Vanity and Gravity
An Attempt to Attain Beauty Is a Violent Act.
TW: this essay includes self-harm
My reflection creeps me out. Not sure exactly when this started. Likely around the age of twelve when I was old enough to articulate all of my physical inadequacies. I went to Catholic school where we wore long pleated skirts and long ties and prayed at the end of every class, where recess was separated by gender, where our post-pubescent desires became so strong they had to separate us. Twelve was the year all the boys and girls in school made fun of me for my hairy legs. Girls, obviously, were the cruelest. It’s not in our nature but in our nurture, we were prodded to be compared to and jealous of and internally enraged since the moment they put those little bows on our heads.
But anyways, back to my hairy legs. My leg hairs were long and virgin and pubey looking. I wish I could tell you I had the personality to not shave my legs on my own accord, but no. My mom wouldn’t allow me to shave my legs. I wanted to be like the rest of the girls so badly, but my mom kept telling me she wouldn’t allow it until a certain age. I remember the ways I’d beg and plead and bribe her. We used to attend church as a class on Fridays and I would pray to god that they’d strike my mom by lightning in hopes she’d become nicer and allow me to shave my legs. I yearned for smooth legs and to wear my pleated skirt rolled up and to wear a push up bra. I yearned to be a sexy baby.
My obsession to shave became so pronounced that my mom started to watch me bathe to ensure I wouldnt sneak in a razor and start swiping all my long virgin pubey hairs off. What a thing to do, no? For context, I was twelve: I didn’t have any money to buy a razor. I didn’t have a source of transportation to get me closer to a place that sells razors. Where would this alleged razor come from? Did my mother think I was a Santera? And that a razor would just appear in my bare hands in the bathtub? My bathtub was tiny and narrow and the water never got fully hot. The bathroom itself was a modest one so a chair couldn’t fit in it. So my mom would accommodate herself on a chair in the hallway, the bathroom door wide open. She would announce to the rest of the house that I was about to bathe so everyone was confined to their rooms until I was done.
I adore my mother. She’s alive and well. She’s addicted to her refusal to age. She has thick dirty blonde hair and jet black eyebrows. She opposes and objects at the sight of a new neck wrinkle. She claims she’s “not gonna change for nobody.” Her face is hardened by all her efforts to strike the fountain of youth. She commands attention, her presence must be noticed. She pronounces the “l” in salmon. She has never understood what I do for a living. She loves her daughters because we are extensions of her torment.
The apple certainly doesn’t fall far from the tree; I, too, struggle with vanity. As much as I love words I will still sometimes pronounce the “l” in salmon. I have kids and they are my burden and my buoyancy, my breath and my curse.
So finally came my permission to shave my legs. As I saw it, as soon as a razor fell into my hands I became obsessed with my smooth skin. I shaved my legs and everything fell into place. In my head I go, people will love me more now that I am a smoothed skinned person. Now that my impurities have been washed away with a few up and down swipes. One step closer to having autonomy over my beauty. Imma take a page out of Mariah’s book and put insurance on these legs. One step closer to being beautiful, to being like the rest.
For some weird reason, on the first day at school as a smooth legged person, I was not immediately praised or worshiped or celebrated. I was not granted access to the popular girls and I was not much noticed by the popular boys. None of my teachers told me I was beautiful and the day just went on as normal? I was no longer bullied for my virgin hairs but I wasn’t praised for no longer having them either.
Whenever my mom wraps her arms around me I think: her plushy skin that is always tan. Her smell that brings me back to when I was a child and would cry endlessly just to be close to this smell. I am the weight of burden that has sat in her pelvis the moment I exited it. The foundation of my ego. The past, present, and future of my entire existence, wrapped in a hug.
Maybe my mom, in her own way, was saving me from entering the tireless war of seeking validation from beauty standards. Maybe she thought it’d be better to objectify me at home so I wouldn’t be objectified in the halls of my private school. I commend her for her efforts. But her execution? Not entirely. But that’s the best she could do with the burden of being a mother to two daughters.
High school came and we had to level up. Everything in the game of beauty was about “leveling up.” There was no way to get by in high school without validation over the way we looked. I was sixteen. Sixteen, like twelve, felt big.
