This is a little tough for me to write, but since I've never
seen anything in print about it I figured it might be something other
people scanned pages for, even if they might not admit it. It's nothing
fancy, but here goes.
For most of my life I absolutely believed
that if I had better skin, the whole world would be a wonderful place
to be. Everything would be easier; this is what I figured at 16, then
19, then 22. I would automatically become more desirable and charming. I
could be cute; I could even try being "girlish" and sweet just for the
heck of it. I could look straight into the camera. I could cut my hair
short; I could wear a ponytail in public. I could use cheap makeup
without worrying that I'd break out or look lurid and tough. I could
lighten up. I could be less angry, less defensive, less miserable.
I figured I'd be less ashamed of facing the day without a scarred face.
And I was ashamed -- constantly and profoundly ashamed. As a teenager, I
totally blamed myself for the poor condition of my skin and would make
serious, often written, vows to give up soda, pizza and chocolate -- too
bad, since now most dermatologists agree that diet doesn't have much to
do with acne. Almost every diary from those years begins with a New
Year's resolution to forgo oily foods, as if that was going to begin my
Cinderella-like transformation into a girl who could appear on the pages
of
Seventeen or
Mademoiselle.
I especially
identified with Cinderella out of all the fairy-tale possibilities
because it seemed to me that bad skin was something poor kids seemed to
have; the wealthier ones had parents who would take them to doctors, or
even specialists, or for facials, or buy them the right kinds of magical
products that would minimize the problem. Poor kids were left to comb
our hair over our foreheads and put our hands up to cover our faces as
often as possible. Yes, of course, it was the worst possible thing to
do, but try to tell that to someone who is interested only in hiding.
You've never seen a girl with rough skin in a movie; you've never seen
any woman whose flawless, silken face is anything but perfect. It just
doesn't happen. Guys who have rough faces are usually cast as the tough
characters, mobsters or evildoers, but at least they get roles and they
are visible in some way.
While it's true that physical perfection has always been at an absolute premium for women, a beautiful face is
la creme de la creme
-- it is at once the most essential and it is the most valued element
of loveliness. You can, after all, get a body double; there is no face
double to be used for the closeups. You
are your face. And when you hate your face, it's a pretty short step to hating yourself.
OK, it sounds like I should be asking you to get out the violins. It's
not a sense of adolescent whining I'm trying to convey, but instead to
give a sketch map of a real issue for a lot of girls and women (and
maybe for men as well, although I imagine it would be slightly
different). How is this different from worrying about weight, for
example?
For one thing, weight is (for better or worse) a topic
the culture has supplied with a large vocabulary; giggling or weepy
girls trade diet stories the way boys trade baseball cards.
The
only girls who ever drew attention to one of their facial imperfections
(a nice way of saying "zits"), however, were the ones who had skin like
Glenn Close, just as the girls who usually shrieked about putting on a
pound were usually the ones wearing the skintight jeans and looking good
in them.
And, yes, it is both true and tragic that eating
disorders can destroy the lives of some young women, while in contrast
few people have died from acne. But when it's your face you're trying
not to look at, the pain is deeply real.
When did it get
easier? My husband Michael made all the difference in the world to me
when, very early on in our relationship, he wanted to stroke my face.
Gently but unhesitatingly, I pushed his hand away and told him not to
touch my cheek because I felt too self-conscious, too uncomfortably
aware of my own unloveliness. He asked again, and kept asking, telling
me he loved how I looked. I told him I was ashamed of the scars, and he
told me that it wasn't scars that he saw, that whatever scars I was
talking about were the ones left inside, from a long time ago, not ones
facing the world every day.
Not to sound too corny or anything,
but I took him seriously and spent time looking at what inside wounds
needed healing and what inside work needed doing. And I started to be
able to look at myself a little more steady and to face the world.
--reviewed and revised from an earlier essay
