Response to Lauren Greenfield's Girl Culture
At times, it happens that my thoughts become fastened to an idea or two, and that anything else must be set aside until the ideas are purged. Last night, between dinner and sleep, I spent some time here and here ; Lauren Greenfield’s photography imprinted; her images were hung like wallpaper on the back of my mind.
The images disturb me, as they should. Much disturbed have I been lately: women’s body image and women’s changing roles, the increase of women’s exhibitionism — what I have called, the Porno-Sex Disorder — the steady increase of eating disorders, the constant humiliations of the fat. To digest what is happening to women’s bodies is like trying to swallow a 2×4; the rhetoric of our bodies, ourselves, the owning of our own bodies, that beauty is not only skin deep, are like the clothes and the accessories and the make-up which litter a teenage girl’s room, abundant and overwhelming, yet forgotten then washed away. If the crowd applauds when I take off my shirt, the lesson has been learned: off with more shirts! I am loved! Acceptance being one step ahead of the goal.
Are we so hungry for attention, in this increasing impersonal world, that the one thing which should resound with passionate personality, our sexuality, has to be demeaned into a commodity, to be bought and sold? That there is nothing sacred in our world has been all the rave; then there’s my complaint: the whole world abounds with sanctity. I know not one place, one person, which lacks the raw ability to make me overflow with warmth and respect. For when I look at these girls in these photos, I want to cry.
“Society” twists our vision: ugly has become beautiful, the unreal and the plastic have become ideal. There is no stopping what has been set in motion. But that doesn’t mean I need to swallow; no matter what I do, that 2×4 is not going down.
There is one question in all of this, one question I always return to: What are we missing out on by women’s (and men’s) ceaseless preoccupation? What is the extent of potentials shattered by the shallow obsession with the mirror?
I dare say, the answer is more immense than I dare imagine.
Sometimes I play games in my head with the women on the street, women in the restaurants, women in the bars. I try to guess at the amount of time each woman sacrificed for their three hour show. To arrive at an accurate sum I must begin with thought. Thought encompasses a very wide scene indeed: thought of want, belts, shoes, make-up, clothes, thought of ensembles and outfits, thought about body and shape and size and look, thought about the perfect body, thought about defects and shortcomings and large-comings, thought of self-consciousness while wearing an outfit, thought about the attention one draws, thought of “if only…”, thought about food and hunger, thought blown out into the mirror.
I believe that the thought, before, during and after, any woman’s three hour show is interminable. The woman in the restaurant, the woman on the street, the woman in the bar has no three hour show, but has stretched her “look” through an eternity. There is nothing more serious as this.
Then there’s the time on the clock. Time shopping, driving to shopping and back from shopping, time window shopping, time trying on and off and off and on and combinations of color and accessories, time make-up painting and washing off the painting, time studying other women, how they walk, how they look, time studying hair tips and nail tips and skin tips, time at the gym, time toning and dieting, time judging one’s self, time looking for the perfect face soaps and body soaps and body creams and face creams, shampoos and conditioners and oil and gel and curling irons and straightening irons, nail saloons and feet salons and hair salons and spas, trial packs of this and that, time spent practicing one’s pose in the mirror. The three hour show is certainly three hours no more and soon one woman will have wasted her entire life.
I think it is very necessary to bitch about lost potential.
Women die from eating disorders. Women have extremely low self-esteem and body-image. Women have an extremely difficult time accepting their own bodies, big or small, lean or wide. And yet, women continue to toss their time away as if the meaning behind themselves was nothing, as if with that time we are not capable of creating, not capable of sounding ideas and new ways of being which could change the entire planet for the better. I don’t understand and I can’t swallow it.
An outstanding applause is risen from my corner of thought for Lauren Greenfield’s astounding work. May it help to recover thought from the surface; may it help to return thought to under our skin.
Bracciano Italy
October 2008
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