2005-10-06 - 8:08 p.m.

Thursday, October 6th, 2005

A recent drive-by comment from a stranger reminded of a topic I've been wanting to discuss for a while. I've put it off because it's difficult for me to express as clearly as I'd like, but most of you know me well enough that I think familiarity/context will make up for that.

I'm not going to link to the comment, and I'll ask that y'all don't go looking for it and start it up again, because I'm interested in the larger issue, not in that specific exchange. If you have some direct response you'd like to express, please do so in this post. But in the interest of honest representation I'm going to reproduce the thread here. I changed some paragraph whitespace into spaces to make room, but otherwise this is exactly what was said:

Stranger: you seem very bright. your bottom talk (and pictures?!) though. . . hm.

I asked her to clarify, offering a list of possible interpretations that Poindexter and I came up with when I mentioned the comment to him. Her response was to choose one of them:

Stranger: from one woman with an attention-getting, male-pleasing, sticking-out-butt to another: perhaps - My brightness is being wasted on butt-talk instead of more dignified topics. :)

This particular statement is remarkably similar to a comment someone once made about Kit. Amusedly, the comment was made TO ME, the critic apparently being unaware that the object of the criticism is one of my favorite people on the planet, and that I probably had a much different perception of her than the critic did. The comment, which was later made directly to her (gotta give the person credit for being direct), led to several in-depth discussions between me and Kit about what sort of responsibility women have as far as the way they choose to use or express their intelligence and their looks.

So I wanted the stranger to elaborate, and I didn't want to incorrectly misinterpret what she said, so I did that pesky Evelynne thing and started asking her a bunch of "Why?" questions:

Evelynne: Well, that's interesting. I still don't quite understand. What would be some "dignified" topics that I should be writing about instead? For that matter, what is undignified or "wasted" about a seemingly-bright person writing about and showing pictures of one's clothed posterior in her personal journal? What if I don't want to write about dignified topics, and prefer to use LJ as an outlet to be silly and have fun, or just to spill whatever's on my mind at the time? Should bright people spend all their time making sure people know they're bright, and not just a bimbo with a big ol' butt? And while I'm bombarding you with questions, how'd you find me?

Stranger: did I touch a nerve? I found you here by way of reading a friend's list, and then that person's friends list. Nothing of a direct route. I never called names (such as Bimbo) or said anything such as "Bright is as Bright Does" Or intended insult. And yes, you can talk about anything you want to in your lj. It is indeed your journal. (And your bottom.) And I agree that you can use them however you want. No arguments there.

My reply to that (and the end of the thread, so far) contains a few points that I elaborate upon in the rest of this post.

So far I have not received a full explanation for this person's intentions, and my focus in this post is on my personal interpretation (which may or may not be the right one). My interpretation of the original statement is something along the lines of, as Kit expressed it to me in e-mail, "a condescending 'only BIMBOS do x, and you don't look the type' comment."

The stranger did touch a nerve, but not in the sense that I am personally insulted. Long ago I adopted Eleanor Roosevelt's quote as a way of life: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." I ponder criticisms people make of me, and sometimes modify my behavior when I agree with the criticism, but I refuse to feel bad because somebody didn't like something I did, though I will often try to explain myself in order to correct misinterpretations. No, I think what bothers me is the idea that women (whether blessed with intelligence or not) are wrong somehow for celebrating the way they look and sharing it with others.

There are several possible reasons why this could be considered a bad thing. If you value modesty, you would find gratuitous display to be vulgar and wrong. Another possibility is the attention-whore angle. Some people don't like it when others post pictures for (seemingly) the express purpose of getting lots of adoring comments. I know there are a number of people who post pictures of themselves because they have low self-esteem, and are looking for validation from strangers on the internet. While it bothers me that these women have low self-esteem, and that the compliments they get are essentially being thrown into a black hole, I am not bothered by picture posting per se, because I love looking at pretty girls. And in my world, there are a LOT of them, and they don't fit any kind of narrow botoxed definition of beauty, either.

There is probably a feminist angle to this, too. For a very long time, women's outward appearance was given far more weight than whatever they had in their head. Women who were pretty were usually not taken seriously at all, and whatever intellectual contributions they might have made were ignored or suppressed. One way of rectifying that situation would be to downplay one's looks, to put the emphasis on one's intellectual prowess and avoid insults along the lines of "don't worry your pretty little head about this." But this is 2005, and while it's a sad fact that attractive people tend to get more attention than less-attractive ones -- to the extent that my perceived intellect may even be falsely enhanced because some people like looking at me too -- I do not see this as a reason to downplay my looks. Especially on a place like LiveJournal, which is strictly a social venue for me.

