It volition beryllium the Year of Perfect Skin, I told myself. I had arrived astatine my mid-forties, and the reflector abruptly gave maine a look crosshatched with creases. I was Portrait of a Woman Aging. I was a cubist composition, thing by Picasso. I was a unusual collage of exhaustion. Mouth, eyes, on the Cupid’s bow of my lips—each 1 was crinkled similar a portion of insubstantial that had been balled up and past pressed level again.
I nary longer looked 20 years younger. But, worse, my tegument had breached retired successful a unusual midlife puberty. Every morning, different pinkish spot connected my cheek. Every night, different tiny people of embarrassment written on my jaw.
To statesman the Year of Perfect Skin, I ordered creams and moisturizers, serums that arrived successful solid ampules, oils I would measurement retired by the droplet. I learned to double-cleanse: archetypal a balm that melted similar butter, past a soapy liquid to lavation each residue away. I ordered small disposable look towels from a institution called Clean Skin Club, due to the fact that immaculate tegument was a nine I wanted to join. I tapped thing called essence into the abdominous of my cheekbones. My fingertips moved crossed my look the mode they did crossed the keyboard of my laptop. I wanted solid skin, bouncy skin, tegument slickened similar the way a snail leaves behind. Tap. Tap. I americium revising myself, I said.
It was January 2020. Soon determination would beryllium a planetary pandemic. I would larn however to region socially. I wore a disposable disguise to the market store and a brace of surgical gloves. Standing successful the nutrient conception among the bins of apples, I grasped each portion of effect with my blue, latex hand. Beneath the protective layers, I could odor the fearfulness successful my sweat.
Back home, I stood earlier the mirror’s metallic scrutiny. Sometimes the disguise near a welt astir the perimeter of my mouth, a groove that concisely obscured my aging and acne.
The frivolous is simply a splendid excuse. It allows america to partake successful stead successful the amusive of gossip, to bask the delights of manner and fragrance, to devour sugary cookies until our gluttony is sated, the psyche abdominous arsenic a afloat belly.
What could I bash successful that twelvemonth but importune connected tegument without flaws? What powerfulness did I person beyond leaning toward my ain reflection and studying the lunar contours of a pore? If I stood adjacent capable to the mirror, the satellite was reduced to my face. My tegument became a full topography. There was thing beyond the landforms of forehead, nose, and chin.
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Frivolity, meaning connected to the frivolous. That is, unimportant, undeserving of rigorous thought.
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Frivolity is ever intended arsenic an insult. We deem definite lawsuits frivolous. Some entertainments. Some conversations. Frivolity is seldom a compliment we pay.
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The connection frivolity wears a feathered boa. When uttered, it is coquettish. It opens with an unvoiced f. It closes with what grammarians telephone a feminine ending, which seems to fizz similar a airy splash of prosecco.
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Feminine, due to the fact that frivolity is stitched to gender. It is often tied to queerness and to colour arsenic well. Those who telephone an entity “frivolous” knock the happening and, by extension, they besides critique the idiosyncratic who loves the snippet of lace, the leather fringe down the magnitude of a sleeve.
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Feminine, due to the fact that items deemed frivolous—let’s accidental a lipstick shaped similar a sleek, reddish slug of seduction—are mostly marketed and sold to women. Men’s passions are taken seriously. The games they play arsenic children go their play hobbies arsenic adults, adjacent if present they lone ticker a shot being hurled backmost and distant from the marshmallow cushions of their surviving rooms. Men are permitted to beryllium fans. They tin deterioration jerseys that bent to their knees, baggy shirts successful superior colors, without censure. And the game (whatever that crippled mightiness be) is ne'er a frivolity.
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But a pistillate who buys a vessel of perfume indispensable beryllium condemned for spending wealth connected a silly spritz of mimosa and patchouli. She is judged for wanting what women want. Purses and heels. A formal made of thing silky called charmeuse, a French connection that means a pistillate who charms, 1 who bewitches.
And ne'er caput that she has bought lone what the marketplace is selling. Never caput that she volition beryllium disparaged if her lips stay plain oregon her lashes deficiency the indispensable overgarment of mascara, that caterpillar thickness. She should inactive beryllium blamed for giving successful to the allure of billboards 10 feet gangly with languorous models. Shame connected her for wanting those immense cheekbones highlighted successful gold, those large eyelids dense with shadiness the colour of smoke.
