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I didn't photograph well until I was twenty.
Before that, there were two photos considered good of me, but one was when I was such a child and the other was me looking back on a ferry at my stepfather.
my successful photographers were always men.
from the earliest of ages, it made sense to me later when I discovered a sociology term where black people hate being black so much that they hate black people.
I was that for women.
I hated us.
fucking hated us.
we were utterly ridiculous - so competitive, so shallow, so man-centric. I vowed to never ever be like the ones around me.
and I succeeded, and I failed.
and I was assessed like the new filly in the barn. "this one is thicker than the other one." "this one has blond curly hair. that's an asset. too bad it goes away at four." "this one doesn't have blue eyes, but they're kind of exotic." shit, they didn't even really exactly say that much about me. It was more, "you have a nice face."
and of course, I could see my sister was a freaking beautiful rock star. it was formative. so formative. my mother had had a beautiful faced sister. it had been a death match. at my aunt's third wedding - when she was 82 and my mom was 85, my mom made the reported statement "Linda can't be skinnier than me. I've got to go on a diet."
I fucking
detest
the
word
diet.
fuck that word. fuck that life. fuck all that shit. what the fuck were we thinking.
I had a lovely body. they had lovely bodies.
I don't even know what to say or why I'm saying it. at this point, I'm a crone myself, but it made me mad today - looking back on my past self and realizing that I never got to feel beautiful until I was filled with tested (not lying) men/lovers.
and it will always matter, and it's ok to matter that you adorn yourself that you treat your temple lovely, but there's something evil in it too.
I can't quite display it well enough, but when my 88 year old mother responded to my "good lord. just give it up. you can stop feeling judged. you've won. you can chill. no one is looking at you anyway. no one is looking at me either. it stops at 43."
"well that's not true Kristy. I've had several men - I'm sure you have too - at the grocery store come up to me and mmmmm-hmmmmmm me".
"mother, that has never happened to me."
It's something like being trapped.
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