Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Narcissus Revisited

Lately I have been having a problem with aging. My own aging, not other's. Looking at recent photos I find myself seeing every line, every wrinkle and I wonder where that young girl went, the one I still feel inside me. The luminosity of my skin and hair is fading. I can no longer eat whatever I want without running every calorie of it off. It feels like gravity is slowly pulling everything down. I find myself contemplating various procedures and surgeries that I could pull off in secret (Yes my time in France did do me very well thank you) and these thoughts make me blush with feminist shame. I'm not supposed to feel like this. I have two university degrees. I have a successful career. I am a good mother. I look good for my age. I'm not entirely sure what being a feminist has to do with this but somehow I feel like I'm supposed to be larger than all this anxiety. That I am now supposed celebrate my womanhood beyond the gaze and feel secure in my mind and in my talent. At this stage of the game, I should know who I am enough to know that how I look doesn't matter. But I think about my appearance - a lot.

Obviously in a culture that fetishizes youth and beauty above all else these feelings should come as no surprise. And it also comes as no surprise that this fetishization applies primarily to women although I know this is slowly changing to the point where men are becoming as apprehensive about aging as we are. I love that we think this is progress. When I look at my husband, I can see grey hairs creeping up his side-burns. His crows-feet deepen every year. He, too, gains weight more easily. Somehow I am able to look at his aging and my heart fills. He's never looked better. And I'm not even saying that to appear magnanimous either - he really does look better every year.

Which brings me to Narcissus. Everybody thinks that Narcissus could not stop staring at his reflection because he was so in love with himself, that the sight of his beauty was so bewitching that he couldn't imagine pulling away from the pool even for a moment. He was a slave to his beauty to the point where he ended up destroying it - sacrificing the needs of the body (food, water, sleep) in exaltation of the body. The moral of this story is that this is the recompense for vanity. Narcissus was vain and therefore he got what he deserved for loving himself too much.

I don't know much, but I know that this was no act of love. This was an act of hatred.

Narcissus did not love himself. He hated himself. He needed that pool - the gaze, even if it was his own - to define him. Without the gaze he was nothing and he knew it. Narcissus was never able to trust in himself, in who he was as an individual beyond the body. That's why he withered away into nothing but a pile of bones when there was food and water right by him. He could have saved his life, stepped away from the pool, had he just trusted that he existed beyond his reflection.

I think this kind of trust can be especially hard for women. And how can it not be? To be looked at is a big part of being a women, even if we wish it were not so. I love to look at women, especially in summer. Flirty dresses, polished toes, pony tails, bodies just waiting to be seen - to be gazed upon. I think most women enjoy being looked at - and what is true for most women is perhaps doubly so for me.

This need for visual attention starts fairly young too. I have a friend whose little girl plans what dress she is going to wear the next day as a surprise for him. He has strict instructions as to how she will reveal herself and he knows his job is to be delighted and to tell her how pretty she looks. I've been trying to unpack what she is excited about. Is it the anticipation of the surprise? Is it the planning of the dress, the shoes, the purse, the jewels that thrills her? Or is it his attention? I imagine it is an amalgam of all of these things.

I was once at an all-girls party where we were discussing the possibility of going camping. One of the girls looked rather pointedly at me and said that she would not tolerate any 'girly' girls worrying about chipping their nail polish. My sister - who else? - rushed to my defense saying to not be deceived, I was a master outdoorswoman who could fish, hunt, start her own fire and even build her own lean-to (thanks dad) but this woman wouldn't lay off. She said: "I've gotten to a place in my life where I think God wants more for women than just beauty." I was not sure how God came into this coversation however, I readily agreed but also added my own views: I think God gave us beauty to delight us - to please us. I think pleasure in beauty in art, or music, or architecture, or nature is to elevate our hearts and minds. To remind us that she exists.

But in many ways beauty becomes standardized, molded, and reduced until it only fits within narrow parametres. I'm trying to work on that in my own mind. I think about how much I love Isobel's snow white hair. I think about how I am proud of my hands even though they are ugly because they are a mark of a great pianist and became so chorded from years of typing/playing. I'm trying to love my laugh lines and my big bum. But most of all I'm trying to accept that it is okay to walk away from the pool from time to time. That I have done the hard work of becoming a person that I could be proud of.

And I won't disappear just because no one is looking.

No comments:

Post a Comment