mirror self
Sun12.8.19
Why are we not happy? Quite a lot of research has been done on the topic. We are not happy because at some point in our infanthood we were exposed to a mirror. Up to that point baby was quite happy experiencing himself without it. By the way, I’ve decided that identifying humans in the generic masculine pronoun is not an offense and takes nothing away from me as a woman. What’s more men are bigger and tend to be more aggressive, thank god! Otherwise the human species would have disappeared in the stone age. So the guys get the front lines, but they’re crazy for us so it balances out. I can hear the feminists castigating me now for the sellout that I am. That’s because they lack power. Power is not something given to you, handed on a plate because you stomped your foot and demanded it, paraded on main street with your pussy hat shaming all for the discrimination you’ve endured. Power is you realizing that you have a special talent to share and committing yourself to it as your pathway in life. It anchors you. Power is you in the schoolyard waiting round the corner with a big stick for the bully who has pushed you around, ready. Everybody knows showing your tits and booty is about attracting a man; it’s a form of false advertisement. Ain’t I hot baby! Don’t you want to get to know me? No lady, I don’t want to get to know you. I have other things in mind. What gets me are the athletes who having achieved success and then pose for seminude pics in some sexy magazine. Their sexiness, their power was in their athletic feats, this just takes away from it and robs them of their dignity. Someone thinking your hot does not mean respect for you.
Does the sexy woman want sex? Sometimes, but primarily she wants a man to protect her; she wants a family and a house in the country. There is nothing wrong in wanting these things and if that is a woman’s path she must commit herself for at least 15, 20 years and choose her mate wisely; the “in love” phenomenon only lasts a couple of years. People who tell you that they’re still in love after 30 years are lying. It may be that what they’re experiencing is just a good accommodation between reasonable people, a rare occurrence nowadays. We are all shouting me, me, me! Décolletage and spike heels can attract a powerful man if a woman has the right assets. Will he be amenable to the house in the country, the dirty diapers and the ball and chain?
Problem is the role of wife, mother, home-maker has gone out of fashion in society. Does she churn butter, milk the cow, tend the vegetable garden, put home grown food on the table, teach the kids, make the family’s clothes, knit socks, scarfs and mittens? Vestigial skills, no longer needed or wanted, today’s home-maker works just as hard as her predecessors without its acknowledgement or valuation. Women have to deal with that dichotomy and own up to who they are and what they do. Men have similar situations, but different problems.
Baby looking in the mirror sees a person. After a while it registers that the person in the mirror is him. There was the tactile, acoustic, olfactory, visual, tasting self who scrambled about, and now there’s this kid in the mirror. That split, that dichotomy is the cause of our unhappiness. The kid in the mirror eventually takes precedence over the sensual one, a mute witness who lets you know occasionally that you are on the w r o o n n g track.
Notice how often you unwittingly look in the mirror and adjust your mirror-self to fit whatever image you try to present to a society disposed to value stability over idiosyncrasy.
The favorite essay this month has been, Oy, Oy, Oy