BODY & TECHNOLOGY— CONVERSATION WITH STELARC
Marta Ostajewska
Agata Zbylut
WILL THIS COUNTRY WANT TO ACTUALLY WATCH A WOMAN GET OLDER BEFORE THEIR EYES ON A DAILY BASISS?
Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?’ 1 asked Rush Limbaugh, 2 trying to discredit Hillary Clinton as a candidate for president of the United States. He considered appearance, and more precisely age, to be a decisive factor in terms of her competence. The same age that gave her twelve years of experience in the state government and eight years in the White House as the president’s partner, and then eight years as a senator. And although Donald Trump is one year older and Joe Biden is four years older than Hillary Clinton, their competence has not been considered in an aesthetic context. No wonder. It was already in The Beauty Myth (1989), that Naomi Wolf pointed out how unfairly we look at the changing bodies of women and men, recognising that men age better. ‘Our eyes are trained to see time as a flaw on women’s faces where it is as a mark of character on men’s’. 3
The view of older men accompanied by younger partners is therefore culturally obvious. In the cinema, where Bond girls have always been much younger than Bond himself, in anchor couples conducting TV programmes, etc. A mature woman ceases to be a ‘trophy’ that can be boasted about. It is not only a matter of appearance, but also of escaping the category of the so‑called ‘“young women”, with accompanying moral qualities, such as freshness, candidness, or submissiveness, with which it was more or less consciously associated’. 4 With age, we become more aware of our own needs and less susceptible to manipulation.
The imbalance regarding the ageing of the bodies of both sexes is also related to the fact that women are culturally ‘more carnal’ than men. ‘“there are almost no bodies that are not female” in the artistic, journalistic and advertising images that surround us’. 5 When dressing, men do not expose their bodies. They choose items that raise their status (expensive suits, shoes, watches, or cars). And the older the body, the more likely it is to have managed to rise higher in the culture promoting male political and economic power. The quantitative advantage of men in high positions and in politics is crushing and visible in probably all statistics that have ever been published. Research also shows that the older men are, the more often they choose younger partners. ‘Comparing the statistics compiled based on matrimonial ads, it was proved that the older the man was, the greater the age difference he preferred. Thus, men in their thirties were looking for partners 5 years younger while those in their fifties opted for partners as many as 10–20 years younger.’ 6
As we women age, we sense, observe, and find scientific confirmation of the fact that the men accompanying us want women who are younger and younger than we are. And our bodies, unlike men’s, are as carnal as possible. Our clothes are to emphasise beauty which, in the patriarchy, is a currency of publicly assigned value. Anyone can define this value by rewarding efforts with compliments that women should ‘be able to accept’. Commenting on a woman’s appearance is a cultural norm, situated in a system in such a way that until now many of us perceive it as a manifestation of kindness instead of an emanation of power. Compliments remind us that viewing and assessment take place constantly, so each of them redirects attention from the situation, action, doing – which means agency – to our appearance and the pleasure we should give others using it.
No wonder, then, that many women who can afford it go for plastic surgery. They do not wait for society to become more egalitarian and allow them to age without guilt, in the sense that their appearance, which is a logical consequence of knowledge and experience, is accepted and important. This leads to a paradox. I have in my head a quote from Naomi Wolf, who rightly points out: ‘To airbrush age off a women’s faces is to erase women’s identity, power, and history’ 7 and the statistical data that reminds us that only a decade ago (2014) in none of the most popular films the leading role was played by a woman over forty‑five years of age. 8
This has led to a situation in which women are afraid of getting old but, at the same time, they also feel pressured to be natural. Well‑groomed and natural. As Kathy Peiss (1996) observed, in the past, the middle class generally regarded visible makeup as ‘carnal hypocrisy’. ‘It was believed that a woman attributed herself qualities that she did not have; she lied with her own body’. 9 Today, the same mechanism of ostracism is applied to bodies that go for anti‑aging. We do not want elderly women to look too young. ‘Mutton dressed as lamb’ – I heard from men in the family about women who ‘tried too hard’. The pressure not to ‘cheat with your one’s own body’ is so strong that many celebrities declare in their youth they are not going to have plastic surgery, but the need to maintain a young appearance and the growing popularity of anti‑aging treatments is so common that they break these public promises. Reflections on which women have undergone surgery become a kind of public lynching in which we are happy to indulge by reviewing the rankings of ‘plastic surgeries gone wrong’. Photos of older women, most often not posed, are compiled with studio portraits from their youth. They serve as a warning – if you want to look young for too long, you will end up like them – as a public laughing stock. 10
A good illustration of the phenomenon is the example of Madonna and the enormous ostracism that the transition to a younger look arouses in her case. As if resmoothing wrinkles actually erased all her achievements, building 10 schools in Malawi, 11 adopting children, fighting for equal rights, feminist equality, visibility of non‑heteronormative people, etc. In social media posts following her performance at the Grammy Awards, I read that her body fits into ‘an action in favour of maintaining the status quo of the dominance of the “male eye”, which limits, eliminates, divides, and humiliates women for their appearance’. Analysing the changes in mature women’s bodies for years, I see patterns which correspond more to patriarchal aesthetics, which are more ‘natural’, less ostentatious. Madonna takes her image to the extreme, emphasising its performativity with her bleached eyebrows. Her image screams: ‘my body, my business’, but hardly anyone has heard that voice. There is no shortage of people willing to comment on what she looks like and ‘what she has done to herself’.
