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I think that over the past six years I've become more and more worried (paranoid?) that I'm not "pretty." Or at least, not conventionally pretty (in Hollywood read: 20s; thin; cute clothes, shoes & jewelry; perfectly dyed hair), and perhaps not perceived as "feminine." So when I started on eHarmony again, I put up four very "feminine" shots. And got an unexpected result.
Can I digress? I was once asked for a Women in Film video what it meant to me to be a woman. I was stymied, but eventually said that it meant having a lot of choices. I was displeased by my answer at the time, but have come to believe that it's an overwhelming truth. "I'm every woman," right? I can cook, clean, sew, lift weights, tackle home repairs, drive, be the director on set, be the executive assistant at work, dominant, submissive, lead, follow. Seriously, the list goes on and on, and yet it's role switching, right? Because everyone has ideas about what "woman" is, so at any given time I feel like I'm fitting a mold or fighting a mold.
And the mold I seem to be most failing is "pretty," or at least I feel that way a lot. It's not that I don't want to be who I am, but sometimes who I am seems to eclipse the pretty part of me in other people's eyes. Like, they can't see both at the same time.
Sometimes I feel like my gray hair is a cloaking device. Men's eyes bounce off of it: Judged and dismissed because of all the things it doesn't mean, but that they think they see. I can't even blame them, since most women dye their hair for most of their lives, so people really can't help how they perceive it.
So, my profile. Online profiles are like resumes. You tweak it and you polish it and you look at it a million times, and then three weeks later you notice a typo. Or you have an experience that makes you realize that you're projecting something or left something out without even realizing it.
I got a hit from someone specifically looking for a "feminine" woman. Reading his words I thought, how is this possible? I so more often think of myself and my life in traditionally "masculine" ways or new egalitarian ways, and I think that my profile is quite true to myself. And then I realized that I'd set up a profile with no pictures of me on set. No pictures of me in a favorite T-shirt. No pictures of me being geeky. No, I was all about the pretty to the best of my ability.
Because that *is* a part of me, at least I hope so and I try for. And it's a part I feel like sometimes people don't see. And it's a part I sometimes don't have the time or money for, which is frustrating. And it's something I struggle with and worry about.
But, it's only a part of me, the pretty. And if you *just* see pretty or "feminine" if you will, then you don't see me, that's true.
But. If you *do* see the leader, the geek, the ambition, the director, and the steel, and you *don't* see the pretty, then *you* didn't see me either.
Post title in honor of the hours I spent as a teenager singing and dancing in my bedroom, "I Feel Pretty" from West Side Story. And "America." I could never decide which character I wanted to be.
~
Linky Goodness:
Mirrors - from Nine on Nowoman's Land, a post about reconciling the way you physically feel and how you look in the mirror.
Feeling Pretty - Shanea at From TX to TZ via WA is living in Tanzania right now and missing having opportunities to dress up.
Pretty girls don't need to be doctors! - from Fizzy at Mothers in Medicine, a rather disturbing post about talking a former beauty pageant winner out of studying medicine. It kinda reminded me of the dynamic where when a woman gets pregnant people spend 9 months asking her if she's going to go back to work, while no one ever asks a man that. Which I'm sure has no effect on the psyche and the universe at all. Hey, I'm sure that former beauty pageant winner's much better suited to business school anyway, right? I'm betting sales and marketing is right up her alley. (/painful sarcasm)
