Jennifer Miller, 35, Single Mom/Superhero

Jen and I became friends in the gifted and talented class freshman year of high school. I was the new girl, and entering a new gifted class meant reconfiguring my assumptions of what “smart girls” were. I eyed Jen with curiosity: With her wavy auburn hair, enormous green eyes, and killer curves, she defied my expectations of what my smart-girl cohorts should be. She rode horses, went out with older boys who could drive, and had a sharp, sassy sense of humor that carried a hint of the “bad girl,” even though she was just as beholden to the rules as I was.

At the time, I looked at Jen and saw the impossible: She was smart and beautiful, something that seemed beyond my reach, available only to students of, say, Sweet Valley High. Yet here she was, in my midst, first in the classroom, then in each other’s homes for slumber parties, later in one another’s cars as we drove around suburban Portland looking for just enough trouble to keep us feeling saucy. My envy of her never overtook our friendship, but for me it was a part of our connection, me always looking toward her for guidance on glamour, beauty, and womanhood. (She gave me my first-ever sex tip when we were seniors, which involved a soft-serve ice cream cone.) My mind permitted me to view her as both smart and beautiful, even as I felt that having both was somehow forbidden to me. The first time someone asked us if we were sisters, I was thrilled—it was one of the moments that allowed me to see that maybe part of what I envied in her, I actually possessed but was unable to see. I never had her Mae West-tinged attitude (or the mile-long eyelashes to match), but having her as a role model through the tricky waters of gifted girldom did me pretty well. Sixteen years after high school graduation, we chatted about beauty, brains, and the intersection between the two. 

Jen and daughter Annika.

On Feeling Beautiful
In all honesty, it’s been a long time since I truly felt beautiful. If pressed, I’d say I felt "sassy" a couple of weeks ago [see picture below], but I don’t know that I’ve felt really beautiful in years. Which I’m sure stems from my inability to like myself without some kind of male approval, but I’m working on that! Sadly, I think at least 80% of how I feel about my appearance comes from male approval. I seem to need a lot more in the way of compliments and approval than most people. I don’t know if that stems from it not happening in my childhood, or from middle/high school when I felt like a raging geek. It makes it hard in relationships, because I feel like if I don’t get compliments, then he doesn’t find me attractive anymore, even if that’s not the case. Caused more than one argument…

And the first time I felt beautiful? My first wedding. I think a big part of it was that I was in love, and marrying a man that I thought was way out of my league. Hindsight, I know… It was amazing to feel absolutely beautiful. I think it wouldn’t have mattered if my hair was a wreck and my makeup didn’t work—I felt like I was floating.

On Hearing “You’re Beautiful”
I blush. Like a total dork. And I make some kind of sarcastic comment about getting eyes checked. The only time it differs is when it’s my daughter telling me, and then I know she’s wanting something! My parents’ attitude toward beauty was pretty much to ignore it. Good hygiene, yes. Compliments for no reason? Oh, hell no!

A very sweet, older gentleman, in his 80s, maybe, stopped me at the grocery store one day when I was totally grubby—jeans, hoodie, hat—and told me I had beautiful eyes. I almost cried, and I’ve held onto it for a long time. The first time someone told me I remember someone telling me I was beautiful, it was senior year, and I’m pretty sure the guy said it so that I would write his English paper for him. But I do remember it gave me butterflies and warm fuzzies.

On Pretty vs. Smart
I was the “chubby, oversmart, drama geek.” I guess I still think of myself that way. I don’t know that I find beauty to be an asset. In my life, I’ve gotten a hell of a lot farther on my brains and perseverance than on my looks. I almost exploited my looks for personal gain once—I auditioned to be a stripper. I think I auditioned to know whether I was “good enough,” though I don’t think it would have meant anything to me at that point in life but being able to pay the bills. I didn’t take the job.

The idea that girls could be pretty or smart but not both? I know I absorbed that message. I was smart! I think it affected my attitude by making me try to hide my brains so that maybe people would think I was beautiful. I always tried hard in classes, but I’d also try to hide grades on papers, keep my head down so the teachers didn’t feel the need to praise me out loud, that kind of thing. I’m not sure how I got rid of that idea, but I do know that now I’m very proud of being smarter than the average bear… I try to get it through to my daughter that it’s cool to be smart. She’s in second grade, and loves school—goes to the third-grade classroom for math and the fourth-grade classroom for reading/writing. She has the advantage of also being tall, thin, and athletic to go along with her brains. She’ll be all-around awesome.

On The Most Beautiful Person in the World
My daughter, Annika, is naturally the most beautiful person I’ve ever laid eyes on. She has all the "physical" beauties that society wants—and I need another shotgun or two before she starts dating!—with long legs, super-fast metabolism, long hair, sparkly eyes. But more importantly, she has a generous spirit, does not judge anyone, and has never met a person that she hasn’t said many fabulous things about. I tell her she’s beautiful every day. I never heard compliments—unless it regarded grades—from my parents. I want the polar opposite for my daughter. I want her to never for a second doubt how much I love her, or how incredibly beautiful, smart, charming, and talented she is. And it’s my job to make sure she knows.

On the Beauty Ritual
I think 90% of me feeling beautiful comes from prep. If I take a hot bubble bath—with wine, please!—use body butter, straighten my hair, put on makeup and use perfume, I feel a hell of a lot prettier than when I just shower, do the bare minimum, and use deodorant. But in reality, I look pretty much the same both ways. I never have time for myself—it’s really rare that I can even find half an hour to devote to a book or an episode of Glee without interruption. I’m not sure what it is about the ritual that works, unless it’s just that I can lock the door and ignore everyone else and have a little me time.

On Confidence
I think I’ve actually gotten more attractive in my 30s. I have a bit more confidence, and I know who I am and what I want. Confidence goes a long way toward projecting a good self-image. An average/plain woman can come across as gorgeous if she has confidence. When I’m in a good/sassy/confident mood, I feel better about me—and I feel more attractive. I wish I knew how to make it happen more often…

One thing I’ve learned since high school is that the only person whose opinion of me really matters is me. If I’m happy with me, and proud of me, and sure of me, whatever anyone else thinks is nothing but window dressing. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be complimented, or that I won’t solicit opinions from whomever I’m with as to how they prefer my hair, clothes, etc. But in the end, it all boils down to being able to answer “Would you be proud to have you as a friend/mother/daughter/sister?” with a resounding YES.

