Hello from Paris!
I’m getting my mojo back, or trying to. Vacuuming the apartment, restocking groceries. Studying the French subjunctive. I even had one of those pricelessly banal encounters I miss so much with women at the laundromat when the machine which controls the washers ate a euro coin, then another, then someone else’s and we all complained about it at length. Three of us had the accented French of foreigners. Another a Parisian purr. All shrugging with the crinkles around the eyes that meant smiles hidden behind our masks.
That’s what I’ve missed most these last two years—an ordinary exchange between ordinary people—which provides these days an extraordinary pleasure. I felt almost good afterwards. A breath of fresh air into the grimy and sodden cave where I’ve lived for two years since us humans began staring at each other with mutual fear.
The eyes have it. We want so much from them.
The other day, standing naked in the bathroom I cringed at my own harsh gaze, reproaching myself for all the tortilla chips, all the peanuts I’d eaten, beer I’d drunk when I was miserable visiting New York. I paused, told myself to stand up straight, raise my head, stare directly, imagine that this flesh I inhabit was beautiful, was strong. The weird thing is that when I did—stand up straight, stare boldly—I did look good, was transformed. That’s what comes of claiming your power the old feminists would have said. Or maybe re-claiming what we hand over again and again.
Watching myself transform reminded of the laundromat I used to go to in New York, and a woman I’d see there. A dyke from the neighborhood, a working class Latina butch with close-cropped grey hair and a slight limp, missing teeth. Not somebody I’d fantasize about, but then one day when I was waiting for my stuff to come out of the dryer, she swaggered into the place with her jeans slung low around her narrow hips, thumbs tucked under her belt, and she was magic. Spine straight, a small smile playing on her lips. And she was the hottest thing I’d seen in weeks. Practically burning up with sex. Pulling me like a moon. You could see the warmth all around her. And I thought, the dyke got laid.
She glowed for a couple of weeks. But then I saw her again, six months later, and she was… flat, diminished. Thinner than ever, shabby, gap-toothed and grey-skinned. Not only would you not give her a second look, you’d turn your eyes away. And I felt such grief for her. How fragile a dyke’s joy can be. The danger of looking in the mirror and seeing what the world sees. Or worse, posing for their eyes and not yours.
It’s hard. It’s why I find my equilibrium keeping a minimum of mirrors in the house. I just am. Not posing for anyone, even myself. I remember my mom yelling at my sisters for hogging the bathroom. “Quit staring at yourself and get out here. You’re gonna be late for school.” I knew this girl who, like me, didn’t like to look at herself too much, and decided the solution was to post a selfie every day. She tied it into the idea of self-care. I wonder what would have happened if she’d taken the shot, but then kept it private. Refused other arbiters of her own beauty. Her own gaze.
I wonder, too, if it has side effects—the selfie—when only a couple dozen of the people giving us approving clicks are intimates, true friends, and the others are acquaintances, or imperfect strangers. Or marketers of course. All our data harvested by corporations and political campaigns. Who are we posing for? And why?
Before, I remember people talking about how selfie’s were super narcissistic, but I don’t know how they can be, really, when we take them shaping ourselves for the harsh or pitying or approving gaze of an unknown multitude. They aren’t self-portraits, really, trying to reveal something essential. For many, they may even be masks we put on to elude discovery of the square-peggedness that plagues us all.
In other news…
In the UK, feminists who believe the practical implications of some extremist positions on gender need to be examined more carefully are met with death threats and doxxing.
Oh Goodie! France’s Very Own Trump!
Author Eric Zemmour, the French Jewish Trump, Storms to Top of Presidential Polls
With his ability to control his own narrative, the one-man show is a symptom of the Americanization of French politics.
Rethinking Political Branding Apart from Identity
I think this is an important idea.
That’s it for this time.
Disgruntledly yours,
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