Auto-Ethnography of Someone Else (excerpt from the book titled “Selfie”)
Auto-Ethnography of Someone Else
Can I hope, perhaps (should I hope?) that posting a little selfie with a red lipstick will for a minute attract your attention? The red lipstick works miracles. It is like a separate creature with tiny hands, a being on its own. It all is very prosaic and perhaps discouraging. The red lipstick can kill one’s belief in humanity. I had a profile up at a dating app for about several months, until I got bored. The app allowed several photographs; all mine were selfies, and so were the pictures of everyone else I quickly discarded or equally quickly accepted, swiping left or right. (The app emulated Tinder.) Its algorithm changed my avatar, which was also a selfie, on its own. Five out of six my selfies were with a breaking-screen, screaming red lip. Inevitably, they placed me among the most-sought-after candidates for a cheerful hookup and perhaps further up the list. (Not sooner though than I registered on the “BDSM-community Facebook,” called FetLife did I learn that women in their late thirties like I am, are attractive to 20-year-olds. I always had men well over forties matching on all the dating apps popping up, and I suspect that it is somehow done automatically. But to the point, which is my selfies, which is the red lipstick, or whichever point seems to be making itself right now in this writing. Whenever one of the five maked-up selfies was put by the mysterious goddess-ex-machina algorithms, I was desirable. Whenever the only unmaked-up selfie with pale lips and eyes reflecting all the somber melancholy of the world surfaced and represented me in this ungodly corner of the web universe, my chances were low. I, myself, and my accomplishments — we all were plummeted down to the depths of hell, to the void where least desirable creatures on earth scrambled for crumbs of attention and hoped to find someone equally ugly and unattractive for a sad, exitless copulation. What was that about the red lips, the femininity, the dating scene, and the diabolic machine that made the rotation of maked-up and fresh selfies into such a predictable pattern? What did it say about me? What did it say about the universe, apart that it was terribly fucked-up? How could I, like, theorize it or something? After all, I was in a perfect position to proclaim that the selfie-taker is using their own body, objectifying it, deliberately manufacturing it into an object, and trading it for the intangible resources.
Troubled by the questions, and entertained by the experience too, I bought one new lipstick after another, all red. One of them, a lasting thing, was advised against by the seller. Pregnant, she first insisted I did not buy a green one, although, polite with a customer, she issued a reluctant: “It’s cute on you… But on me, it always looks weird for some reason.” The red one did not get her approval either. “I don’t think the color will suit you.” But by that time I, of course, learned a color theory with a thoroughness that was nothing short of pedantic. When I just started wearing the red lip, I kept something of a diary that I now am refreshing in my memory with hopes to unearth out of this autoethnographic evidence something that will better reveal the connection between teleorgasmisation (as Derrida put it) and seemingly unrelated matters like “torso” — “marble” — “dick” — “photograph” — “unsolicited” — “social media” — phone” and “affect” (the mind map that we did in class upon insistence of Kathleen Stewart; the map was supposed to help us tackle the topic of choice; mine, selfie).
To the Anatomy of Red Lipstick
There is definitely an appropriation in what, a deep-down male personage I am, I’m performing by wearing high heels and red lipstick. In the hieroglyphics of feminine self-representation, a lipstick–red lipstick in particular–heels, dresses, long hair, and some other attributes, place one without further ado in a specific category of beings, both attractive and dismissable. Since I started wearing red lipstick, all my minor interactions with the world changed dramatically. Anything else has changed in me to redefine the first-glance interactions? I don’t think so.
The Diary of the Red Lip: Encounter
It so happens that men compliment me a lot these days, far more often than they complimented me a decade ago–although I must say I am in a very privileged position to be, there was never a lack of it. I don’t know what to connect a sudden increase of praise to though, many factors, I guess. Red lipstick is definitely one of them. But perhaps most importantly, I owe these compliments to the very fact that I am older now and paradoxically my kind interlocutors are being somewhat more generous if they tell me how good-looking I am, now that I am older.
And a lot of these compliments, too many, assess my young looks. As if being young should be my desire, and being younger-looking is a thing I need to know about myself and cherish. As if there is an all-too-evident way of making me happier: just tell me how young I look (if I do not, just say it anyway).
And I am expected to be pleased with these assessments, for which I did not ask, and take pride in looking supposedly younger than my age. Which brings a lot of difficult questions. Is it really a good thing for a person to appear, even if this is by way of a not-fully-sincere compliment, younger than they are? Does not a phrase “you look young(er)” robs you of your experience? Does not it erase who you are, diminishes your wins and losses? Does not it attempt not to notice who you have become and are becoming by this time of your age? Does not it suggest another, better you, in which you are somehow in a competition–and to whom you would lose in a face-to-face confrontation?
