Monday, March 07, 2005

ick ick ick....

well, it's finally happened.

after years of working with pornographic images. after a life-time of being a jolly consumer of smut. after frequently sharing my porno-happy bliss and strip-club adventures with my significant other. after all this time... its finally gotten to me.

the envious affliction of "less than" and "not enough" has somehow dug its way into my guts and is gnawing at my insides.

thoughts of eating disorders and excessive exercising, the insatiable need for attention, the desire to be an hollow object, judged solely on exteriors, utter shallowness and purely superficial considerations overwhelm me.

this is not healthy.

what the fuck is going on? have i fallen victim to the power of the male gaze? is it time for my latent feminism to rise up and counter the vicious molestations of advertising and commerce upon my delicate psyche? is it just that summer is coming?

it may be time for a new job.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

you know what i think? nobody looks good from every angle. everyone has faces they make that make them look unattractive, little tics that make them seem crazy, etc...

i used to get so goddamned jealous of those people i'd run into who seemed to have cultivated only attractive mannerisms. because every time i caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror (especially while talking or the way i incessantly fiddle with any loose edge), the acceptable face i'd tried to identify with from my favorite photographs of myself would be swallowed by a being that never seemed as natural and relaxed as anyone around me.

and that could be acceptable as an individual with whom to interact, but the things i saw in other people that make me lust after them (or covet their athleticism, voice, facial expressions, laugh, movement, style) weren't the kind of things that carried my personality along. and i wasn't really sure what did.

the mirror image of me in motion was always startling. i seemed to know how to stand constantly so that all the wrong things composed the worst possible silhouette. if i'm sitting, my boobs stick out as far as my belly. sometimes i wonder if people perhaps spend more time actively looking in the mirror than my timid self has, learning to be a moving sculpture that is a treat to the senses.

is that vanity? or art?

i feel justified trying to make beautiful things all the time. why not myself? somehow i almost feel guilty that by choosing to evaluate and improve upon my form, it implies the ability to judge and evaluate the worth of physical encounter with beings, other people -- i'm judging the people around me. maybe even competing for rank in this "pretty" system that my feminism rails against.

yeah, all this stuff still plagues me. but recently, my gf and i got drunk and shameless and decided to film ourselves making out on the bed to see if we looked hot. we agreed beforehand that it was a risky venture: would seeing ourselves make us eternally self-conscious, feel unsexy, and disturb our ability to just be hot for each other? might it ruin our sex life? we took the risk, and it was fairly easy to be candid with no one manning the camera, the option to delete it, and my girlfriend and i squirming all over each other.

and then: we watched it. what we noticed most was how in love we are, and how not like any porno we'd ever seen. and there was a big zit on the side of my face and a few faces i made that weren't quite hot. but most of it was actually a pleasant surprise. i just looked like any old person rolling around in a bed making out with someone they can't get enough of.

okay, so maybe i judge folks around me and don't always know how to stop the mental process, but the width of their right thigh when they stand [this way] is not my focus. i am a person easily delighted or brought to tears by tenderness, innocence, honesty, beauty. my friends all have things about their personalities that i cherish and which i mostly associate them with.

i hope that i am surrounding myself, throughout my life, with people whose mental images of me are similar emotional bits. that doesn't always mean that i have the same image of someone as they have chosen to try to know themselves as. i think that's where it's difficult. when you wanna be some sexy bitch, but you're treasured as the joker.

that's when i think the bathroom-personal-theatre-rehearsal could come in handy, as an active choice to help make one your intention as a walking sculpture and the perception of your ever-present audience. us artists. heh.

3:12 PM

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