How Rejecting Rituals of Beauty As Self-Care Led Me To Peace.

She was sitting at my desk and smoking a cigarette, eyeing my body the way she always has. She eyes it for flaws and fixates, fantasizing about how she would change it if she could carve me with a knife, sometimes she shares her vision for me, more often she shares her disappointment.

“You know, just because a person is fat doesn’t mean they cannot make the effort to be beautiful,” she says at last, “You look so run-down and stressed, you have such a pretty face, if you made an effort to take care of yourself, you would look great.”

“How would you have me take care of myself?” I asked her.

“You could get nice clothes, you make enough money, you can put some creams on your face, get a nice haircut, go to the beauty salon,” she started to explain, already agitated by my questioning, “There are lots of ways to take care of yourself.”

There are, are they? That’s funny, I could have sworn that every suggestion of self-care I have ever received is laden with the expectation of performing rituals of beauty and as I become increasingly reluctant to participate, I am told, more and more often, that I am not taking care of myself.

I have never been particularly invested in looking good. There was a phase in my teenage years when I enjoyed being shocking with how I dressed, there was a phase in my early-twenties when I shaved my head and wore boxers and crocs to everything, there were a few intermittent phases when I aspired to or attempted at pretty and finally, there is this. Over the last few years, I have more and more firmly gotten to the place where my clothes are basically a (very simple and unflattering) uniform, my hair is going grey (and I am doing nothing about it), I haven’t been to a hair or beauty salon in years, I don’t get facials, I don’t line my eyes, I don’t put on jewellery, I don’t style anything, my bathroom shelf is two unscented bath products for my entire body, you get it. I just shower, brush my hair and exist, I use a moisturizer when I swim, and I apply nothing to my face to keep me from aging.

I have never had more people tell me they are worried I am not taking care of myself.

I find this very strange because I feel absolutely amazing. I feel amazed by life every day. Work has bever been better and I have never been better at balancing it well with my life. I have a very happy home life, my family is great, I’m in a good place with myself, I exercise every day and I love it, I’ve never been better at drawing boundaries that cater to me as opposed to everyone else, I’ve actually been sleeping moderately well for the first time in my life. I’m working through issues with connecting with people on a social and romantic level and it’s hard but it feels good. I feel like I am in a phase of my life in which I finally do not feel guilty about caring for myself and taking myself out of the quest for beauty is part of that.

Look, I have nothing against beauty, I love it and I could lose myself for hours in a beautiful person or thing, I’m just not beautiful nor am I interested in being that. Every single time I say that, someone feels the need to console me, to tell me we are all beautiful in our own way, or something about the eye of a nondescript beholder, and sure, maybe that’s the case, but I am not lamenting when I say that I don’t and don’t want to feel beautiful. It’s just a fact, I don’t want to live in a big city, I don’t want to put honey in my tea, I don’t want to feel beautiful. I’m not sad or happy about either one of those things. Do I want, then, to feel ugly? No, not exactly. I feel very powerful in this state of being, which I don’t necessarily see as ugly but acknowledge that since that is how it is often socially-viewed, I sometimes refer to it as ugliness. I feel there is power to existing in this way and still feeling desirable, valued and wanted, and I do. I feel, finally, a type of confidence that I assumed was mythical, I don’t feel disadvantaged for not worshipping at the altar of pretty and you are, aren’t you? It’s what my mom meant when she told me that despite being fat I could try because trying means I value your visual experience of me and am willing to compensate for my flaws with effort.

I don’t mean that people don’t or shouldn’t find meaning in rituals which, for them, could very well be those of self-care, even as I view them as rituals of beauty, I am talking about my experience with being visibly uncaring about my beauty and how it has made people feel sorry for me. Sometimes they try to console you by suggesting how you compensate with your personality or your intelligence, but the thing is, I don’t feel like there is anything to compensate for. Some people are ugly and smart, some are pretty and smart, some are smart and have cool personalities, it’s all chill. I don’t want to be better than anyone else, I don’t want any part in the “beauty versus personality” debate because it’s an unnecessarily polarising debate. I just want to exist.

And that is so hard.

For years, I have struggled with my body, my image, my politics. With the combination of my body, my image and my politics. I feel finally able to exist in my body as I am, devoid of image and devoid of politics as well because there was a lot to shedding the burdensome image of womanhood from myself, in order for me to get here. My father is a 68-year old pernickety, pedantic bald man, who wears the same clothes, takes no “care” of himself and everyone agrees he looks amazing. He feels pretty great about how he looks. My mother is 61-year old woman who spends hours in front of the mirror every week, wears tailored carefully-selected clothing, gets many facials, wears many face-creams, has watched how she eats for decades (only for how she looks, she gives not one shit about feeling good) and worries every day about whether she looks good. I have never left the house with my mom without her asking me if she looks fat and whether she looks great. I think she looks amazing, but she doesn’t think that, and everyone agrees that my dad looks better. This fucking game is rigged.

And I don’t want to win.

I want out.

So I can finally take care of myself.