I never listened to the whole “Do What ya want wit mah baaawdy” song, but I get it now.
I think.
‘cause Vogue and then Versace did exactly that – what ads do best – retouching her “baaawday” and eradicating blemishes until homegirl was unrecognizable.
I’d ask why we all keep playing along and trying to emulate what’s fake. But I can’t.
For two reasons:
1. I’m still totally addicted to some sort of cream n powder masquerade myself
2. Well, I suppose we all know why.
Playing dress up can be enjoyable -like an accent to beauty that’s already there. But it got confused as a commodity along the way. Hair and makeup went from an accessory to a demand that we all transmogrify our identity daily. For some reason, it becomes the demand from people we know, too.
What we are not is what’s expected. And what we really are is some hideous monster exiled to a moldy basement until it can pull its shit together and behave like the other boys and girls who hate themselves as they’re supposed to.
There was this Pantene ad back when I was a wee bit. The model in it had dark brown hair and she was the most gorgeous chick I’d seen. Retrospectively, it was likely because I made a connection – that she looked a lot like my cool older sister who I adored. For a while, I admired every brunette Disney princess and movie protagonist. Then, later, I’d be told how much more attractive blonde was than dark hair. I wasn’t blonde. Yet.
And ad after ad would fortify this lie with avidity.
It was initially really confusing.
But the idea of “subjectivity” was completely absent from my abstract concept catalog as a kid. Beauty was being defined one way (by changing everything about myself) one moment. Then I was hearing “beauty’s skin deep” the next. This Odysseyean schizophrenic influx of opposing information was an evenly mixed potion of lies and the truth.
And it all but quarterhorsed the organ in my head.
Was I wrong about what was beautiful? And if so, then why wasn’t I born gorgeous? Did reality make a mistake? Isn’t external beauty what gets hoisted out of the crowd and promises to free us from our daze of malaise to be adulated by all?
Gary Zukav said something similar recently. Before getting hooked on the old firewater, he felt like something was missing. He even went off to war because always thought being a soldier would make him more macho – and he always thought he needed to be like “The Marlboro Man”.
It’s interesting. Smoking the cigarettes didn’t make Gary any more Marlboro man than lipstick made me a chic ska frontwoman. The promise failed to deliver while the desire remained.
I stopped wearing as much makeup recently (again: “as much” not “all” of it).
Too goddamned inconvenient for a daily routine. And ya know what? So long as I’m not a dick queef to the people around me, they generally haven’t any shits to offer about it. When they do, I magically haven’t any to offer either.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s still the monthly tress molestation. I spend an hour of my life force-fcuking the mousey brown outta these follicles. If you’re a chick still living in this faux-ciety you never chose to join, it’s tough not to cave into consumerism sometimes. The familiar drivel feels safe somedays – whether it’s overpriced coffee or retail research (euphemism for window shopping).
It’s bullshit, but it’s comfortabullshit.
So I can’t chuck it all at once (until planet Kepler is open for bizz).
In the end, beauty perception is like any acquired preference – we build opinions that resonate from early associations. Then we spend our lives reinforcing them or branching off as new memories form parallel to new sensory input. What shapes the primary perception is the mindset we were in when we first experienced it.
I love Motown because my dad would blast it in the car when church finally ended. I liked the model because she looked like my sister. I wanted to be a slut because Hollywood showed sluts getting attention. And attention looked like love. And love was earned through having beauty. And beauty and love alike were just words whose wrong definitions I’d come to believe wholeheartedly.
Remember your kid-era experiences with beauty?
The ones you felt before aligning them with external ideals? That’s what’s beautiful to you. Not what you like out of lack perceived.
Everyone loves a big fat lie because the vain anxiety of the perfection quest is comfortably familiar too. Even the “Seat of the Soul” author wasn’t exempt from the Marlboro Man’s charm.
And Miss Stephanie Germinotta may not be recognizable, but I always thought she was pretty pre-pop. Ya know… back when she was unfamous.
And brunette.
Bottom line: if they have to advertise it, we don’t effing need it.
Except for toilet paper. I totally need to pick that up tonight.