Room Full of Mirrors

There is nothing like a heat wave to make one hyper aware of your body. Every limb, every roll, every errant strand of hair, every drop of sweat becoming a river. Feel it all, it’s all heavier and slower, more weight. For those of us in the throes of the many vague stages of menopause, this heat amplifies the betrayals this body offers. Am I sick? Is it the heat? Is this a hot flash?

A few years ago, a documentary titled “The Reverend” about my partner, Vince, was released. It’s about his life playing music, his weekly musical residency in New York City and his faith. The film is full of interviews, clips, live footage…y’know, a documentary, the filmmaker Nick Canfield followed Vince for five years. I am one of the people interviewed, and when the three of us watched an early cut in November 2019 I found myself mentally preparing to watch myself on-screen.

Well, I tried to. I thought to myself “I will look fat, because I am fat, and that’s ok” and, in theory, I was at peace with that. But then I saw something different. I wasn’t just fat, I was old, my eyes were tired, there was a physical slack from leaving the professional kitchen. I saw the fatigue and self-medicating from our national political nightmare. Fuck. I wasn’t prepared for that.

I have since seen the film several times, most often on the big screen at theaters. It debuted in November 2021 at DOC NYC, the largest documentary film festival in the US. The premiere concerned me, how do I dress, how do I look, after a year and a half of living in the comfort zone of band shirts, hoodies, masks and carhartts during COVID? Being seen in public, with more cameras, weighed on my mind more than it should have, or that’s how it seems now. Hindsight, the great gaslighter!

I’m not mortified by my appearance in the film now, I’ve become used to it. That’s how I looked, there, in a chair, without a team of humans telling me how to sit, talk, dress, do my make-up and my hair and adjust the lighting. There is still something weird about being seen by people I don’t know, and now that the film is streaming, there is a new anxiety, that people are so casually watching me at home. Going to a theater indicates some caring and effort, watching something at home, we all know that’s a low bar. Nobody wants to become a new Tiger King.

Yes I am an introvert and yes I am an extrovert. It’s complex. Obviously I should know that if I’m being interviewed there is an end result, a product. My desire for my insight into the world to be considered versus my need for privacy, that to be heard often means to be seen, they are at odds with one another. Looking good is an art. That is a fact. It is also a job. There are a lot of hands involved when someone looks good, even when it seems like it’s effortless.

Yesterday I watched the screener of another documentary in which I am interviewed. It’s been sitting in my inbox, waiting for the right moment. There was no right moment to watch this one, about a friend who passed, so I might as well do it in the part of the apartment with no AC during this heat wave. When and where I feel everything.

I had tried to self-correct how I looked for “The Reverend,” but I did not accomplish my goal. Maybe no one else sees it, but I do. I’ve been trained to, my family is intensely judgmental when it comes to appearance, it’s baked in me. That’s a bitter place to grow up in, the intense critical eye not just of society but my family and family friends. The ease with which my mom and sisters disparage themselves and other, this corrosion also appears effortless. It is anything but.

I’ve been reading Annie Ernaux’s “The Years” for what feels like a year, consistently struck by her attention to the changes, the shifts throughout her life. Here she discusses the advent of the video camera in everyday life-

“It was disconcerting to see ourselves for the first time on the pull-down screen in the living room. We walked, our lips moved, we silently laughed while the projector sizzled away in the background. We were amazed by ourselves, our gestures and movements. It was a new sensation, perhaps similar to what people in the seventeenth century felt on viewing their first photo-portrait. We did not let on how greatly it disturbed us, and preferred to watch others on screen, relatives and friends, who more resembled what they already looked like to us. It was even worse to hear one’s voice on the tape recorder. After that, one could never forget the voice that others hear. We gained self-knowledge and lost spontaneity.”

I’m here for the living, for the spontaneity, not this kind of self-knowledge. Maybe my writing makes you think otherwise, but I’m just exorcising the demons of my brain. It’s taking me forever to finish “The Years” because I notice the same things in my life all the damn time, these changes to how we live, like for me and my generation, we didn’t grow up with phones with cameras and videos and social media. Everything I did wasn’t recorded thank fucking god. Sure, I can perform, but I’m terrible at being performative. I just want to be. I’m a three-dimensional person, how could I possibly translate well to a two-dimensional world?

This body stuff is hard. I call it stuff because it’s wildly messy, the thoughts, the realities, this dysmorphia. It’s a mixed bag, this body, and it’s not lost on me the utter brattiness of bitching about mine while it functions pretty alright, considering, is disease-free and well-fed. At the end of the day I respect this body, its strength and the things it has built. I’m impressed with how it has functioned in spite of me, my thoughts, previous actions and years of disregard. I’m lucky it still goes along. Part of its mess is the brain space it takes up. Another part of the mess is knowing how much physical beauty is valued, how it creates advantages for those with it, and that how we look does have consequences on how well we are treated, how well we are paid, what opportunities are afforded to us and in general our worth in this society. And all of this contributes to why it takes up so much space.

I recently learned a phrase referring to the moment when fit models’ measurements change. Fit models are hired to try on a brand’s clothing beyond its sample size, the garment’s prototype, and let them see how it looks and drapes, along with giving feedback about fit. Each model represents a specific size, their measurements are taken. When their measurements and size changes, that body is called “out of tolerance.”

Out of tolerance. Those words, in regards to a human body, feel like they can apply to many situations, the body’s measurements just being one. I wonder when our bodies will be out of tolerance for the crap we pull on them, the scorn, the wishing, the dreaming, wondering how life would be different in another one.

When my mind is out of tolerance, for me, when I am obsessed with how I look, it indicates that something is off. I’m looking at screens too much, I’m fixated on public people with rapid weight loss because I am just that shallow and compulsive. I’m judging my body more than I’m using it. It often means I’m not reading enough or connecting with people. Usually what it means is that I’m just watching, that I’m not living enough. I don’t want any of these grievances with how I look to stop me from doing what I want to do, I don’t want fear to make decisions for me.

That, I have no tolerance for.

Recently a therapist told me that I am not a problem to be solved. What an epiphany to hear, and to say. I am not a problem to be solved.