Talking The Talk: How I Look/How I Feel

Barbara: We’ve talked a lot here how we look and feel best, but since we’re focusing on The Conversation, I want to open it up a bit further. Where does the line hover for why we feel best at any give moment?

When I was thirteen I had just begun to wear makeup. I don’t remember it being a big deal, or my parents being against it. My mother was an active arts student at the time and relied on my independence, my dad probably teased me gently about the fact that I was growing up. What I do remember very clearly was my immediate sense that, as far as the big picture goes, I was somehow less when I wasn’t wearing it. It got so bad that I actually refused to be seen in public without it!

One particularly strong memory from that 13th year: my family was driving home from our cottage one lazy Sunday afternoon and my parents decided to stop at a roadside chips’ truck for a snack. I refused to get out of the car—because I WASN’T WEARING MAKEUP!! What did I think would happen? That the chip truck attendants would scoff at my slovenliness? That the teaming throng of hot young 13-year-olds would condemn me on sight because … I was wearing no mascara???!!! My parents, as you can imagine, were aghast. I huddled in the car, determined to keep up the bargain I had made with my self-slash-the devil.

It took many years of growing up to develop a sense that I was okay without makeup. Interestingly, I get as many compliments for my fresh-scrubbed look (“so natural!”) as I do for my makeupped version (“so nice!”). Rather more interesting, these compliments often come from two different sets of people. Hence, the certain sense that one man/woman’s idea of beauty is another man/woman’s “yeah, whatevs”.  To this day, I go without a second thought to the gym without a stitch of makeup, but when I get ready for my day—which is often midday!—I don’t think twice about applying my routine look: under-eye concealer, mascara, eyeliner (on inside of upper lashes), brow brush. If I’m getting more dressed up, say for an audition or a night out: the same, plus eye shadow, blush and lipstick (I never wear foundation).

I—get this—just feel better with that little bit of makeup. Even if I’m the exact same person. I want to know that if I catch my reflection somewhere—in a window, in a mirror—I look a certain way (ie a bit of pop in the eyes, not as much of a dark circle underneath). But the question remains: why do I feel better? Is it because I feel brighter? Or is it because of this engrained notion that my looks must be amplified in order for me to be valued?

I doubt my mind-set will ever change vis a vis my face and its adornments. I will always love a special outfit or a pretty necklace or a lovely fragrance. These things will always make me feel better, even if they don’t exactly “make me”. But why?

These are 2 photos from my files (I'd wanted to do a little session for you, but lost track of time). Sorry for the poor quality: they're with my computer camera, but they are reasonably similar in composition and timing. The first is not a stitch of makeup, at work at my computer, the second is my "day look" (but also showing off the gorgeous necklace a friend gave me).

PS As another point of interest, someone once asked Deb and I how we could dare show our non-makeupped faces on the blog. Not like an insult, but like a truly perplexed, couldn't-undestand-the-logic question. Obviously there was a time when I would NOT! But no more. This is me, baby.

Deb: When I think of makeup it always amuses me that it was men who first started wearing it and women who ended up getting stuck with it! :-) As for me, I am not an obsessed makeup gal either. Like Barb, I will go out without it. When I am in my ‘hood, just shopping around and doing chores, I more than often go out without any at all. I am fine with my naked face and quite comfortable with it. When I am in the house for the day doing house chores, I never wear makeup, but I certainly do my face for events and for anything social. Like Barb, I do not dramatically change my look. It does help to have long black eyelashes and that makes it easy when I am sporting the natural look. As to why we feel better with makeup, I don’t know. I guess it’s because we sat at our mother’s dressing tables as tots while they put on their faces and thought how glamourous it was and how pretty they looked. It was a right of passage, this makeup. Made us feel grown up. And when I am getting ready to go out on a date with my husband and I see a little colour on my cheeks and lips and the depth of my eyes popping, I feel pretty. Can’t help it. I like the naked faced Deb in the mirror, but I also love to see my “Sunday go to meeting face”. 

Talking the Talk In The Conversation: Calling Our Men!

Barbara: I was talking to my dad the other day. My dad is awesome. He’s always been my biggest fan and reads the blog religiously. If he goes away on a trip, then he reads the ones he missed when he was gone. At the very beginning, and once he got the hang of it, he commented a couple of times, but then he got a bit self-conscious: not because he was a man commenting on our blog, but because he was my father and it might be deemed … inappropriate. You know, like when your parents find your diary or something. Funnily, this is the same feeling I’ve sometimes felt from other random people. We’ll get to talking and they’ll mention the blog and they’ll look a bit sheepish, really as though they’ve seen something they maybe shouldn’t have. But, hey, we blog because we think. We want you to peek inside. And so I’ve always shushed my father and told him to go ahead and post comments. And besides we love men over here, fathers especially, and we want them to feel they belong here too. Middle age is for everyone (sorry if that’s a shock), and middle-aged women affect everyone. It’s a fact of life.

