety pin and an essay from a textile conservator. "Fashion Is Identity" sees a primer on various hijab styles and a story on how the pink-is-for-girls thing came about riding alongside a history of how gay men used fashion to signal one another. (On the 1970s "clone" look of gay men adopting conventionally masculine dress: "By dressing like 'real men,' clones had discovered that masculinity was a performance with costumes no less contrived than the fairy's tailored suits or the radical drag queen's gowns"—can you imagine this being written in a conventional ladymag?)

Not that, despite this critical complexity, the collection is short on reader service. You'll learn how to fashion a clothes line, make four classic tie knots, and whether you should dry-clean that vintage find, mostly bundled under the "Fashion Is Practical" section. Even there, tucked in amid service, creative intelligence abounds, particularly with a piece on what our culture lost when most of us stopped learning how to sew. Neither is the magazine short on sheer beauty—the photo shoots (which appear to feature what has come be termed as "real women," as opposed to professional models; I even caught some quiet leg hair, shown not as a gender-rad fuck-you but as a part of what composes a woman's body...which I suppose is a gender-rad fuck-you, in a way) are exquisite, and the articles are elegantly presented, with custom illustrations and photography, allowing the reader to consistently remember that fashion is a lived experience using all the senses, not only the intellect.

But back to the question of the "takeaway." It's a useful editorial idea—after all, you want your readers to take something away from your publication—but where so many mainstream magazines have gotten it wrong by thinking that the "takeaway" means something bite-sized and neat with no loose ends, The Worn Archive (available here, under editrix name Serah-Marie McMahon) gets it right, reveling in those loose ends, trusting its readers enough to take the information presented to them and come up with their own takeaways. Nearly every piece in the collection does this beautifully, but the one that particularly stands out is a riveting story about the "Beauty Is Duty" campaign, in which the British government worked with women's magazine editors to urge women nationwide to keep up their looks during WWII. It would be easy to either critique this as a low point of objectification of women, or to cheerlead it for its kitsch factor alone (after all, the piece is illustrated with a shampoo ad of a woman in curls juxtaposed with that same woman in a helmet, with the headline "Hair Beauty—Is a Duty, Too!"). Instead, Worn examines the phenomenon with its characteristic thoughtfulness, acknowledging the very real sense of stability that beauty routines can give us in the midst of national chaos while keeping in mind the consumerist, gender-bound ethos at the base of the campaign. It's stories like this where The Worn Archive shines the brightest—a feat that wouldn't be possible if the journal ever dared to underestimate its readers. Thankfully, it never does.

You're Right, I Didn't Eat That

"The second best thing about fifth grade," writes Alana Massey, "is that nearly without exception, everyone in it is a hybrid monster sitting precariously on the border between childhood and adolescence which results in them doing uncomfortable things like still playing with Barbie but making her have multiple abortions." You see why I'm eager to share her work here, oui? Funny as her blog, Oh It's Just Awful, may be, it's her keen, pensive eye on human behavior that draws readers in. A graduate of New York University and Yale Divinity School, Alana has seen her work published at The Baffler, Religion Dispatches, Nerve, Jezebel, xoJane, Forbes, and more. Follow her on Twitter here.

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I’d only dropped a couple of sizes but I was in an entirely new country.

There are a number of euphemisms for female thinness that do not require a man to make the impolite admission of his exclusive attraction to women with very little body fat. Though “active” and “full of energy” make respectable showings, they are a distance second and third from “a woman who takes care of herself.” It seems a benign enough request, but one quickly learns that this man is not especially concerned that she has regularly scheduled self-care sessions like time with friends or spa days with a good book. He isn’t asking that her household finances be in order and that she be self-actualized. He is asking her to be thin. When he says “herself,” he means “her body.” 

I am not especially bothered by men who desire thin women. They are just as susceptible to messages that these are the women that they should find most attractive as women are to messages that they should look like them. The more troubling kind of man has a caveat about a woman’s thinness. She must not be “obsessed” or “overly concerned” with it. Or at least not visibly so. She mustn’t always order salads or freak out when she doesn’t make it to the gym. Watching her eat a cheeseburger—or better yet, a steak—even oddly enthralls him. (I’m sure there’s a Freudian explanation about the appeal of watching big things go into small ones for that but I haven’t found it yet.) An Instagram trend of thin women posing with calorie-dense foods that functions partly to appeal to this desire has even made headlines recently as the “You Did Not Eat That” account has gained popularity. But the impulse to pretend is understandable. For a thin woman to betray the reality of her diet and regimen for staying that way would spoil the fantasy of a woman who is preternaturally inclined to her size rather than personally preoccupied by it. 

Men seeking this woman are not seeking a carefree attitude as much as they are seeking a biological anomaly. For the majority of women, being thin is something with which she must be overly concerned in order to achieve and maintain it. Being effortlessly thin is no more achievable through a charmingly carefree attitude than becoming green-eyed or double-jointed. And while naturally thin women exist, of course, their numbers cannot keep pace with the number of men that desire them. And so we must be overly concerned as quietly as possible. 

At a size 0 and a low BMI, I am frequently told by men, “I can tell you take good care of yourself.” This was not something I heard much for most of my adult-sized life when I was a few sizes larger. I was average and proportional. I worked out regularly and ate reasonably well. But I was never thin. And then in my mid-20s I had the good fortune to react to a breakup not with overeating or bad rebound sex but with exercise. Lots of it. And homemade juice. Lots of that too. Mostly that, really. Bones and sinew emerged. I got a thigh gap, that bizarre and coveted beauty feature defined by absence. The number on the scale dropped, then dropped more.