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In Ways of Seeing, the creation professional and writer John Berger examines the unkindness with which women are often viewed. The publication considers the enactment of European artists, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and into the twentieth century. Berger examines the motivation judgements that are embedded successful representations of women’s bodies, their beauteous faces:
The reflector was often utilized arsenic a awesome of the vanity of woman. The moralizing, however, was mostly hypocritical. You painted a bare pistillate due to the fact that you enjoyed looking astatine her, you enactment a reflector successful her manus and you called the coating Vanity, frankincense morally condemning the pistillate whose nakedness you had depicted for your ain pleasure.
The existent relation of the reflector was otherwise. It was to marque a pistillate connive successful treating herself as, archetypal and foremost, arsenic sight.
Berger shows america Hans Memling’s Vanity. The portion is lipid connected wood. Created astir 1485, it’s 1 3rd of a triptych. A pistillate stands naked, but for her sandals and the thin, golden circlet successful her hair. She holds a mirror. The lone happening reflected is her look staring backmost from the glass. Although she’s positioned successful a scenery dense with greenery, dogs, a thatched cottage successful the distance, she sees thing but herself. We are meant to hatred her for the mode she has fallen into her ain reflection. But wherefore should she not? Her breasts are pert. Her belly’s curve implies fecundity. A unreality of auburn hairsbreadth hangs past her waist, reaching astir mid-thigh. Her soma is truthful airy she mightiness arsenic good beryllium alabaster, carved and polished smooth.
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In Georges de La Tour’s The Penitent Magdalen, the creator gives america different mentation of a woman. Painted circa 1640, she excessively sits earlier a mirror, this 1 rectangular, a framework placed wrong the framework of the painting. A gleaming skull is cushioned successful her lap. Eyeless, it seems to regard upward toward a candle that burns connected the tabletop. The occurrence precocious and pale, voluptuous successful its flickering, its representation reflected successful the glass.
As is emblematic of La Tour, the country is divided betwixt brownish shadiness and stretches of brightness. The woman’s look glows with light. The V of her achromatic blouse plunges astir to her navel but not immodestly. She has nary of the seductive vanity of Memling’s subject. This indispensable beryllium Mary Magdalen, reformed and healed, aft her brushwood with Christ. Although her skirt simmers red, immoderate benignant of dense satin, she isn’t presented arsenic a fig of intersexual pleasure. Her purity neuters her. Memento mori, specified paintings instruct us: Remember death. Magdalen confronts herself successful the mirror, neither delighting successful her ain quality nor regretting its imminent loss. She is appropriately humble (as the creator sees it). Her self-regard is forgiven due to the fact that she confronts her flaws. She acknowledges the corruption of skin.
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The Year of Perfect Skin, for instance, was much than an illustration of self-centeredness….It was my tiny was of insisting: This assemblage is live and permanent.
Early connected successful George Eliot’s large caller Middlemarch, Dorothea Brooke agrees to her younger sister’s petition that they yet disagreement betwixt them their dormant mother’s jewelry. Dorothea is serious, pious, and beautiful. She wants not lone to beryllium a bully Christian but besides to look similar 1 to others. She wants to beryllium seen arsenic fastidiously unadorned, dressed lone successful her devotion to God. But the jewelry container holds immoderate precise beauteous stuff, including “a necklace of purple amethysts acceptable successful exquisite golden work, and a pearl transverse with 5 brilliants successful it.” Although she is tempted, Dorothea gives the portion to her sister, Celia. “A transverse is the past happening I would deterioration arsenic a trinket,” she intones.
A fewer paragraphs later, the girls observe an emerald and diamond ring. Dorothea is captivated by its sparkle and hue. “I accidental this is the crushed wherefore gems are utilized arsenic spiritual emblems successful the Revelation of St John,” she muses. “They look similar fragments of heaven. I deliberation that emerald is much beauteous than immoderate of them.” There is simply a matching bracelet, and Dorothea can’t defy it either. She decides to support the 2 pieces, though the ornaments necessitate that she “justify her delight successful the colours by merging them successful her mystic spiritual joy.” Celia notices her sister’s philosophical inconsistencies and asks if Dorothea volition deterioration the jewelry astir different people. It’s a infinitesimal of antithetic hostility betwixt them, the biddable younger miss mildly pointing retired the elder’s hypocrisy.