So my father challenged me to call out our men. We know you’re reading because sometimes you’ll pop in, or you might message us privately, or you might mention it at a get-together. And here’s the thing: this isn’t a private girls’ club. I know those exist (and maybe must) as do the boys’ clubs (again, no judgment: we sometimes need the safety of private forums). But here we THRIVE on discourse. We love to skew a point of view this way and that until we get a broader sense of things. You guys might have different prisms through which we can look, or you can remind us that we ALL worry about the same things, not just those of us in the female orbit. We value our men. We count on your wisdom, your support, your sense of things.

So the question is: would you stand up here and be counted? Would you let us know what you think—even if you don’t agree with us? We know if you’re reading this that you are compassionate and temperate. If you don’t agree with something, or if you have a slightly different take, we won’t be offended (we only get offended at rudeness).

But most importantly, if over these next few weeks we are taking on The Conversation, if we’re examining how women are being portrayed in the media and how women’s sense of self is compromised or diminished because of it, if we want to change that, and even if we women are to blame for much of it, don’t you think you guys deserve a place at the table, a voice in the discussion?

We want to hear what you think about this stuff. We want your ideas and thoughts. Even if it means we’re forced to accept a “difficult truth” (yes, men do look at “shiny objects”), it helps get us all closer to the real truth (but they usually don’t mistake that for love, or even lust).

So I hope you’ll speak up today. I hope you’ll join us in our search for balance.

I’ll start off by throwing out a specific question—that of course, I’m still hoping our female readers will weigh in on. What do you think of the pervasive sexualization of women in the media? Does it have a subtle, shifting impact on how boys and men (and girls and women) look at women? Or is it harmless fun that doesn’t actually filter into our private expectations or our bedrooms? This isn’t a trick question, I swear! In its simplest sense, many men I know truly prefer their beloved woman fresh-faced, no makeup, no fancy clothes, despite the fact that it’s the rare media image that portrays a woman like that. So what do you think?

Deb: There was an article yesterday in the Globe and Mail entitled “Thinking Outside the Boxers” and it was basically raising this question: “with so much porn and negative portrayals of women in the media, does it affect a young boy’s view of sex and relationships?”. Are these young boys poised to treat women like objects? I was thinking about it from both sides, this very interesting question. I also wondered if some young women start to act the way they think is expected of them, which is why everywhere I turn, in television and the media at large, the skank meter is up to 11. I got to thinking about my own son and his friends and cousins that I know well. They are, of course, exposed to these things but I think a greater force is at work which prevents them from painting all women with the same glitter body paint. I think they see by example in their homes and the homes of their friends how a real man treats a real women and how a real woman treats a real man. They learn by example, respect, and equality. This way they are able to see porn for exactly what it is, and whether or not they engage in watching this type of thing, they are aware of its place in the grand scheme of things. It is not a real way of life. To a degree, it is theatre. Smart boys know this. So do smart girls. 

Walking The Walk In The Conversation: Annette Shares Her Adventure With Cosmetic Treatments

Annette posted this message to a bunch of us on Facebook the other day (after, btw, she’d linked us to the Ashley Judd article—talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous ;-) ) and we asked her if we could post it here. Always generous, Annette (“gredican” in our comments section) couldn’t wait for us to laugh at her pain. This is the next of our series of posts about women as part of The Conversation.

Annette: O.K. ... as I have the most disconcerting habit of inadvertently scheduling "medical” stuff back to back, I followed up Monday's awful mammogram—that left me bruised and sore after I was twisted and pulled well beyond my range of mobility—with another appointment  yesterday. This one saw me forgoing mindfulness about my health for an encounter with a Doctor that was cosmetically-motivated.

We have an extended vacation in San Diego and Las Vegas approaching and I had determined that I needed to tackle the spider veins that have begun to map themselves on my thighs. I don't have a lot of them but my considerable vanity over what independent sources have deemed my well-turned ankles saw the offending veins bother me in a manner disproportionate to their appearance. Hence, I decided, after mulling it over on and off forever, to have them removed via the injection of a solution that causes them to collapse and fade away.