Jessica Obrist/Jo Jo Stiletto, Burlesque Dancer/Roller Derby Queen, Seattle

I first met Jessica Obrist in 1997, when we were both involved in theater and magazine journalism at our university. But I first met Jo Jo Stiletto—her alter ego—in 2005, when I saw her gender-bending burlesque act involving a auto-work chassis, coveralls, and, of course, pasties. Jo Jo/Jessica performs and leads burlesque workshops in Seattle, and also has a heavy presence in the Rat City Rollergirls team, winning 2008 Alumni of the Year for her fairy-godmother-like dedication. She talked with me about beauty personae, self-exposure, the allure of athleticism, and drag-queen rash. In her own words:

 
On Having a Persona                        
If you gave me two words to choose from—beauty or glamour—I’d choose glamour. Beautiful, pretty…maybe I’m like—that’d be boring. Give me moxie, give me glamour. Would I describe myself as beautiful? Probably not. Fabulous? Yes. I consider myself a faux queen—like a drag queen, but, I mean, I’m a woman: taking this persona and making not even a real woman, but this crazy, over-the-top woman. I like the heightened reality of burlesque, and part of me thinks there’s nothing wrong with that heightened reality—this woman with no imperfections, with 10 pairs of pantyhose on. It’s fascinating to me. There’s the everyday Jessica who wears what I call my uniform: leggings, American Apparel skirt, T-shirt, sweatshirt. Jessica hates glitter. But this other person, Jo Jo, is the glitteriest person anyone seems to know! I want to wear wigs, wear the glitter and the fabulous makeup. It’s me putting on my clown face. And I kind of like to put on my clown face.

It’s for fun, this sort of exaggerated beauty, this fake beauty. It’s not real. I don’t have to do this to feel better about myself, and sometimes I do it in unflattering ways too—really gross-looking eye makeup, the "I cried myself to sleep" look, for dramatic effect. Why not? In some ways I don’t want to attract the male gaze. Maybe I want to be the center of attention, but it’s not about being the beautiful center of attention. It’s about—Oh, look at that wig, where did she get those shoes, that’s ridiculous! It’s the idea of making art. Being myself is expressing myself in these ways, and it’s okay to express yourself by wearing fake eyelashes and way too much glitter.

Right now I have drag rash, this rash on my forehead from a wig. The first time I experienced drag rash, I wasn’t on a show; I was just on this party bus as a fundraiser for an LGBT nonprofit benefit. It was a bunch of drag queens and regular people going on a pub crawl. The theme was “back to school,” and I was the best substitute teacher I could be—beehive wig, pencils in the hair. Could it have been as fun in jeans? Maybe. But every so often it’s fun to put on a dress and have a persona. It certainly makes it more fun to hang your cleavage out in the wind—that’s not me, not Jessica, but that might be my persona.

I feel beautiful if I perk myself up a little bit, put myself in drag. But a part of me also feels like I don’t have to have any of that to have that same feeling. It’s hard to remember that sometimes, especially for people who have a persona: If I take that away, I’m still the same person. Look in the mirror without all that and you’re the same girl, you’re still beautiful. Hearing it without that persona feels strange, but it’s true.

There are these girls with the perfect shoes, the perfect makeup. It’s who they are, from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed. I cannot put that effort in. I just can’t! And you know what? I feel fine. I feel fine if I put on leggings and a frumpy outfit. Because tomorrow I’m going to wear a vintage pinup dress and put on fake glasses and do something else, and I’ll feel a little pick-me-up. But then I’ll be back to a sort of frumpy outfit, and it’s okay. I mean, those people who feel like they always have to look perfect—I don’t know if that’s a persona. Is that a persona? I hope so. They’re wearing their game face for work, for everyday. But to me it just seems exhausting.

I was getting a dress for my wedding reception. Honestly, the idea of going to stores is horrible, because I hate trying on clothes in traditional stores. The idea of being fussed over sounded horrible. I go into these stores and have a miserable experience, buying cookie-cutter clothes for cookie-cutter body types and having people fuss over me. I guess I like making my own persona instead of being told who my persona is. The persona of a bride—maybe I’m not comfortable being what other people might define that as. Going anywhere and having someone call me a bride—I’m Jo Jo! I’m Jessica! I’m not going to play that role, that bride role.   

 Jessica as bride: at her wedding reception, November 2010

On Changing Faces
The public image is that I’m pretty happy with myself, but, I mean—my hair is matted down and I’ve got this rash on my head, and my skin isn’t perfect. I’m having my wedding reception this weekend and I’m thinking, I look awful. And then I’m like: You hired your friend, who’s a fabulous photographer. All you have to do is just look in the mirror again, and your face is going to look different. What’s in your brain is going to be what you see. Look back in the mirror and change that. I have that hating voice, and then there’s the good voice. It’s all in your fucking brain.

On Changing the Rules
Roller derby was theatrical at first. Girls in fishnets and lipstick hitting each other—wow, it’ll be crazy! [Laughs] From the get-go there was definitely a lot of sexuality at play, but it wasn’t supposed to be that we’re doing this for dudes. Early in our history we were offered pictures in German Playboy and we were like, Fuck no! There’s this idea of the hyperfeminine, but there’s this athleticism too. If you went to a bout today, there’s no difference between this and any other sport. They’ve trained for hours—it just happens that they wear lipstick. Why are they wearing fishnets? Because it’s fun! We write our own rules. Anyone who changes the rules, it’s not like the rest of the world just catches up to you. I always tell the girls: If you want to keep the fishnets and lipstick, wear it, do it—hey, sure, wear a push-up bra. If you want to wear an athletic jersey and pants to your knees, do it. It’s women being athletic and strong, but still having a wink and nod to something that’s not accepted into any other sort of sporting world.

With burlesque, it’s about accepting that there are many different types of beauty, that it’s not just the type of beauty that we see in magazines. For me it’s the world that I love, the world that people are creating that’s sort of free of what society is telling me is beautiful. I’m seeing what these artists are telling me is beautiful. When we do these burlesque classes, it’s your idea of sexy, and the person next to you is probably really different—let’s explore that. They’re both beautiful and sexy, let’s engage with that. 