And though I never had trouble getting a respectable amount of romantic attention, at a size 0 it rushed in at such a volume and with such enthusiasm that it was difficult not to be taken aback. I always thought it was a melodramatic cliché when thin women said that the more they disappeared, the more visible they became, but it was now undeniable. Male acquaintances suddenly wanted to spend more alone time together. Compliments during sexual encounters that were once full of the word “beautiful” became dominated by mesmerized declarations about me being so “little” and “tiny.” Men suddenly felt comfortable telling mean-spirited jokes about overweight women and lamenting how poorly other women took care of themselves. I’d only dropped a couple of sizes but I was in an entirely new country. 

Covert concern about my body is easy to maintain in the dating phase of relationships. Men will touch a particularly small or toned part of me and remark, “Wow, you must work out.” Upon confirmation that I do, the most frequent reply is, “So what do you do, yoga?” It is generally safe to assume that such men have never practiced yoga. Yoga, in the minds of many straight men, is a placeholder for light but effective exercise done primarily by women. It is a sanitary practice, a form of exercise uncontaminated by sweat or gender-neutral footwear. Something that pretty girls do three times a week in flattering pants. But while the benefits of yoga are tremendous, it cannot turn overweight or average bodies into tiny ones. Real yoga—as opposed to cardio routines that borrow heavily from it—cannot create the calorie deficits required to be thin thin. Real thinness requires something much more brutal. 

For naturally average or heavy women, maintaining a thin physique means making a constant and careful calibration of physical activity and consumption. Too much caloric intake that isn’t rigorously accounted for with exercise produces undesirable weight gain. Too large a calorie deficit backfires with a slowed metabolism. Strength training causes more calories to burn while at rest but too much produces a muscled look, literally hard evidence that this is not the thinness of a carefree woman. It is not just a matter of what you eat and burn but also of making sure you’ve planned sufficient time for both, carefully anticipating social engagements, unforeseen late nights at the office, and illness. It is deeply disordered but not quite diseased and because the aesthetic is desirable when it only borders on worrying, it is presumed the result of good care. 

“What do you do?” women will often ask, perhaps in the hope that initiation into the secret society is by invitation from existing members. I have found that three syllables followed by an exclamation point is the most optimal response to deflect attention from the reality of your regimen. Lean protein! Barre method! Kale salads! Neurosis! Even if I were to neutrally report what I must really do, the overt concern would be evident by the sheer number of precautions and actions that must be taken on a daily basis. “Diet and exercise” can be used as deceptive shorthand because it doesn’t actually mean anything at all.

“Can’t you just skip the gym this once?” a man asked as he tugged at my forearm from the bed on a Saturday morning and remarked on the merits of brunch. The night before, he had remarked on the merits of the prominent female clavicle. I smiled and pulled away, saying I signed up for a class that required 90 minutes advanced notice for cancellation. Maybe next weekend? I did not say that I could not because I skipped the gym Thursday to console a friend. I did not say that I had already splurged on grapefruit juice instead of my usual seltzer the night before. I did not say that I would double my cardio all week in anticipation of not being able to ask what my food was cooked in or to have egg whites in front of him at brunch the following week. I wouldn’t want to bore him with the details of scheduled spontaneity.

“Come on, you don’t need to get any skinnier!” another man declared after I declined food during a camping trip where everything seemed to come either on a potato bun or drenched in mayonnaise. I didn’t mention that four days away from the gym was already dangerously close to compromising my progress. I didn’t scream, “Vacation is where skinny goes to die!” or any other troubling quote I had read on the many Tumblr accounts blurring the line between motivation and beratement. He knew that I had not always been this thin yet treated my getting that way as a single event that could not be undone, like getting past the age of 25 or earning a Bachelor’s degree. I wanted to tell him that getting thin was not terribly difficult, but that staying that way is another thing entirely. I wanted to say that as a complex living organism, the human body is on for twenty-four hours a day, ready to betray you at an astonishing speed for minor transgressions if you do not respect its hypersensitivity to what goes in and out of it. But that would sound so obsessed.

As relationships advance, romantic partners become visibly disappointed and even annoyed that maintaining thinness is not a matter of a quick jog and 100 crunches. When he goes to find a refrigerator staple like butter, I can claim I simply ran out the first time but I must eventually admit that I don’t keep it in my home. My getting up to run eight miles the morning after sleeping together is admirable in the beginning but becomes frustrating when it means he almost always wakes up alone. I fool no one when I claim that really, this salad made of translucent iceberg lettuce is my favorite menu option at the diner. Meals are never skipped but they are rarely thoroughly enjoyed either. Despite taking care never to mention the cycle of calculating, scheduling, and calibrating, there is a mountain of damning physical evidence.

The revelations are slow but they come. A calorie tracking mobile app has better real estate on my smartphone than my calendar. The sudden realization that I’ve never been “that hungry” when we go out. The suspicious number of claims I make about simply not liking universally popular foods. I’ll let the cable bill wait but my gym membership is on time, every time. But these symptoms do not aggregate into the appearance of a disease but rather, into a certain temperament. It makes them exclaim, “Relax!” rather than, “Get help.” The level of control the symptoms reveal hovers close to illness but doesn’t cross far enough over the line so as to become sad, merely unattractive. And it is easier to walk away from someone who is unattractive than someone who is sad.

