Make Me Up

Today I marched in Berlin's Alternative Gay Pride.  Well, walk, not march.  No military precision involved.  I was thinking about make-up.  I saw lots of smeared, daubed blobs and moustache swirls in eyeliner.  Glittery skin surfaces transferring onto unglittered skin.  Full-face tranny make-up – not a square millimetre of skin without a trowel full of make-up – hard lines at the edges of the colour swathes on eyelids. 

Make-up seems important to me.  If I can be certain of nothing – nothing essential about myself, no theoretical life-line author to cling to – lost in the PhD sea, swimming out in high tide without a life vest – all of which is true – I have to ask myself, frequently, who am I? What do I desire?  What do I want? What do I want you to think about me?  I cannot answer any of these questions.  But I do know, that I love two things, intensely: make-up and dancing.  By which I mean – make-up has been for me, the means of self-creation, -invention, -construction since I first started wearing it when I was I guess around 11 or 12.  It seems more important than ever.  I do, of course wonder if people think of me as a pantomime dame and/or a joke with my intricately blended turquoise and teal shading and red lips.  But that’s how I need to fix myself up.  That’s what I need to do to feel like I am me.  Not everyday.  This is not an addiction and I am no case for body dysmorphia.  But if I have time to do my full-face, then I will.  And of course, dancing.  I am not saying I love dancing because I am any good, but rather, that sense of bodily freedom, pleasure, elation – happiness in my own skin.  I don’t know.  I’m trying to tell you, I’m trying to say – make-up and dancing – they are tools for thinking – they are daily practices that take me further on my journey…. my journey to say something about what we need feminism for, what we need it to be enable us – to be how we want to be in the world, to think how we want to think, speak, laugh, love, desire, be.

And so I ‘marched’ with my face on.  My real face.  The smeared abject make-up around me, make-up that can move, shift around, slimy, glittery and transfers across cheeks is social, bodily, temporary.  Played for laughs.  It’s fun because the wearers don’t wear it regularly, it moves around because there is no commitment to it, it’s a quotation.  But my face is for real. I put it on around noon and it stayed exactly put, no movement, no red-lipstick kisses on cheeks from my mouth.  It’s not so over-the-top its camp.  My red lips and turquoise eyes are me.  I bought the good stuff (MAC and Illamasqua) and put it on with good brushes, sealed it in place.  This is work, and I care about it.  It’s not a joke.  It’s my face.  This is who I am, the essential me.  That I washed off at 2am. 

Follow Up

It’s the following day and I just went to the supermarket to buy some food.  When I came out, one the Neanderthals from the night before was in the street.  He did not recognise me.  I had no make-up on, blue pedal pushers, a white blouse and a coral cardigan.

My Body, A Tool For Thinking

Through my PhD I use my body as a tool for thought.  A case study.  A testbed.  Tonight I went out in Berlin, in a nice outfit.  I try to look nice / smart all the time – even more consciously now.  At CalArts, such complicated feelings about my body arose that it felt the preferable option to stay overweight, to allow myself to gain weight, loose touch with my body: that appendage below my head I carried around.  But not now, in this inquiry.  I want to be the impenetrable, tight, theory-hard body. 

I guess Lacan would say I chose to be the object of desire.  But I know from experience, sometimes we choose to be, and sometimes we choose not to be.  Tonight, I thought I looked good.  I was wearing a black dress with white dots from Oasis, cropped leggings, black 2-inch buckle shoes, turquoise raincoat.  I fixed my face with eyeliner and red lipstick.  Oh my word, I could feel eyes on me.  I become so aware of the gaze in public.  I mean, could they stop staring?  I did not choose this! I am not an object for Neanderthals on public transport! I am the object so that I look together, to conceal the wobbly mess I am.  I am the object to give myself an outline around myself, an edge I can see around myself in the mirror.  I am the object because I am constructed in any case, so I might as well construct myself!  I am the object because I feel better when I put myself together well.  I am the object because this is my tool for thinking.

Dancing with Bandage

When I danced with a bandaged wrist in 2008, one week after surgery, I guess I was performing the abject, penetrable body.  I was on heavy painkillers and danced to music I had never heard before – a reprisal of my performance piece ‘Me Against the Music’.  I don’t really know what happened (do you ever when you perform), but I do know that my friend was cross with me for making her worry – she thought I was pushing my body too hard and wouldn’t feel it because of the painkillers.  I have photographs, I never saw the video – too hard to get hold of.  There I am, in clothes chosen for there ease of pulling on, with my arms outstretched with a huge bulging blob on the end of my right arm.  The class performance evening was re-scheduled from the week before, because I fell and broke my wrist in three places as I warmed up in F200 in CalArts, half an hour before the original performance evening was due to start.