On Self-Exposure
Burlesque is fun, and it is petrifying. It’s terrifying to expose yourself, whatever that means. Burlesque can be done without exposing any part of your body, but you’re exposing yourself creatively. Will I be accepted? Will people scrutinize me? You judge yourself more harshly than anyone else. So stand in front of a group of people, take off your top with confidence. Watch the audience, watch their faces change. You have this expectation that you won’t be accepted, and it’s the exact opposite. It’s beautiful and fascinating to watch. You’ve got different bodies, breasts, bottoms. You’ll find that the girl with the big tits hates her big tits and loves the girl with the tiny little boobies and thinks they’re awesome. It’s about finding what you appreciate in other people and what you appreciate in yourself. If a girl walks in and is all, “I hate my butt, I’ve got the biggest butt”—okay, okay, I hear that. But part of my thing is: Well, bend over. Bend way over. Now bend over all the way. Now bend over all the way with your legs straight. And it looks amazing, and that person is owning their giant bottom—everybody loves it!

In my world, it’s very much a bunch of women—I hardly ever think of men. But I do think of gender roles. It’s playing with sexuality, playing with gender roles and who you’re appealing to—or do you even want to appeal to someone? There was a man in the show this year, and I found myself trying to rewrite statements in my head. It’s so much focused on women for me, and I felt totally biased. How do I tell a man that he’s beautiful? How do I make him see that he’s dealing with what we all deal with?

Anyone stands on that ledge, exposing themselves, and you have to take that step. Burlesque and roller derby both happen in a room. It’s not filmed, it’s not recorded. It happens live, for an audience, an audience who will experience it, and then they will leave, and they can’t ever perfectly re-create that experience. It’s truly unique. Something is happening. And there’s a lot of beauty issues there, a lot of issues relating to self-image, to how women are perceived, and sports and art and sexiness, and all these things are being explored live, in front of an audience. You’re going to find that falling off the cliff is a thrill. It’ll be amazing, and people are going to love it. It’s the same for everyone, it’s no different for men, women, tiny women, big women—we all have the same fear. But if you actually step off the cliff, they’re going to love you.

Pretty Stinky People

I’m four months into the no-shampoo, no face wash experiment, to healthy results. The face part has been fantastic, actually: My skin has balanced out nicely, and even this extraordinarily dry winter isn’t causing any major flakiness. I’m using a serum on my face morning and night (anti-aging! this 1976 baby says it’s time!) and a tinted moisturizer instead of foundation, and so far so good. My face is perenially shiny and while the no-washing hasn’t helped, it hasn’t hurt. Nary a pimple in sight.

Hair has been a bit more problematic. There’s no question that my hair does not look squeaky-clean, and I eye those shiny-haired girls with envy—o, to have that utterly breezy feeling again! That said, it usually doesn’t look dirty either. The texture has changed for the better; it appears thicker and fuller, with more volume (and without any effort on my part). I blush to report that it has been called “luxurious.” The roots look oily, which I combat by sprinkling dry shampoo—or, more often, arrowroot starch (which, unlike baby powder, doesn’t make my hair look white)--through it.

I’ve largely kept mum about my experiment. And here’s why: I met up with a friend from high school recently, one I hadn’t seen for six years. After about 10 minutes of catching up, he said that my hair looked fantastic: “It’s a New York thing, right? You always have a perfect blowout?” (I’ve never had a blowout in my life.) I told him I hadn’t washed my hair in four months, and he wrinkled his nose. “I’m going to sit over there now, okay?” He was teasing, of course (I think?) but the fact is that was his reaction, and I know it’s a lot of other people’s reactions too.

I missed this story—about what seems to be people who have access to showers not showering--when it first came out. No great loss, as there’s no newsworthiness here whatsoever. I like Virginia’s take over at Beauty Schooled Project: It’s “newsworthy” because these people are unassailably attractive.

I started out joking about all the pretty people in the article, but it’s also no accident that the NYT managed to find such fresh-faced beauties to be the spokespeople of Team Dirty. If they’d shown a bunch of older, less conventionally attractive, or — God forbid! — fat people, they couldn’t even have done the story. Because unattractive people not smelling great is not news.

So when I tell people that I’ve given up washing my hair and face, I immediately invite them to judge not only my cleanliness but my attractiveness. It reminds me of the time a magazine I was working at was doing a staff celebrity lookalike bit, and I reported that a professor had once told me, “There’s something about you that reminds me of Jack Palance.” It was funny in its absurdity; still, a photo assistant came over to take a snapshot of me to show the editor-in-chief “because we need to show her that you’re pretty enough for us to make a joke about you looking like Jack Palance.” (What if I hadn’t been?) 

Me.

Jack Palance.

About 1/3 of people I’ve told about the no-wash plan get all, “That’s AWESOME” and want to know more specifics. Another 1/3 don’t think it’s news. But the last third gives me this look of—not quite disgust; these are friends, after all—but of wariness and distance, as though I’m then going to tell them my recipe for making my own maxipads out of old copies of Mother Jones. Yet nobody I’m close to—the people I’m hugging, kissing, sitting next to at work—has mentioned or even hinted that perhaps this experiment should come to a quiet close. I’m choosing to believe that the wary folks are simply jealous with all the time I now spend eating bonbons, the poor hair-dryer slaves.

Sarah, 29, Designer, San Francisco

I met Sarah online, at a feminist discussion board. So even before I’d met her in person, I knew her to be thoughtful, clear-minded, clever, and, well, fun—as fun as a person can be when everything she says is in 12-point Helvetica. When we did finally meet in person, I immediately got the impression that if she liked you, she would not only implicitly be on your side, but would act as though it had always been that way and couldn’t possibly be any other.

Her sense of play extends to her self-presentation and fashion: On any given day, Sarah’s look might conjure Weimar Berlin, prairie dust bowl, or Paris student riots. So evocative of other times and places are her varied looks that you might not immediately notice that her physical attributes would read like a model booker’s dream list—tall, slim frame; blonde hair; lush, even features—and in fact she did model for a short time. She agreed to share her thoughts on opting in and out of beauty, her erstwhile modeling career, and expectations and judgments of beautiful women. In her own words:


On Choice Words
To say someone is beautiful, and to mean it, is a powerful statement. Truth, poetry, nature—these things are beautiful. Beauty is something that touches you on a very basic level. When I think of pretty I think of effort. Pretty is made. For example, if you put on bright red lipstick, pretty is the word you'll get from people. Cute and adorable are my least favorite adjectives. There is something backhanded to them, something a shade belittling. Puppies and babies are cute, possibly shoes—but not women. It's a word people use when they do not particularly value the described as equal to them.