Once on a first date, a man remarked on the dishonesty of online dating profile pictures and said, “You know this girl showed up and I thought, ‘What did you do, eat the girl in the pictures?’” He was not the first to make such a remark but I was so ambivalent on the possibility of seeing him again and it wasn’t even a good fat joke that I said, “I don’t like that joke. I used to be fat.” “Fat” was an exaggeration but “fatter” wouldn’t have put me in evident solidarity with this duplicitous overweight woman. Eyes that had been looking at me affectionately all evening became fearful and he asked, “Do you think you’ll ever gain it back?” Flattering as it can be to know that a man has already considered our long future together all the way into “ever,” I was mostly appalled at the transparency of the question. I considered the life expectancy of healthy women and the statistical probability of me having children and nodded my head. “Yeah,” I said, refusing to add, “But not anytime soon, I’m totally and completely obsessed with staying thin now that I know that the world is handed to me on a silver platter.”

It is the moments when they realize that thinness is so impermanent, a constant struggle against a metabolism and genetic composition that you’ve breathed sinister life into that they are disappointed. Realizing that thinness could easily be sabotaged by illness, injury, or age seems a strange revelation to have for people who also occupy human bodies but it seems a revelation nonetheless. So what I’ve been more disturbed to realize is that it is not the habits themselves that are unattractive, but their clear necessity. Watching me order kale all the time isn’t the hard part, it is realizing every time I do that the alternative could be disastrous. And so they seek a more carefree woman who possesses either enviable genetics or professional expertise at disguising her weight-related diligence. Someone who does not force them to confront the reality that her body can and will change.

And so I have become increasingly up-front that for me, it takes an enormous effort to stay small. That it takes up my time and energy and by extension, might end up taking some of theirs as well if we are together. I assure them that I want to stay that way more than I want anything else so not to worry too much about me “letting myself go.” Romantic relationships are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the rewards of thinness. But I let them know that when it comes to me being thin and carefree about it, they can’t have their cake and eat it too. But that they’re more than welcome to mine.

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Edit: This is the first in a series on bodies and romantic relationships. For more entries, click here. 

On Ladymags and Liberty

A tale prompted by the Brooke Burmingham/Shape story, in which the magazine requested that Birmingham cover up her loose-skinned abdomen for a photo accompanying a story on her 170-pound weight loss:

Some years ago, I was freelancing at a women's magazine that did cute little "factoids" about staffers on the magazine's masthead, i.e. the "cast list" of all the editors and designers and other staff members—and, as at this magazine, freelance copy editors. That particular month, the "factoid" was to be "celebrity lookalikes," in which selected people on the masthead would share a celebrity comparison they'd heard about themselves.

I'd heard a smattering of celebrity lookalikes for myself over the years, but one immediately came to mind: Jack Palance. In college, one of my teachers said to me, apropos of nothing, "Something about you reminds me of Jack Palance"—as in then-octogenarian one-armed push-up performer Jack Palance of Shane, Halls of Montezuma, and City Slickers—which was hilarious. I submitted Jack Palance as my celebrity lookalike, partly in hopes that it would serve as an antidote to the string of other staffers who would be pointing out their resemblance to, say, Amanda Peet. (As it were, I underestimated at least one staffer, whose celebrity comparison was E.T.)

A few days later, a pert art assistant swung by my cubicle and asked if she could take a snapshot of me for the masthead. I knew that usually staffers supplied their own photos for such purposes, and asked why I needed my photo taken. She said as she took a couple of snapshots of me, "Oh, if we run it you can use whatever photo you want, but for now the editor just wants to make sure you're pretty enough that we can make a joke about you looking like Jack Palance." Cheese!

Left: Autumn Whitefield-Madrano. Right: Jack Palance.

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My sympathies in the Birmingham/Shape bit instinctively go to Birmingham, for reasons that are too obvious to bother with here, though I will (perhaps tediously) point out the irony of a woman who is being hailed for her successful weight loss being asked to cover up one of the side effects of that very success. Seeing the loose flesh that often accompanies extreme weight loss doesn't neatly fit into the weight-loss-as-achievement narrative that magazines like Shape love to trumpet—in the photo in question, Birmingham is proudly smiling, showing that she doesn't consider her loose skin a detriment to her successful weight loss, but it does fly in the face of the idea that weight loss is some magic key to looking the way you've always dreamed.

Yet I have sympathy for the Shape editors as well. I've never worked at Shape, but I've worked at magazines like it, and while I'm hesitant to apply any one rule to any group of people, I will say that while the women's magazine industry attracts all sorts, one sort in particular they attract is someone who genuinely wants to make women's lives better. The ways different staff members might try to achieve that varies, but ladymags are pretty competitive, and most people don't just "fall into" them; they seek out these jobs, and it's often driven by a passion for women's issues, whether that be fitness or reproductive health or general health or politics or fashion or whatever.