My Body

My body seems to know things I do not know.  Or, at least, I have observed it’s critically timed messages (rebellions?).  I guess there is a battle for supremacy between my brain and my body.  My brain can think and generate thoughts and words.  But my body can call the shots.  Let me recount an instance.  Last year, I gave my first conference paper in Newcastle.  Not only did I speak words, I danced a section of it.  When I woke up very early on the morning of the conference, to catch the train to Newcastle, I realised I had very itchy toes.  Athlete’s bloody foot!  I hadn’t had it for years!  I had my outfit planned out, which involved a trusty pair of blue t-bar shoes with a two-inch heel.  Closed toe.  So, I put on a pair of ugly, comfy Crocs sandals and took the pretty shoes in my bag.  I switched the shoes over just outside the conference venue.  On my way up the stairs to where the conference was held, an ugly sandal fell out my bag.  I did not notice until a man ran after me with ugly shoe.  I was mortified!  Not only was I nervous at the ridiculously maschocistic nature of my presentation, but my body was telling me who was boss!  There is nothing like my own body to make me look stupid at any moment!

Love Letter to LA

I am gently encouraging myself to write an introduction to next Saturday's symposium 'How Do We Look?'.  I have just typed the following.  I am not going to use it.  So, I am pasting it here.  It makes no sense other than as a visual to help me think.

Imagine I find a hand-written love letter on the street in LA.  I pick it up, and wilfully, misinterpret the letter as a love letter to the city itself.  Not wishing to remove this letter from its original location (perhaps its author will return), I quickly write the contents of the letter.  My new version is to no-one and from no-one.  It is in my rushed handwriting and I do not know how much it bares resemblance to the original text.

Today

Here are a few things about my day today.  Driving to Hallam this morning, I was thinking about the loveliness of Rita Hayworth.  I was thinking about the way she is remembered more for the tragedy in her life, rather than the virtuosity of her dancing.  I remembered the quote I am using in my first chapter : 

"Hayworth’s was a frank and open beauty.  Her smile dazzled; her strong lithe body was amazingly fluid.  Unabashedly sexual, she also possessed a playful abandon that the screen had not seen before."[1]

Then I was interim-assessing my third years - a conversation with them and another member of staff about their work and how they are going to approach their degree show.  Bless them, I love them all and want them to do so well.  All the things you hear about parenting I could apply to my experience of teaching.  I feel, by turns, so proud, so disappointed, and so anxious that they will find their wings and fly.  What I never realised was how teaching affects you, I'm constantly questioning if I am doing ok by students, if I am supporting them enough.  Oh! I want them to do well, I don't think I will every forget this group of third years, my first to support through the degree show and dissertation.  They are teaching me how to be a teacher.  

Walking up to my car, I passed the star of the Crucible's Me and My Girl, Daniel Crossley, and so I couldn't help myself, I blurted out congratulations like a crazed fan.  Perhaps I should own it, I am a crazed fan.  I saw Crossley in A Chorus Line when I worked at Sheffield Theatres and I thought he was such an amazing and highly talented dancer, capable of real pathos in his role of Paul.  In this current show, which he leads, he uses all that real dance-skill and pathos, but adds comic timing and charisma.  Its an amazing show exemplifying the best of the musical genre, and I guess, I am a proud-fan.  But I'm not alone Daily Telegraph Review, and you can hear him here Audioboo.

I got home and found the Picture Post (Vol. 6 No.11, March 16, 1940) I bought on E-bay waiting for me.  I bought it for the 'Girls in Cabaret' article, I wish I could type out the whole text, because its difficult to pull quotes from and the whole thing is interesting.  However, what really drew my eye was the wording of the adverts: not only because of their quaint, old-fashioned language, but also because of how current they still feel, in terms of the hard-sell for example:

"At 40 her skin is only 25.  Why do some women look fresh and youthful with a minimum use of cosmetics while the complexion of others begins to age in youth?  Remember that your skin reaches critical age before your figure.  You know that the way to keep your skin young is to keep the pores clean.  You have been told that before.  But you may not know the one cleanser that will do this better than cream, better than water.

This one cream is Avocado Beauty Milk, made by Coty from the oil of Calavo Avocado pear, which has greater penetrating power than cream or water.  Coty Avocado Beauty Milk searches out hidden particles of powder and rouge, buried deep in the base of the pores, and floats them out to the surface.  

If you want to keep your skin young and get the most out of the cosmetics you use, get some Coty Avocado Beauty Milk right  away. Your skin will feel fresher and cleaner.  What is more, your powder will go on better than ever"

I just googled Avocado Beauty Milk, and I can't find it, I was hoping to get myself some…

Right, its time I get going to my dance classes – tonight its Jazz and Tap – wa-hoo!

[1]  Majorie Rosen (1973) Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies and the American Dream, 1974 third edn. New York: Avon  p.224.