on the beth ditto gruesome thread...
this post has me feeling a lot of things
a) like i really ought to post that belt dress photoshoot on the comm interspersed with one of my "normal" OoTD posts so that i can confront every comment of "why would do you do that, looking shitty on purpose is STOOPID you are a fat girl TRAITOR" with a picture of myself unwashed and pantless in some sort of granny panties flipping the bird.
b) i don't think i have the wherewithal to really own "Ugly." I've spent (and spend) so much time trying to figure out how to feel and look good in this body, and this has involved moving in slightly altered orbits that still manage to weave in and out of the direct planet face of (the acceptable societally sanctionted destinate of) Planet Pretty. I admit this about myself.
i can completely see understand and support Ugly as a political statement because isn't that just the way for common for brilliant artists/theorists to confront and articulate their issues with society: take something we accept as "the way it is" & the "unanimous emotional goal for humanity" and to explode it with a "WHY WHY WHY?" of actions we find counter-intuitive.
for Sigfried Kracauer, it was boredom in face of a society he felt was overstimulated to the point where they coudln't for their own thoughts. for him if you weren't choosing Boredom, as a position, to sit in a room and feel completely unstimulated (and so allowing your own thoughts to return), than you were having your soul eaten by capital. (not saying i agree... because this sort of suggests thoughts come from some internal pure core of thoughtliness or some crap.)
and the most obvious example for yours truly is of course, the Mozfather. In the dark dour dire mess of Thatcherite England Morrissey's (often ironically) miserable songs, usually thick with post-apocalyptic descriptions of the landscape (physical, emotional, political) communicate the idea (to me) not that Moz himself is so much sad but that to him, Miserable is the only viable position. Like he's asking, again and again desperately in hus music "How could you people not be miserable in face of what is happening to this country, to our values?"
maybe i wish i was the kind of person whose well-being didn't hinge on feeling put together. somedays it feels like my self-image reservoir is so small that i have to choose one thing i feel could about, or risk exploding it all together and feeling like a ball of shit all the time. right now i feel so shitty in regards to my intelligence and personality that performing Pretty seems like my one comfort.
But then i know it's shallow and hollow because there are days when even going through the "cute script" does nothing for me. perhaps i'm just extremely vain, but i still can't deal with certain photos of myself and have days where i feel so fucking hideous inside and out that i don't want to leave the apartment. this is why my OoTD photos have disappeared. i've tried to take several sets the past few weeks and have hated them everytime.
I resent the pull Pretty has over me, how i can't seem to leave its atmosphere without feeling horribly empty and uncomfortable and hopeless and lost. and the fact that there are others who are pulled in similarly just makes it worse because i am aware of how i want to compete with them, like its a race to see who can get closer to her core (a race than can never be one but offers the illusion of possibility through the accruing of as much fashion capital as possible). someimes i read fatshionista and i want to smack and shake the commenters who seem to hold me to this competitive standard by posting things like "you are the PRETTIEST" not just because the underlying implication that fatshionista is just another beauty pageant with clear winners and losers is so markedly different from the diverse space i like to imagine, but because there is this part of me THAT WANTS THAT FUCKING TIARA SO FUCKING BAD.
the thing is, i actually hate competition, but it doesn't stop it from being part of the structual foundation of the soiciety i live in. inspite of this, i don't feel like i really have to compete with any of my friends,(net-based or otherwise) & i don't even want to conceive of my relationships in those terms & in fact tend to pull away from friends who seem to want to compete with me in terms of things like "who got the most myspace view/lj comments etc etc." I don't really know where i'm going with this. just that the gruesome thread made me really uncomfortable because it suggests that i subscribe to a fascist beauty standard much more than i ever thought i did.
on the other hand, i feel so alienated and guilty about so many things in my life right now that i refuse to apologize for taking pleasure in aesthetics. it seems fair that i should be able to acknowledge the value of a statement like Beth Ditto's without practicing it myself... but then part of the reason i've never fit into feminist activism in person, is because i am "too femme" and don't look many women in my university feel like a feminist should. (this is why so much of my feminism happens in online discussions) in class one time i was carrying this hot pink clutch and one of the self-tited REAL feminists turns to me, looks at it, and sneers "how does it feel to be a walking parody of a woman" and part of me wanted to be like "AMAZING, how does it feel to be a exclusionnary narrow-minded BIATCH FACE?" but then i knew she was brilliant and respected for her Great Feminist Works by my prof (who heard the comment and said nothing) and everyone else so i just sat there feeling like shit.
i don't even know why i am getting into all this. i guess that thread just brought all this stuff that i'd pushed firmly to the back of my cerebral cortex to the surface and it seemed like writing might make it gnaw less but it isn't. i think it's time for me to return to my copy of Fresh Lipstick...