When I first started exploring online journals five or six years ago, I used to perceive frequent picture-posting with a negative tinge, myself. Why would anyone post pictures of themselves constantly, especially those artsy glamorous pictures, unless they were shallow and looking for attention? But when I actually started reading the journals of these people and getting to know them, I realized that in many cases, they were just sharing pictures because they liked how they looked, and so did their readers, and so the pictures were posted for everyone to enjoy. Sometimes people aren't that thrilled with their looks, but they share the pictures anyway, because it is a part of who they are.

So the question remains: Why did I (and why would anyone) think it was a bad thing for someone to like how they looked and want to share it with their friends or the world? How is it different from sharing anything else they are blessed with? Is it because exterior beauty is shallow? Because not everyone is beautiful? This morning, crossing the street in front of us, was a tall lovely brunette with a stunning figure wearing form-fitting tan pants and a form-fitting red shirt with fluttery cap sleeves. After she had crossed and we made our turn, I said to Poindexter, "What a lovely way to start the day!" Should she have been wearing baggy clothes and hiding under a hat so we wouldn't judge her based on her looks, or should she have been celebrating her loveliness, as she was?

The thing is, my perception of people I meet on the internet is greatly influenced by the things that they write, by what I know of them as a person. The fact that they post pictures of themselves is only one facet of the total package. When I see pictures of people whose journals I read, I'm not just seeing their physical characteristics, I'm seeing a smidge of how their personality comes through in person. And when I like someone's personality, I like to see their physical presence as well. I absolutely love seeing pictures of LJers I've known for a long time, and you will often see me pestering people to post more pictures (Evilegg, I'm looking at you). It's like a substitute for seeing them in person, until I am fortunate enough to do so, for the first time or again. And if a person's looks are particularly appealing to me personally, I enjoy seeing pictures of them for purely aesthetic reasons, for the same reason I like to look at art. It makes me happy to look at people I find attractive.

Many of you have been reading me for years, so I assume (correct me if I'm wrong!) that the pictures you see of me serve many of the same purposes for you. Certainly, I enjoy the attention, and am deeply honored and grateful to those of you who have been so kind as to give me such wonderful compliments. But if you think I am only in it for the attention, you either have a frame of reference that doesn't intersect with mine, or you have not been paying attention to the things I say. (And if that is because you are too distracted by parts that stick out, or were only in it for the butt pictures to begin with, that's OK with me.)

And finally, there are so many women who are so critical of their appearance even while they are perceived as absolutely gorgeous by those around them. There is some genuine emotional pain experienced by these women because they are not happy with how they look. I don't want to be that way, and chose long ago to focus on the things about myself that I do like, and enjoy them. I know I am not the most beautiful woman in the world, and I know there are plenty of people who probably find me uninteresting, if not downright homely. But while there are things I might change if I could wave a magic wand, on the whole I am very happy with my appearance, I like how I look in certain clothes and in no clothes, I love that my husband finds me irresistible, and I love that many of you find me attractive as well. It's ALL GOOD. And so I am going to post pictures of my new outfits, my new hairdos, the round sticky-outy parts I've been blessed with and am exceedingly grateful to have, and random pictures of "just me" because I LIKE ME, and this journal is about, among other things, THE THINGS THAT I LIKE.

So naturally, when somebody comes along and appears to tell me that posting bimbo pictures (for any reason) is bad, they seem to me to be completely missing the point.

Now let's talk about my alleged brightness. Apparently my closest guess was that I am "too bright to be wasting my intelligence on butt-talk". Ignoring the fact that I may not be all that bright in the first place (though I'm as happy with my intellect as I am with my looks), I'm not sure what this means I should be writing about. I can see that smart people should try to develop their intellect, because intellect is a gift that can be used to benefit many. But my intellect gets a workout when I am at work, in the reading that I do, and when I attempt to learn something new. LJ just ain't the place.

I write about the things I want to write about, and which come easily to me, because my LiveJournal is supposed to be about fun. Occasionally I will write a longer themed post where I try to argue an intellectual point, but this is difficult, and extremely time-consuming, so I rarely do it. I could spend three hours agonizing over ten paragraphs (which I have done in the past), or I could spend half an hour writing something fluffy that is an accurate snapshot of what's going on in my head at that moment, and then spend the other two-and-a-half hours reading, skating, walking around my beloved city, going to the Art Museum ... you get the picture. LiveJournal is supposed to be FUN. I know a lot of people use it almost like a newspaper column, or to advance their political views, and I've dabbled in that myself and enjoy those journals, but that is not the main point of my own journal. In fact, if I were to express it as concisely as possible, I would say my journal is about "a record of my life and of everyday inconsequential things that everybody experiences, but don't usually talk about." If that means my intellect is being wasted, so be it.

So I might as well post butt pictures, huh? Since I'm going to be wasting my brain anyway.

I took this one over the summer. I like this picture because, if I recall correctly, my smile is becoming wider and more genuine because I am looking at Poindexter and laughing. The reason I am laughing is because he is making fun of me about something. Being a showoff, perhaps (which he likes). Nothing makes me laugh harder than when my husband pokes gentle fun at me about things that are undeniably true.

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