number eleven, with a mirror
observing my own gaze during quarantine, cancel culture?, and wine!
hello readers! Two quick things before we get into it this week. 1) If you are having trouble finding narrative lines in your inbox it may be going to your spam or promotions folder. Do a search for the latest issue and move it on over to your main inbox (in Gmail you can drag and drop it) and you should get it in there from now on. 2) There is a new section I am introducing called ‘question of the week’ where I pose a question I am wondering about for you, my wonderful readers, to answer. Each week will be a different question and the following week I will include some of the responses in the newsletter. Like we are a bunch of pen-pals having a little conversation, I’m excited! xoxo
Four months into quarantine and the excitable energy of the March has given way to the low hum of an altered reality. There are moments of panic and new traumas, as deaths continue to rise and people across the country are facing the belated consequences of job loss and housing insecurity that ripple out following a devastating event. Talking with friends and talking to myself and my cat (Olive has been a steady yet sleepy sounding board) it is clear that we are all riding our wave through this thing, cresting and tossing us around as it sees fit. There are so many different things we are all dealing with all at once. Wherever you were at the beginning of this thing you are sure to come out the other end changed, for each of us it will be different. The best we can do is be strong for those who are going through a low point and remain kind to ourselves. At this point it seems fair to look back and take stock. Our political leaders on the whole don’t have a lot to be proud of, but all of us certainly do. I am proud of myself for being resilient, patient, and for creating meaning for myself. I am proud of all of us. Whatever it is you have been hard on yourself about, I am here to say that I don’t even need to know what it is to tell you that you have been doing as well as you can.
I wanted to say all that, but I also wanted to talk about one area that has required a lot of kindness and forgiveness: yourself. Really, your image. The person you confront in the mirror day after day. I am thinking about the self-gaze, how I have spent more time with it than ever in this time. Every day I get up and look in the mirror. I walk around my apartment and catch my own glance in the living room, in the bathroom while washing my hands, at my desk, on Zoom or FaceTime calls.
We talk about the gaze most often in photography and film. What does something look like when shot with a male gaze, will the camera find a girl leaning against a bar and linger upon her ass? What does it look like with a female gaze, will the camera take in her body as whole as it shows us her laughing with a friend over an old fashioned? Cinema has, of course, been seen through the male gaze most of the time, even now, and certainly throughout history. Our ideas of what it means to be a woman, to be a desirable one or lonely one or dangerous one, are those that have been reflected back to us through the eyes of men. There is white gaze, straight gaze, queer gaze. Whoever is capturing the reality will tend to see it through their lens. How these visions have been internalized, deconstructed, and flipped around has been the work of feminism and other movements to increase representation in the arts. Film is such an interesting and visible example of this, but I am also interested in the gaze offscreen.
Going out into the world every day required a calculation of who would be looking upon me. Work, date night, meeting up with friends – we all have our own uniforms and our way of presenting. You arrive to a place and your outfit, beauty look, hair or accessories are commented upon. How you put yourself together, the amount of effort you choose to put in moderates the gaze upon you. You consider how you are feeling about your body, face, hair based upon how you think they might respond. You amplify the features you imagine or have been told are most appealing.
For the past four months the only person I have truly had to face is myself. With any healthy partnership I would hope that day to day you do not work to moderate yourself much for the other, they take you as they are. Sure, there are sometimes I intentionally put on something appealing for my husband, a little something I know that he will like or because I find myself desiring his gaze. No matter what it is not him that looks back at me in the mirror. Rather than getting up and thinking “what should I wear for xyz today” I think about how I feel and what will make me feel most like myself today, most comfortable in today’s skin. I have always loved style and playing dress up. This time has been like a fashion reset, where I have honed down into the things that feel most true. The few purchases I have made have not been because I am trying to put together looks for the right occasions, they are simply the things that I want to wear. A Marie Kondo approach perhaps, does this bring me joy?
