Weekly report 6

Weekly Post

Sarah Make-up and Mirrors

Week seven-back in the studio with Sonia. It is great to be back together and we are now putting together our final piece in terms of a structure and finalising ideas. I believe our process has refined itself throughout the rehearsal period and our line of enquiry has evolved over the period of time we have spent in the studio, and apart.

We have created a three-part structure to our piece:

1. Make-up and Mirror section.

2. Masks, measurements and words.

3. Physical score.

Make-up and Mirrors

In studio this week we have started to work on section one. Sonia filmed me putting on my make-up and interviewed me whilst I was doing it. Explaining the process as I was doing it made me aware of how much of a routine it is for me and how I follow exactly the same pattern – always.

I felt very self-conscious completing this process in front of a camera – it made me feel a bit embarrassed that I hold so much importance to this ritual. On discussion after the process Sonia confessed to me that quite a lot of that process seemed quite normal to her and that she also follows similar rituals in her own beauty routines – many women do and this is our ‘normal’. After the process, I was contemplating the whole process of applying make-up and the following question came to mind -

QUESTION- Why do we place so much importance on making-up our faces to look ‘beautiful’ when it is only other people who can see the outcome?

I remembered a quote from some of my research reading:

“Looks dominate our judgement of the general worth of women. This was the case for Ann Hopkins, a consultant who had clearly established her professional credentials and earning power. However, she was rated unfit for partnership I her firm because her behaviour, make-up and dress style were considered insufficiently feminine”. (Ellemers, 2017)

We have the example above to refer to and can be applied to many situations – our aesthetic appearance is, in many stations, how we are judged and given a worth. The more beautiful a woman is the more she is accepted and the higher peoples regard is for her. Yes, of course, we say we apply our make-up for ourselves and it makes us feel confident and blah blah blah BUT once it’s on we don’t see it – it’s the outward facing image we are showing others, and when we buy products such as “AirBrush flawless finish” it is other people we are trying to impress – not ourselves.

We then wrote our first draft of our script and are planning to use recorded sound within this section whilst we are both present on stage carrying out our individual procedures (me putting on my make-up and Sonia convincing herself to go out). The aim for this section is to show the audience the ‘norm’ for both of us and for the groups of people we are representing. We do not want to create a “poor me” performance piece just simply make some observations on the lines of enquiry we are following and how they are integrated into everyday life for large portions of society.

PROCEDURE - When working on the first section we found that we both referred to our rituals as procedures. Sonia made a comment that the word ‘procedure’ makes everything seem clinical and formal. I liked the reference and found that by referring to the application of make-up as a procedure IT immediately took it from being something casual that I do for myself to something that is required and expected. Something that has to be carried out correctly in order to succeed. This type of formality associated with beauty is something that is echoed many times in my research reading and makes the point again that social expectations dictate our relationship with beauty – we are not free to choose.

Society says that The Barbie doll image is the ‘correct’ one.

“Not only is the doll [Barbie] proportioned with a tiny waist, large bust and long legs, but her skin and hair colours represent a flawless, wrinkle-free Caucasian woman”. (Reel, 2008)

COMFORT IN DISCOMFORT

We also looked again at the cycle pictured above.

The last section originally called Comfort in denial will now be called Comfort in discomfort.

Our point of discussion is that we all follow our routines, rituals, processes and procedures because we want to - this is the opposite to what we have previously stated on purpose - we want to pose the question to our audience. Is it possible that we all find comfort in the unachievable and the impossible and we actually enjoy the struggle to succeed? Society has many expectations and accepted ‘norms’ and we ultimately choose if we succumb to them or not – we have the choice and most of us choose the comfort in discomfort because we know we are not alone and in fact we are all then ‘in it together’ for the end goal we know we will never achieve. In the chance that we do achieve our end goal you can bet that there will then be another goal just around the corner. We enjoy the chase and the search for the impossible.

Further Experiments & Ideas

Next week we will continue work on section one and start work on section two –mask, measurements and words.

Bibliography

Ellemers, N., 2017. Gender Stereotypes, Utrecht: Annual Reviews.

Reel, J., 2008. Age before beauty: an exploration of body image in African-American and Caucasian adult women. Journal of Gender Studies , 17(4), pp. 321-330.

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SONIA: To divide and conquer

This week was divided into two parts: first I continued with my readings about social anxiety and depression and the second part was with Sarah in the studio discussing the structure for our performance.

Thinking back now, it’s interesting to realise that our process was a bit backwards… First we went to studio to explore our ideas and get to know each other (and ourselves) and only after that we spent time apart to focus on our individual lines of enquiry. Honestly I think that if we would do it the other way around we would miss many important details and common points between our investigations.

A philosophical approach and the “ideal” woman

“… in the days when mankind was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life on earth was more cheerful than it is now that pessimists exist.” (Nietzsche 1969: 67)

Continuing my friendship with Nietzsche, I found a really interesting article (Morstein 1999) about anxiety and depression but from a philosophical point of you. This revealed itself to be way more productive to read than the psychology and medicine books.