I am interested in how women’s magazines address aging, for they do, from time to time. Often in light how nobly age certain beautiful women, and how badly lose their battle with time other women. As a rule, noble aging means successful plastic surgery, and ugly aging means plastic surgery gone awry. Either way, you are fighting a battle, and either way, you are about to lose it–if not next year, then soon enough. But you have to be or to appear young, and if magazines are to be believed, in doing so you also have to wear clothes and make up which suit primarily young women.
To age, and to lose brightness of your eyes, to lose tightness, elasticity, and evenness of your skin; to acquire wrinkles; to have a changed, further changing face, on which a sleepless night leaves its inexorable trace; to lose the precision of your vision; to lose agility, is no fun for any gender. But it is a high demand for a woman to be not just successful, not just married, not just a mother in a certain timeline, but also to remain young and pleasing to the eye, attractive, beautiful. Beautiful but beautiful in a specific way. It is not thoughts, nor philosophical studies, nor the sharpness of her mind–which are evident in her face–that matters, but how closely she is identifiable with a generalized image of a beautiful woman, in other words, how well she conforms to standards. The generalized images of how a beautiful woman looks, in the West are very few and closely resemble each other. But the list of conditions you have to satisfy to be considered a beautiful woman is long and wearisome.
For a model, the face and the body are instruments. They are her tools of earning her living, but also they are used as tools by forces greater than her. They are employed and exploited to replicate the standards of beauty by expressing them in a living being’s polished, altered, improved appearance. Women use these standards in their turn to navigate these spaces to their advantage.
The temporality is tragic. Every story of aging is tragic. Aging is a world-altering experience. Is there a way out, towards the universe where an appearance in general, and younger looks in particular, do not matter that much? I don’t know.
But when I look at the photographs of my exceptional interlocutor, both in her maturity, in her ripeness, and in her blooming, her blossoming, her nascent, fledgling beauty, I see her story as a film — and a very short film at that, for I do not know many things about her. It is as if her whole lifetime was sped up in a quick video clip, reminding me of those videos which people sometimes create, putting their images of themselves, taken day by day for years, together. The film of a bold, creative exploration of temporality and ephemerality and endurance and inner and outward beauty. Of a manifest beauty piercing years. The film about the world and our brief and aggrieved, and still fascinating, act of living in it.
She was working hard. I noticed her from afar: she was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a billowing, long, black and white dress. Wearing and weaving the dress. She was rocking it. We stopped on the red light crossing the street concurrently. She noticed that I look at her, and casually started a conversation. She was walking to her favorite cafe and invited me with her. I ordered a cup of coffee, she bought a latte and a doughnut, and in several phrases, she told me her story.
“From the early childhood, I was into makeup and fashion.” She said. “I never did heroin, that was not my time, but I drank, and I did cocaine, that was my time.”
She was a model and was never married.
“I just did not want to live with a man.”
Even I, a feminist, found it hard to believe it. How inculcated in my mind are the ideas that you have to need and want someone? And in needing and wanting, “have” them.
“Girls from rich families do not have to, but we, we had to.”
That morning I met her, she told me, she picked a number of photographs from her archive to send them to her sister, who asked her about this favor. I actually suspect she was just carrying around with her a bunch of photographs in her purse for such occasions, specifically. She showed pictures to me, extracting them one by one from a huge brown envelope. She kindly permitted me to photograph them.
“Do you like Sex in the City?” She asked. “I look like Carrie Bradshaw, and you–you look like Charlotte York. Yes, you will be Charlotte. We already have Miranda and Samantha.” (She was referring to her friends.)
I was looking at her, at her photos. Comparing and contrasting what I saw, without intending to do so. What does it mean for a woman, to age?
Over time I have been gradually gaining an understanding that women age. I encountered men explaining to me that I am about to lose my beauty. One moment was particularly striking. When I was in my twenties, on a plane a man going down the aisle, whom I did not know, twice my age, told me out of the blue that I was beautiful, and added: “But it will soon pass. The corners of your mouths would turn down.”
Once I took a selfie with my child’s toy: a mustache on a stick. Looking at the picture, I was struck by how young my face was looking in this momentary, fleeting, playful assumption of masculinity. In my 36, I am barely a young woman anymore, but I am quite a young man.
Am I beautiful? A dreadful question which defines us so profoundly at certain stages of life. The answer to this question is, always, yes, of course, you are, because beauty is in motion and in the movement of your mind, in the thought that your eyes reflect, and in the kindness of your heart.
Am I beautiful? The irony of it, we never know just how beautiful we are, even if we are aware of our beauty, much less when we are unaware–but then we look at our own photographs and remark that we were beautiful.
Am I beautiful? What does it matter if I am not? What does it matter if I am? All too young, one is irreparably made aware that her appearance is favorable (or not, or, more often, both). And it is a highly racialized process, not to mention other complexities.