But whatever role little-f or capital-F feminism plays in women's magazines, there's one way in which they will never be feminist, and that is their reliance on advertising. As long as a women's magazine depends upon advertising dollars to support its editorial content, it cannot be feminist. I say "women's magazine" in particular because most magazines rely upon advertising to stay afloat, but most magazines do not have to bend their editorial content in order to grease relationships with those advertisers. For the definitive breakdown of how this happens, read Gloria Steinem's brilliant "Sex, Lies, and Advertising" (PDF here), an essay about the early days of Ms. magazine and trying to get advertising dollars for it. In short: in women's magazines, there's an expectation that advertisers will get preferential treatment in editorial pages. A "beauty editor's secret find" might well be that individual's secret find; just as likely, it's an offering from a company that buys a lot of ad pages in the magazine. In the Ms. essay, Steinem lays out how these expectations were made explicit. I've never been privy to discussions at that level, so I have no idea how explicit those expectations are at ladymags today. What I do know is that most staff members understand that relationship at a level that they no longer think to question it: Of course, if company X needs a product mention on that page, we'll give it to them. Eyes might be rolled, but it stops there, because they—we—understand that that's just how it works.

So what does this have to do with Brooke Birmingham's loose flesh? Everything. If you accept the implicit (or explicit) condition that any part of your content can be dictated by advertisers, you cannot keep the reader's needs as the sole priority of your work. That's not to say that editors don't do excellent work that benefits the reader; they do, all the time. But once advertiser needs encroach upon editorial liberty, your own liberties as an editor feel encroached upon, even if they're not directly touched by advertisers. You begin to make preemptive decisions to avoid trouble, knowing that you have to choose your battles—whether to your top editor, or the editor-in-chief, or to "ad side," the team of people who essentially make sure you have a job. And sometimes those preemptive decisions might be something like looking at a photo of a woman with some not-so-conventionally-pretty fleshy folds around her waist, and quietly determining that that particular battle just isn't worth it. You tell yourself you're doing more of a service to the reader if you show a picture of the ideal—the magical weight loss that doesn't result in immovable "proof" of what you've "overcome"—so that she doesn't get discouraged from making the choices the entire editorial mission of the magazine supports. You make a note to yourself to pitch a story about how to "fix" that loose flesh, because that's what readers want, right? A fix? What you might not make note of is the fundamental connection here: "fixing" readers is what the ad dollars that pay your rent are built upon. Some of your corporate sponsors do it with tenderness (Dove, for example); some do it with savvy (M.A.C.); some might still resort to the old-fashioned don't-hate-me-because-I'm-beautiful technique. But fixing is the name of the game, and it is really, really hard to break out of that narrative as an editor who really is trying to provide a service to the reader. "Service" is framed as solving a problem. And a concrete problem—loose flesh—with a concrete fix (surgery?) is simpler and more readable than an in-depth investigation of the untold side of weight loss.

I'm not exactly defending Shape. It was a lousy, cowardly choice (and, as The Gloss points out, throwing a freelancer under the bus is a lazy way of handling things; I have little doubt that this came from the editors, not the writer), and I'm glad that Birmingham's story is coming to light, because while I'm doubtful that conventional ladymags will ever change in this way because of the framework they're built upon, it's showing that there are plenty of people who don't want a neat "fix"-type story but rather a more complicated journey of weight loss. Shape should do better, but I think I recognize where this came from, and it's not a place of spite; it's a place of status quo.

The best editors out there are able to keep their mission as an advocate for their readers as their highest priority. There are plenty of examples out there of magazines and editors that consistently try to tell a different story other than the "let's fix you" angle. But that is not the default, and within the current way that women's magazines are funded, I don't know if it ever will be.

On Fit, aka Baby Got Back

 Someday, friends. Someday I will be on the cover of Butt.

Allow me to make this clear: I wanted a bigger butt. My mother's clan is a flat-butted folk, as is my father's, so there was never a question of me having anything that might qualify as "booty." This worked fine throughout the '90s, when the collective goal seemed to be to stay as tiny as possible, and throughout the aughts I simply didn't allot much time to considering my rear end. It was functional, not decorative, in my mind, and as long as three-way mirrors revealed nothing unsightly I was prepared to live with the prairie-like Whitefield-Madrano derrière the rest of my days.

I'm still not sure what prompted my recent malcontent with the state of my behind. Some might blame Kim Kardashian; some might blame an ever-shifting lexicon that gave way to words like "bootylicious"; some might, after a bit of cultural archaeology, blame a delayed response to Sir Mix-a-Lot or even Freddie Mercury for making me believe that were I a fat-bottomed girl, I just might make the world go round. Me, I'm just as willing to assign responsibility to my relatively newfound interest in strength training. After seeing how, by simply raising and lowering weights for a certain amount of time, I could make my biceps suddenly, proudly appear after a lifetime of ignoring their clandestine service, I may well have just wanted to develop every muscle in my body to the best of my ability. And can I help it if the gluteus maximus is one of the largest muscles in the human body?

There is much to say about the above possibilities, both about cultural dictation of "in" body parts and about the relationship between strength training and one's vision of the ideal body. That is not what this post is about.

My plan to transform into a baby-got-back type worked, in that my posterior is now, instead of board-flat, curved like the Ohio countryside. Which is to say, still basically flat, but with more curve than you might expect from, say, Nebraska. (Hey, you can't change your genes.) I do notice a difference, but it's more tactile than visual, so you'll just have to trust me when I tell you that my buns are as steel-like as can reasonably be expected of a thirtysomething woman whose livelihood involves sitting in chairs in front of glowing boxes. I can tell a difference in how my butt looks on yoga pants, but the casual observer of my butt (and to my knowledge, there are no studied observers of my butt) probably wouldn't. This was good enough for me.