I checked the cost on the U.S. side of the border and learned that a treatment was about $400.00 and that you need several. (Full disclosure: I had this done after my son was born—22 years ago—and had not been troubled until the last couple of years with their reappearance. But suffice to say, I know the drill.) Put off by the significant expense, I decided to research what it would cost in Canada and was thrilled to learn it would only be $70.00 per session plus $50.00 for the original consultation as I no longer have Ontario health insurance.

Which is how I came to find myself laying face-down, trying not to put weight on my still-smarting and bruised right breast, on an examining table with an ever-so-capable, twenty-five-years-experienced, Niagara Falls, Ontario-based Doctor administering the first treatment of 50 injections to my less-than-toned thighs...

Now I need to digress here for a minute and explain that prior to the appointment I grabbed a late lunch in Ontario by way of killing time before the encounter with our capable practitioner. If you've known me for any length of time, you may recall that men who are down on their luck are inflamed by the sight of me. Ever since I was a little girl, I've had them go off ... totally off ... whenever I've so much as crossed their line of sight. Long ago I gave up trying to understand it.

So yesterday, I was in a Tim Horton's, a phenomenally popular chain of doughnut shops and as innocuous a location as you can imagine, when I heard a commotion. I looked up from my egg salad sandwich and my clearly provocative copy of the new Woman's Day and just had time to think "Oh here we go!" before a homeless guy barged in shouting the odds, modified with tons of profanity, having spotted the irritant that is me through the plate glass. I was gathering my wits to shut him down when he spewed, "You effin' little wh*re of sex toy!" So impressed was I with his dazzling imagery, I almost bought him a coffee rather than giving him a taste of his own verbal abuse but just made a quick escape instead.

But I return us now to the examining table ... I had failed to recall that while most of the injections sting rather than hurt, a number of them proved painful indeed. I tried unsuccessfully to keep count so I could gauge when the unpleasantness might end while giving distracted thought as to whether the ordeal would ultimately be worth it. I was musing over the whole “getting older, expectations for women thing, our female reluctance to go gently-into-that-good-night and its attendant pressure” while the Doctor meanwhile busied himself ripping off huge strips of surgical tape which he used to adhere a giant cotton ball, applied with considerable pressure, to each injection site. When this, the first of three or four treatments ended, he wrapped my now pulsating thighs in thick tensor band-aids leaving my legs, under my trousers, looking as if one of Hollywood's best had fashioned me a fat suit.

It was then I realized two things ... the tensor bandages made it all but impossible to bend my knees, and also that surgical tape is called that because it has a scalpel-like edge which will slice flesh quite handily if you attempt to crook knees when they are wrapped in it. Now all of this could have been put down to a painful lesson learned ... save for the yet-to-come drive home which included a crossing at an International Border heavily manned with people trained to look for the out-of-the ordinary ... say … just as a for instance ... a woman wearing a from-the-waist-down fat suit who can't bend her knees.

Swinging my legs the way you did when playing Monster with a gleeful child, that is say tossing them in an arc to complete a step, I made my way to my car. I have to tell you as I awkwardly endeavored to hoist myself into my crossover vehicle, encumbered by my somewhat useless limbs, I did not bear any resemblance to an "effin little wh*re of sex toy"! Nope ... I did not! Further, I quickly realized that driving while unable to bend one's knees is a challenge indeed.  I had to push the seat all the way back which left my arms completely straight. Picture a stuffed animal with its permanent arms and legs extended pose and you'll get the idea ... In addition to the disconcerting visuals and obvious safety concerns, every depression of the gas pedal or brake caused the surgical tape to behave like Christina on Grey's Anatomy and slice with unencumbered delight deeply and decisively into my punctured flesh.

 At this point, the offending veins, in what I took to be some sort of an objection to the solution pulsing through them, began to burn as if gasoline was flowing through my circulatory system. And so it was that when I approached the border, my face was contorted in a combination mask of pain/feigned normalcy. (It had occurred to me upon approach that should the guards’ suspicions be raised, they would likely make me remove the bandages and that the fresh 'tracks'  from fifty hypodermics would not win me any dispensation with those charged with protecting our borders.)

Sure enough, you'll be pleased to know that our tax dollars have been spent such that the official took one look at me and, his expensive training artfully serving him, asked me to exit the vehicle. "F*ck", I whispered under my breath as I swung my tree trunks to the side and awkwardly hopped out. I saw the young man cast a sidelong glance as he took in my misshapen thighs and, after a moment's indecision, he did the kind thing and searched the vehicle believing, I'm certain, that I had the worst case of cellulite ever seen in Niagara county.