I hate when men use compliments as way of introduction—it makes me flare up with anger. I don’t think it should be acceptable for a stranger to comment on your physicality. It feels like they are bestowing a judgment on you and you are expected to be grateful. I want to say, “So what?” I feel like they are putting me in a tricky position where I am forced to have a reaction—a reaction that will also be judged—to walk between bitch and narcissist and coquette. My reaction is usually a cross between annoyed and skeptical. It should be noted, that I rarely feel this way when it comes from a woman—perhaps because I feel there is a tinge of positive sisterhood spirit in the comment. A well-placed and heartfelt compliment between women can sometimes feel subversive.


On Her Beauty Routine
At this point in my life, I almost feel as though beauty is something I can opt in or out of, and I choose to opt in by engaging in routine. The benefit of this is feeling as though I have control over the face I present; the flip side is that if I leave the house without engaging in the full routine, I feel uncomfortably overexposed or even ugly.

Having a routine is fun about five days of the week. I do take enjoyment from the process and the artistry, but sometimes I feel trapped by it and annoyed with the time investment. It's gotten to the point—and I am completely ashamed of this—that I don't like to leave the house bare-faced. Putting on makeup can be used to enhance beauty, but lately I feel I’m using it more as a disguise. There is a double standard operating here. When I look at other women, I find myself most engaged by natural looking faces and hair—the less makeup the better.

I've heard men comment negatively on women catching their reflection in windows, and that kind of misinterpretation of vanity annoys me. For instance: At minimum, I'm usually wearing foundation, eyeliner, and mascara. Sometimes I wear loud lipstick, blush, eyebrow pencil, and fake lashes—all depending on my mood. Sometimes I tease my hair up into a big ’60s pouf (Bump-Its are for amateurs). None of these things are natural. They are constantly at risk of running, smearing, caking, marking my teeth, being uneven, deflating, etc. And despite these femme trappings, I am not a delicate woman; I sweat, run, push, dance, eat, imbibe, kiss. When I catch my reflection I’m just trying to make sure that everything is still mostly in place. I prefer to avoid the “Did I get it? How about now?” conversation about lipstick on my teeth.

On Modeling
I was 20 years old, claiming to be 18 at the insistence of the photographer who "discovered" me and wanted me to have a longer shelf life. I did it just to see if I could. I suppose I was looking for the usual things—money, validation. I stopped after about six months because I found it tedious. The two words that immediately come to mind are cold and bored because of all the time you spend waiting around on the shoot. I hated the rules and dietary restrictions. Also, I was working in Boston and I quickly came to the opinion that if these photographers/stylists/makeup artists were any good, they'd be in New York. It was frustrating to watch people compose shots or pull outfits and feel like I could do it better. It all came to a head when I had to decide if I wanted to try out a summer in New York, staying at a models' apartment. I realized that it would just be more of the same, so I bailed.

I was also looking for perspective. I didn't trust the image I saw in the mirror and I didn't trust the (nice) things people around me would say, so I was hoping these "professionals" would be able to finally give it to me straight. I've since come to understand that beauty is incredibly subjective, and that there are no “experts.”

I didn't feel beautiful when I was modeling. I felt my strength as a model was my height—I’m six feet tall—and when I was working I only saw my body as a tool. Nothing could have been less sexy or glamorous. I would work really hard on a shoot and get so excited to see the photos, only to be disappointed. It was still me. Me with makeup, in a dress, limbs in impossible positions—but still me. There wasn't transformation. I was left feeling the exact same way, because I was the exact same person.

I find it disheartening that the public seems to view modeling as an ideal way to make money. I say this because when I tell strangers that I have no interest in modeling, they act like I am putting something to waste—as though if you meet certain physical qualifications, you would be a fool not to cash in on them. Do we have to sell everything?


On Having Blonde Hair vs. Being “The Blonde”
The people I found beautiful [as an adolescent] did not look like me. Specifically, they were darker, more severe. My own face, in contrast, I found boring. When friends or boys found me attractive, I chalked it up to a difference of opinion. By my own assessment, there was nothing overtly wrong with me, but there was nothing really great either. I felt like I defaulted into a certain beauty ideal, but in my heart I believed that I didn't particularly excel at that either. Yes, I was: tall, thin, fair, with long blonde hair, and blue eyes. But these are just words. They sound good, but they hold no intrinsic value. Blonde is not more beautiful than brunette. Tall is not more beautiful than short. But these words represent certain touchstones of beauty and we are taught that they have value. It’s a checklist and if you check off enough of them people will grant you a certain beauty status. It was always hard to take stock in the attention I got for the way I looked. I never bought into Barbie. Those blonde amazons of my childhood—Christie Brinkley, Elle McPherson, Claudia Schiffer—held no interest for me.

The disconnect between what I think is attractive, and what I’ve gotten attention for, can be hard to reconcile. It’s like being good at soccer when all you want in the world is to be a ballerina. I know that I can use my looks to seduce—I don't mean that exclusively in a sexual way. I can dress a certain way, put on makeup, style my hair, and make a stir when I walk into a room. But it feels like a sleight of hand. Where I succeed, the effect is more than the sum of its parts only in other people's heads. The imagination fills in the gaps.

It’s hard to untangle the subject of beauty from perception and expectation. In regards to perception, there are: the ways we perceive ourselves, the way we perceive others, and the question of how we are perceived by others. Which perception holds the most value for you and influences the choices you make? For me it breaks down like this: When I look into the mirror, I find my own reflection boring. When I think of beautiful woman—I’ll use a celebrity, since they exist in our shared consciousness—I think of Anna Karina. If I believe the compliments that people give me, then I can conclude that some people think I am beautiful. When I wake up in the morning, I'm faced with bridging those gaps—between how I think I look, how I wish I looked, and how other people perceive me to look. I’m never going to be Anna Karina, but I do have the option to play into other people’s perception of beauty. But, to be complicit in perpetuating something that feels like a lie, and somehow expect to come out of it with healthy self-esteem is asking your brain to execute some fairly complicated gymnastics.

