Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall Page 18
A few minutes later I received a panicked and angry text from Michael. Apparently when one of the producers hadn’t been able to reach me, they’d gone to the trouble of looking up his contact information. This person had called the main number for Michael’s department at Stanford, asking to speak with him. I felt awful, and angry. That was just plain rude!
I’d no sooner apologized to Michael than I received a cryptic e-mail from my mom:
Good morning, my sweet daughter! Please don’t take any of those awful Yahoo comments seriously. I hope you’re okay. Call if you need to talk. I love you.
What’s she talking about? Awful comments? What awful comments? I tried in vain to connect my laptop to the hotel’s wireless network so I could read the article for myself.
“Here, I’m connected,” Liz offered, handing me her laptop.
I entered my name into a search engine and prepared for the worst. My smartphone continued to ping.
I found the Yahoo! article and scanned it for trouble. First, I noticed with pleasure that the author had included a photo of me that happened to be my favorite from the engagement photos Michael and I had taken several months back. I really loved that picture. I thought I looked cute and even a little bit glamorous, wearing my favorite bright blue Tracy Reese jacket. The text of the article was similarly nice and balanced, with no outrageous critiques or accusations.
What’s the big deal? I wondered.
And then I read through the comments, all 1,063 of them.
Plenty of them, particularly those written by women, were supportive of my project and kind, but the comments written by men were another story. Most of them dismissed my project by accusing me of being fat, ugly, stupid, or some combination of the three. Words like heifer, fatso, dogface, feminazi, fugly (aka fucking ugly), and fucking stupid ugly-ass fat bitch were scattered across the page. They even made fun of my favorite jacket.
I couldn’t stop reading the comments, not even after my hands started shaking and the tears began to flow. It was like a horrible car accident I couldn’t look away from. I knew that many of my role models in the Health at Every Size community had experienced this sort of public fat-shaming and had dealt with it gracefully, but this was my first time and I crumbled. When I reached the end of the comments I was in a state of shock. I’d spent so many years calling myself fat and worrying that I was ugly, and here, it seemed, was proof that my critical voice had been right all along. Sure, my body was healthier now than when I’d been in the midst of my eating disorder, and I was grateful for this, but it was still awful to be told I that was ugly, and therefore dumb and worthless.
Even the few kinder posts seemed to doubly confirm my fears of fat, such as when one man gallantly came to my defense by saying, “Plus-sized chicks are hot. It’s a shame society makes women believe that you have to be a toothpick to be beautiful.” Completely true, of course, but not how I usually defined myself. Speaking of which, my horrified reactions to being described as fat made me feel like a Health at Every Size phony; it had been easy to proudly endorse body diversity from the safe confines of my average-size (and, thus, infrequently bullied) body, but when it was my turn in the hot seat I wavered.
I wanted to call Michael, but felt too ashamed. Several of the comments had expressed pity for my future husband (i.e., “I feel sorry for the idiot who’s marrying her. What a train wreck! Get out now!”), and I didn’t want him to know this and feel ashamed, too. Instead, I called my mom, crying.
“I’m such an idiot!” I sobbed. “I never should have started this stupid project. I felt so confident, but I must have been delusional. Now I’m just humiliated. I feel like I just got put back in my place. Maybe I deserve this for thinking I wanted the media attention.”
“Calm down, Kjerstin, it’s going to be okay. Really,” my mom soothed. “Don’t let a bunch of anonymous bullies intimidate you. They don’t know you, so those comments weren’t even about you. To them you’re just some woman—any woman—who did something without their permission. You struck a nerve, that’s all. Trust me, confident women who don’t apologize for themselves will always upset insecure and old-fashioned men. If you start apologizing for yourself now, they’ll have won!”
She was right, and I knew it, but I wasn’t yet finished with my pity party. I needed to wallow in sadness for a spell, licking my wounds. My mom listened patiently for a while longer as I cried it out. I knew that I needed to let myself experience all of my hurt, frustration, and embarrassment before I would be able to move past it.