Looking in the mirror each day I have newly confronted my own face. The squishy and uneven parts. The parts where wrinkle lines are beginning to set. The angle of my chin and the roundness of my cheeks. The way it evolves, how each day I have to greet it anew.
There is something about going out into the world every day that seemed to necessitate a level of consistency. I dreaded going into work without the chance to apply concealer and have to be exposed as being sleepy and dark under the eyes. Some of our makeup is made to play, but much of it is to maintain consistency – it is our mask. Skin tints and concealers dotting over dark spots and newly formed zits. Instagram filters and even the handy little beauty filter on zoom blur any little imperfections so our image can remain acceptable. It feels vulnerable to be with others with these flaws. These are the very things that I now accept, that I greet every day. Accepting for probably the first time that every day I am a little bit different, and that isn’t because I keep straying from how I am supposed to look. All of these faces are my own.
I still put on makeup some days. As I look at my face in the morning, I ask myself how I feel like seeing myself today. Most days it turns out I like to have a little glow to my cheeks, some lifted eyelashes, and an inviting lip that smiles back at me. Some days I like a cat eye or some glittery eyeshadow to lift my spirits. I have been wearing perfume more because I am with myself, and I like to smell musk and roses wherever I go. I like a hoop earring and my hair in a low bun or high pony to keep it out of face. I still paint my nails once or twice a week, the colorful enamel ferreting across my keyboard brightening my words.
I have been attentive to the expanding, softening, shrinking and strengthening of my body. The way that what I eat seems to have very little with how I feel about myself, and the ways my stress and anxiety levels seem to have a lot to do with it. In a time where so many are truly struggling to provide for themselves and their families, I have new gratitude for every meal and fridge full of groceries. I am grateful to nourish myself and to appreciate food as sustenance and health, but also comfort and joy and indulgence. When so much is unknown, I can know the joy of ricotta on toast without conditions other than if it will bring a smile to my face.
The things that make us feel at home in ourselves are different for each of us. This time has been a blessing in allowing us to take time out from dealing with how others see us, confronting our perception of ourselves to discover a kinder gaze. May we be fortified for the future with more love for our contours and changes, strengthening something deep inside that cannot be seen by anyone other than ourselves. Protect that kindness toward our own reflections and maybe we can adjust our own gaze to capture more of others than we have been accustomed to seeing.
also thinking about
Cancel culture! Have you heard, it is taking over media and threatening freedom of speech as hordes of Twitter dictators are silencing discourse! If you missed this particular controversy, I will give a brief overview. A little over a week ago a letter signed by a bunch of established writers, journalists, etc was published in Harper’s calling for “the end to cancel culture.” The letter alleges that “(t)he free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted” and that the limits set on free debate by the ideological left threaten the very causes they are fighting for. There has been a lot of response to this piece pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of claiming there is such a thing as cancel culture when a piece like this was able to be published in a major publication, and that those who signed onto this letter have had successful careers and have not at all been silenced in any meaningful way. I liked this response by the wonderful Hannah Giorgis in The Atlantic , as well as this counter-letter signed onto by a large group of writers, journalists etc. (led by journalists of color) that pokes holes in the arguments made in the Harper’s letter and makes the important point that “marginalized voices have been silenced for generations in journalism, academia, and publishing".”
From my perspective it is patently absurd to claim we are living in a time where free speech is being stifled from the left, especially when the right and the most powerful person in the country attacks the freedom of the press daily. Much of this seems to me like conflating online outrage with actual consequences. I think about the recent case of Alison Roman, who was “cancelled” if you choose to think of it that way (I think we should not), for basically coming off as really rude, entitled, and for singling out two successful Asian women for no damn good reason in an interview. Roman did face online outrage which I am sure was personally quite brutal to deal with but, let’s be clear, she has not faced any real consequences. She is on temporary leave from her position with the New York Times, unclear whose idea that was but it does not seem to be permanent, has started a newsletter and remains very active on social media. To stay in the world of food we can look at Adam Rapoport who was removed from his position as editor in chief of Bon Appetit after staff came forward alleging patterns of behavior that favored white employees and created a toxic work environment. Rapoport did have actual consequences for his behavior because he failed as a leader, and people are not entitled to their jobs forever if they are not doing them well.
