in richard siken’s poem landscape with a blur of conquerors he says “make him handsome and you’re a fascist. make him ugly and you’re saying nothing new.”
beauty is conflated with the beauty industry. america is never talking about one or the other. i don’t think america believes in beauty (or the individual, for that matter). it is a purchasable item, never an organic process. using beauty as capital is a great idea in america because america prides itself on hideousness. america is the best place on earth to be deeply puritan. america doesn’t go out to eat unless it’s grandpappy’s birthday. america likes sales and deals and one pair of shoes and no color and no puff and fluff. america shops at costco once a month and no other time. america creates a myth in order to resist against it. america creates myth of hedonism, greed, materialism, individuality. “we are so dopamine poisoned!” we have not felt pleasure in one hundred years.
at the end of the substance, when we bathe ourselves in the blood of a monster, elizabeth sparkle is up on stage, eyes on top of her head, face coming out of her back and she produces a breast out of her face. a nipple protrudes, grows distended. an entire boob comes out of the beast. the crowd is repulsed. it is a disgusting thing to see a breast grow. she coughs it up, drops it on the stage. here is the breast without the wet and real body. here is the body that produces the breast. the crowd needs to kill the beast, leave the breast. and they try, slicing off the head of the beast, but beauty is a regenerative disease. there are more beautiful women, more shiny teeth, more tight asses, more pink mouths, more breasts.
i am at apres diem with my boyfriend and his friends outside on the patio. after a drink or two, i like to get up and wander around looking for the bathroom. there’s no emergency, i just like to be a little buzzed and strut my full figured body around. i like to be inside knowing the bar tender is watching me, people on dates are watching me. men and women are all thinking about me and my body. i hold everyone’s attention for a whole 25 seconds, or however long it takes to get to the bathroom. i play with my hair in the mirror. no one has taken a picture of me tonight, and i had no time to stage a living room photo shoot, but i look hot. i affirm this fact in the mirror. an older woman in a brown vest comes in behind me and gives me a strong look up and down and says, “this outfit is made for you. you look amazing. where did you get it?” i swing my whole body around because i love an aperol spritz and its animating effect on my body and we lock eyes. “thank you so much. i was so nervous to try it, none of the reviews had pictures of my body type but it was so worth it and under a hundred dollars!” she goes into a stall and says “well, it’s totally adorable. or sexy!” and i say don’t worry ma’am both work well for me. i come back to the table and giggle about it. a positive connection to the world floats my boat. my friend’s wife says “i don’t have the hips for jumpsuits” and i don’t know what stuff like that ever means because not one of the reviews include images of people with my body type. as far as i can tell, i am the anomaly, not the rule. i do not see hips like mine in the pictures. i do not see hips like mine anywhere.
at the theater, i buy a corona and a box of skittles. there is a space left in the middle because my boyfriends friend doesn’t want to sit next to me—gender politics. ladies, is it cheating if your man sits next to another woman? my boyfriend zips up the top of my jumpsuit, “put those away!”
the theater is mostly empty. there’s a guy by himself way down in front and then a couple on a date that sit directly in front of us. this means nothing except for the part when demi moore gets totally naked and considers taking the substance. we see her small breasts, flat stomach, and perfectly adequate ass. at the sight of boobies, the woman of the couple in front of us, she pulls out her phone and googles “demi moore age.” it is important to know these things. the timing of a woman’s body. you see her tits and you want to know what that means for yours. i guess? i’ve never actually experienced this, to say “she looks good for her age.” the hardest part for me, as a young hot woman, is finding women who have not let the substance enter their bodies. who are not getting medical procedures, who are just aging. as all beautiful things do.
let me set the terms of why i am here so you can decide if you want to be here or if you’d like to go find someone else writing about beauty in some glossy way. i believe in beauty, not medical intervention. all the while, i believe beauty mirrors monstrosity. i believe beauty is lonely. i believe being unable to take your body off in order to be accepted by a group is lonely. i believe participating in humiliating beauty rituals is an attempt to be invited in, not a further attempt to stand out.
the west is ashamed of what is born, not bought
who knows the first time my father felt ashamed of me? was it birth? there was a boy name picked out for me. was it when i was 5 and cried because i didn’t want to hurt his feelings that i really really really didn’t want to wear the black teevas he bought me? because i wanted to wear green sparkly jelly shoes instead? who knows. the first time i knew about it, i was 13 and on the track team. i had a big crush on a boy who played no sports and virtually did nothing at all. he was 17 and very sexy to me. i was also very sexy. i. had a big ass that adult men grabbed after pressing themselves against me at a fall out boy concert and boobs i couldn’t fit into my winter coat anymore when dad wanted to go hiking. i was good at track because i had big strong legs. i liked to run long distances—there was nothing to do but lightly abuse myself, expend my energy, deplete. my mother was thrilled that i took to exercise. my father took a more interesting approach. he was disgusted because i just “wanted max to look at me.” i carry the shame of being an appealing fuck.
