More mirror work (and Poetry Thursday)

from the DHD Multimedia Gallery

I still hesitate on the way to the mirror. Oh, not because I don’t know what I’ll see...I do. Sometimes I even smile a little—it’s a bit like greeting a friend who is going through a hard time. In this case, familiarity has bred a certain affection. Sure, the hair is a little blowsy in this humidity...my curls have seen better days. And the body is still a little lopsided, a little soft where it should be taut. But it inspires tenderness in me...we’ve been through a lot, after all. I’ve learned to look at myself curiously, like a child—is that what it means to be nonjudgmental? I genuinely want to know more as I stare at myself...why is my skin doing that? Are those lines around my eyes wrinkles? When did that happen? Look at that gray hair or two...where did those come from?

I don’t expect to look 18 anymore.

But the mirror work has brought up so many unexpected questions—why do I carry myself so tersely, unwilling to relax, to be touched? Why have I decided that sensuality is an aspect of my former life—does my body no longer deserve to wear soft fabrics, to be adorned and perfumed and soothed by rich lotions?

I’ve always thought of myself as ambivalently sexy. When I was younger, I loved to push myself forward, wearing provocative little chiffon dresses that murmured promises I wasn’t always quite sure I wanted to keep. I played with fashion, with vintage dresses that suggested something of the woman I wanted to become—artistic, bohemian, but also passionate and sensual.

Sex and sensuality is an enormous aspect of a Latina woman’s life—just watch Univision for five minutes and you’ll see a woman gyrating suggestively. I wanted to taste it, that power—I wanted to be watched the way my mother was, as she sauntered down the street. She owned every movement, calculated with a grace that seemed effortless. Beauty, my mother always said, is a woman’s power, and any pain it might bring (said to quell my complaints as I waited for her to finish getting dressed) was worth it.

But even as I longed to be beautiful, to be sexy, I wanted to be able to revel in my other side—the intellectual who loves to play in the ethereal realm of ideas, who wants to forget about the body and its tyranny for a while.

As I grew older, I felt like more of an awkward fit in my culture—all of the pleasing, teasing poses that other girls put on with ease...I just couldn’t master them. I’d inevitably grow serious, grow pensive. I couldn't quite pull it off, wasn't quite voluptious enough, wasn't quite flirtatious enough, or not in the right way, or not at the right times. And the greatest sin of all...I’d question the game itself. Why should I turn myself inside out to please a man? Why should every man be able to judge me in almost a proprietary way...judge whether my clothing was skimpy enough, my hair loose and wild enough, my curves beckoning enough? Why was it so important to make sure the man felt good, strong, macho—what about me? I wanted to feel strong for myself, confident even when I wasn’t being reflected in some admiring man’s eyes.

So I rebelled, wholeheartedly embracing the life of the mind—or the version of it that I could cobble together from my books and imagination. I didn’t want to be seen as one of those wild, "hot" girls, forever burning white hot for a man. No, I wanted to be cool, instead...to live for something beyond my own appearance. All of my most important moments would take place above my neck. I would claim myself as an intellectual, beyond those base bodily pleasures.

But now, facing myself in the mirror, I wonder...why did it have to be either/or? Was I like those men, seeing those beautiful girls as the sum of their bodies, denying them personhood because they dared to be lusty, to be physical? Yes, Latin culture tends to be patriarchal, but did that mean that they saw themselves that way? Why did I need to see them that way? Why did I reduce them?

And why did I reduce myself? So desperate to be taken seriously, I cut myself off from pleasure, from sweaty passion and the adult strain of taut calves in my high heels.. From enjoying my own body and knowing that I could STILL take myself seriously as a thinker even if I wore crushed velvet and blood red lipstick.

This is something that is coming up in my marriage, as well. TEG is very conservative with his ideas about women's appearance...he thinks less is, well...less. He's always said that he LIKES that I am "modest", especially compared with the way he sees Latina women in the media and when we visit my family in Miami. But...I don't feel especially modest, not really. I DO want to flaunt myself, after all. I want to come up with my own standards rather than feeling bound up in his. But I don't want to lose his admiration. And I don't want to have another reason to fight.

But it's beginning to feel dishonest...like I am affecting a reserve that doesn't feel true. And it's one more way I feel like I'm betraying myself.

I have such a hard time manifesting things in the world—my words remain trapped inside my mind, my body remains starved for beauty. I long to embody wholeness—to look on the outside the way I feel on the inside. Why can’t I claim that?

I want to turn the lights down low, and dance to salsa as it thickens like smoke around me.

And I want to do it for myself.

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I have had Leaves of Grass on my mind for a few days now, especially this stanza, which haunts me as I continue to face the mirror.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul;
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy, walks to his own funeral, drest in his shroud,
And I or you, pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye, or show a bean in its pod, confounds the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

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For more poetic goodness, go here.