The Simple Life

Almost-current American television seasons have miraculously appeared on one of our previously very-chaste cable channels; transformed now into a veritable pot-pie of Stateside media, thick with the flaunting of plastic bodies and sexual innuendo I'd taken for standard-fare while living in the U.S.
It's always been true, but never more obvious to me than now: I grew up inundated by media that told me that I, as a woman, am supposed to be sexy - at any cost. That beauty is worth something - perhaps even more so than brains or compassion. My society tells me (long distance even!) in every way it can that my boobs have got to be so fabulously unnatural that they literally don't move. Women and girls are dying of breast cancer while some are choosing to pump their own natural healthy breasts full of liquid plastic and dying anyway. But sometimes I catch myself wanting them; craving their perfection; sick with the realization that I've bought into it, if even for a moment.

I wrestle internally with an admittedly disturbing, aching desire for a lifestyle left off. Attempting to reconcile what I've been socialized to crave with a much more relaxed (and realistic) version of my self, learned only after having lived in the third world for so long that keeping up with the Jones's, and Mrs. Jones in particular, is a mere memory. But it lingers, eerily, almost on a cellular level. A feeling of envy, need, greed, want, all iced over with a big fat am-I-good-enough? A concept of female beauty burned into my mind, providing image after image to compare myself to. Frustrating - to know perfectly well how very very shallow and ultimately meaningless it all is, to feel some sense of triumph at having shrugged it away even if just by virtue of geography, and yet to once again be faced with it in every imported primetime soap opera and high school drama. Paris Hilton flaunts her paid-in-full beauty across our Sansui's screen (or is it more a glittery shininess than an actual beauty?), and I both adore her selfishly exhorbitant style and disdain her habit of purchasing reality. Is it jealousy on my part or just self preservation? Either way, it's a warped paradox of a perspective, made even more grotesque by the fact that I am surrounded by people struggling to earn enough money just to buy rice, much less brand new breasts and hair extensions. Either way, I sincerely (if inexplicably) like Paris Hilton. But she does nothing for the effort of centering one's self in reality.

I cringe when I see a woman's face on the screen, obviously pulled too tight or just too many times. But I still look in the mirror and wonder if I'll do it when the time comes. I worried it would be sooner than later so I quit smoking and stopped eating meat. (yuck) But even that they can just suck right out with a surgery. Get rid of the buildup. Sculpt the body and soothe the mind.

I find it torturous that virtually every single television show that comes in here from the States makes me question myself on the basest of levels. Wondering if my husband will still tell me that I'm the most beautiful girl he's ever seen when finally faced by the hordes of Barbie-wannabes that appear to be walking the streets of my country. An army of available sexuality and fantasy-fulfilled; televised 24 hours a day like some twisted public service announcement.
I have stupid, terrible insecurities born of these shows so I change the channel or turn off the television altogether; I have to wonder what it would do for the self esteem of America's little girls and women if they could just manage to do the same. But for them it's literally every channel besides CNN and the Weather Station.

I want to look different, so I cut my own hair. Chopping and shaping very straight too-long bangs that hang over my brows and into my mascara-ed eyes in thick blonde chunks.
For now, it's enough, but I'm still in India and the pressure to pick myself apart, to change what is comes blessedly only when I pass by Channel 37.