I’m currently reading Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos (which I highly recommend for writers!) and in it, the author references this quote from British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott: “It is joy to be hidden and disaster not to be found.” This is exactly how I feel about beauty and exactly what I hope to get across in my work.
The performance of physical beauty is often touted as self-expression, and sometimes it is just that. More often though, I think, it’s actually ego-expression — a prop, a placeholder for identity, not an armor for protecting the self, but an armor for protecting against the self.
Don’t get me wrong! Covering up (with lipstick, with acrylic nails, with microbladed brows, with a 20-minute moisturizing face mask) can be an absolute joy.
But never uncovering is an absolute disaster.
This is it isn't it?! It's the idea that the covered/treated/makeup-d face is your ONLY face is deeply saddening. Thank you for putting it in this context. Also, adding that book to my list of things to read stat!
Self-expression? Hmmm… I think it is always questionable - unless it’s one’s political stance (punk hairdos and leather jackets in 70ies Britain, skinheads, Femen’s bare breasts), but that isn’t so much individual as collective self-expression. Other than that, any performance of beauty is an ego-booster - or a means to fit in (although again, the ‘self’ hardly figures in that one either)…