Speaking of yoga pants, I hadn't left mine in months. At least, I hadn't left the general sartorial realm of yoga pants for months, through book-writing and surgery-recovering (and book-writing-recovery). So when I took my first in-office gig in nearly a year a few weeks ago, I was actually sort of eager to leave stretchy materials for a while and put my closetful of work dresses to use. But to my surprise, some of those dresses didn't fit right anymore. Specifically, the dresses that I'd had tailored to fit my body didn't fit right anymore. They still fit fine in the waist, which is where I tend to store excess body fat, and everywhere else, but sure enough, around the hips—which is to say, around the butt—the fabric clung. Enough so that one dress that used to perfectly skim my body now has to be tugged down, which means it rides up when I walk. It still fits, it just doesn't't fit well.

Anyway. The minute I put on this dress in particular, I knew exactly why it didn't fit perfectly, and Reader, I was proud. All my hip thusts, my single-leg Romanian deadlifts, the act of repeatedly stepping onto and off of a box while clutching iron weights—they had worked, and knowing that my body was stronger because I chose to make it stronger felt fantastic. It felt so fantastic that I even noted it didn't matter if my rear end didn't look any different; this was tangible proof beyond my own tactile assessment that things were getting firmer down there, and that was just as satisfying as becoming as bootylicious as I'd hoped, and recognizing that was even more satisfying. To say that I was pretty self-satisfied might make me a bit smug here, but it's also the truth. I kept the dress on—it fit okay, after all, and it's a lovely blue vintage dress that makes me feel all Mad Menny in the right way, so why not keep on this talisman of my satisfaction?

Here is what happened: Throughout the course of the day, my satisfaction melted. I felt wrong every time I tugged at the dress to bring it down over my hips; I felt wrong every time I caught a glimpse of my body in the mirror and saw the slight strain of the fabric where there had once been a clean line. You might say I felt "fat," but by now I've learned that when I "feel fat" it means I'm feeling something else that's harder to identify, though in this case it wasn't so hard to identify at all. I felt physically uncomfortable in my own skin; I felt cumbersome to my own sense of movement; I felt restrained, pinched, where I'd once felt ease. All because my dress was a little tight around the hips.

You see the joke here: I felt uncomfortable in my skin because of something I'd consciously done to make myself feel better in my skin. There was a disconnect—I'd worked to develop muscle, but when my muscle did what muscle does and created space for itself, one of the consequences was a sense of wrongness for having that space taken up. It didn't matter that I'd worked for it, or that I'd achieved my goal in some sense, or that my initial reaction to noticing that my dress didn't fit well was pride. The result—discomfort—overrode all of that.

My point here is startlingly simple: Wear clothes that fit, for chrissakes. My cognitive dissonance between my hours at the gym and the sensation of feeling "fat" was dismantled easily enough, with no lasting effects. (It was solved easily enough too, by putting my tailored dresses away for a bit.) Still, it was startling to find how instinctively I linked physical discomfort—even if it stemmed from something I'd specifically wanted—to the particular sort of wrongness I usually associate with more conventional body-image issues. Knowing the cause didn't matter; the result was that same topsy-turvy sense of self-image that so easily gets funneled onto my body, even my looks in general.

Our bodies make for convenient scapegoats for unrelated anxieties, and part of why it's hard to separate actual body image from all the stuff we heap onto body image is sheer habit—once you've learned to displace dissatisfaction in such a catch-all way that's societally expected of women, it's difficult to break that connection. And in a way, that's what was going on here—habit. I wasn't in the least bit dissatisfied with the state of my rear end, but I'm so used to linking physical discomfort to "body image" as it's most often discussed on body image blogs and the like that it was instinct to connect an unpleasant physical sensation with an unpleasant mental sensation.

I'm used to framing the "wear comfortable clothes" thing in either a purely physical way (if I wear clothing that's more comfortable, I'll be...more comfortable) or in a feminist way (if I put myself into physical pain to fit a certain standard, to a certain degree I'm giving in to "the man"). This made me frame it in a more holistic way: If I'm physically uncomfortable, I'm going to be mentally uncomfortable. That might be displaced onto appearance-esteem stuff; it might not. Either way, I'm back to stretchy fabrics, all the better to be bootylicious, my dear.

Beauty Work and Intrinsic Motivation

Motivational poster, 1937, Works Progress Administration

A friend of mine who's having trouble sticking to her exercise plan asked me what gets me to the gym. The answer, truly, is habit: Unless I'm specifically taking some time off or there's some sort of concrete scheduling problem, strength training is just a part of my routine. That's not particularly helpful advice to someone who's trying to make exercise a habit, though, so I tried to remember what got me to the point of workouts being habit. A common—and useful—bit of advice in this arena is to not focus so much on the weight loss bit, even if you are interested in reducing your body fat, because it's self-punishing. Instead, you're supposed to think about those other rewards of exercise: reduced stress and better mental health, improved functional strength, heightened flexibility, etc. It's often broken down as internal motivation vs. external motivation—that is, what your goals are "for you" versus what other people/society at large tell you your goals should be.

That's all nice and good, and I agree with it to an extent, but A) it's not like we can separate the two so neatly; motivations from society at large fuel our own motivations, after all, B) in order to be functioning members of society, we need to at least consider the collective ethos of said society, if only to then discard it out of hand, and C) sometimes external motivation—the "bad" motivation—can be a lot more effective than internal motivation. Most of the time I'm more driven to get to the gym by the knowledge that it will help with stress reduction, but does the thought of having a more curvaceous rear end (and therefore a "better" one) sometimes get me to do that third set of hip thrusts? Yes, yes, it does, and I'm fine with that. And certainly in other areas of my life, I lean toward people-pleasing, and the fear of disappointing someone has fueled many a project on my end—but of course, I glean my own rewards from it too. So it's reflexive.