These were two different cases and they received different consequences. This is not an anomaly. On the whole I would argue we have done a remarkably good job at seeing difference in the behavior of public figures. Public opinion and consequences are weighted differently for a person who is criminal, racist, incompetent or simply a jerk whose books they don’t want to buy anymore. Harvey Weinstein is in jail, Aziz Ansari has a new Netflix special — let’s not pretend our culture is incapable of treating people fairly. There will always be angry mobs calling for heads to roll for just about anything but there is plenty of room for forgiveness and for growth on the internet too, that process just receives a lot less attention. Of course there are anomalies of those who will be punished unfairly, but those instances are much more rare than those where people of color, LGBTQ folks, or women are unfairly labeled, maligned, or denied opportunity.
There have always been gatekeepers controlling who receives acclaim and backing for their work and those decisions have always been impacted by cultural trends. What is different about today is that everyone has a place to make their opinion known, there are more voices than ever to weigh in on what they are love or hate. One of the more complicated questions this Harper’s letter made me consider is whether we are living in a culture where creativity is actually being stifled. On the one hand more people are able to make things than ever, the artists being given platforms are more diverse than ever, and we have more platforms to access all types of creative work. On the other hand who you are as a person, your public persona, and your work are held up to more critique than perhaps ever before. What do we want from our artists these days? Are there those hesitating to create or shying away from honest work because they fear they are not “saying the right thing”? Art has always been a place for exploring, play, working things out and provoking us to do the same. How do these cultural and social tides impact the work being made? Is it even possible for us to know in this moment or is a matter for history to determine?
recommended for….
something to read: Speaking of cancel culture, you can’t get anymore cancelled than being called a witch back in the day. One of the things I love about being a member of a book club is that the process of selecting books in a relatively democratic process means that I am asked to read things that I would likely not choose for myself. This past month our book selection was The Mercies by Karen Millwood Hargrave, and I loved it! The story is based on the real history of a small town at the very tip of Norway-Denmark where all the men were killed by a storm and the ensuing witch hunts that took place in the early 1600’s. The world she builds is so vivid and captivating you will be transported to this very odd and dark reality.
wine all the time: Before *gestures wildly* all of this, we made two key purchases. One, a couch which is certainly at least a little responsible for us still loving each other after months inside, and two, a book on wine we keep close to the couch called Wine Simple by Aldo Sohm. This book is amazing. It makes learning about regions, varietals, tasting and everything else you want to know so easy, so you sound basically smart about wine and successfully buy bottles you will actually like. It includes tons of helpful graphics and tidbits so you can learn things like that Gamay and Beaujolais (both very good natural wine values btw) are the same thing. The focus of the book is not specifically on natural wine, but that is what I like to drink. Here’s a couple recommendations of wines that are delicious and that Sohm’s book helped me appreciate:
Bichi, No Sapiens, Natural red wine from Mexico light and a little spicy and perfect for anything
Vinyes Singulars, Pim Pam Blanc, Natural white wine a little funky and super drinkable
Pet Nats are sparkling wines made from natural processes, they tend to be a little more funky and not as fizzy, and generally more affordable. They are perfect for a hot day and for happiness. I like this Osmote Cayuga Pet-Nat from the Finger Lakes if you can find it but just go to your wine shop and ask for a rec!
Maison Noir, O.P.P. Pinot Noir, made in Oregon by a Black winemaker just super easy drinking and yummy
question of the week
new section alert! Reply either by responding to this email or in the comment section below. I will start next week’s newsletter by pulling out some quotes from replies I receive (anonymously, don’t worry I won’t call you out by name unless you ask me to!).
Do you feel ‘cancel culture’ is real and how does it impact your work, what you create, or put online?
Pour yourself a glass of wine and let me know what you think.
With love,
Caitlin Rose
