Aesthetica

by Allie Rowbottom

For women, so often robbed of agency, was there some freedom in controlling how the world saw our bodies, consumed our bodies?

Mine was, “the fickle power of teenage girlhood,” a temporary currency, according to my mother. Objectifying myself could never make me happy, she said, though she was wrong. Her version of feminism was outdated, too rigid to work in the real, digital world where I was in control of my body, my content, and smart to leverage the short blush of my youth for what was permanent and sure:

Is this how I really look? I often spend hours trying to know for certain. I press the shutter again, again, again, then step back and pinch the ugly selfies I just shot, parsing the distortion of the lens from past procedures, the passing of time.

I just want to look like myself, my true self, stripped of time and the violence of past mistakes.

The phone rang and I told myself to be patient, I told myself to be kind. Often, I went into conversations with this goal and failed to keep it.

“This back pain is killing me,” she said. “I want to have them reduced.” She gestured at her chest. My father didn’t look up from his plate. “And get rid of your best asset?” he asked. And that was when she knew he would someday leave her.

It was apparently commonplace to undergo multiple cosmetic procedures on the way to wholeness, selfhood. Some women even set out timetables for their entire body transformation, order of procedures, wish lists of surgeons, lines of credit. Were these women addicts? Or were they simply empowered, in touch with their desire, financially and spiritually ready to pursue the body of their dreams, the shape in which they’d finally feel at home?

I toggled between her before and after photos. “Day one and I’m already thrilled with my open, brighter expression,” she wrote, and what sort of woman would I be if I wasn’t thrilled for her?

Our eyes met. His, feathered around the edges by crow’s feet, every wrinkle distinguished and therefore sexual. Whereas mine—already beginning to show, thanks to Aesthetica™—will always be evidence of obsolesce, unwantedness.

It’s a privilege, to age, I see that now.