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Beholding Appearances I was in a coffeehouse the other day, and I was carrying one too many coffee drinks in plastic cups and a croissant with jelly. I pressed the two cups close to my belly so I wouldn’t drop one or both and create a mess on the floor. Naturally the mess came, narrowly avoided the floor and ended up down the front of my tank top. I began to laugh because even though I knew I was going to make a mess I still tried to carry everything in one trip. Why? Because I didn’t care if I spilled coffee on my clothes, in fact I took a strange childish delight in it. So there I sit munching on a croissant with coffee like a cow tongue on my shirt (which I may add was littered with other stains from past adventures with food and beverage). I am wearing cut-offs that leak fat rolls from their waist. I am showing off the hair on my legs, under my arms and the nest atop my head which I have neither brushed nor washed in days. I am a slob, a wreck. I feel...different than the other people in the coffeehouse. The nail polish is chipping off my jagged toenails. My feet are black with dirt that won’t come off in the shower because it has apparently soaked into my skin. Shouldn’t I be ashamed? And for the record I can’t remember the last time I’ve worn a bra. So am I a hippie, a defiant person? Or do I lack even the smallest morsel of self-respect? While I was on a road trip in May, I spied yet another billboard plastered with airbrushed women’s bodies on the side of the road and I got that pang of self-hatred. It struck me all of a sudden that advertising was dependant on making people feel bad about themselves, or lacking in some way. “You know,” I thought to myself, “Every time I see one of those ads I feel bad. I take a moment to acknowledge that I do not have perfect teeth, breasts, hair, legs, arms. I compare myself to the fake image of a body before me and I feel bad. This happens everyday, multiple times a day, to everyone.” Now, what does this have to do with the incident at the coffeehouse? I’m not quite sure. But let’s take a look at how our society values appearance. Good looks are something essentially unattainable. Because, well who are the beautiful people? models, extremely unrealistic body type, celebrities, hair, costume and make-up constantly. We are ultimately told of beauty through the photograph, yet the human form in a photograph we see clinging to a billboard is manipulated several times before it is presented to us. This is beauty, perfection completely unattainable. Yet we try over and over like Sisyphus and his boulder to reach this state of perfection and when we inevitably fail, we feel bad about ourselves and marketers cheer because they can convince our deflated souls to by something else. “This boulder is easier to push. You’ll make it this time.” So how do I react to this constant pecking at my psyche? Am I holding up my proverbial middle finger to a society trying to break me down? Do I not care that I should shave my legs, lose some weight, dust on some make-up and for heaven’s sake put on a bra?! Or am I weaker than the more presentable of us? Is the way I look a manifestation of the poor way I feel about myself? If so, I am proof that advertising will inevitably destroy its own ploy to break our spirits and sell us products that promise to make us more beautiful better humans. Because I don’t buy sensitive razors, nice shampoos, secretive tampons, startling eyeliner, diet pills, or padded bras. If my appearance is a result of advertising campaigns then this marketing strategy is producing a population with so much self-hatred that eventually it won’t even feel worthy of the products guaranteed to make it beautiful. One day at the bank, with my hair especially dreaded and oily, I saw a black woman with whom I assume to be her baby, and another woman who seemed to be doing the actual banking. The baby was dressed like a doll and her hair was in little, round knots all over her head. Cute. The other woman was very presentable. The mother, on the other hand was wearing an oversized, rough-looking tee-shirt and her hair...her hair is the interesting part. It was messy. It was permed straight but not combed and it was in an unkempt ponytail that had shifted to the side of her head while she slept. She, I assume, had rolled out of bed and gone to the bank with her baby looking adorable. Here are two women (this woman and myself) comparable in appearance, but how would people react to us? If this woman was walking down the street people might see a crack whore. I have yet to meet a black woman with the same lackadaisical attitude toward appearance as I do. Their appearance then is used to prove something to onlookers—I am not poor and destitute. Is this something that I don’t feel the need to prove, if so why? Beyond matching ourselves to a billboard we must also match ourselves to each other, to our group. Respectable black women with permed and combed hair, corporate men in white... or blue shirts and ties, teenaged girls revealing as much of their skin as possible without crossing the line into tacky. And somehow they all know where that line is. Our dress, our appearance is like a code to let people know instantly who we are, to which group we belong. So where do I fit in or do I? Do I see myself the same way other people do? Do most people wish to blend in because they don’t want to be judged on their appearances? What then does difference indicate? Why would the woman at the bank and I dare to leave the house without brushing our hair? Are we defiant or defeated? Are we trying to assert our individuality? I don’t know what people thought when they saw me sitting at the coffeehouse and I feel like I don’t care. There is a sense of freedom in being able to spill on yourself that perhaps we envy in children. I don’t know that the patrons at the coffeehouse would have liked to come outside with me and spill their cold drinks all over themselves because I assume, we must all grow up at some point. Maybe I feel defiant of that. I looked down at my black feet and brown stain and thought maybe it would be nice if things were different. But maybe my appearance, as I sat in that chair was demonstrating who I really was. I was somebody who had better things to do than mess with my hair (all of it). There I was, a woman who appeared to like walking barefoot and who didn’t feel that her time should be spent putting on make-up because then she would lose time sleeping or reading or staring off. Perhaps I want people to see my story—that I am klutzy, hairy and do not spend time shopping for labels. I spend time giggling when I drop coffee on myself. I suppose an element of defiance is always healthy but to say that I have overcome the difficulties in society regarding appearance would be false. I can’t say that I giggled at the next billboard ad I saw. I also can’t say that I always feel comfortable with the way I look. Perhaps we all have our moments of accepting that life is not a billboard ad—the woman with messy hair in the bank, and I with a coffee tongue on my shirt.
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