There is beauty in the breakdown, I reminded myself. Let go. Let go of control. Just ride the wave. This mantra had helped me survive emotional anguish in the past, and I needed to call on it again now. The idea was simple: shame, fear, anxiety . . . all of these were as much a part of the human experience as pride, joy or pleasure. Running away from negative feelings—or trying to ignore them in hopes that they would just go away—never worked. But consciously sitting with them, getting to know them, and allowing myself to fully experience them—as awful as it seemed—made me feel stronger. I liked to envision emotional pain as an ocean wave: impossible to stop but exhilarating to ride. Okay, well, I wouldn’t exactly describe emotional turmoil as exhilarating, but willing myself to fully experience it does make me feel more alive. This is what makes a breakdown beautiful to me.
And so I sat with my feelings for a while, and once I’d exhausted myself and grown bored of feeling “fully human,” I was calm again. I was okay. It was time to summon up some anger.
My mom was right. Those comments weren’t about me, they were about what I represented: a woman who hadn’t asked permission. It wasn’t personal, it was political; it was misogyny; it was patriarchy; it was fat-hatred; it was everything I’d ever wanted to fight against, both for myself and for other girls and women. Here was an opportunity to be a role model instead of another victim. I didn’t want any of my blog readers—or any woman or girl, for that matter—to see me cave in to this torrent of cruelty by validating the insults as anything other than bullying. I turned to my Top Ten list for inspiration. I knew my naive three-year-old self would have been completely destroyed by this cruelty, which was exactly why I couldn’t let other women absorb these messages without me putting up a fight. It was time to channel Miss Piggy’s karate moves (HI-YA!). I still felt hurt, but I would fake it ’til I made it. I would be a role model.
I didn’t know exactly how, but I was determined that those sexist, misogynistic bullies would not have the last word.
• • •
I TRIED MY BEST TO PUT THE BULLYING OUT OF MY MIND, AND the next few days passed by in a blur of conference presentations, networking, and putting off making any decisions about the media. I tried my best to forget about the circus I’d stumbled into in my private life, and instead did my best to focus on my professional life. My presentation on Sunday went well, as did my coauthored talk on Monday.
Monday was my second official Makeup Free Monday, and it went well. In addition to ditching my makeup, I also ditched my contacts in favor of my favorite pair of cat-eyed glasses and felt completely in my element. I couldn’t help noticing that at least half of the other women at the conference weren’t wearing any makeup, either, and wearing my fun glasses made me feel like the chic geek I wanted to be. Sociologists rock, I thought. It occurred to me that I’d felt more pressure to be fully made up and fashionably chic when spending time with my hip and trendy college students than I was feeling with my more down-to-earth colleagues. I knew this had to do with my belief that my students were less likely to take feminism seriously if I looked like a stereotypically angry-and-ugly feminist. Helping my students think critically about gender inequality had always seemed worth it to me, but at what cost to my own sense of authenticity?
That night, after Liz and I enjoyed a few free cocktails at the casino, I drafted the blog post I’d been mulling over ever since reading the
Yahoo! comments. I’d needed a few days away from the situation to collect my thoughts and gather confidence.
In it, I addressed some of the more thoughtful critiques of my no-mirrors project and thanked my readers for their support. Next, I set some ground rules for civil debate: “I WILL be deleting any bullying (i.e., “you are UGLY/FAT/STUPID/CRAZY”) comments left on this blog . . . As I like to tell my students, it is fine (in fact encouraged!) to critique ideas, but not people. In particular, I will not tolerate misogyny or fat-hatred, and especially do not want my readers to see these types of comments and feel threatened, bullied, or insecure by proxy.” I didn’t want to seem ashamed or apologetic, so I closed with my all-time favorite Miss Piggy quote: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye!”
I reread my post one time before uploading it to my blog. I fell into bed emotionally exhausted but proud of myself. I couldn’t control what was written about me on the rest of the Web, but I could control the content on my own website. When other women visited, they would see no hate and no shame.
