I’m a narcissist first and an artist second so let’s start with a story about myself.
When I was nine a boy stood in front of me and told me I wasn’t a girl because of my voice. We were waiting for cookies after the mandatory winter choral concert during which I had sat in a spray-painted plastic sled dueting a girl named Jill, who in seventh grade was so beautiful Rick Hoffman just had to lean over, squeeze her skinny ankle and tell her she had chicken bones. I said to the kid
but i’m wearing a skirt
He didn’t care. Yeah, me neither dickhead.
CHICKEN BONES
Rick meant that as a compliment I think.* What I know is that suddenly I was desperate for someone to tell me I had chicken bones. Then I learned how to think circa sophomore year of high school or at least started to, and in doing so realized the chicken bones probably kept Jill up as much as it did me. Whatever we had predetermined we were competing for was as much an illusion as the unnerving adjacent-human shadow a coat slung over a desk chair makes in the dark. She was not the enemy.
The condemnation that comes with the label ‘girl’ is an inbred psychological competition with every other woman in the room. This condition is amplified by a faceless crowd eager to watch girl gladiators take each other down or go down on each other or - this their preferred route - both at the same time. The crowd (define: The Man) has structured society to trap and retain. A girl realizes too late she’s been taught to channel self-hate into pseudo-love, so stuck in mud she blames her insecurities on herself rather than taking it direct to the source. Captive together girls turn against one another because it’s easier than fighting a ghost.
My senior year I stood back to back with two best girl friends in a Forever 21 changing room.
that would look better without a bra
I took it off and wore a shirt without a bra for the first time since childhood. It reminded me of visiting family in France at six and parading around the nude beach, body matching every boy beside me and that observation being something totally irrelevant to the waves. In the wide-lens mirror you could see all three of our faces at the same time, the six of our socked feet scuffling against the scratched linoleum. Peace and serenity rolls over a girl once she discovers there is no inherent danger in community.
I was the only one who changed behind the nuclear yellow curtain in the locker room because I didn’t know yet that there is safety - anonymity - in numbers. If we all spent less time paying attention to how we look when we breathe we’d realize nobody else is watching for that. The other girls make sure you are breathing.
*Why a ‘chicken bone’? Lewis Keseberg (Donner Party murder cannibal) said human meat was closer to California Beef anyway.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS
This is anthropologically represented best in the human pentagram girls make five minutes before entering a building (see: school-ordained dance, nightclub, highway bar, opening shift). The pause is an act of rebellion in itself because it drains time from the primary artificial activity - a girl can find respite among peers when alone reality would otherwise suffocate. By performing this ritual girls gain power from a simultaneous acceptance of both their ability and inability to control the future. They smother anxiety by dissecting it (‘is this dress too much? do you know anybody here? does our manager hate me?’) until only harmless chunks under the floodlights are left. It’s a gorgeously obnoxious sound ala morning birds. Enough time spent in the circle changes the way a woman takes in the world, because instead of seeing DANGER DANGER DANGER you feel the clam of your friend’s hand, her new nails against your knuckles (and out of all the senses, touch is the best).
Yet mutual reassurance of a girl’s self consciousness/self conceit relies not just on her friends but also - primarily - the reception she gets on the internet. Posts are manufactured with The Man in mind. Even when a girl decides consciously not to drink the koolaid her brain works against her and is easily won with the silky on-demand validation of likes. And because girls are lying about their ages to get accounts younger and younger, eager to be older than they are - until it’s no longer socially viable - we get hooked on the high while not really knowing what we’re injecting.
FUCK! THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!
I started posting my writing on the internet when I was eleven and have been ever since. A compliment in the margins of my essay on The Outsiders from my English teacher was all nice and good but three thousand strangers reading my work and giving me praise felt like constant cardiac arrest. Until my stories weren’t for me anymore. They were for The Man.
I got my first Instagram account at thirteen. A compliment from my mom curling my hair in the bathroom mirror was all nice and good but twenty people from my school looking at me and telling me they liked my haircut felt like constant cardiac arrest. Until my photos weren’t for me anymore. They were for The Man.
My face stopped being for me. My body stopped being for me. I learned at an early age how much better praise felt out the mouth of a man and The Man than from my own.
In third grade my best friend and I talked weight for the first time in our lives. I bragged because I was heavier, I had more muscle than her. But here’s when community dries up because girls wrapped up in THAT disease - the disease we all have to be so small we blip away, to take up as little space as possible - turn conversation into a competition. And The Man loves this because he loves women when they’re down for the count, down for anything, but especially when we turn from the mirror and look up at Him for answers. We wring ourselves dry in the vain* search for validation. This yearning is not natural for a girl. But because the assurance we do get is plastic none of it actually feeds us and so the hunger grows deep and long.
So where to find it? Like I said, girl community is good - is vital - but in further examination not enough to be sustainable. When you look in the mirror there’s only one girl looking back at you no matter how many others you think you see, and she’s you and you deserve to get to know her. I’m learning through EMDR my core issue: I have self-worth regardless. I have self-worth regardless. YOU have self-worth regardless. Yeah, here’s the dreaded conclusion: validation comes from the self.
*All definitions apply.