Expectation is another beast. Let me use this example: Think of all the gossip websites and magazines that turn a buck on publishing unflattering, candid photos of celebrities. The beauty of celebrities is at least as much artifice as genetics, and though I think most of us realize this, we take pleasure in these revelations—these failures to meet expectation.  This perception (there’s that word again!) of expectation has affected my daily routine. I don't feel comfortable leaving the house without makeup anymore. I hate this. I don't hate putting on makeup; I hate the shackles of the need. I know I can hold my own on non-physical attributes: I am smart, curious, and can make people laugh. Surely, if you just met me, and I had made no physical effort, you wouldn't think badly of me. The need lies somewhere in this murky business of expectation.

There’s a 1962 television interview Anna Karina that’s been on my mind. In it, the reporter starts needling Karina about the way she looks. It’s hard not to feel sorry for her as she squirms under the camera’s relentless stare. You can tell she desperately wishes the interviewer would just move on to a new topic. For me, it illustrates this twisted desire to get beautiful women to just admit they know they are beautiful. But I don't imagine anyone being able to have such a simple and absolutist view of something so subjective and in constant flux, complicated by expectation and endlessly confounded by perception.

Beauty Interviews

Part of what makes beauty a complex subject for women is its secrecy and its illusions. We may talk explicitly about our favorite skin products and lipsticks. Among our intimates we may talk about beauty and self-image--our fears and our joys alike: I love this picture of us, we look great! / I feel gross today / It was for the best but I miss having someone to tell me I'm pretty.

But because we place so much emphasis on beauty, we are unable to talk about it freely. We don't share our deepest vanities for fear of being judged narcissists; we don't share our most terrifying moments of  doubt because it's impossible to put it into words. We may touch on it, with terms like "confidence" and "inner beauty," but we all know that confidence alone is not the answer to the beauty conundrum.


The interviews in this blog are a space for women to cast a spotlight on their own take on the beauty mystique. Artists, cosmetologists, photographers, dancers, models, plastic surgeons, actresses, professors of women's studies, sex workers: The professions that directly deal with questions of beauty are plentiful, and here many of them will have space to put forth their views on beauty. Of course, it's not only women whose professions and passions bring them into the beauty sphere who have a take on the matter: veterinary assistants, office managers, writers, bartenders, and retirees will have voice here as well.

In the weeks since I started conducting these interviews, I've learned a helluva lot about the myriad ways there are to approach the question of beauty; already I've found myself approaching the mirror, and indeed the world, with more nuance. I hope that reading some of these interviews does that for readers of this blog as well.

Helen Gurley Brown on Makeup

That fabulous face...can you achieve it by being very, very clever with make-up?


I don't think there's even a prayer!

The even-featured, alabaster-skinned, meltingly, gaspingly beautiful beauty men go to pieces over can't be achieved with make-up, prayer, incantations or sending your face back to the factory!

You can have something else with make-up...an interesting face, an alive face, a sexy face. ...

You don't have to lie your head off and say I am, I am, I am when you know damn well you aren't—a stunner. But you must love yourself enough to employ every device...voice, words, clothes, figure, make-up...to become one. ...

Nearly every woman is part-beauty. She has one good feature even if it's just smooth elbows. You play up that feature. You draw a face on the elbow with little eyes and a mouth. (I'm kidding!)



—Sex and the Single Girl, Helen Gurley Brown, 1962

Mani Mania

I swore off manicures when I was in pastry school--it was forbidden in classes, but one girl wore it anyway, and I remember seeing the smallest bit of bright pink polish flake into our brioche dough. I became disgusted at that moment by the thought of having semi-permanent varnish put upon one's body--on your hands! your hands touch things! things people might eat!--and didn't look back.

But in the past few weeks, three separate people have offhandedly (heh) mentioned to me that they love getting manicures--that they feel it gives one that extra little polish (okay, I'll stop). I quit the professional kitchen life several years ago, and my home cooking consists of little more than defrosting precooked chicken strips, so after person #3 today mentioned manicures, I went in for one.

 Snap decision: today's $8 manicure.

It's not hard to see why manicures top many women's lists of beauty musts. It's frivolous, meaning it's for pleasure only; it's affordable (or at least it is for women who live in cities with plentiful "pink collar" immigrant labor, at a rock bottom of $7 a pop); it creates at least half an hour of forced lassitude, time in which you can literally do nothing--not even read, unless you've brought along a servant to turn the pages of Us magazine for you--other than sit there and let yourself be treated. Part of the New York manicure ritual (which has been the same at literally every salon I've visited, which has been a good handful despite my seven-year hiatus from fingernail polish) is the miniature back rub, which comes, unasked for and free of charge, from the manicurist. (Virginia Postrel argues here that the economy can't afford to scoff at nail salons. That was in 1997, and time has proved her right: Spa visits went up in 2008 and 2009, presumably the $12 pedicure kind, not the $200 massage kind.)

And sure enough, it felt good tonight to go in and let myself be treated--and, of course, my bitten nails look much better than they do when left solely under my guardianship. Still, I feel weird about the whole thing. When I put on my coat, an aesthetician came around to help me button it lest it mess up my nails; it was a practical move on her part, ensuring that the just-performed labor wouldn't be for naught, but still--I felt in that moment like she was my servant, not someone I had merely paid to do a service. (Is there a difference, though?) This was compounded by the race/class intersection at the salon: Like 80% of all New York-area nail salon owners, she was Korean. The steady flow of Chinese labor has actually diminished that percentage, just as it has in California, where 75% of all nail salons are Vietnamese-owned. Asian women are often depicted as being passive, and a demure sensibility is indeed considered a feminine asset in many Asian cultures. As I sat there while this woman bent in front of me to button my coat--after, of course, washing my fingertips, rubbing my arms and back, clipping off the dead skin around my fingernails, and then carefully painting ten tiny canvases--I couldn't help but feel a bit like one of those creepy dudes who frequents Asian dating sites.

Now, if I withdrew from any fiscal interactions involving a race/class disparity in New York, I'd pretty much do nothing but sit in my apartment eating dirt. This is a city of immigrants, particularly brown immigrants, many of whom are on the first step of the great American journey. Indian men drive me home late at night, Mexican men deliver my dinner, Chinese women wash my clothes, Arab men sell me sodas and bubble gum. And I'm paying for those services, and presumably that price has been set by the market and is remotely fair, so I just sort of have to guess that it's all okay after all.

