“Tell me what’s wrong with me – my body,
face, my hair.
Tell me all my many faults; tell me like
you care.
When we both know you’re cruel and we both
know you’re right,
I could listen to you like a fool all
night.
What’s wrong with me? How I speak, how I
dress?
What’s wrong with me? You keep me guessing.
Mama called me beautiful, don’t believe her
any more.
Now I’m listening to you. What do I do that
for?”
Mean Girls (2017)1
 |
| This fancy three-glass mirror was already in the room I took when I moved into my current house. All the paraphernalia draped over and around it, needless to say, was not. |
Well, it’s getting late and I’m already a
post behind my usual one-a-week schedule, so I’m afraid this one’s going to be
poetry. I wrote the below a little while ago out of a kind of sad frustration
that we seem to expect women and girls to think negatively about their
bodies and appearances. Like, I know there are countless projects out there devoted
to fostering positive body image,2 but, well, sometimes it feels as
if the very preponderance of them is fuelling the fire by reinforcing that the
opposite is some kind of ubiquitous norm. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe it is.
Maybe it’s to some degree just another strand of the way in which we, in
Britain at least, tend to treat a low opinion of one’s characteristics and
abilities as some kind of virtue: for instance, the standard polite response to
any compliment is to deny its veracity (even though I’d argue that that’s
actually rather an impolite thing to do, since it insults the
discernment of the complimenter). Or maybe it’s true that there are all sorts
of insidious misogynistic influences at work in media and education and culture
that quickly establish the negativity in question as a default that then has to
be concertedly dismantled. At any rate, I’d be interested to know to what
extent and on which particular points these few stanzas resonates with any of
you.
They told me to hate the mirror.
They told me to duck my gaze down and away.
They told me that one vital trait
Of a girl who looks great
Is she thinks that she doesn’t, OK?
They told me to hate the mirror.
They said to disparage the way I was made.
They said it was normal to scorn
What my mother had borne,
What my God had designed and arrayed.
They told me to hate the mirror.
They told me that liking oneself is a feat
Accomplished by few and select:
I could hardly expect
To be counted among that elite.
They told me to hate the mirror.
They told me a fun game for girlfriends to
play
Is to take it in turns to declare
One another most fair,
Then refuse to believe what they say.
They told me to hate the mirror,
To treat my appearance as some sort of
joke,
And so I soon learned how to seem
To have low self-esteem,
Because that was the language we spoke.
They told me to hate the mirror,
And here comes the punchline: they told me
to just
Wait around for some guy to say he
Thinks I’m pretty – ’cause, see,
His opinion’s the one I can trust.
They told me to hate the mirror,
But I got so bored of maintaining that lie.
If I’m being honest, I grin
At the skin that I’m in
When I look up and catch my own eye.
They told me to hate the mirror,
But I say, Nice work, God, and pootle on
by.3
Footnotes
1 If you’re frowning in confusion at the given date (Mean
Girls came out in 2004, didn’t it?) and the given quotation (wait, at which
point did they start speaking in rhyme?), then you’ll be relieved to know that
there’s a perfectly straightforward explanation: I’m referring to the Broadway
stage musical of this title, not the film it was based on. The soundtrack is
top notch; here’s a sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiIi7STG3e0.
2 The one I encountered most recently was a programme called
Free Being Me, sponsored by Dove, that we ran at the Guide unit I
assistant-lead: https://free-being-me.com/.
3 More of my thoughts on body image and how it relates to
Christian hope are in Swallowing the Abacus: Thoughts on Self-Image,
from way back in August 2015. I do find rereading some of my earliest posts a
little bit cringey now, though I’d actually consider that a positive
development, since it means my opinions and writing skills must have matured a
bit since then. Which one would hope they would have done in three and a half
years, you know?
No comments:
Post a Comment