beauty is monstrosity
If i had paid for my tits, there would be room for understanding. My vulnerable insecurity at having small tits would make me more appealing (“everyone is insecure!”) and the consequences of my actions (being desired) would be, in part, false, or a part of the illusion of beauty that america is obsessed with. that they grew naturally is the freak show part. a cosmetic procedure invites you in. you are not the only one who is so sickly weak at their appearance, who will undergo numbings and carvings to look different, better. you share a hatred, a total disdain for yourself. and also, money to do something about it. what grows out of the body should be appropriate, as nature always is. subtle, quiet, sturdy. ready for hard work and crows feet, and very unassuming. any deviation from this is a problem.
maybe by now you’re ready to stop me in my tracks and say beauty is on the other end of the spectrum of say, monstrosity, or deformity. the benefits of beauty include comped dinners and special treatment. fine, whatever. but i believe you’re headed in the wrong direction. my point is that, often, my only human interaction throughout the day is with a man who wants to take down my number or ask me on a date before he even knows what my name is. sometimes the only time i open my mouth is to respond to a compliment. beauty is isolation when it is not purchased. and maybe even then. beauty, like deformity, is otherness. and america does not like otherness.
women under the microscope
In the substance, harvey, the male gaze embodied, we see him from a tight fish eye view of his face, like we are under his microscope. We see his gross mouth and teeth, his sweaty face, piercing eyes. The perceiver is not the one critiqued. only critique what is under the microscope, and what is under the microscope is women.
i felt cleansed and purified after i saw the substance. this movie cracked me open. i bathed in the monster’s blood, but it might as well have been my blood, or the blood of all women.
beauty makes you a prey animal, or a power-wielding narcissist
because I am blonde and big-titted, so is my algorithm. my explore page online is just fat asses, little skirts, sexed up women (when i looked at my own post of what i wore to work for a week, the reel below is an indian sex account that posts full frontal titty breast feeding videos). online, i see a long scroll of beautiful shiny women with beautiful full figures and a peanut gallery full of people going “all she has to offer is her looks. sad.” i wonder why that is sad. i wonder why that is so sad to my father, to strangers. i wonder why beauty feels like that in the eye of the viewer. i wonder why offering beauty to a world devoid of meaning, color, virtue, passion, or pleasure is so sinful. i wonder why beauty is not a gift to you. beautiful things age. flowers age, trees age, wild and unreal animals age. all beautiful things do. clinging to youth is always written about power, but never about meaning. you have power over people, you’re a star. ok, all good and fine. but doesn’t that seem so vapid as to be untrue? it does for me, someone who does not get mean and weird when i see a beautiful woman. elizabeth sparkle is losing her meaning. older women “hitting the wall” are supposed to be scared into purchasing something invasive and painful. there never seems to be much else to say. offering beauty is important in a colorless world. i find this simple and uncomplicated to say.
to be free of the body, or to redefine its meaning
i’ll rest myself here, at one of the most visceral and probably relatable things i’ve ever seen in my life—when elizabeth sparkle has a fucked up senile finger because the little fruit tart version of herself just wanted to stay out a little longer before becoming old again. elizabeth sparkle feels so disgusted with herself, she take the attention of any man and decides to find the piece of muddy paper that had an old school mate’s phone number written on it (he handed her the paper while it was damp and muddy). with the fruit tart version of herself on a big bilboard staring her down, she realizes her outfit is wrong, sure. but the most potent part of the scene is her face. her face is all wrong. she applies lipstick and then wipes it off. she adds blush and lip gloss and wipes it off. it’s becoming panicked and obsessive, not being able to get her face right. she tries covering her neck with a scarf. and then it happens. she starts clawing at her face and oh my fucking god what a total release it is. thank fucking god someone did that. i was in ED treatment with a girl who was of normal and healthy weight. we all wondered why she was there. it turned out she was so compulsively insane about how she looked in clothes that she couldn’t leave the house. she was living inside of her closet. doing your hair over and over, redrawing your eyeliner over and over, changing your outfit over and over. it’s game over. there is no date. no type of man of any kind will soothe the pain in the body. the body is trapping you inside and there is no escaping it.
Absolutely loved this movie. So dark, so funny, so incredibly fair in its critique.
was so looking forward to hearing ur thoughts on this and u delivered