• • •
ONCE THE MEDIA FLURRY—AND ITS ACCOMPANYING ONLINE bullying—began to settle down, I was finally able to catch my breath and think about all that had happened that month and what it had meant to me. August had begun with my decision to explore how wearing (or not wearing) makeup was shaping my life, particularly my professional life. I’d decided that my choices mattered, and therefore deserved a closer look. My resulting commitment to Makeup Free Mondays had led to tangible progress, particularly when I learned that my professional environments allowed ample flexibility for this (at least in the direction of wearing less makeup . . . wearing more might have had the opposite effect!). Yet this step back from vanity was accompanied by an unexpected step toward it, as I found myself enjoying my moment in the media spotlight (at least until those trolls had their say!). I felt conflicted about liking the media attention and terrified that my professional colleagues would judge me for spending time on a mostly nonacademic project. Then I felt conflicted about feeling conflicted. Was I shallow and vain to enjoy the attention? Or was the pressure I felt to behave modestly just another gendered double bind? Would a man in a similar position have felt so conflicted? Would a man in a similar position have been subjected to the same flavor of online abuse?
These questions would remain mostly unanswered, but one thing felt certain: Whether I enjoyed the attention or not was less important than how I used it. Being the target of cruel, sexist, and misogynous Internet bullying had been awful, but it had incited a sense of social responsibility. Standing up for myself might not have been the most “ladylike” thing to do, but it had been the right thing. HI-YA!
SEVEN
September
MIRRORS FOR SALE(S)!
Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
SEPTEMBER WAS SHAPING UP TO BE THE MOST HECTIC month of my project. I simply had too much going on, including putting my condo on the housing market, wrapping up final lectures and grading for my two summer classes, celebrating my bachelorette party, traveling to Louisville for a future-in-laws-hosted engagement party, and moving all of my things from L.A. to San Francisco permanently, all while wrapping up numerous final wedding details.
September also marked the sixth full month of my project. The halfway point—Day 183—was fast approaching and would fall on September 24, exactly one week before my wedding. With so many months behind me, I felt confident that I’d finally transitioned to life without mirrors; things that had formerly been challenging were no longer so, or were at least easier to manage. I’ve totally got this! I thought to myself. I knew that my wedding day might pose some internal challenges, but I felt certain that the tough stuff was behind me and that avoiding mirrors would be smooth sailing from here on out. How very naive I was.
Deciding to sell my condo in Los Angeles had been difficult, as the housing market in L.A. was less than ideal at the time. I felt bittersweet about leaving the place where Michael and I had met for the first time, even if I was leaving it to move toward a future together with him. Michael and I knew that our choices were to either (try to) sell the condo or to rent it out while we waited for the market to bounce back. I was wary of managing tenants from across the state and anxious to have my mortgage debt behind me since my employment prospects were uncertain, so we decided to put the condo on the market to see what happened. We figured that we could always rent it out if it didn’t sell.
I met with the realtors who would be managing the sale. They introduced themselves as Patty and Chad, but I immediately renamed them Barbie and Ken in my mind. Both were gorgeous blond Hollywoodesque types, with long limbs, ice-blue eyes, and almost-too-perfect teeth. Dressed in pastels that highlighted their “I spend all of my weekends at the beach” tans, I couldn’t help wondering if they had coordinated outfits for effect. I was a bit dazzled, but snapped out of it in time to talk business.
“Your home is lovely!” Patty/Barbie began, while walking through my living room and kitchen. “I don’t think we’ll even need to stage it,” she continued. I was flattered, but suspected her tone might change once she saw my bedroom and bathroom. I was right.
“Why is the bathroom mirror covered with this . . . What is this? A sheet?” Patty/Barbie asked, bewildered.
I began to explain my no-mirrors project, apologizing profusely for the covered mirrors, when I was interrupted.
“Oh my gawd! I heard about you on the radio! Are you the girl they interviewed on the Ryan Seacrest show?!” Patty/Barbie squealed.