Finally, after hitting every red light therefore finding it necessary to depress the brake constantly, I made it home where I just had to kill time till 10 p.m. when I could remove the offending tensors. After some experimentation, I found the least uncomfortable position was lying flat out on the floor, which is how I spent the five hours, watching the clock the way you do when you are in labor, until the bandaging could be removed. The removal of that tape, with its glue that would probably hold stuff firm in a Level 4 hurricane, is yet another story, but allow me to say I hacked at it with abandon using garden-shear sized scissors such was my desire to get it off me.

So ... what have we learned about vanity and the suffering that we are willing to endure for it? Well, I can't speak for any of you … but I might just start paying a bit more attention to Jamie Lee Curtis and her frequent rants about her abhorrence for the artificial things women do in pursuit of looking good as we age... “Might,” I say ... at least after my next three treatments. Whatever thoughtful consideration I entertain though, I’ll certainly be careful not to cross my milky-white, unlined thighs and risk causing fresh spider veins while I do it!

To your days I leave you ... Fondly, Annette

Adding To The Conversation: Women And Media

Barbara: So last week Ashley Judd asked us (and by “us” I don’t mean The Middle Ages specifically, but wouldn’t that’ve been cool???) to “join in—and change—the Conversation” about women and how we’re seen and represented in the media. In case you missed it, she wrote this biting piece for the Daily Beast in response to the overwhelming attention she’s received lately based SOLELY on her looks. She’d wanted to ignore it at first, but then she got mad. And then she knew she couldn’t sit back anymore and “take it”. She needed to speak out.

Now Ashley isn’t the first person to speak out against this kind of thing, but I really believe one of the reasons themes keep repeating themselves in our blogs here or in our conversations in life or in society in general is that we need to keep remembering—and reminding each other—to adjust. Because adjustment is so incremental (another common theme here!), we need to practice working and re-working our gears toward the truer and clearest path toward compassion and acceptance.

Why was Ashley lambasted? Because she’d “had work done” … or because she hadn’t. No one (in these articles) talked about how she’d scored a strong lead role in a new TV show, that she was setting a great example for strong female characters, one which didn’t need to be overtly sexualized to be interesting. No, the articles were all about her looks. And the mean-spirited writers of these pieces were usually (maybe exclusively) women! She calls it a misogynistic attitude. Not anti-male, but anti-female. That we are so conditioned to deconstruct each other that this is the only conversation worth having in our media right now: the insulting speculation goes viral, the nasty comments pile up, the media jumps in to ride this next wave of escalating vitriol. Ooh, we love to hate each other!

Now, I almost didn’t talk about this here because I know we’re not of this ilk. I’ve seen it over and over in how we support each other and celebrate our spiritual wellbeing. But then I also realized that if we don’t talk about it here, we’re missing a chance to spread the consciousness of a really important issue. We can put our feelings into words here—and everyone will have slightly different words—and we can make a difference in how women and men talk about women.

As an actor, I obviously have had to give my looks a lot of thought. But I was almost never cast as the “beautiful” girl, was almost always as the sweet mom. And so I didn’t really feel the onus of needing to look a perfect way. That said, the “beautiful” girl roles are usually the most exciting. And I do remember the whole “is she fuckable” question that was applied to who would eventually be cast in any given role. And, yes, this question gets applied to male actors too. But I’ve never been in a position where my looks have been scrutinized, picked apart, and spit upon like Ashley Judd has. People say Ashley was “asking for it” because she chose a career that puts her in the public eye. I have news for you: people who want to be actors are almost never in it for the fame. Is fame seductive, can it twist you around? Most certainly. But fame is really only part of the equation for an actor because if you’re famous, well, then you get to work—and actors want nothing more than to work (you can’t perform a little show by yourself, for yourself, the way you can, say keep a writing or drawing journal or dance or sing). People become actors because they have a deep-seated need to communicate with other people, to help share the human experience by showing you yourself. We’ve needed actors as story-tellers since the beginning of Man. Why would we excoriate them for not looking like some increasingly bizarre notion of "perfect"?

As a now “middle-aged” woman, I see my role in society shifting, my looks changing. Of course, I ask myself from time to time if I would ever get “work done”.  Funnily, this is probably the one instance when I have been guilty of deconstructing a woman’s looks: when she’s had so much work done, her face looks like an unnatural mask. I don’t know where to look; I blurt out how “great” she looks because I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. And what am I doing when I do that? Implying that in her natural state, the one where she looked utterly like herself, she was somehow not lovely?