a) like i really ought to post that belt dress photoshoot on the comm interspersed with one of my "normal" OoTD posts so that i can confront every comment of "why would do you do that, looking shitty on purpose is STOOPID you are a fat girl TRAITOR" with a picture of myself unwashed and pantless in some sort of granny panties flipping the bird.
b) i don't think i have the wherewithal to really own "Ugly." I've spent (and spend) so much time trying to figure out how to feel and look good in this body, and this has involved moving in slightly altered orbits that still manage to weave in and out of the direct planet face of (the acceptable societally sanctionted destinate of) Planet Pretty. I admit this about myself.
i can completely see understand and support Ugly as a political statement because isn't that just the way for common for brilliant artists/theorists to confront and articulate their issues with society: take something we accept as "the way it is" & the "unanimous emotional goal for humanity" and to explode it with a "WHY WHY WHY?" of actions we find counter-intuitive.
for Sigfried Kracauer, it was boredom in face of a society he felt was overstimulated to the point where they coudln't for their own thoughts. for him if you weren't choosing Boredom, as a position, to sit in a room and feel completely unstimulated (and so allowing your own thoughts to return), than you were having your soul eaten by capital. (not saying i agree... because this sort of suggests thoughts come from some internal pure core of thoughtliness or some crap.)
and the most obvious example for yours truly is of course, the Mozfather. In the dark dour dire mess of Thatcherite England Morrissey's (often ironically) miserable songs, usually thick with post-apocalyptic descriptions of the landscape (physical, emotional, political) communicate the idea (to me) not that Moz himself is so much sad but that to him, Miserable is the only viable position. Like he's asking, again and again desperately in hus music "How could you people not be miserable in face of what is happening to this country, to our values?"
maybe i wish i was the kind of person whose well-being didn't hinge on feeling put together. somedays it feels like my self-image reservoir is so small that i have to choose one thing i feel could about, or risk exploding it all together and feeling like a ball of shit all the time. right now i feel so shitty in regards to my intelligence and personality that performing Pretty seems like my one comfort.
But then i know it's shallow and hollow because there are days when even going through the "cute script" does nothing for me. perhaps i'm just extremely vain, but i still can't deal with certain photos of myself and have days where i feel so fucking hideous inside and out that i don't want to leave the apartment. this is why my OoTD photos have disappeared. i've tried to take several sets the past few weeks and have hated them everytime.
I resent the pull Pretty has over me, how i can't seem to leave its atmosphere without feeling horribly empty and uncomfortable and hopeless and lost. and the fact that there are others who are pulled in similarly just makes it worse because i am aware of how i want to compete with them, like its a race to see who can get closer to her core (a race than can never be one but offers the illusion of possibility through the accruing of as much fashion capital as possible). someimes i read fatshionista and i want to smack and shake the commenters who seem to hold me to this competitive standard by posting things like "you are the PRETTIEST" not just because the underlying implication that fatshionista is just another beauty pageant with clear winners and losers is so markedly different from the diverse space i like to imagine, but because there is this part of me THAT WANTS THAT FUCKING TIARA SO FUCKING BAD.
the thing is, i actually hate competition, but it doesn't stop it from being part of the structual foundation of the soiciety i live in. inspite of this, i don't feel like i really have to compete with any of my friends,(net-based or otherwise) & i don't even want to conceive of my relationships in those terms & in fact tend to pull away from friends who seem to want to compete with me in terms of things like "who got the most myspace view/lj comments etc etc." I don't really know where i'm going with this. just that the gruesome thread made me really uncomfortable because it suggests that i subscribe to a fascist beauty standard much more than i ever thought i did.
on the other hand, i feel so alienated and guilty about so many things in my life right now that i refuse to apologize for taking pleasure in aesthetics. it seems fair that i should be able to acknowledge the value of a statement like Beth Ditto's without practicing it myself... but then part of the reason i've never fit into feminist activism in person, is because i am "too femme" and don't look many women in my university feel like a feminist should. (this is why so much of my feminism happens in online discussions) in class one time i was carrying this hot pink clutch and one of the self-tited REAL feminists turns to me, looks at it, and sneers "how does it feel to be a walking parody of a woman" and part of me wanted to be like "AMAZING, how does it feel to be a exclusionnary narrow-minded BIATCH FACE?" but then i knew she was brilliant and respected for her Great Feminist Works by my prof (who heard the comment and said nothing) and everyone else so i just sat there feeling like shit.
i don't even know why i am getting into all this. i guess that thread just brought all this stuff that i'd pushed firmly to the back of my cerebral cortex to the surface and it seemed like writing might make it gnaw less but it isn't. i think it's time for me to return to my copy of Fresh Lipstick...