My mother gave me a heck of a scolding for my dressing yesterday. I had worn a lacy black bra beneath a black sheer top for the Super 0 event. She demanded of me the purpose behind such an outfit and then desperately pleaded for me to love myself more.
I really didn't know how to respond to her scolding and concerns. Yeah, the top was see-through. And yeah the bra was lacy. But it wasn't as if it was indecent exposure where my nipples were on display (and while I say this, I find myself struggling to understand why the revelation of a woman's nipples is considered 'indecent exposure'. Let's return to this topic later). As for the reasons behind it, I couldn't up with anything more than "That particular set of coordinates of black on black on black was what I was really feeling at that exact moment," which could work just as well as for when I leave the house with ridiculously huge green spectacles, oversized denim shirt (bought by yours truly as a gift for the brothers but often stolen to be worn yet again by yours truly) and black leggings with a messy top bun. I'm really not dressing to attract attention, Mom. Or to be attractive to heterosexual men or homosexual women. Sometimes I really don't know how to get that across to you.
As I pondered over this wordlessly, I stared at my mom's retreating back, dressed in Gina Tricot's organic cotton tights and a school shirt with no bra. That's appropriate for a Sunday afternoon with inactivity on the agenda, is it not? Function is one reason we dress the way we do. However, more than that, I believe that style defines our choices more significantly. The way we dress is a salient aspect of our identity. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, "the apparel oft proclaims the man". Forgive my taking one single phrase without contextualising it (I think in the play we're not meant to take this seriously - or we should at least problematise this phrase - because of the personality of the person who had said it BUT I'M NOT ENTIRELY SURE, please don't quote me on this), but besides disagreeing with the generic use of the word man to represent the entire humankind, I quite agree with that phrase; what we wear quite often defines whom we are as people.
I'd like to believe that my decisions of wearing a floral crop top and denim high-waist shorts today bring across to you the Summer breeze and clouds in my mood; that tomorrow I choose to bring retro back with my rounded maroon sunnies, and with that slit skirt for Friday night I'm emanating sexy vibes. Well you could probably say that I'm so deluded and my desires have been subconsciously shaped by society's expectations and its dictations of how a woman should dress like that even if I want to believe that these choices are my own, they really aren't mine. Because to you, my red lips betray an underlying promiscuity, my 6-inch stilettos position my derriere to better receive your penis and the curvature of my breasts invite your attention.
No, no, no. I'm self-aware. I'm aware of what emphasises the positive parts of my body and I'm aware of how to dress to portray my best qualities, i.e. I know what I look good in. I am also aware of those societal and cultural expectations and judgments. Hence I realise the need to balance the possibility of inviting gazes to objectify my body and to well, still display my identity through my choice of clothing. I feel like being a woman is a really difficult in the sense that for most of my peers and myself, we've somewhat learnt to objectify ourselves. That never really sunk in until I was watching the ever talented, poised and eloquent Rosamund Pike in W Magazine's interview:
In it, she describes her first movie she had done, which was a James Bond movie, and she talks about the dress ("this sheath; this slinky, sparkly sheath") that the filmmakers had prepared for her.
"
Suddenly you've got a - you know, you're given an awareness, you're given a look, that is sort of far more sophisticated than you feel.
Eye makeup, eye lashes, mascara, Armani, fur, high heels - I mean, just everything that I had no experience of.
And you're having to sort of come to terms with yourself as a woman, I suppose, and also as an object as well. You're looking at yourself from the outside for the first time, which I think for any girl, is a very - you know, it's a horrible and also rather fascinating time of one's life [emphasis mine]."
They're kind of on different ends of the spectrum, aren't they? Horrible and fascinating. It really is how I feel though. On the one hand, it's degrading and humiliating to be brought down to an inanimate thing incapable of thoughts and knowledge, but on the other hand, it's intriguing to think of yourself as an object. You sort of just distance yourself from your body and you do whatever you want with it. And it's this contradiction that defines being a woman to me.
It's this tension of displaying your personality and identity through the clothes yet also not really taking your body seriously that defines me as a woman.
Another learned person, Mark Twain, also expressed his opinions on the matter of clothes. "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society," he had once said.
IS THAT REALLY TRUE? That naked people have no influence on society? Perhaps, they haven't much influence... They most certainly have the ability to
rile people up, or create uneasy feelings amongst people who don't understand nudity. Especially women's naked bodies. If you contemplate the matter of nipples; all human beings have them. However, men's nipples are treated differently from women's nipples. Women's nipples are banned from the light of day. Why is that so?
One possibility is that the structural oppression of one gender over another in the form of enforcement of bodily restrictions has led to this. .... Nah let's not be dramatic and shit. My take is that it's just because
we don't bloody appreciate nudity enough. I'm so intrigued with naked bodies and being naked. I feel that everyone should be naked more often. Someone recently told me "You're so comfortable with your body."
I never was. I truly never was. All of my conversations with my friends in the past years always included the question "Did I gain weight?" somewhere. It was in either year 1 or year 2 of college when the words of a friend of mine really made an
impact on the way I thought about my body. "You need to strip naked and stand in front of the mirror. You need to spend time looking at yourself, and observe your body. You just need to do that until you love your body." Many a times when we are taking photographs, our bodies twist to present the best we can for that single second (or 1/100th of a second) of a snapshot. But we often forget that our bodies are more than those snapshots of clothes on our bodies. We can't suck in our tummies all the time. It isn't always a photograph. In front of the mirror you need to go. You need to stand, with exhaled breath, and tummy out, and then learn to love that little sucker. And the fact that your waist is there, it just does not swivel inward like an hourglass does. Or all those stretch marks and cellulite. Or that one breast/chest is larger than the other. Yeah, it works for men as well. Or all those scars and scabs from falling down. Seriously. It took me very long to get there, and sometimes, along the way, insecurities still rear their ugly heads, but yeah, I got naked and learnt to love my naked body.
I feel that more people should learn to love their bodies privately. Get acquainted with your skin and flesh in the privacy of your room. Laze around with your loved one naked. You once prodded my boob before and I just watched you do it. "What are you doing?" I had asked. Your reply was simple: "I don't have boobs. I'm fascinated by it." Just be comfortable in your own skin. The way Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus go about it, it's problematic to me, because they're selling a packaged image of hyper-sexuality and they insist that they're not pandering to societal expectations, instead they're being true to themselves. Maybe they are. Maybe they're so comfortable in their own skin it's fine that they parade it. But I think they should tell people they ARE fine with their own skin. That's the step that's missing. There should be more awareness that displaying one's nipples is EQUALLY as fine as wearing corduroy slacks and pullovers. As long as you're comfortable with your own body.
Women's bodies have been brutally beaten up and every decade, new meanings are forced upon them. Breasts used to be vulgar, and now they've been hyper-sexualised. Nipples are indecent exposure. Why? I don't get it. Men are feeling the stress as well now, with emphasis on muscularity as masculinity. All of us should just get naked and appreciate the beauty that is our unique body. It's not a one-size-fits-all thing. I don't think we should hide our bodies.
Everyone should be more adventurous. Everyone should embrace their bodies in all its imperfection. No one should have to cover themselves after sex, awkwardly with flailing arms and clothes, tossed aside. Be naked in your glory.
x
(I feel like I have a lot of refinement to do to this entry, but I'M JUST SO FED UP WITH THE LACK OF LOVE FOR THE BEAUTY OF NUDITY, C'MON. Hope my ramblings made a bit of sense, at least.)
Labels: Beauty, being female, being naked, body image, clothes, contradictions, dressing, early morning type, identity, musings, nudity, Rosamund Pike, tension, what it means to be woman