But the full definition of internal motivation contains a particularly intriguing leg—intrinsic motivation, a term that's often (and somewhat erroneously, to my thinking) used interchangeably to mean any internal motivation. As I understand it, though, intrinsic motivation is fairly simple: motivation to pursue an activity for the joy of the activity itself. The motivation comes from not any promise of something good happening, nor of avoiding the occurrence of something bad, and not even just from some deep personal wellspring of happy consequences to come, but from the immediate pleasures the activity brings. It's easy to see how this applies to exercise, even if its most-repeated mantra doesn't mention motivation directly: Find something you love to do, and keep doing it. For me, that was strength training; for some, it's yoga; for others it's fencing, or martial arts, or spin class, or running. Whatever it is: The reward doesn't come from the doing; the reward is the doing.

Naturally, as I do with most things, I began to wonder how this applied to beauty work. I've done a good amount of research on the internal vs. external motivators for wearing makeup—like, how it can embue its wearers with a sense of confidence, vs. how women wearing light makeup are perceived as more competent. There's a lot to look at there, but in thinking about intrinsic motivation—the reward that comes simply from performing the act in question, as opposed to simply our internal reasons for doing something—I'm questioning how much I actually like the act of putting on makeup. I've long held that many of us wear makeup for reasons that go beyond glib you-go-girl talk of "I do it for me" or mere conformity to societal expectations. Personally, my internal motivations for wearing it include its meditative-like ritual, its aid in presenting the public vs. the private self, and, sure, a sense that I look more like how I'm "supposed" to (which shouldn't be confused with kowtowing to some sort of beauty standard, though of course the two aren't entirely separate).

But intrinsically speaking, do I get some reward for my beauty work? I'm not sure. There are parts of my beauty/grooming routine that I actively dislike—I dread shaving my legs, for example, but do it nearly every day because I like the feeling of having smooth legs. Same for washing my hair, which I do maybe twice a week. (O for the days of no shampoo!) The face stuff isn't so bad, but I can't say I derive pleasure from the act of putting on makeup, any more than I derive pleasure from brushing my teeth. If the "Find something you love to do, and keep doing it" maxim applied to beauty work, I'd be one of those Grace Coddington-like souls who wears no makeup whatsoever except bright red lipstick. (I love applying lipstick—so sensual!—but don't like how it feels afterward and nearly always wind up biting it off anyway.)

The idea of intrinsic motivation is that because you find the act in question pleasurable, and pursuit of pleasure is one of our chief drives, things that have that sort of motivation are the things you're likeliest to stick with. But here I am, rarely going a day in the past 20-odd years without applying makeup, even though I don't necessarily derive joy from standing in front of the mirror for six minutes and doing my thing. So I'm wondering if beauty work is an exception here, or if I am, or if I'm being too strict with looking at what "pleasure" constitutes in the context of intrinsic motivation. I mean, I get pleasure out of seeing my face perk up a bit with each step of my makeup process, and I take pleasure in knowing that I look the way I want to look, as opposed to the sleepy-eyed, pale-cheeked version of myself I usually wake up with. Is that enough "pleasure" to qualify as enjoying the act of doing something so much that you'd do it without its other rewards? I really don't know.

I think of women who report approaching their face as a piece of living art—playing with color theory, sculptural lines, or just plain old wacked-out looks. (These women, I presume, constitute the entirety of the market for pink mascara.) Same with women who consistently style their hair differently; I remember listening with awe as a chameleon-like acquaintance explained, after I semi-complimented her new ink-black hair by saying, "Wow! New look!" that she knew it wasn't a flattering color for her, but that she'd always wanted to go jet black, and that hair-dyeing had become something of a leisure pursuit for her, so why not? She'd be donning a flattering, "safe" honey-blonde look in a few weeks anyway, most likely. That seems like a clear-cut example of performing beauty work for its intrinsic motivation—and it's something I really can't imagine doing for myself. (I mean, if I really hated putting on makeup, I wouldn't do it, but it's not hatred—more of a meh.) But what other forms besides artistry and play might intrinsic motivation take in the context of beauty work? Does the meditative, ritualistic aspect "count"? What about the act of transforming from a private figure to a public one (at least for those of us who don't usually wear makeup at home alone)—is that considered a pleasure to be had in and of itself, or is it by definition driven by the public end of that equation?

I asked readers before why they do, or don't, wear makeup. Now I'm asking a more point-blank question: How much pleasure do you take in wearing makeup or styling your hair? And how much pleasure do you take in not?

The 5-Minute Facial Workout, and the Placebo Effect

Like this, but for your face.

It would be easy for a critical beauty blogger comme moi to make fun of the book “The 5-Minute Facial Workout: 30 Exercises for a Naturally Beautiful Face.” I mean, the setup is all there, beginning with the title of the first chapter (“Facial Gymnastics: Why?”—my question exactly), through its promises that exercises will “revascularize the dermis” for “significant” results of “a younger and more relaxed face,” all illustrated with photos of a pleasant-looking, vaguely yogic woman doing things like extending her tongue to the corners of her smile, or doing what looks like an exaggerated pout.