Sixteen was the cusp of everything. It was the year of I’m a Slave 4 U, Natalia Vodianova in Calvin Klein lingerie ads, it was the year of MySpace profile pics, it was the year of photoshop, it was the year of buy 3 VS bikini bottoms for $25. It was the year my body lurched forward with desire and my mind was too inept to process. Here I was entering a chapter of womanhood my subconscious was rejecting: I didn’t want to lose myself in the pressures of “beauty,” in what society expected me to look like. I didn’t want to embark on the impossible journey of abiding by beauty standards. I didn’t want to turn away from who I was. So as a means of regulating my emotions, I’d disassemble Venus razors during my showers.
At sixteen I started to cut myself. I’d cut myself thinly, like as if I was scoring some homemade sourdough. I never applied too much pressure, I didn’t want to scar. I was sad, I was overwhelmed and confused, but I was certainly still vain. I’d slice slowly to watch the blood pool up big enough to become a teardrop that became heavy enough to pour down. It was lyrical, it could probably follow the beat of a Taylor Swift song. My bright red flesh traveled slowly down my body until it suddenly went fast and splats on the floor. It’s as if I was able to control gravity.
This new habit called for some isolation: I bought a bunch of black long-sleeved shirts from Uniqlo. I ate lunch in the bathroom stalls. I couldn't stop obsessing over how hairy I was. I’d come home and write in my journal (to which I lost :(). My introduction to beauty morphed me into a person that was only capable of a few things: Recede. Evaporate. Bleed. Recede.
I was raised to move cautiously with language, so I know this is all so morbid. I know what I’m doing here, telling you of the instants my blood seeped thick like ripe fruit. I believe there are reasons we remember the hard parts. This is the way I keep my balance. I am a rare tree with knotted roots. Will you dig deep in this abundant earth to spread me out? Pull them out like tentacles. Use all your strength and I’ll show you my nightmares. I have lived every moment of my life in the body of a woman.
It’s a big deal to wrap your head around how much our worth is derived from validation. It’s a big deal to take autonomy over your body and what you want it to look like. It’s an even bigger deal to grow up and attempt to build your own definition of “beauty.” It’s a big deal to write out all these sentences.
Anyways, back to the cutting. This was the best way I knew how to be a person in the world. It was a season of self-hatred. It’s as if I suddenly became awakened to my doom. It’s as if I was so remarkably different from everyone else when in actuality I wasn’t so different at all. I wonder if we are all confined, in our own way, by beauty. I tell people my cuts are from the chickens. They’re not. My cuts are a sign of submission to the dominion of beauty. My cuts were the initiation ceremony for something so pervasive it has saturated our entire lives: “...To be beautiful.”
Where do the dreams of girls trying to be beautiful go? Do they leave? No, I think they stay. Hidden in our bodies. Safe like a secret, like a long sleeved shirt, like a lost journal. Never to be realized. Unless we realize it ourselves. Unmercifully beauty can haunt you for as long as you live. Mercifully you can pull down your defense. My mom knew what was coming. Maybe not from the baths. Maybe from the moment I was born.
Show me what you can make of all this; our shared yearning to belong, our stories that are buried deep, our longing, our loneliness, our meals in the bathroom, our MySpace profile with side bangs and pouty lips, our overpriced VS underwear, our hairy faces and the industrial tweezers we use in hopes it will make us desirable. Vanity is validation. Validation is acceptance of the way our mothers choose to love us despite all of the burden. Beauty lies to be hugged by our mothers soft, pliant, tan, and curvy bodies.
Will you bathe with me next time? Let’s rub our butts together and give each other foot massages. Let’s let out fart bubbles. Let’s talk shit about my dad and the way he lives in a house full of girls and how “he’s never gonna get it.” Let’s be silly about the hand we’ve been dealt. Tell me about your survival, talk me through the hard parts. I am your king. Tell me how much I’ve crushed you. Put me in a bow and compare me to the others. You’re the only one who can help me interpret myself. Will you tell me how hard it is to be a woman in the world? What is a scar without a story? What do we do with our stories if not make them beautiful?
I live between my scars and the mirror. We’ve healed, we’re alive, unflinchingly.
This essay could not have been made possible without the brilliance of these women: Jessica DeFino, Heather Havrilesky, Lidia Yuknavitch, Kathy Acker, Clarice Lispector, Nora McInerny. And for better or worse, Taylor Swift’s Midnights.
This is so so good ❤️❤️❤️
"It’s not in our nature but in our nurture, we were prodded to be compared to and jealous of and internally enraged since the moment they put those little bows on our heads." Yes.