The Diary of the Red Lip: the Want
Ever since I knew about their existence in the universe, I wanted a red lipstick. My grandmother was the only person in our family who was urbane enough to have a vanity case with a red lipstick amongst other treasures. And she was a Siberian woman who knew hardships and, by and large, pretty much only hardships. Nothing really expensive ever belonged to her. Her lipsticks were bought in Soviet shops, and they were apparent in color and held strong smells. When one of those tubes was finished, she invariably stuck a match at the bottom of it, so that nothing from precious mass would be lost. She kept empty lipstick tubes because they reminded her of her past: where and when she bought them and how she wore lips.
I remember her modest possessions: brooches with artificial gems, clips, earrings, and scattered among them several bright buttons.
Grandmother always wore lipstick if she was out on her business. The causes that drove her out of the house were fewer and fewer until they were narrowed down to the local health care provider, a nearby shop, and hairdresser next building. And yet her thin lips, prudently pressed together, were always graced with a violent pink or screaming red or obstinately brown.
I could never achieve a matching consistency with my sporadic attempts to lead a life of a woman. I’d forget to apply lipstick, I’d never have time for that, and I when I do, I would spread the color unevenly and then disfigure the attempted delineation with a careless gesture of forgetfulness. Not a very good starting position for wearing red lipstick, the most demanding of all. My teeth were also a problem, they always were either too crooked or too yellow. Or both. Also, I always was too young to wear the red lipstick until the very day I suddenly became too old to do so. The whole nomenclature of gestures related to the red lipstick thing was completely foreign to me. How women kissed each other and men with their lipstick still on, how do they eat, smoke, sneeze, drink from water fountains and plastic cups, use napkins and straws, was the realm of uncertainty.
It’s amazing how women can wear such a thing of their bare faces and everyone would take it as is.
Still, sometimes I managed to apply and wear the aggressively, unapologetically, and undeniably red lipstick. It seemed to cross all the social borders at once. Even in the enclosure of a car, it interacted with people on its own accord, because it swiftly wiped out the windshield and shrieked at pedestrians and drivers.
The Diary of the Red Lip: Ambivalence
Still could not decide if red lipstick makes me look younger or older or both. I am wearing the red lipstick of no uncertain saturation as a mourn for the loss of my fantastic naiveté. Red lipstick is a fascinating impersonation / femininity appropriation experience.
There is definitely an appropriation in what, a deep-down male personage I am, I’m performing by wearing high heels and red lipstick. In the hieroglyphics of feminine self-representation, a lipstick — red lipstick in particular — heels, dresses, long hair, and some other attributes, place one without further ado in a specific category of beings, both attractive and dismissable. Since I started wearing red lipstick, all my minor interactions with the world changed dramatically. Anything else has changed in me to redefine the first-glance interactions? I do not think so.
Testimony of summer nights: “What is red?” — “First of all, Georgina’s lipstick” (I heard), and everyone looked at my lips, enthralled.
Red lipstick, staining consecutively: the glass, the cigarette stub, the fork, the napkin, and then my fingers.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
How do women do bright lipstick? I want to know. It is a constant embarrassment. If you smoke in addition, it means at least half of your day is busy by default.
The Diary of the Red Lip: Mastered
Oh, but of course I learned the art of wearing the red lip just as I learned so many things. This one, late in life–later than I should have learned.
I will write a short essay about the red lipstick one day; I’ve been taking notes. Red lipstick is a crucial detail for the performance of certain types of femininity.
I really am that woman: the only one wearing the red lipstick in the room. It’s fun. You should try it some time. A 19-year-old asked me how to wear the red lip. And, as an old Madame indulging her vices, I told her: “Alright, listen. What I am going to say now, is a rare bit of information which you are not likely to ever hear from anyone else. For some reason, it is kept secret. Use a lip pencil. To preserve the symmetry, draw rhombi on your lips. There are manuals, and when you stumble upon one, you’ll recognize it because I told you. They are rare for some reason, but drawing rhombi with a pencil is crucial, for the red lipstick forgives no flaw.”
The Diary of the Red Lip: Everydayness
I am waking up with traces of red lipstick under my nails, like particles of blood.
Hoarder
As I observed my collection of lipsticks, I thought that this abundance, although modest (compared to others’ collections), will perfectly suit a Creature With a Thousand Lips, a fair goddess of the void and an abyss’s faithful gazer
But as I skimmed my diary — the last quote from it: “this dark purple lipstick is both terrible and cool on me,” I am returning, like a ghost, to my question. Should I hope to solicit a bit of your attention, should I post a little pretty provocation? And if yes, what on earth could work better than a selfie with a red lip? Not another pensive poem or a love letter that is easy to ignore or to even read and not answer.