But, like I said, that’s easy. I don’t want to take a potshot at the author of “The 5-Minute Facial Workout,” Catherine Pez, who has done a fine job of explaining how, theoretically, these exercises work. (In short, the idea is that by performing a daily ritual of face exercises, you strengthen the muscles of the face, thus ameliorating the saggy effects of maturity and helping to “sculpt” the face and keep it looking as it did before the ravages of time shat upon your visage.) Frankly, given that the entire book is a guide to facial gymnastics, it’s remarkable how non-goofy the exercises actually are. If you’re going to embark on a self-guided natural face-lift, you may as well do it with Pez leading the way and allow the book’s earnest, utterly guileless tone to carry you through. I wish you voluminous cheeks, stimulated neck fibers, fleshier lips, and all of the other things the book promises to deliver your way. Merry pouting.

No, the question here isn’t this actual book, or even the entire genre of face exercises, which includes not only “The 5-Minute Facial Workout” but sisters such as “The Ultimate Guide to the Face Yoga Method,” the “Tal Reinhart Facial Workout,” “Facial Fitness,” and my personal favorite, “Facercise.” The question of face exercise is really the question of what’s at the root of plenty of beauty work: the placebo effect.

Face exercises to prevent signs of aging are the ultimate candidate for the placebo effect: They work as well as you think they work. An aggregate study recently looked at nine individual studies that purported to find evidence that facial gymnastics worked to counteract signs of aging. But the authors of the aggregate study found that the “existing evidence is insufficient to conclude whether facial exercises are effective for reducing signs of aging.” None of the individual studies had a control group, none of them were randomized, three of them were case studies of a single person, and the highest number of participants of any study was 11. (Interestingly, the only studies the researchers could find were in South America, and indeed in Brazil it’s apparently considered a legitimate thing—aesthetic logopedics—stemming from facial exercises’ existing role in speech pathology. Anyway.) All of that may make for shaky research, but here’s the kicker: In all but one study, the participants themselves were involved with ranking results, with some of the studies’ results consisting entirely of merely asking participants if they noticed any changes after doing the exercises for a set length of time. So the people who had chosen to invest regular amounts of time in facial gymnastics were asked not only if said gymnastics made them feel better but if they made them look better. Most people wouldn't want to believe they’ve wasted their time fluttering their lips at themselves in front of a mirror for nothing, so is it any surprise that all participants said they’d noticed visible changes?

That’s not to say that they didn’t look better, though. And that’s the beauty—or the trouble—of the placebo effect when it comes to our appearance. When you’re talking about a quality as difficult to articulate as loveliness, merely believing that something “works” can be enough to lend you the light that you’re seeking. The practice or product itself becomes beside the point if the effect approximates what you were after in the first place. As beauty editor Ali put it in our interview a ways back, “If you just shelled out $300 for a cream, your brain is in this mode of, This is going to work. You have that optimism that can actually make you radiant. If you’re thinking, Oh, I just got this $5 bojangle cream, I don’t give a shit—then no, it doesn’t work.”

A red lipstick either reddens your lips or it doesn’t; you know immediately whether its essential task is fulfilled. But when it comes to products promising something more ethereal—like the “radiance” or “re-energizing” properties avowed by various creams and serums—who’s to say whether it works? Enter facial gymnastics, the promises of which are essentially immeasurable. "Redrawing” the chin? “Modifying” a “sad mouth”? “Strengthening” the “musculature of the eyelids”? Not to mention its vague assurances of improved circulation and cell renewal. Do enough facial contortions with enough devotion, and you just might see your eyelid musculature strengthened, because who even knows what a muscular eyelid looks like?

Of course, there’s a chance that placebo effect aside, these exercises do work. (Remember, the aggregate study said the evidence was inconclusive, not that the practice was ineffective.) For starters, practicing making your face more animated could conceivably lead to your face being more animated in daily life, and people with animated faces are more likely to be perceived as friendly and as leaders, thus making you possibly more attractive. And, of course, our faces do have muscles, and muscles can visibly grow with use, so, hey, why not. “The 5-Minute Facial Workout,” just $14.50, folks! (Of course, I’d argue that if you’re working your face in specific ways with aesthetic results in mind, you might well increase a generally unwanted aesthetic result—wrinkles—but I’m no dermatologist, yo.)

Still, there’s something underneath facial workouts that bothers me: In essence, these are prescribed drills of movements that most of us would perform in the course of a day. We smile, we frown, we press our lips together, we grimace, we tilt our chins upward. We move. But when these movements become formalized, they give birth to a promise: This will do something that living your everyday life won’t. It takes normal human action and shifts it from being something we do to live into something we do to stop the appearance of having lived. When I picture women doing these exercises in front of the mirror, the image that comes to mind isn’t one of relaxed joy or of self-care. In fact, the image is downright grim, though I hope I’m mistaken in this. Do these exercises if you wish, o ye of deflating cheeks; may it give you what you’re looking for, whether it be placebo effect or not. But I urge you to laugh about it too. Consider it a bonus workout.

Thank You for Shopping: Customer Loyalty Programs

Spend $350 at the Red Cross and you get a free pint of O negative!

Yesterday, I was informed that I’d “unlocked” the “VIB Level” of Sephora’s customer reward program. What this means in Sephoraspeak is that by “earning” 350 “points” at the store, I will receive seasonal VIB-only gifts—presumably along the lines of the free lip gloss I received whilst shopping during my birthday month, back when I was merely a Sephora “Beauty Insider”—that I will have advance access to sales, and that I get “dibs” on new products, so that I will be the first lady on the block to have NARS’s newest nail polish in Quivering Otter, or whatever the color of the season is. 

