Eat the Damn Cake

I like my women striking. It’s self-centered. It’s because I have a big nose, I think. I’ve been to war and back with my big nose, but the women I think are the most stunning almost always have big noses, too. I can walk by a hundred Victoria’s Secret posters (and I do. Who doesn’t, in the city?), and not care. But when I  meet a woman with something different going on with her beauty, I am immediately intrigued.

Maybe I just like tension. I like love stories about Muslims and Jews. I am bored by romantic comedies where the difference between the girl and the guy is that she is a girl and she has brown eyes and he is a guy and he has blue eyes.

I like beauty that surprises a little.

And then, inevitably, when I get to know a surprising beautiful woman, she doesn’t like the thing about her that makes her surprising.

And even though I am exactly the same, I am a little crushed.

(wait, it’ll make sense in a second)

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My friend’s brother filmed my friend and I once, acting out a scene we’d made up. It was something dramatic, destined for a blockbuster movie that we would make when we were fourteen, or some other distant, grown-up age. After, he put the tape in the VCR and we watched ourselves. My friend looked like herself, cute and bouncy. I didn’t recognize myself for a second, and then my heart sank. From profile, I was just a nose, poking out from between curtains of long brown hair. Like a shaggy afghan hound. I looked melancholy. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I wanted to curl forward around my own body and hide myself from the world. I wanted to be a ball.

There was the guest post from Madeline over in Hollywood, and then a reader sent me an email in which she mentioned being a performer and her struggles with body image. It made me think about my back. And about standing up in front of people and singing.

This is me, in a suit I sometimes wore while performing:

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So while I was reading one of the aforementioned women’s magazines (occasionally I walk by the stack on the couch and get hypnotized by the hot pink bubble letters in the headline and start thinking, “What IS he really thinking about sex every time he sees my hair?”), I stumbled upon an article about women and ambition. Women, said the article, don’t like to admit that they’re ambitious. In fact, the only woman who has ever been known by the editorial staff at this particular magazine to refer to herself as ambitious is Catherine Zeta-Jones. The rest of us just blush and look down modestly when we receive our Olympic gold medals. We say afterward, to the hordes of hungry reporters, “Oh, gosh…I don’t know. I guess I was lucky?”

Of course, I immediately thought, “Yet another way in which Catherine Zeta-Jones and I are soul sisters.” No, not really. But I did think that I don’t know very many women who aren’t ambitious. And it seems to me that they are willing to admit it.

I am ambitious. It drives me crazy. I don’t want to be. I want to be completely content with a delicious sandwich, a decent job,  and a good TV show. Or several delicious sandwiches, a reasonably decent job,  and a few mediocre TV shows. Life would be  a lot easier. I want to be OK with leading a quiet life, surrounded by family, like my fantastic 90-year-old grandmother.

But I’m ambitious. I don’t need to be a celebrity or a world-famous something or other. I have no interest in the paparazzi and I’m incredibly unphotogenic anyway. I don’t feel any need to make a million dollars. But I want to be recognized for what I do. I want people to think that I’m awesome. I want to be perceived as successful. I want to push myself to be better at the things I’m good at. To be better at the things I’m bad at. To be better.

(source)

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People like to argue about what’s best for kids. And then they like to tell other people what’s best for kids. For all kids, usually. People have argued for parenting methods as disparate as locking a crying baby in a room by itself, to teach it independence, and literally never putting a baby down, from birth, until, um, it can give birth to its own baby. And they’ve argued these positions passionately, and convinced a lot of other people that if the thing they are arguing for doesn’t happen then the child will grow up to be a blathering, pathetic, hopeless failure who is obsessed with collecting tiny porcelain Disney character figurines.

