In honor of National Poetry Month, I wanted to share the collection of poetry I am currently enjoying. Over the past year, I kept seeing lines of poetry from Mary Oliver in numerous places from research texts to Instagram accounts. I’ve found it’s one of those odd things about books or really any art. Even a prolific or cannon writer may not always be one I stumble on, or it may not the right time.

Receiving Oliver’s compilation of work as a gift turned out to be a gift at the right time. Complied by the poet, who unfortunately passed away in 2019, Devotions was created and arranged by Oliver.  I have taken my cue from the title and used it as a way to start my morning. While I have struggled in many ways with the idea of faith and with the structure of religion, beginning the day with a poem and one by Oliver who focuses so much on nature, on spirituality through the senses, and wonder, I have found it as centering.

What poetry have you been loving this month?

I had a chance over the holidays to sit down with the wonderful book, Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The book weaves together Wall Kimmerer’s experiences and knowledge from the multiplicity of her identity in a way that takes the reader on a journey through scientific knowledge, history, and cultures. Wall Kimmerer showed how her approach to teaching changed as she grew more confident that the ways to reach her students also meant reframing the paradigm. She challenges the western approach to scientific knowledge, the patriarchy and the hierarchy of academia, and the view of nature as driven by their value as resources. She does the by demonstrating that humans are in a relationship with other entities; a plant, a rock, an ecosystem, have their own knowledge and abilities. The book frames ways to consider knowledge and viewpoints and encourages all readers to consider their relationship with land usage and how it is a fraught conversation.

After finishing the book, I was left with a great deal to ponder and examine. My parents garden but in my own adult life, I have never attempted to keep plants. To read and hear about all the knowledge within the cycle of chestnut trees, as one example Wall Kimmerer uses in her book, furthered my understanding.  Her book showed how many natural cycles have been disrupted and knowledge lost. Humans have a hand in the disruption and the destruction. Humans will be needed for the solution.

I recently finished Perfect Me: Beauty as Ethical Ideal by Heather Widdows. Widdows positioned the idea of beauty and the process of beautifying women invest so much time in through the lens of philosophical critic. Her claim is that the standards of beauty continues to evolve and envelop every woman (and soon man) to a look that is achievable only by using make-up and only by going under the knife. This isn’t a book that spends its time trying to dwell on how the individual participates but more at the overarching swell where women continually find the marker of internal self-worth is linked to physical appearance. Her connections across history of how strict beauty standards (e.g. binding feet) were limited to one socio-economic class, and how that is rapidly changing. As the world changes, the gap has gotten narrower and narrower. Women now, in the book, are expected to wear makeup at the gym, at home, and even while battling terminal diseases. Her examples are specific and while skewed toward western Europe and America also incorporate the changing global identity as well—particularly the idea of thinness.

Her discourse struck a chord with me. Even an individual, setting out not to wear make-up, or not to use a filter with a photo, becomes an investment of time and emotional energy comparable, or more so, to those who stay within the current. Examining the beauty standard does not rest on the individual, but on the society as a whole to examine why this ephemeral idea of beauty and of youth is so intrinsically skewed to inherent value. Reading her work, I found another reminder to check my own values and weigh them against why exactly “a bad hair day” seems to strike such a dismal mood so quickly. Why I am willing to pay x amount of money for a manicure or a pedicure before a big event? Why do so many young women ask for, and receive from their guardians, cosmetic procedures on their 18 birthdays? Why do women who struggle to pay for rent, food, still fork over money for hair dye? Why do I shave my legs? The answer is simple, cultural norms tell me (and them) it is expected. Not participating results in its own tagline. Letting yourself go. Not being the best you.

As Widdows puts it, this cultural trap of not participating means not believing in betterment, not believing that getting better by the careful mascara wand would result in stagnation.  Truthfully, I rarely wear makeup and am often envious of those around me able to wield their tools with mastery for the perfect look. But, I am also aware of the way it can hinder, and can trap time, effort, and mental and physical health and spiral talented women downward by not keeping up.

This is not, perhaps a new revelation (though the increasing number of cosmetic procedures was), but Widdows provides a new frame to my thinking as she shows how common practices, increasingly complex ones, begin to be woven into the fabric of everyday care and how women continually police themselves and others. This is not really about finding that heterosexual relationship. This is about the normative practice (encouraged by patriarchy and capitalized on by a global market) that slowly increases to fulfill and ever growing need to meet a standard that is not achievable. A standard linked to the idea of worth.  

Widdows helps answer the question of why culture tell us to tie our self-worth, our public personas, to masks, to the future person that is ten pounds lighter, and hair the perfect shade, and our skin without wrinkles. What I wonder though is how best we start untangling the idea of value from the mirror.