We are meant to emotion Dorothea. She stands astatine the halfway of the narrative. But Eliot wants america to recognize excessively however the young pistillate volition endure for her performances of virtue. She volition wed idiosyncratic older—Casaubon, a fussy and self-centered clergyman—who makes her miserable, each due to the fact that she believes him to beryllium a student and imagines a romanticist beingness successful which she mightiness assistance him prosecute world distinction, the mates bent implicit the yellowed pages of books and parsing dense passages together.
In an effort titled “It Can Be Embarrassing to Love Dorothea,” the novelist Pamela Erens reminds us:
Eliot makes it wide that Dorothea is nary saint but alternatively a morally immature young woman. Her self-denials person roots successful youthful arrogance and impetuousness….Dorothea doesn’t admit her bossiness and grandiosity. Her ideals of Christian humility and simplicity and work are genuine. But she is precise young.
Instead of admiring her mother’s jewels for the involvement of their splendor, the miss indispensable rationalize her emotion for faceted stones. The gems glitter with holiness, she assures herself, due to the fact that she cannot yet judge frivolous beauties connected their ain terms. Eliot departs present from the moralizing messages of Memling and La Tour. As the novelist sees it, ornamentation is not vanity. Dorothea’s abnegation is.
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The large Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne begins “Of Vanity” by arguing that there’s thing vainer than to constitute astir vanity itself. “What the Divinity has truthful divinely told america astir it ought to beryllium cautiously and continually meditated by radical of understanding.” Montaigne is alluding to Ecclesiastes 1:2. “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; each is vanity.” In the Christian tradition, these words are a grim informing of our transience, the vaporous substance of our lives. To beryllium distracted by vanities (read: frivolities) is to hide that earthly pleasures person nary lasting value. They are impermanent dust. The assemblage is simply a candle that glimmers briefly. Only the psyche persists.
But due to the fact that Montaigne is subversive and a wit, helium past devotes galore pages to examining vanities, some his ain and those of others. “Of Vanity” is arsenic overmuch a meditation connected the acquisition of being a writer arsenic it is simply a treatment of antithetic forms of governmental rule. Then, conscionable arsenic it seems helium has mislaid way of wherever helium began, Montaigne returns to examining the matter:
This communal cognition and wont of looking elsewhere than astatine ourselves has been precise utile for our ain business. We are an entity that fills america with discontent; we spot thing successful america but misery and vanity. In bid not to dishearten us, Nature has precise appropriately thrown the enactment of our imaginativeness outward. We spell guardant with the current, but to crook our people backmost toward ourselves is simply a achy movement: frankincense the oversea grows troubled and turbulent erstwhile it is tossed backmost connected itself. Look, says everyone, astatine the question of the heavens, look astatine the public, look astatine that man’s quarrel, astatine this man’s pulse, astatine different man’s will; successful short, ever look precocious oregon low, oregon to 1 side, oregon successful front, oregon down you.
We’re each implicated successful what Montaigne says. Vanity is what’s mendacious oregon empty. Vanity is the fruitless. We stock successful Montaigne’s metaphor of the oversea and consciousness uneasy erstwhile we are forced to brushwood ourselves successful the bluish waves of self-reflection. We volition bash thing to debar specified crashing, downing scrutiny. And this is wherever frivolity enders. The frivolous is simply a splendid excuse. It allows america to partake successful stead successful the amusive of gossip, to bask the delights of manner and fragrance, to devour sugary cookies until our gluttony is sated, the psyche abdominous arsenic a afloat belly.
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Montaigne successful “We sensation thing pure” writes astir the flaws of the quality condition. He says we unrecorded successful a authorities that makes it “impossible for things to travel into our acquisition successful their earthy simplicity and purity.” Whatever we delight successful “has an aerial of groaning and lament astir it.” And adjacent the top joys person “more seriousness than gaiety.” Later successful the text, helium observes that painters judge that the expressions formed by faces—their creases and wrinkles—must service some for crying and for laughter.
If I americium to travel Montaigne’s argument, past I mightiness accidental the frivolous is ever tinged with solemnity, a grey pigment. The Year of Perfect Skin, for instance, was much than an illustration of self-centeredness, much than an effort to crook my look translucent, luminous arsenic a moonstone acceptable successful metallic prongs. It was my tiny was of insisting: This assemblage is live and permanent. The clearer my complexion became, the greater my region from each the dying successful that year.
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Excerpted from Frivolity: A Defense by Jehanne Dubrow. Copyright © 2026 Columbia University Press. Used by statement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
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