What makes manicures different; why am I more uneasy with that exchange than I am with others? Part of it is the unseen damage done to the workers: In a 2004 survey of salon employees in New York, 37% report eye irritation, 66% report neck and back discomfort, and 18% report asthma (compared with the 6% general rate in America). I left the salon three hours ago and I can still smell the solvent on my fingertips, even though I've washed my hands--and that was one half-hour visit, not 10-hour days, six days a week. [Edited 4.19.2011: Virginia Sole-Smith's investigative feature at The Nation gets more into the labor conditions in nail salons; I wish I'd known about it when writing this originally!]

But I think the real reason I'm uneasy with bargain-basement salons is not because of labor issues, as left-wing-righteous as I occasionally fancy myself. (And it's not like my friends who love manicures are gleefully exploiting cheap labor. Certainly I'm not condemning salons nor their clients--among whom I count myself--even if some of the labor practices that have garnered protest from the workers, detailed in this Times piece, makes me cringe. Let's all just be sure to tip well.) The real reason is that I still see beauty as being frivolous--and despite what I wrote above about frivolity equaling pleasure, the fact is that I feel guilt over taking those indulgences for myself, even when I know I needn't. I'm slowly coming to realize that what I thought was resistance to beauty culture is actually a deep negative engagement with it--sort of always wanting to explore its lands more but being afraid to, for fear of seeming too frivolous, too girly, too weak, even though I don't look at women who more comfortably inhabit Beautyland in that way (unless they prove themselves through their actions to be so). I'd like to try to engage with beauty culture in a more positive way, on my own terms, without always looking over my shoulder for its folly.

Riding the F Train

My first bit of unwanted attention in 2011 came last night—happy new year!—from a stranger on the subway. Transcript as follows: "Hey, fatty. Fat fat. Fat booty, fat pussy, I see your fat underneath your clothes, you're fat, I see it. Fat fat fat fat fat."

There was only one other person in the subway car, and the perpetrator had earlier made a point of yelling across the car that "as long as you're with me, you're 100% safe" (perfectly standard behavior for a man who isn't a threat, right?), so I knew not to escalate the situation. At the next stop, I waited until the train doors were already open before striding toward the door, so that he would be less likely to follow me out. He didn't, and that was that.

Except it wasn't. I had no idea how to internally react, even if externally I handled it just fine. My first words to myself were of self-assurance, even if now I wish I could say they were of something closer to anger. The immediate thought process: 1) This is a crazy source, not a trustworthy one; 2) You were sitting down and wearing baggy clothes so he couldn't tell what you looked like anyway; 3) You are well within recommended height-weight guidelines and are emphatically not fat.

This is all fine and good for not allowing myself to use a stranger's comments as an excuse to spiral into disordered eating ("I need 2,100 calories a day to fulfull my body's energy needs--but the dude on the Q train said I was fat, so no breakfast for me, mkay thanks!"). But the fact that my first thought was not upset but reminding myself that I wasn't fat--as if his assault would have been justified if I were--made me think about the power of that word as an admonishment for existing.

That man wasn't yelling at me because of my weight; he was yelling at me because it was New Year's Day and here he was, drunk or high on the subway, skin weathered by years of hard work, unclean, unshaven, and alone, and here is this woman about his age whose hair is in a French twist and who seems like a nice friendly girl because she hasn't had a day's hard work in her life, look at that fair skin, and is that fucking glitter on her eyelids, and she had damn well better learn her place. And whether he consciously knew it or not, he chose to put me in my place with the #1 word that is anathema to women in our culture: fat.

The F-word is anathema because we let it be anathema. We let that word become the biggest insult a woman can hear--I know plenty of women who might doubt their intellect, but none of them cower from the word dumb as they do from fat, even when the former is a greater fear than the latter.

I'm already conscious of trying not to attach negative judgment to the word--if a woman complains to me of being fat, my response, verbatim, is usually "I'm not going to hear that." It doesn't matter if the speaker is overweight. It's a lose-lose scenario, but part of why it's exactly that is because if I were to say, "Okay, you're fat," I would feel like I were telling someone she was all of the things that our culture mistakenly associates with that word--even though I don't believe those things myself. I'm just as unable to truly divorce the word fat from all of its illegitimate siblings--like lazy, poor, uneducated, damaged, self-hating, unprofessional, not to mention ugly, asexual, and unattractive--as the believers who came up with those associations in the first place.

All this is retrofitted reasoning, however. Fat activism was not on my mind in the moment. On top of my self-assurances of being not-fat was a foggy awareness that I was supposed to be having exactly this reaction. I called a friend after I left the subway, and as the words tumbled out of my mouth I found myself becoming more hysterical than I'd initially felt--my voice rose in pitch, the rumblings of indignation changed to a tightly wound self-pity. My friend said, among other things, "That's crazy; you're not fat," and while that was what I wanted to hear, I also felt frustrated that it was what I wanted to hear. It wasn't safe in that moment to say anything back to that man, but I hated that even after he was out of sight, my trembling self-doubt gave him exactly what he wanted.

I was playing the part of the wounded, insecure woman; the supporting role would go to the angry, outraged feminist. But the fact is, both of those were roles; truthfully, I just felt muddled. The word fat is so loaded that I couldn't sort out my authentic reaction to hearing it used as an assault weapon pointed directly at me. Yes, I did immediately reassure myself that I wasn't fat (and I'm not proud of this reaction), but I assure myself of that literally dozens of times a day (which I'm not proud of either). I never really felt angry or outraged or scared; instead, I felt nervous before he said it and numbed thereafter.

What I wish could happen, to me and anyone who hears that word used as a weapon--whether it's as friendly fire from a well-intentioned but misguided family member ("If only you'd lose a few pounds," a mother says), as training tactics ("Melt off that ugly fat! Feel the calorie burn!" yells the Spinning instructor), or as a plain old attack from a sad loner on the subway--is not numbness but neutrality. To react as if one heard not "You're fat" but "Your feet are a size 9! Size 9 size 9 size 9!"--a statement of fact that is either truthful or isn't, and if it isn't can be dismissed with no questions, and if it is true, is a matter between you and your doctor.