When Orlan began the XXX series in 1990, transforming her body with the help of plastic surgery into the ideals of a woman’s appearance known and fixed in works of art, she too met with criticism. She was accused of showing plastic surgeries as procedures that can be passed through repeatedly without any major damage. She talks about them precisely as about a performance that does not bring pain 12 or the possibility of complications. The project lasted from 1990 to 1993, during which time the artist underwent nine operations. The first one was performed when she was 43, and the last one at the age of 47, but looking at her photos from later decades, I have an impression these were not the last ones she went through. I would not speculate about it if – as Orlan proudly emphasises – she was not the first artist to make surgery her own artistic medium.
And although PANCIA [Lady] begins where ORLAN finished her performance, it was not even a direct inspiration for the project. ORLAN’s gesture talks about the ‘dictate of beauty’ (not its passing), and PANCIA about the attempt to maintain the status quo; a path that women follow without publicity, and alone. Instead of a spectacular operating room and doctors dressed in magnificent smocks, specially designed for this occasion, there is hiding and loneliness. I had my first hyaluronic acid treatment in 2018, at the age of 43. I did it a bit by accident, but I quickly realised the existence of female rituals that I had had no idea about. Of course, I saw more and more youth clinics open all around, which meant there were more and more people interested in using their services. But never before, until I went through it myself, had I seen anyone after the application of hyaluronic acid, which forms bubbles on the skin for a few days. Or the fact that vampire facelift is not glamorous droplets of blood on the skin with its shocking and spectacular Instagram look, but rather several days with a swollen face, because the platelet‑rich plasma injected into the skin creates inflammation.
In general, using the beauty industry means expenses and isolation. This is not the way it is presented in the collective narrative. The message prevails that good looks are primarily a matter of money and it is certainly a prerequisite, but besides that, it carries a lot of pain, shame, and loneliness. Any person who undergoes surgery can count on gestures of compassion and care in convalescence – unless it is plastic surgery. Then these rules are suspended. I would never encourage anyone to use the beauty industry, because it is an insidious practice, based on our complexes and uncertainty. Using almost unlimited resources, it manipulates the relationship we build with our own body.
Besides the danger of medical speculation and malpractice, there is the further concern that body remakes remain individual solutions and add to the process of social stratification and exclusion, as the ‘care of the body’ requires more money, time, and access to services and resources than the majority can afford, particularly when surgeries are involved. Already images are jarring. While the bodies of some are becoming more fit, more perfect, the number of those who can hardly move because of excess weight, illness, and poor nutrition is growing. Bodies and worlds are drifting apart. 13
All the more, we should de‑tabooise it and learn to talk about it. Only then will we not allow ourselves to be played or set against one another and instead make more conscious decisions about what costs and risks we are able to bear and whether it makes sense to bear them at all. All the more so because it is the ‘ordinary middle‑class girls’ who more and more frequently opt for those treatments, striving to make their wish of improving the comfort of companionship with their own body come true for a possibly small amount of money. Many a time, I would answer my female friends’ questions about what really works and whether it hurts. I do not believe that we will be able to eliminate plastic surgery, including that which is related to ageing. As humanity, we have always been dissatisfied with our appearance and, in fact, at every point, we have created ways to beautify bodies, often equally painful and dangerous. However, I believe in the idea of building a more egalitarian society in which our appearance will be as marginalised as possible and in which age will not translate into a chance for employment or promotion. Societies in which women will not have to ‘look good’ to support themselves or their children, because they will be able to earn their own money, and the responsibility and cost of raising future generations will be shared. Quite the opposite of the appearance, which should forever belong only to a person and under no circumstances be subject to public assessment.
