Breaking Beautiful
An Epistolary Response to Syl Ko's 2015
"The obsession with women being different, special, alien, remote, and so hard to understand and 'figure out' and so on is premised on the distance culturally placed between the sexes. The artificial distance between us almost nullifies the fact that women themselves are subjects. Since the male viewpoint is commonly centered and objective, women are seen as the deviation from the norm; they are the ones who are scary, strange, and beautiful. They are to be grasped "from afar," passive objects to be understood and figured out, and physically observed and admired. Women have a perpetual object status and are tied to beauty in a way that men cannot be" (Ko, Aphro-ism. 131).
Image Courtesy: Pinterest
"The problem is that 'all women are beautiful!' is seen as progressive. I'm beautiful when I wake up in the morning, when I'm in the middle of a grueling six-mile run, and when I'm not particularly interested in being beautiful. Why am I beautiful? Because I'm a woman. I am always the right kind of being to admire in that particular way. I'm perpetually an object. It is part of my nature to be an object of beauty, to be admired. The very same thing that affords us this status of perpetual beauty, however, also makes us exploitable. Because we are distanced from subjecthood, because we are alien and different, mystical creatures, passive beautiful things to be apprehended from afar, we are also forced to perpetual object status" (Ko, Aphro-ism, 133).
Sisters,
Two realms exist, between them are many planes of perception that offer each human opportunity to add individual blips to the universe. Between the physical and spiritual realms, I find my edges balance quite well. I live contently and feel the cycle of life, Earth's inhabitants, and unconditional love in most moments. When my edge teeters toward the spiritual realm, I am speechless, in awe of the privilege that comes with being so able-bodied in a limitless world full of stunning connection, light, and greenery. Of course, when my edge leans toward the physical, it is much easier for me to locate awareness of those others who inhabit the physical's planes regularly. With my peer group of college students and artists, at this moment I am blessed in bringing my perspective to socio-political discourse.
However, when I feel perfectly centered between the two, I feel thoroughly whole. All that I absorb is perceived with previously inaccessible clarity. An indescribable feeling overwhelms me in this alignment. The best way to capture my feeling of balance with the surrounding world is as complete loving awareness; all polarities disintegrate and everything, including me and my life's chronology, exists at once. My complex limbs carry me through streets, cars, buildings, and unnatural structures, and I find beauty in glimpses of trees, interactions, foliage, shops, non-human beings-even rotting litter- all seem to radiate natural beauty. And honestly, though all exist together, birds particularly catch my eye. Some days I am in awe of the beautiful auras that carry them through the sky. They surpass industrialized streets, thick with polluting plastics, to reveal shining feathers dripping with fluid virtue. On other days, particularly those when I find myself enamored with the man-made street lights and city of modern architecture, birds irk me. Disruptive of clean, constructed lines, I find their feathers begrimed- carriers of disease disrupting sterile sidewalk.
Image Courtesy: Tumblr
One day, in an instant, I recognized this difference in perception of the bird's being. Things in my life change, but the bird stays the same even though what I see of their light changes. It was then that something clicked for me, the bird does not think he is beautiful, she does not think she is not beautiful, he does not think about when he will find its next meal, she does not think about the next time she will be happy. The bird just is.
Of course, this is an assumption of how a bird may cognize. Naturally, human cognition receives a different understanding and capacity. Our mind creates the frame of the future based on our past and removes us from the present for means of survival. The process makes sense, but due to all stimuli created from it, we lose the truth and fixate on non-existent falsehood rooted in our want to mirror each other, to fit in with a group. If that group values beauty as an object- and if that object is a woman- I want to be that beautiful woman. So, as I write this, I consider the bird's surrender to life:
I don't long to be beautiful, I just long to be. I don't want a constant 'progressive' narrative thrust on me deeming my every move as 'pretty' because I am a woman. I want my every move to be exactly it is. Offering love, drinking coffee, having body hair, not having body hair, sweating on a hot day, grocery shopping. These actions are human, alive, aspects of life.
A divinity to the feminine historically exists in connection to flows and cycles that mirror our moon and gravitational pull; but, this connection should not separate 'woman' from rightful subjecthood. This nature should not invalidate women without reproductive systems, this right should not further separate women from men or non-humans. This cycle should not objectify or feed into structure set by oppression.
"Genuine non-violence means not only non-cooperation with glaring social evils but also the renunciations of privileges and benefits that are implicitly guaranteed by forces which conscience cannot accept… You cannot successfully fight them [The Big powers] with their own weapons."- M. Gandhi on the Principles of Ahimsa (or Non-Violence)
When we attempt to reclaim the narrative and subvert what has been typically regarded as 'beautiful' by regarding opposing aspects as 'beautiful too!', we continue an inverse of the same polarizing and divisional institutions. I cannot ascribe to the pre-determined colonial structure by subverting the narrative through reclamation; to surpass polarization I must renounce the structure altogether.
Seek truth. See feminine actions for what they are. Finally, question your first thoughts about beauty, security, and choice until you reach your true voice, make your understanding of beauty, and preach it to the world; for it is as valid and deserving as the birds and the trees and the stars.
Strike Out,
Writer: Brittyn Dion Bonham
Editors: Giselle Parks and Savannah Tindall
Tallahassee