I've spent a lot of time trying to recognize that I don't need to artificially manipulate my weight, and I've been somewhat successful at that. And I've spent a lot of time trying to accept my body even in the places where it truly is chubby--recognizing that my little beer belly is the result of a lot of good fun and isn't something I'd trade in for a smaller belt. And I've spent just as much time questioning why it all matters. What I haven't done yet is truly try to not let that word--the fat word--have any sort of stigma within my own mind. And maybe my muddled reaction is testament to being farther along in that than I recognize; I don't know. I want to stop being afraid of not just adipose tissue, but the word itself. Those three little letters carry too much weight.

Beauty Resolutions

When it comes to my appearance, I've had the same loose resolutions every year: drop a bit of weight, and/or accept my appearance as-is. (Contradictions? Moi?) The former is easy enough when you set your mind to it, but the latter isn't; it's vague, with no real actionable steps. It's about how you feel, not about how you act, and if we all had control over our feelings we'd be a nation of robots (and therapists would be out of work).

And really, I've never been able to stick to resolutions. But I do have a handful of goals surrounding looks:

1) Go for a week sometime this year without looking in a mirror (except once in the morning).
2) Approach beauty with a sense of play, not duty: Try fun hairstyles, try the occasional makeup "look" instead of my usual oh-I'm-not-wearing-makeup makeup.
3) Flipside: Go for a week without wearing makeup.

And again, these seem contradictory. But what I've learned so far in talking with different women for this blog (starting in 2011, this blog will have weekly interviews with women from all walks of life, focusing on beauty-related issues) is that beauty doesn't have to be about duty. I've been surprised by the joy that a number of women I've talked with have reported about their beauty routine: Many report it as a sensual experience, a time to devote attention to a sense of fantasy. I've always approached hair and makeup with a sort of "ugh" approach, but still I do it. Ideally my beliefs would be in line with my actions, but the fact is I prefer how I look with makeup, so I'm not going to change that. But I want to try to stop approaching beauty mainly as something bestowed upon us--or not bestowed upon us--by others, whether that be nature or whatever "look" is deigned to be in at any given time.

One woman I interviewed described liking her beauty routine because then it felt like something she could opt in or opt out of, instead of something based solely on genetic accidents, and I rather like that. I've chosen not to opt out, but I'm not satisfied with the ways in which I've opted in, either--largely because I'm not looking at it as an option. Perhaps it's not really an option; I don't know, that's part of what I'm trying to investigate. But it's worth a shot.

Baby's in the Corner

Am I the only one who's sort of sour about Jennifer Grey winning Dancing With the Stars? I mean, I don't know who Kyle is (should I?) and, well, there are other "teen activists" I'd rather see be crowned than Bristol Palin. But I still feel like Ms. Grey betrayed all the goofy-looking girls in the world when she got her nose job, after becoming a national heroine simply for being, as Patrick Swayze put it, "the cool, funky Jewish girl who gets the guy."

I'm aware of the hypocrisy that comes for judging someone on their looks when that's supposedly all I'm against. And Jennifer Grey has a right to do whatever she damn well wants to do with her body and face. That doesn't mean that I wasn't cringing as I watched her paso doble. Her technical proficiency was remarkable, certainly. But the paso doble, as any good teenaged drama geek circa 1992 knows from Strictly Ballroom, is a dance of passion. It's meant to mimic the bullfighter entering the ring; the lead is the matador, the follow, the cape, swirling around the matador in a tight but fluid dare. It's a dance that requires skill, yes, but also: bravado, courage—hell, it requires chutzpah.

And sure, one's bravado, courage, and chutzpah isn't necessarily reflected in one's features. But it speaks volumes to me when I see a face that once had courage—the courage to be a teen dance queen despite nontraditional looks; the bravado to play Baby (Baby! Baby who nobody could put in the corner! Baby who always made the right choice, even when the right choice was the wrong choice! Baby whose courage inspired Johnny Freakin' Castle to be a better man! Baby who carried the watermelon!) ; the chutzpah to live her ethnicity—do her damndest to mimic the intensity that appeared to come so naturally more than 20 years prior. Jennifer Grey's new face, courtesy of a nose job she's publicly regretted, showed little of that character. I take comfort in her public regret, much as I wish I didn't care, much as I wish I could take a more libertarian attitude toward the whole thing. I wish that I could have received her triumph on Dancing With the Stars in the way I received Baby's so long ago—as a woman claiming what she felt was rightfully hers, the perception of others be damned.

I can't, though. I wanted Baby to stand for something I wanted at the age I first met her; I didn't want my proxy to womanhood to have the human foibles I had. As long as I'm stuck with those foibles I want my messengers to be purer than myself. Jennifer, your dance was perfect. Baby, your dance was brilliant.

Ponytail Economics

For all my rhetoric about beauty-as-commodity, it's chilling to see an aspect of beauty literally functioning as a commodity. In poor regions of former Soviet states, many blond women turn to their hair as a resource, according to this Times piece. There's a huge market (the largest being in America, natch) for hair--particularly blond hair, which is abundant in the region.

There's a number of unspoken notions about beauty embedded into the human-hair industry, and indeed into this article. For one, the unquestioned notion that long hair is desirable; it's not even worth getting into why women might pay hundreds of dollars to cement someone else's cellular matter to their head. (Personally, I'd rather wear someone else's underwear than her hair--the latter seems extraordinarily intimate, don't you think?) For another, the assumption that light hair is preferable. This is practical in part--blond hair is more dyeable than dark, which needs to be stripped of pigment and then dyed in order to be a perfect match for a buyer's own hair. But as one of the hair czars interviewed, Aleksei N. Kuznetsov, says, "honey-hued" hair that changes color in the light is the most desirable hair--that has little to do with dyeability and more to do with what blond hair connotes (more fun, gentlemen's preferences, etc.).

"Why does one woman sell her hair to another? The person with money wants to look better than the person without money," says Kuznetsov in the piece. "Better," in addition to being long-locked and perhaps blond, also means being transformed after three hours in a stylist's chair instead of the nearly three years it would take to grow a 16-inch braid. The industry transforms the waiting game of the growing-out process--the sort that non-impoverished but non-wealthy women such as myself bemoan and cover up with barrettes and headbands when deciding to grow out one's hair--into either a long, drawn-out, passive labor (for the seller) or a non-issue altogether (for the buyer).

Go on, tell me that a lopped-off ponytail isn't a little bit creepy.

