An adversarial relationship

The Week in Selfies: 4/20/20 - 4/26/20

Apr 17, 2022

Programming note: No newsletter next week as I want to get the April 2020 to April 2022 dates more closely lined up again. I’ll be back in your inbox on May 1st! (Paid subscribers will still receive their weekly Tryping My Best Moment of the Week newsletter.)

CW: Body (image, size) related stuff, mention of BMI

There are two ways I want a haircut to go: 1) the hair stylist does all the talking and only requires grunts of recognition from me or b) we sit in complete silence while I stare into the mirror.

My current hair stylist falls into the former category and I love her for it. She carries the conversation while I interject a few smart and/or sarcastic quips here and there. This is my ideal situation when being held hostage in a chair with sharp objects near my head and neck for 30 minutes or more. (I’ve listened to Sweeney Todd far too many times to not be a little nervous about being anywhere near a shave and a haircut, two bits.)

From time to time though, inevitably, the topic of conversation will require that I pick up a little bit of the slack. My haircut right before I left NYC for the holidays was one such time. The hair stylist was talking about how her sister was self-conscious about weight she had gained since being in drug recovery. Of course, BMI came up at some point. Whether I brought it up or she did, I can’t remember, but I was aware that she, being about a decade older than I am, is probably not in the same place that myself and younger generations are in trying to unravel our reliance on this totally bogus and racist medical standard of measurement. So, I was quick to point out that BMI doesn’t actually mean anything in terms of health. She stopped cutting my hair for a moment and said, with genuine curiosity, “How do you know so much about this stuff?”

A number of responses flashed through my head. My first instinct was to chuckle and look myself up and down. Then I thought about the nightmare hellscape growing up in the 90s was in terms of anything diet or health related. Can’t quite make it to heroin chic? Well, don’t worry, fad diet books are being released at a breakneck speed. Next, I flashed to high school. I was 14 or 15 and doing Weight Watchers with my Mom (possibility for the second time already). The meetings were at the town rec center which was a block from the theatre building. I would have my Mom pick me up after drama and drive me around the block so no one would ask where I was going next. I did a pretty good job of keeping that activity under wraps. I stopped going, however, when someone at a meeting congratulated me on some weight loss and my mom told me that was the parent of one of my classmates.

A million other anecdotes came to mind since this is an ongoing narrative but none of those responses felt quite right. So, I smiled a little, said, “I read a lot,” and went back to searing a hole into the awful hair salon mirror, which is always the worst mirror for miles.

I have an adversarial relationship with mirrors. Interior designers and home shows are always suggesting adding mirrors to any space to make things appear “bigger” …well, alright. I also have an adversarial relationship with photos of myself which is, partly, why I took up this selfie project in the first place.

With all of the more recent discourse about bodies swirling around, I have landed squarely in the body neutrality camp. Pragmatic to a fault (and if you have something to say about this, let’s put that in a box and handle it later), the idea of focusing on what my body does and not what it looks like is useful to me. I’d rather just recognize my body as a home for important organs and blood and oxygen and as a vessel that moves me around and gets stuff done. Everyone has to deal with their bodies in the way that best serves them and makes them happy. This viewpoint serves me in that way, at least for now.

Over the last few years, I have tried to find practical opportunities to really put this viewpoint into action for myself. And that is why, for the last photo of this week, you’ll see the first of what will be a few of me-only-in-a-bra type photo. It’s not even that there is so much skin showing, but these types of photos always feel like a big and vulnerable deal to me.

My adversarial relationship to mirrors and photos continues to exist; some days it is louder than others. But today, I am tryping my best to lean into a more positive relationship with these particular photos.

Monday, April 20, 2020