Embarrassed, I confirmed that, yes, that had been me.
“Well, that’s wonderful! Our new client is a celebrity!” Patty/Barbie exclaimed with a smile. I knew she was mostly just trying to flatter me, but I hoped her enthusiasm would spill over into the marketing of my condo.
“Will you be willing to uncover all of the mirrors for showings? We’re hoping to have your first open house next Saturday, the eleventh,” Chad/Ken asked cautiously.
I assured them that this wouldn’t be a problem. I’d be in Kentucky on the eleventh anyway, and moving back to San Francisco soon after that.
“Oh good!” Chad/Ken responded, clearly relieved. “We don’t want buyers thinking that a vampire lives here! Well, maybe one of those kooky Twilight fans would like that, but I wouldn’t count on it,” he snorted. Patty/Barbie giggled along, and I tried to do the same.
In addition to uncovering the mirrors, Barbie and Ken also recommended that I stage my second bedroom, which was now unoccupied since my last roommate had moved out a few weeks ago. Being on a strict budget, I was looking forward to this creative challenge. To make a “bed,” I inflated a queen-size air mattress and then placed it on top of four identical decorative storage boxes for height. A small bookshelf from my closet became a side table, and a desk lamp became its reading light. A naked air mattress sitting on top of four storage boxes wasn’t going to fool anybody, but I knew I could disguise the getup with a mountain of pillows and the right bed linens.
For more inspiration, I looked up “how to stage a home” online and stumbled across a wealth of tips and information, including this one:
Decorate using mirrors instead of paintings or photographs on the walls. Mirrors help bring in more light, and a large mirror can make small rooms look larger.
Versions of this last tip came up again and again in my research about home decor. It seemed that, to realtors and interior designers, mirrors offered both aesthetic and practical advantages over other decorating options. Not only were mirrors more aesthetically “neutral” than paintings or personal photographs (which a buyer may find distasteful), but they also helped reflect light throughout one’s home, and a large mirror could make rooms appear more spacious.
This made se
nse to me. Since beginning my year without mirrors, I’d noticed how frequently mirrors were used to decorate stores and restaurants. Restaurants, especially, seemed to love adorning their walls with humongous mirrors, probably to give the illusion of having a dining room twice the actual size. For this reason, I’d often found myself forced to sit at restaurants with my back against a (mirrored) wall. I’d also noticed that covering the wall-to-wall mirror in my bathroom had made it look much cozier. I loved cozy, but I knew that in real estate listings cozy was just a euphemism for itty-bitty-teeny-tiny. Chad/Ken was right to insist that I leave the mirrors uncovered for any showings.
But then I stumbled upon a more specific tip for using mirrors to sell homes.
Place a mirror in the entryway of your home so your buyers can literally see themselves living in your home.
This idea seemed reasonable enough—that is, until I read another article that insisted that sellers ought to use a “skinny mirror” for this purpose. In his article “Skinny Mirrors: You Look Great, and the House Does, Too,” Pat Kennedy, real estate agent and contributor to The Washington Post, explained that it isn’t enough to make your house look great; you want potential buyers to like how they look inside of your home. Described as “an interesting form of subliminal marketing,” Kennedy insisted, “We don’t want our listings to make people look fat!”
Had I read that correctly? I needed to make sure my home didn’t “make people look fat” or else they might not want to buy it? This didn’t sit well with me, but I couldn’t help giving it some thought. Skinny mirrors, those beloved and hated mirrors that are concavely warped just subtly enough to make one look slightly slimmer, but not to such an exaggerated extent that we doubt the veracity of what we’re seeing. Sure, funhouse mirrors had been showing us our outrageously stretched out or squished down reflections for years, but we know when we’re looking at a funhouse mirror. The beauty (or ugliness) of a skinny mirror is in its subtlety; the effect is slight enough that we believe—or want to believe—that what we’re seeing isn’t warped at all.