This hirsuit surrogacy becomes particularly chilling when you look at other ways in which the region's women make a living: It's estimated that 2/3 of the world's victims of sex trafficking are from former Soviet nations. In those cases, it's sex that's actually being bought and sold; in the case of a blond ponytail, only the symbol of sex is being trafficked. It's also fertile ground for young models to be exported to wealthier nations--another case of women's beauty becoming a sort of natural resource.

And a precious resource at that. Selling one's hair is describe as "a final resource to tap in times of desperation," and once again it's not spelled out why it's a last resort; we're expected to intuitively know, an expectation that is only a responsible assumption if we get that a woman's hair is so deeply personal, so tied to her essence, that to part with it is a newsworthy sacrifice. In fact, some sellers are consciously switching up their style and are just capitalizing on the opportunity, a notion that's squeezed in at the very end of the piece--consciously or not, the writer is urging us to sympathize with the women who sell their hair. The economic desperation is the point of the piece, but it's the understood psychic sacrifice that adds the poignancy here.

I was 8 when I first read Little Women; as every high-spirited girl reader is encouraged to, I adored Jo. That didn't stop me from being furious at her when she sold her hair, "her one beauty," in order to pay for her mother to visit their ill father behind the battle lines of the Civil War. I gave a glance to her nobility, sure, but also privately thought that surely she could have found another way (chop off that little brat Amy's curls, for one). As a third-grader, I understood that Jo was selling more than a part of her body--she was selling her femininity, a choice that made even tomboyish Jo break into quiet tears in the night: "My...My hair!...I just made a little private moan for my one beauty." Louisa May Alcott didn't need to spell out for us why the hair was valued, nor why the choice hurt even a woman as nonchalant toward her appearance as Jo. In the same way, I'm surprised that this story is even considered newsworthy by the Times (though I'm pleased it is); it's just business as usual, right?

Why the Long Face?: Justin Long on Looks-Based Criticism

It's rare that you see men acknowledge their own doubts about their appearance--publicly, at least. If they do, it's often in this sort of self-deprecating yet self-aggrandizing way (I'm picturing Jack Nicholson chomping on a cigar while patting his swollen belly). So I found Justin Long's candid, heartfelt comment (as in log-in-and-register comment) to a critic who panned his looks--instead of merely panning his performance--engaging.

Background: Film writer Michelle Orange penned a review of Going the Distance in which she wrote of Long: "How a milky, affectless mook with half-formed features and a first day of kindergarten haircut might punch several classes above his weight [he plays opposite Drew Barrymore] is a mystery...we are increasingly asked to accept on screen." Then Long, on the Jimmy Fallon show, spoke about how he internalized Orange's words, prompting her thoughtful essay on the nature of critique, which is certainly worth a read. Mr. Long himself commented on the article (scroll down to comments to read).

I didn't know what a mook was either, Justin.

The real story here is the nature of the critic, and Orange's excellent points about "relatability" and how it's become "a cultural phenomenon and evaluative rubric"--a stand-in for, say, quality. But it's also a rare moment in which a man publicly acknowledges that he's not invulnerable in regards to his looks. Long writes: "I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d get to be in one movie, let alone several ... never had any delusions of grandeur. I always wanted to be a theatre actor...always assuming the movie roles were relegated to the good looking people. ... Then I started idolizing guys like Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, Sam Rockwell, Woody Allen, and Philip Seymour Hoffman ... if guys that looked like that could do it, I thought, maybe this milky mook could role the dice."

He continues: "I’m surprised by the amount of stock you seem to invest in my looks. I absolutely agree with you too, I’d be hard-pressed to hold a candle to even a fraction of Drew’s beauty... Is that a message you want to proliferate though? That people of higher aesthetic echelons should stick to their own? Maybe you’re frustrated because it so rarely works the other way – I don’t remember the last time I was asked to accept a female romantic lead who was “punching above her weight class” – though it does happen .... I suppose if it were more commonplace though you, as a woman, wouldn’t be so offended and might have taken it a bit easier in pointing out the disparity of our looks in 'Going the Distance.'"

The turn-the-tables approach here works (often it doesn't, because its users miss that sexism is an institution, not isolated incidents) because we simply don't hear a lot of men discussing their own thoughts and feelings on their personal appearance. Beauty, we think, is the women's realm, and public responses to criticism of women's looks vary from the pile-on ("Worst Swimsuit Bodies!") to the outraged (the collective Internet WTF about Jessica Simpson's supposed weight gain). I've heard women rightfully complain that it's unfair that not-devastatingly-attractive men get to play romantic leads while actresses are held to a different standard; I'd never stopped to think of what it might mean for an aspiring actor to look at a screen and see that he might be able to make it despite being average-looking. I assumed--mistakenly, it seemed--that men just didn't think much about it or took those actors' presence for granted. To hear Long's point of view, though, can be more conscious--more inspirational--and it only strengthens my resolve that the solution to the beauty myth is not to make men our miserable company, but to demolish the myth itself.

Still, it's not all about men. Justin Long has pretty much made a career out of being a stand-in for the everyday, kinda cute guy, one who might be inclined to buy a Mac. He's no George Clooney, yet when he came on the scene women and girls were swooning (I remember a former tech-trainer colleague who'd use his name for her SEO classes because it gave her an excuse to investigate him on the clock). I don't think women are any less petty than men in regards to looks, but can you imagine the reverse happening? Long himself points out that it "rarely works the other way"--a not-stunningly-beautiful woman being paired with a prototypically handsome man. Part of this is the dearth of the working actresses who could fit the bill; part of it is that women are frequently written so one-dimensionally that it's hard to imagine such small niches being carved ("We need a Mac girl! Quick, slap a pair of glasses on Katie Holmes!"); part of it is that the rough equivalent of the girl-next-door is still inevitably filled by actresses who are also conventional beauties. (There's better ink out there than mine on why leading men can be out of shape, balding, and liver-spotted and still play romantic leads, while the world shuts down when Kathy Bates does a nude scene, though, so I'll leave it be for now.)

It's also interesting to note that while Long left the comment early in the thread's life, none of the comments before it commented on his actual looks--but once he piped up, people started saying, "Oh, and yeah, you're actually pretty attractive, bro." Nobody wants to hurt anyone's feelings, and I think by acknowledging that Orange's comments did actually hurt, people had a knee-jerk reaction to rush to the defense of his looks. Which sort of misses the point, but if it helps people think twice before panning someone's looks simply because he's a man and couldn't possibly care, then grand.