I am in my English lecture, and all the girls around me are sitting in the exact same position: we are all clutching our stomachs, some of us pulling and readjusting our t-shirts and sweaters, so that the fabric folds itself in front. Even her, I find myself thinking, surprised that she, a real-life, in-the-flesh 'Pandora' should resort to the same belly-hiding techniques that we all do. I look around me and realise none of us are overweight, none of us are unattractive, all of us are intelligent young women (we have to be, T. S. Eliot is no picnic), but still, it seems all of us are thinking, "Watch yourself, make yourself perfect, hide every flaw".
Even the ones that aren't there?
Sometimes I find myself wary of St Andrews, and this is one of these times. I never thought that coming to University would be like coming to a fashion show (literally, as we have five different ones to choose from). I am impressionable, and Eating Disorders Awareness Week might have had its impact on me, driving me to pen these thoughts, yet I cannot help but be shocked at how much appearances count in this town. So many people have called me naive for being horrified at this fact of life. Once, someone told me that she pitied 'ugly people' because it must be so much harder for them to get on in life; it was a proven matter that attractive people are more likely to get jobs, to be thought of as intelligent and 'nice'. When, later, I retold my friends about this fantastic exchange, they said, "Well Fran, it's sort of true..."
Is it, though? Do we realise how much time we waste devoting our thoughts to what we look like and what we should wear? Worse even, as a girl, the self-deprecating musings that pass through my mind on a daily basis. "I wish I had her eyes, I wish I had her breasts, I wish I had legs like hers...". Worse still, the disgusting pep-talks I give myself sometimes; "It could be worse, I could have her hair", or, "I could haver her complexion. I am not too bad after all".
I think that nothing justifies this behaviour, and I am trying, more and more, to make a very conscious and significant effort to stop this kind of thinking once and for all. I have a feeling that all these concentrated aspirations (and frustrations) to fit into God knows what sort of cookie-mould concept of beauty have surfaced on other aspects of our lives here, too. That strange competitive atmosphere in class and in all the societies, for instance, smells very much of this dilemma. So does the excessive drinking, and the social interaction that comes afterwards.
The reality is we have become slaves to appearances, and it doesn't seem like we will ever change this aspect of human nature. It is saddening, also, that we often forget to nourish our internal richness in favour of dedicating so much time to embellishing our immediate and visible selves. And it is scary to realise the extent to which we depend on these constructs to define what we think of others.
A few years back, always in my somewhat naive vein of thinking, I was writing about Marilyn Monroe. I had just seen one of her films, "Let's Make Love", and had been surprised at the sex symbol's utterly normal and realistic (above all, attainable!) appearance. I wrote, "Nowadays I think we all try to be beautiful, period. Beautiful constantly, no matter what we are doing. But maybe we don't realise that we are most attractive when we do certain things, and not all the time, like Marilyn Monroe when she sang. I know that realising that the concept of beauty changes through time is no last minute finding, but maybe realising that we are beautiful when we do what we like best is". I still sort of hang on to that notion; I think that when we find something that we really like doing, and which we are really good at doing, we should hold on to it, because it makes us shine.
And, recently, I suddenly got apprehensive; what if I've forgotten what this thing is for me, because I've just been spending too much time in front of the mirror?
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