damn, maybe I am
I'm attempting to gather myriad scattered thoughts related to the notion of being seen.
Recently I've been emailing back and forth with a friend who, like me, struggles with issues of appearance (outward) and how it sometimes only serves to fan the flames of acqusition...how on one hand there's the love of shopping, the joy of finding a deal, the way it feels to put on a dress or jacket or cool pair of pants and get that extra jolt of confidence. Damn, we say to ourselves in the mirror, I don't look half-bad.
On the other hand, there's this uber-consciouness of the consumerist aspect of things. How we know that money-things-don't buy happiness. We know that there is more value (and greater health benefits) in peals of laughter born from a simple gathering of friends than from the fruits of a shopping spree at the new Macy's. At the end of the day, the clothes are wrinkled and the make-up smeared, but there's more to see and do and feel. There should be a Day of the Naked. Wouldn't that be NUTS!? One day out of every year the ultimate nightmare comes to life: everyone is naked. Imperfections see the light. No one can hide behind their stupidly large Chanel sunglasses, their Boss suits, their Juicy couture jeans. Some would walk proud. Others would take cover in their basements, shivering under the old kitchen table. But to be label-less. Equal.
What I've been thinking most about is how the critical eye that was such a part of my upbringing has wormed its way into my (sub)consciousness so much that maybe, just maybe, my struggle with weight is about the fear of being seen more. I have broken my mother of her nasty habit of commenting on my weight/clothing within five minutes of getting off the plane(she now waits at least an hour, though she still does things like touch my abdomen and say "you look thinner right here") but I know her. I see her look me up and down when she thinks I'm not looking. I can feel it.
What, then, if I was truly thin? What if I dropped forty-plus pounds and could go shopping at any-damn-store-I-pleased and could announce to all that I was now a size 12? Would the fragments of self-hatred that are such a part of my emotional canvas fall away like so many pounds? Or would I find myself terrified of the next encounter with an acquaintance, their stares as they try to place me, the shock and surprise when they realize it IS me? Talk about the microscope. Maybe I wouldn't care. Maybe the very fact that I am lighter would transcend the literal plane and enter a spiritual one in which I fully participate. Embodiment? Would I finally, finally, love this body? Or is losing weight just one small battle in a war that has no real victor?
I'd hate to think that I'm one of those people who uses excess poundage as a means to keep the world at bay. But...but damn, maybe I am.
posted by forward hope @ 9:53 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I had the weirdest and "a first" in experiences at the N. CA Women's Music Festival a few weeks ago.
Many of the women attending were from Sonoma County, my old environs that I left 3 years ago. When I left I 1) had long hair 2) was 40 lbs heavier than I am now 3) had no muscle tone 4) had a much more "femme" look to the way I dressed.
I would see someone I knew (casually knew) and go up to them and say "Hi, (so and so)!" and they would look at me blankly. I could see the wheels spinning. They were trying to place me, but they couldn't and I had to remind them who I was.
And then some of them would still look confused, so I'd say, "Yeah. I cut off my hair and lost a bunch of weight," and then they would superimpose their memory image over the me standing in front of them.
It was eerie; in that space between me saying hi and them placing me, I felt invisible, like I hadn't ever existed for them, or that the memory of me, after just 3 short years or 3 short years with few brief sightings, washed me down the drain, leeched the colors out of me so I became just a wraith, I don't know....but it was WEIRD.
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(Hit send too soon) I too had this fear/concern/projection that in losing weight I would become more visible, but from the other side of this journey, I can say that for me, what I learned is that I was *always* visible and then my experience at the festival showed me a shade of what invisible could look like. And I really didn't like the way it felt. I realized that my heavy person's perception of "invisibility" was that I was invisible to myself more than anyone else.
(OK, I'm done now :-)
OK...one more thing....It is a spiral either inward or outward, depending on the weight direction, vis a vis clothing and body love.
It is easy for me to buy clothes now. It *does* give me more body confidence and body love. I'm not exactly proud of this phenomenon but after all those years of the opposite, it is a preferrable set of feelings.
I think that "self-hatred" changes with weight loss. It's like it morphs from hatred to critique/criticism. Here I am splitting hairs again, but the shift for me has been one from invisibility to self to heightened awareness of self. I've never much liked being visible to others, and I would agree that I feel more visible now-- and you're right, like I'm not instantly erased from perception so quickly as when I was heavier. That said, I'm also more acutely aware of the ways in which I am still invisible (female. over 25. over 5'7". postmodernladyhomosexual.)
I know that I have hidden in excess poundage. I know that I have hidden in Lesbian Fashion Sense. A lot of that felt like a protective layer between me and world, a way to kind of sneak through life. Guess I'm rambling a bit here, but I feel like there are so many ways of hiding from ourselves, and that, to me, feels like the place I need to start. afterall, if i can't take a good and loving look at myself in the mirror everyday, how can I expect to be seen by others?
can we go have coffee now?
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