Have you read the latest piece about parenting? It’s called Why Chinese Mothers are Superior. It is an excerpt from Yale Law professor Amy Chua’s new book, and it was published in the Wall Street Journal, inspiring about 2,500 comments like, “What is WRONG with you?!! I don’t understand why people are so stupid, and you should be ashamed of yourself for writing this, because you are really a terrible person.” But then, as everyone who writes or reads anything on a big site knows, you will find identical comments at the bottom of a piece about why fawns are adorable little animals with sweet round eyes.

Still, we all know this is a cultural hot button. And we all know a lot of people will have a lot to say about this stuff. And we all know I’m going to be one of them. So:

Chua explains that Chinese mothers (and parents from other non-white American cultural groups) think about children differently. They think about potential, rather than protection. They know their kids can accomplish anything, and so they make sure they accomplish everything. No excuses. No play dates. No grades below an A. No TV. She complains that a lot of the (white) parents she knows are constantly worried about their kids. How do they feel? How is their self-esteem? Are they enjoying life enough?

Chua says, you enjoy life later, when you’re accomplished. And at that point, you enjoy it a lot more. In the meantime, she is willing to forbid her little daughter from using the bathroom until she perfects a piano piece. She’s willing to throw away a handmade card from her daughter, because it’s not good enough.

The truth is, well, I can’t completely disagree with Chua.

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First of all, I had no idea my piece about nose jobs was going to be on the front page of AOL yesterday. People started texting me, and I didn’t believe them at first. Thank you to everyone who wrote me an email after reading the article! My nose is taking over the world.

“Beauty” is a powerful word. It suggests something selective, exclusive. Something in limited supply. It’s timeless, classic, and eternally cool. Beautiful. Most of us are careful not to accidentally apply it to ourselves. We think we don’t deserve it. Most of us are normal people, after all.  We have attractive moments, of course, and certain successful features. But it takes more than that.

The heroine of the romance novel never has gorgeous hair but also prominent acne. Beauty is supposed to come as a complete package. She has masses of honey colored curls and spotless, taut skin. And in addition to that she has giant, frightened-yet-defiant violet eyes ringed with lashes the size of feather dusters, perky breasts that heave temptingly on command, lavish pink lips, and a pert afterthought of a nose. Her ears are probably adorable, too. Her ankles are slender. You could go up and down that girl’s body with a tape measure, and not one bit of her would be out of proportion. Which is why she’s fictional. And one reason why I don’t read romance novels (another reason has to do with the sex scenes, which make me laugh outloud and then start muttering irritably to myself, “Seriously? Are you kidding me? That’s supposed to be hot? ‘His stiffening need’?”).

Sometimes I see women whose features all work together expertly, effortlessly. And we’re trained to feel sort of sorry for the girl who gets described only as having “nice hair.” It sounds a little like “good personality.” You say it, and then there’s this empty space afterward, that should be filled with all the other things that are nice about her, but isn’t.

Nice hair is awesome. It’s easy to forget that.

(source)

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How do you feel about being naked?

Do you walk around naked? Do you sit naked? Do you ever stand naked in front of the mirror?

I was in love with my naked body. At fourteen, I sat on the floor with my biggest sketchbook, back straight, legs in what my ballet teacher had called “the butterfly.” I was naked in front of a full-length mirror. I was going to capture myself.

(well, i can’t exactly post a naked picture here, can i? source)

Virginia, of Beauty Schooled (who I finally met in person last week! She is as awesome as she sounds!),  wrote about being naked here. She made me think, as she always does. (And then, as I always do, I copied her idea for my own post.)

I’m sitting here, wearing a lot of clothes, trying to organize my thoughts about this. I think, “Powerful,” and then, “vulnerable.” I think of myself with boys. I think of myself alone. Nakedness sounds sexual, automatically, but every day we stand in the shower, even on the days we don’t have sex or even find someone to flirt with. We change our clothes. I take off most of my clothes every time I come home. I take off my earrings,  my socks. I put on pajama pants and a tank top. Most clothes are a part of my outside world self. Especially a bra. Why wear a bra when no one is around to notice your nipples?* Continue Reading »