Party Doll, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld
October 19, 2013 Martha Thomases 0 Comments
Bad feminist.
That’s what I am.
Despite deeply held convictions that women and men should not only be treated equally under the law, but by society generally, I am obsessed with how I look. Not right now – I’m just in jeans and a t-shirt, neither of which fits properly – but for tonight.
If this was a party of my friends, I would be okay. I probably wouldn’t even change clothes.
Normally, I’m not that concerned with my appearance. I mean, I would like to be attractive, but I don’t spend any time on it. I rarely wear make-up. I don’t dye my hair. I watch what I eat and exercise, but more for the way it feels than for the way it makes me look.
However ….
Tonight I’m going to a big benefit party being held at the New York Public Library. There will be 300 people there, including Maya Angelou (who is being honored), Junot Diaz (who is also being honored) Gay Talese, Dick Cavett and Naomi Wolfe.
Naomi Wolfe wrote The Beauty Myth. This will become important later.
When I was married, I had a husband who could assure me that, when I went outside, no horses would be frightened. These days, my cat is too distraught seeing me leave to provide any useful advice.
If it makes me nervous, why do I go? Good question. The party benefits a charity that I not only support, but with whom I feel I have a personal relationship. It was started in memory of a man who helped me a lot. I owe him, and it is a debt that can’t be repaid just by writing a check.
When I bought tickets months ago, I didn’t know who to ask. Last year I went with my son. Tonight, I’m going with an old friend. He’s very nice, but I’m not sure I can trust him to tell me if my ass looks fat.
It’s a big party. There will be celebrities there. Even among the non-celebrities, there will be people who are young and beautiful. And while there will be people I enjoy there, people who will also be happy to see me, no one is going to notice how I look.
And I think that’s the problem.
I bought a new dress, a really nice one from Donna Karan. I have new shoes, too, with four-inch heels. I’m going to wear make-up, and my grandmother’s diamond earrings.
I want to be pretty. And that’s a form of tyranny.
In The Beauty Myth, Wolfe describes how society judges women on their appearances, and decrees that only those who are beautiful are worthy of love (that’s an over-simplification, please argue with me, not her). A man can be gnomish (Woody Allen) or a fat buffoon (Donald Trump) or short (Al Pacino) or tall (Adrien Brody) and be considered “a good catch.” Women can be dismissed as fat if they look like Kate Winslett in Titanic. It is an insult so damning that the more stupid conservatives use it to dismiss Hillary Clinton.
I do not believe one has to be beautiful to be loved. We are, each of us, deserving of love as long as we are capable of returning it. If anything, falling in love is what happens when one finds another person’s unique beauty.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see if I can find my eyeliner.
Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, expects to spend the rest of her weekend hanging out with goats and alpacas at Sheep and Wool.
Howard Cruse
October 19, 2013 - 2:49 pm
OK, Martha, spill! What’s Maya Angelou REALLY like? (P.S.: You’ve never been anything but beautiful to me.)
Pennie
October 20, 2013 - 8:52 am
Now this is what I call a really good week (Red Sox winning aside). Hang with the good people on Weds, party on Thursday, and Fibrous Animals on the weekend. Looking gorgeous with famous film makers, authors, artists and musicians…priceless.
Whitney
October 20, 2013 - 1:17 pm
M –
‘Tis a puzzle that would be nice to solve even if I don’t like the answer. Why do we care? Or is it: Should we care?
Maybe it’s not a betrayal of biology when our cheeks flush after our eyes meet someone and know that he likes us THAT way. Perhaps it is the beginning of something that can be viewed not as ideological compromise but as a blessing in our lives. Amen? The key is to hang around in a talent pool that will treat you honorably during daylight hours.
RE: Eyeliner – The Big Gun of dating tools. Drawing a good line with a steady hand when you like the guy is an upper division skill set. Hope he appreciated his triumph of making the Cat spend a Saturday night Alone.
Whitney
October 20, 2013 - 1:40 pm
BTW – You look GORGEOUS. Your hair is completely perfect. “Breathless” with Jean Seberg and Jean Paul Belmondo.
Rene
October 20, 2013 - 2:16 pm
I know this will sound crazy, but bear with me a little. I think real equality among the sexes is as difficult in a materialistic culture as it is with a so-called traditional religious culture.
Our material bodies have a drive to procreate. And a drive to choose the best possible mate to procreate with. For human males, that means valuing healthy, child-bearing women that have the best chest-waist-hips rate and nice. For human females, that means valuing powerful males that can take care of them and their kids.
“Feminism” doesn’t mean anything in the face of those biological facts. It’s strong males and pretty females, all the way. That is why ugly-but-successful males like Woody Allen and Donald Trump can get away with it, but ugly women can’t.
Now, fortunately Richard Dawkins is wrong, and contrary to what materialism says, we’re not just bodies and brains tuned by evolution to spread our genes. We also have a spiritual dimension, a divine spark, an immortal consciousness that is a far more than electro-chemical reactions in a physical brain evolved to procreate.