I had lunch with an acquaintance a little while ago. I had only met her once when we’d had an amazing dinner together years before. When we got together the second time, I was delighted to see her again. She asked if she looked different; I said no, she looked exactly the same! It was just so great to see her! But she was disappointed. She’d lost a lot of weight, changed her hair colour, and felt like she’d shed some old unhappy, unhealthy version of herself. I was gobsmacked. I swear, my connection with her had been through her eyes, through her spirit that one night, through her stories. I guess how she looked hadn’t made as strong an impression on me as how she WAS. Sure, she looked great the second time, but she’d also looked great—to me—the first.

I think, like with health and wellness issues, how we look is only important as far as how it makes us FEEL. And we all need different things to make us feel good, don’t we? But we’re also making it harder to FEEL good about ourselves when so much focus seems to be on how we LOOK.

By reading or passing around the nasty garbage about how this person has cellulite and that one has wrinkles and the other one is “puffy-faced”, we are giving this kind of discussion weight. We need to stop valuing each other and ourselves for how good we look (or not). It’s not “innocent banter” or “silly gossip”. It insinuates. It snowballs. It corrupts. It undermines. And it is so IRRELEVANT.

Think about it: the people we really admire, the ones we really love, the deepest, realest connections in our lives have nothing to do with appearances.

Maybe if we practice believing it, we might actually one day believe it.

Deb: This is a subject I have wanted to tackle for some time and have had in my notes and on my mind.  Thank you, Barbara, for bringing it up. I have continued to marvel these last years about the continued and growing attack on woman—by women. I have much more to say on it, but it will be for another time. Right now and for this post, you have nailed it. But I must say, I think the conversation should continue at The Middle Ages. I think we have just landed on a theme that deserves some length of time. I might even suggest a spring theme if you will. I will build on what you have written if you like and you do the same. A great dialogue will ensue, I am sure. For women and for men, we MUST start setting new ground rules. We must. It has lost its way ... mostly, but not entirely. Not by a long shot.

Barbara: Yes, let’s do it!!! 

PS Tomorrow, Annette is going to guest-blog here about her own hilarious encounter with trying to walk this delicate line!

Just Another Pretty Face?

Barbara: Okay, so I’m watching this show the other night and it’s all about body consciousness and dysmorphia and the too early womanizing of girls and plastic surgery and all that. And I don’t want to write about any of this stuff today because there’s already so much out there about it and I don’t feel like ranting and suffice it to say I want women to feel at peace with themselves and their bodies and accept who they are and all that. I do. I wrote about it here. I really really do.

But this TV program also made me realize a couple of things. Not cool things. Things I want to confess to you because it always turns out to be interesting when we go a bit out on a limb.

I’m a sucker for a pretty face.

There I said it.

Like a baby stares at a face for long bouts of time, I too can stare mesmerized at a lovely person. My mom still teases me that when I was a toddler, she could keep me occupied in my bed for hours simply by sticking a magazine in the bed with me. Every time she’d come back to get me, I’d have a certain page open: one with a photo of a beautiful man staring back at me. My virtual handsome-man babysitter.

So on this TV program, they were vilifying the modeling industry for using a 12-year-od girl on the runways. Well, I couldn’t stop staring at this beautiful—she seemed to me—woman. Take off the makeup and the womanly clothes and put her beside her mother and I see her childish self and am no longer mesmerized. Pull me away from the show and I would be all outraged for the poor girl’s lost childhood, concerned with how this life might affect her sense of self-esteem, for all the pitfalls of fame and scrutiny. But wait––let me look at her first. All beautiful chocolate skin and corkscrew curls.

I don’t value pretty faces above others, I don’t think the people who don them are more interesting, better people, more talented. I have no intellectual investment in a pretty face. I also can’t imagine wanting this as a kind of personal goal: “Oh how I wish people would stare at me like mouth-breathing idiots.” This isn’t how it works. Not in my experience. I’ve never known an attractive person to just coast through life on this accidental happenstance. Life is as sticky, as challenging, as frustrating for them as it is for anyone else.

But if you are a pretty face, know now that I will take a break for a moment when I see you, know that for a moment you will be a shiny object upon which I simply must gaze. Can’t help it.

Confession over. Lynch me now.

PS Deb and I were ships passing in the night on this post, so today Deb will post her response in the comments section.