What this means in you-and-me-speak is that I have spent more than $350 at Sephora—not, as the company would put it, “earned” more than 350 “points” at Sephora—since this time last year.

It was a shock to realize that I’d spent $350 at Sephora in the past 12 months, to be sure, but my financial navel-gazing is another post altogether. What “unlocking” this “VIB Level” made me think about was customer reward programs, and what we’re supposed to get out of them. With many customer loyalty programs, you actually save money. You might do this immediately/directly, as in my drugstore’s practice of advertising “specials” that are only “specials” if you are literally a card-carrying member of the drugstore’s loyalty program, or it might be savings down the line, as with frequent-flier miles. But the point is: You save money, as in cash, as in you have a compelling financial interest to use the loyalty program (which, of course, means that to some degree you’re loyal to the vendor, though of course consumers can belong to multiple loyalty programs, making them not loyal at all).

Sephora is a different beast altogether. You don’t save money with Sephora’s loyalty program; it’s more that you get the opportunity to spend more money at Sephora. I mean, sure, getting a free lipstick now and then might count as saving you money, if that shade and opacity of lipstick happens to be the kind of lipstick you’re looking for. Same thing with access to sales on specific products that I’d “unlocked” via spending 350 smackers. But as I hemmed and hawed over my possible “loyalty gifts” at checkout I realized that what I was spending my points on—which, as a reminder, are "points" "earned" because I’ve already blown plenty of cash there—were sample sizes of products I could then buy full-size versions of if I liked them. My options were things like a Sephora kit with a mini bottle of makeup remover, black liquid eyeliner, and a tiny gold shimmer creme liner costing me 500 “points,” or, as a token of appreciation for spending merely 100 dollar/points there, I could have a wee tube of makeup primer or something I think was called “lip sugar”?

If a company is going to supposedly reward me for being loyal to it, what I want them to give me as proof of their loyalty is what they have plenty of—money. I’ve got some thinking and research to do about loyalty programs before I come to any grand conclusions, but my hunch here is that part of why Sephora can get away with a loyalty program that promises specific goods, not money that can be spent anywhere, to its customers is that in some ways it’s truly a unique outlet—there are plenty of beauty stores out there, but few with the ability to try on nearly everything offered for sale from a variety of brands. (Estee Lauder’s technique of touching everyone who came into her stores translated into more sales of Estee Lauder products, but when Sephora associates touch you to guide you to the right blush for you, that touch is translated into sales for Sephora, regardless of the intermediary brand.) In this sense, Sephora doesn’t need to have a rigorous loyalty reward program—they don’t have a competitor that’s truly equal. Sephora doesn’t need to give you a financial discount for your loyalty; what Sephora needs to do (and has done) with its reward program is give consumers the sense that by shopping there, you’re special. You’re a Beauty Insider, or a “VIB” (which, by the way, acronym for…? Very important Beauty? Why, thankyou) if you accrue enough “points”. You get access to a VIB-only section of Sephora.com discussion forums; you get to attend private Sephora events. You get the sense of somehow being a part of something exclusive, even though the only reason you’re invited is because you’ve managed to drop enough cash there over time.

Still, the free-goods approach makes more sense when the goods are something of equal-ish value to all consumers—like, say, frequent flier miles and airline tickets. If I’ve earned enough miles to get a domestic ticket anywhere in the lower 48, well, great, I can go to Kansas or Los Angeles or the Outer Banks or wherever I want to go. But when I earn enough Sephora points, I get to choose between, say, a “Caviar CC Cream” for my hair or a self-tanning gel and maybe a couple of other things, none of which might apply to my desires. This might sound like the ultimate middle-class whine: Oh, after the three hundred and fifty dollars I spent at fucking Sephora I have to choose between hair caviar and a self-tanner, life is hard. But that’s not really my gripe here—sure, I like money back as much as the next person, but after one has “earned” 350 “points” by buying lip liner, one sort of forfeits the right to grumble about money per se. My gripe is the way this particular loyalty program uses its customers’ loyalty to reinforce its own importance and expertise: “Get a taste of some of our most coveted products,” coos the copy above the rewards you can choose from. Our most coveted products, not your most coveted products. That is: You don’t need to get money back from our loyalty program—trust us, the experts, to give you fair value. You’re literally paying to align yourself even more with the company; its loyalty program doesn’t just reward past loyalty, it engenders future loyalty too. I mean, one of the “gifts” you can opt for is the 250-point Sephora phone cover, which allows you to essentially pay Sephora $250 to advertise for it.

I’m wondering about people’s experiences with reward programs in general, whether it be at Sephora, another beauty company, or something like your grocery store. I have what’s probably a disproportionate amount of hatred for them, having grown up with a mother who steadfastly refused to participate in them because, as they tracked your purchases, it was “just too Big Brother.” (Side note: Her anti-surveillance stance dueled for years with her frugality, until she devised a compromise—she would participate in loyalty programs if they offered a steep enough discount, but she would only pay in cash so that the credit card companies couldn’t track those particular purchases. One Big Brother cancels out another, it seems, though even she will admit the logic is dubious at best. Anyway.) What are your experiences with customer loyalty programs? Do the returns seem worth it to you? Do the sorts of goods in question factor into your signing up—like, are luxury goods such as high-end makeup more or less likely to make you participate in a rewards program? And am I the only one who now wants to spend far less at Sephora now that I can so clearly see how much money I’ve been spending there?