We workshopped the piece I had in place of my book, in K.S.’s office; K.S., Sabrina, and I. Commenting on my red lipstick extravaganza, K. said: “Once I bent over at a shop, and the man asked me, out of the blue, if I want to go dance with him. He saw my ass. It was because I bent over; that’s why he asked me. Likewise, the red is an opening, and the nose is the clitoris. This is it, with a clitoris-nose above. The red lip is such a literalization and obscenity. Men are just attracted to the hole. Women know that; women know what they’re doing. It’s a thing, and it’s a disgusting monster.” She was thinking through normativity which is this weird, bizarre, superficial, and totally arbitrary thing. And people entering it, showcasing their fully-fledged bodies, ready to be devoured. It’s them trying to be sexual. I am here now, laboring through my boredom, cutting myself on camera or whatever. I have a body capable of experiencing pain. It’s there, ready to be cut.
The Diary of the Red Lip: Fulfilled Wish
The red lip is but another object of my obsession (along with smoking and writing). I had a sudden wish for a very, very bright, neon lipstick. Red.
New lipstick, a lasting one. A seller didn’t believe the color will suit me. But I, of course, learned a color theory with a thoroughness that is nothing short of pedantic.
The Diary of the Red Lip: Treacherous Thing
She had partially erased lipstick on her puffy lips, and I was aware of it, and she wasn’t. But then we went, at some point, to the restroom and returned, thank god, with her lips corrected.
The Diary of the Red Lip: Souvenirs, Curios
My grandmother kept empty lipstick tubes. Why? Was it because they were a rarity? Soviet deficit? Was it because she planned to use parcels of them still remaining? In some of these tubes, the matches were stuck that fulfilled the role of a tiny spoon with which you scoop the precious microns from the bottom. And then in some, there were bits of white cotton puffs. But why keep them still? Because they reminded her of her past? Where and when she bought them and how she wore lips?
The Diary of the Red Lip: Required Invention
I wish there was an easier way to apply the red lipstick. Something should be invented so that it just jumps into your lips, with zero to no effort on your part. Why is that that in our enlightened times there is still no way to apply the lipstick effortlessly?
The Diary of the Red Lip: Impeccability
The red lip cannot be anything other but impeccable. The special UNESCO convention strictly regulates the rules of its wearing. Please, no abominations for fear of severest sanctions.
The Diary of the Red Lip: Book Presentation With No Red Lipstick
Because I was sick, I couldn’t paint my lips red as I wanted; I knew the lipstick was going to end up on napkins, fingers, dress, water bottle. Wearing a red stain on your face requires observance of careful procedure, strict rules.
The Diary of the Red Lip: Shortness of Life
I should stop neglecting the red lipstick. Life is too short.
The Diary of the Red Lip: Unruliness
I like red lipstick, but it stains objects.
The Diary of the Red Lip: I’m Busy
Fun fact: if you smoke AND paint your lips, particularly with the demanding red lipstick, you only have 4.5 hours a day for all other activities that you might or might not be engaging in. it is the mondialist plot to keep women permanently incapacitated.
The Diary of the Red Lip: Revolution
My friend Talia Lavin recently wrote: “Ocasio-Cortez’s…choices ― bright-red lipstick and hoop earrings ― were worn…in homage to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was advised to appear at her confirmation hearing with neutral-colored nail polish, and…refused.”
Fascinating how with women almost everything that they do becomes revolutionary, and for a good reason. Rocking red lipstick requires a certain nerve. It requires a measure of confidence since no teeth and no lips are ideal in contrast with red lipstick. It attracts an awful lot of attention. Particularly to the mouth. Your mouth becomes the only agent acting in your face.
Red lipstick is dangerous. At any moment things can go wrong. For a politician hated and admired so intensely, with such strong sexual ring, overt and covert, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, anything going wrong with her red lip immediately will go on a record and mocked through thousands of web pages. Then there’s a whole ancient discourse about women who should not be wearing makeup in the first place, much less calling attention to their mouths. Indeed “AOC” (as the Internet adoringly calls her) is a revolutionary to wear the red lip into all the bleak faces, and if you doubt, try doing it yourself in daily life.
The red mouth became Alexandria’s signature feature now, from the moment she won the primaries, when women immediately depleted the stocks of the exact lipstick she wore, to the moment of her swearing-in in Congress. Remember? “Democratic primary upset Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez name-dropped her lipstick brand and it sold out” (2018). Women buy the lipstick in hopes that the lipstick will help them to be more like its wearer, to attain a fraction of her success. If you still need the proof that women WANT to do politics, seek no further.
The Diary of the Red Lip: Kiss
I’d kiss you wearing my red lipstick, but not only will such action imprint an unerasable stamp on to your mouth but will disfigure my mouth as well, depriving it of form and pushing it beyond the shape that I procured for it, and if the former is nothing to think about, the latter is a concern, as you undoubtedly are well aware without me telling you.