And that immortal consciousness is capable of that quaint little thing called love, it’s capable of the trick of finding the “unique beauty” of each person, because each person is divine.
Now I wait to receive a beating for suggesting that love and respect between the genders actually demands “religion”.
Reg
October 20, 2013 - 5:34 pm
“I feel pretty / Oh so pretty / I feel pretty and witty and bright /”
And there’s absolutely everything right with that.
George Haberberger
October 20, 2013 - 5:52 pm
Now I wait to receive a beating for suggesting that love and respect between the genders actually demands “religion”.”
Well, not from me Rene. 🙂
tom brucker
October 21, 2013 - 5:11 am
Martha,
You know too much. I never served in the military, so it wasn’t until I studied Tae Kwon Doh that I put on a uniform. I’ve worn that uniform for 9 years now, and it continues to impart a message both outwardly (black belt bad ass) and inwardly (discipline, strength, respect). Dressing up is not a requirement but it does transform our own feelings, which bear little relationship to what “messages” others may feel. As adults we realize that our own internal messages are important. It is absolutely ok to wear a party “uniform” if your internal messages support your persona. There is a difference between wearing eyeliner and applying it daily because men (and women) expect you wear it.
Martha Thomases
October 21, 2013 - 6:27 am
Rene,
The most recent science suggests that your assumptions about gender roles (men want to pass on their genes, women want to be protected) are recent social constructs, not inherent tendencies of our species. Our closest primate relatives, the bonobos, for example, do not function the same way.
Which doesn’t mean we haven’t been taught such behavior. It simply means we don’t have to put up with it. My husband and I took care of each other. We were not together to pass on our respective genes, but because we found each other desirable.
I also think that the way you are using the term “spiritual” means something different from the way I understand it. For example, I do not think it means the same thing as “religious,” in the sense that it is the opposite of materialism. I can point to many large religious institutions (the Vatican, my own synagogue) as requiring plenty of materialism for their upkeep.
Nor do I think one has to be religious,nor even believe in one or more deities to be spiritual. When I was in Rhinebeck on Saturday, walking along under a clear blue sky, sun shining through green yellow orange red leaves like stained glass, smelling the sweet aromas of autumn (including more than a few sheep), well, that was plenty spiritual to me. And I was there to buy yarn.
Rene
October 21, 2013 - 8:07 am
Martha,
We are more in agreement than you suppose.
I don’t hold the Vatican or most organized religions as shining examples of spirituality. Religious hierarchies are, more often than not, a product of materialistic distortion of divine truths.
And there are atheists that are more in touch with God than they consciously know or acknowledge. Professing a belief in God is not all that important. Living in God is important. And you don’t need a priest or an organized hierarchy for that.
As for science, regardless of recent finds, my view is that the scientific mainstream still holds with Richard Dawkins in that we are biological robots in a deterministic universe whose function is to spread genes. And all the rest is a thin veneer of “morality” applied to it. And the social constructs you spoke of were there to reinforce this natural tendency instead of creating it from scratch.
Personally, I think it’s all bullshit, since I believe in free will. I believe that you and your husband, and that me and my wife, we’re not together just to spread genes. But I do think that’s what the materialistic viewpoint inevitably entails.
Martha Thomases
October 21, 2013 - 9:11 am
Rene,
We can play all kinds of semantic games here (and semantic games are among my favorites), depending on how one defines “religion” or “God” or “sin.” The way these terms are commonly used in the USA has very little to do with the way serious theologians or historians use them.
But I’m going to continue to disagree with you, and if that means I disagree with Richard Dawkins, well, it won’t be the first time. It has been much less than ten thousand years since we’ve known the role of men in reproduction. Before that, humans thought women had babies when they were ripe, like trees with fruit.
So I don’t think the current rules of attraction are innate. I think they are learned. And almost every single organized religion, and certainly all of the Western ones, reinforce the second-rate status of women and girls.
We seem to agree that it would be better for our societies and are happiness if we could unlearn them. So there’s hope.
Rene
October 22, 2013 - 11:13 am
Martha –
Did you ever study the Kabbalah? Forgive me if this question is offensive (as if all Jewish people must have studied the Kabbalah).
In any case, there is a lot of beautiful things in the Kabbalah, and one of my favorites is that the “sinful” man can be defined as a man that is merciful to himself and judgmental toward others. While the just man is merciful to others and judgmental towards himself.
To me, that underscores one of the main differences between “religion” and “spirituality”. Many of the guys in the USA that consider themselves religious are falling into nasty traps.
I also won’t defend organized religion of the charge of making women into second-rate citizens. You are right. But any study of organized atheism/skepticism/materialism will show that they aren’t a lot better in that regard. It’s either skeptics defending that rape is morally “relative” or going from words to actions and being accused of harassment or worse in skeptic conventions. Those guys make comic book conventions look feminist.