“Consciousness begins in confusion, guilt and anxiety” (p.1)

“”Anxiety is… a felt expression of freedom… directed at the unknown, anything is possible… there are no limits on my possibilities… and yet I cannot choose… Alternatively I may be over whelmed by the great weight of sheer undifferentiated potential and fall into the dark of depression, unable to affirm and trust the self” (p.4)

“What is the form of depression? I cannot accept myself… we live under descriptions, guided by theories and principles… It points to something lost in the dark. It urges us to explore, but it also inactivates.” (p.5/6)

“…we must embrace uncertainty in order to be (become) ourselves. Ambivalence is to be overcome only by choosing oneself… only in moments, not <for good>.” (p.8)

After this it was easier for me to understand the reasons why we need anxiety in our lives, why it can lead to depression and most importantly, why we keep putting ourselves through such painful states of mind. It’s the sense of freedom of choice and endless possibilities that makes anxiety so appealing to the mind. Obviously the continuous attempt to answer the question “Who am I?” requires self-exploration and confrontation. This quest for an ultimate answer will lead to a denial of our natural ambiguities, which may culminate in self-doubt, depreciation and eventually depression.

All of those insights made me think about that we follow patterns to avoid our paradoxes (I talked about those a few weeks ago) because we are so ashamed of our ambiguities. This shame and guilt would already be bad enough but we decided to combine it with an unrealistic and exhausting pursue for the ideal behaviour and look (so other people won’t see those ambiguities).

Lafrance (2009) wrote a book called Women and Depression (definitely suitable for the occasion) for which the author interviewed several women that were diagnosed with depression.

One aspect that really stood out was the “silencing the self, masking the pain” (p.63). Most women confirmed that they tried to hide their depression to maintain a specific look and behaviour associated with what is required to be a woman: “… passive, compliant, happy, always had a smile on my face, typifies the “good” woman” (p.86)

All of the interviewees associated the adjective “good” with feminine identity descriptors like “daughter, girl, wife, mother” “Notably absent across the transcripts were non-gendered identity references (e.g. good person or good worker)” (p.87)

“… the spectre of idealised femininity continues to haunt women today… she is always fraught with contradictions” such as: innocent but sensual, pleased and pleasing, with a tiny frame but big breasts and always “young, white, heterosexual and able-bodied” (p.185)

The images of femininity are “celebrated as perfection” (p.186)… and I keep wondering:

Why is perfection celebrated?

…and we went back to the contradictions! This vicious cycle (that we draw on our studio wall) keeps showing up to me in various ways.

Sarah and I have been trying to combine our practices since the beginning with just a general idea of what kind of performance we wanted to put together but the content of it was blurry until now.

Sarah is back!

God heard my prays and Sarah came back to take me out of my misery!

The time we spent apart was indeed very fruitful though.

We talked about our discoveries and then discussed and agreed on a structure for our performance. I am very focused on maintaining this idea of the cycle and use the physical score (final part) to expose the feeling of comfort in discomfort. This is related to our original “dance” piece (where Sarah was dancing while I kept trying to stop her but I comfort her by the end).

I think that the cycle only works because of that comfort we have by thinking that we need to put ourselves through the “procedure” in order to be ready. Therefore we accept all the self-destructive thoughts and actions as something necessary to keep us going.

This being the case the performance must end with that idea of comfort because it’s the end of the cycle, which will make it start again.

For the first scene Sarah showed me her make up routine while I filmed and asked her questions. During that the word “procedure” (the way she puts make up on is always the same as my anxious thoughts also fallow the same pattern repeatedly) came up and we decided to create our dialogue according to that idea.

I also read the play Fake it ‘til you make it (Kimmings and Gayburn 2015) I really liked:

• how they used a recorded machine to “play” the their conversation and thoughts about depression;

• how they talk about the side effects of the tablets and the research they did on the topic (the comfort in trying to know all about it), to then expose it in such a raw, personal and powerful way;

• when Tim says: “I buried my depression so deeply that no one could see it” (p. 60)

• the fact that Tim wears various masks throughout the entire play.

Some of these are things that I was already thinking about using such as recorded voice, masks and comparing the medical/ dictionary definitions to the day to day life of having a mental illness… The struggle was the usual: how to put what was on my mind on stage?

… And that’s why working with Sarah is the best decision I made this year (so far!). We put our heads together and created a script for the first scene that actually makes sense and goes according to the cycle idea!

Kimmings, B. and Grayburn, T. Fake it ‘til you make it, (2015) Oberon Books Ltd, London.

Lafrance, M. (2009) Women and depression, Routledge, New York.

Morstein, P. (1999) “Anxiety and depression: a philosophical investigation”, in Radical Psychology, vol. 1, Issue 1. (http://www.radpsynet.org/journal/vol1-1/vonMorstein.html)

Nietzsche, F. (1969) On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, Toronto, Vintage