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     I am always surprised, looking down at my favorite shoes, at their vibrancy after all these years. In spite of the flaking flesh of the soles and one slight discoloration on the right toe, the pink canvas appears to be in impeccable condition, unimpressed by the usual afflictions of wear and tear. My shoes conceal imperfect, squarish little feet with calluses and long toenails. I wonder, walking down the sidewalk, past brick buildings reminiscent of antique splendor, past flawless green lawns, whether the other girls at this school have toenails. I mean, certainly they must, but as they pass—the slender topaz of a girl paddling her fingers through luxurious black rivers of hair; the perky humility of small, firm, athletic breasts cresting, luminous with sweat, over the runner’s confident white tank top; the clean, loose fabric of sundresses gliding over creamy curves and draping quite purposefully across the jewel-shaped silhouettes of thighs—I cannot imagine that there is anything imperfect about them as there is about me. 

In some ways, though, I know we’re the same. They’re having the same dilemma I often do, this tendency to try to impress some vague, haunting, age-old and faintly male presence of judgment. They seem unable to identify the reason why they devote incalculable amounts of their time to their physical appearance, spend hours in doubtful tears that they are attractive enough to satisfy this—this—what is this, anyway? This bitter, lingering hint of criticism in the air. A musky and mildewed scent of what is expected of us, a half-imagined residue left behind from centuries of coercion, a passing thought that we exist for the pleasure of other human beings and not for the joy of being ourselves. We are running so hard for an invisible prize that we can’t see our fellow women as anything but rivals in the race. It is as though we’re unwilling to abandon the safety net of our obsession with appearances, the cradle that lulls us into sleepy inaction, into a chronic and dangerous sense of being securely acceptable and good enough for our society. 

     So few voices have come to tell us that we weren’t created solely to be the assistant, the helpmeet, the afterthought of masculinity. So few have reminded us that our existence does not depend on the amount of beauty we can exude to attract others to us or the amount of loveliness we can possess to keep them there. Most importantly, I think, no one is around to explain to us that we were made in the divine image too, the image of intelligence and justice and benevolence and creativity and mercy and passion and truth and love—words that go beyond pretty faces and all of our trying so hard, that go beyond this collective, subconscious lie we have bought into about our identity on Earth and who we were created to become. I don’t know why we haven’t shed our skins yet, haven’t put away this lie for good and recognized ourselves not just as women or girls but as complete and full human beings exactly the way we are. Maybe we, the general female population, will always be like this: always needing to please, competing for an imagined crown in a pageant none of us will ever win. We are our own greatest adversary for the singular fact that we have believed in our own subordination. We’ve mastered the art of appearances, patching the tears and smoothing the wrinkles and blotting the blemishes and squeezing into the standards left behind by our mothers and their mothers and their mothers before them. We’ve been taught to pretend we enjoy the expectations of us that begin the moment the doctor says, “It’s a girl”—the assumption that she must be either extraordinarily beautiful or incredibly talented to be anything at all. I think that somehow we can each see a bit of ourselves in the external vivacity and the internal deterioration of my little pink shoes. 

     But I’d also like to think that there is healing power in dropping out of the competition—in stopping short halfway through the race, bewildered by the thrill of a vague, but resolute epiphany—in taking a long, slow, meditative breath and turning around to embrace self-love instead.

-Alys Matthews, UVA 2011

 -Pat Mainardi, The Politics of Housework