Coming to Terms with Visuality
By: Christy Liang
A few weeks ago, I wrote down in my journal: “Visuality Visualty Visuality.” I felt at the moment as if I was floating in a sea of appearances. Walking around Middlebury, I frequently take note of people’s outfits, style, or simply their attractiveness. It can get overwhelming at times, especially after spending four years in Singapore–a regretful fashion desert.
Only recently did I finally have the time and resources to experiment with fashion for myself; but I have always been in close proximity to it due to my Mom’s keen sense of style and ever-expanding wardrobe. When I was young, I would give her a disapproving look when she brought home yet another expensive coat or overly priced fashion magazine from the newspaper stand close to our home. “She’s so superficial,” I’d think to myself. I was very much a bookish kid who would rather enjoy an undisturbed afternoon of reading than a hunt around the shopping mall looking for the perfect summer dress. “My Mom and I come from different words,” was my recurring impression. At least until I inherited most of her clothes and became just as interested in personal style, creative expression, and how we perceive and, in turn, become perceived in this overwhelmingly visual world.
Coming to Middlebury at the end of August, I had a whole month ahead of me to experiment with summer outfits. And let me tell you, I had so much fun with it. I loved layering pieces, balancing color patterns, contrasting different shapes, and at times, going a little more bold. This was a relatively new experience for me. While in Singapore, I felt inhibited by my ability and resources to develop and embody a particular style. However, I always yearned for the day I would strike that note of coherence between my inner and outer selves–to make my curated appearance somewhat reflective of my interior landscape.
“Appearance” is a word I have struggled with extensively growing up. It simply felt unimportant, flippant, too inseparably tied to vanity. And, truth be told, looking at and appreciating others’ appearances can become nothing more than a generator of insecurity based on our inbuilt tendency to compare. Why is my hair not as voluminous? How does she pull off a skirt like that? I wish I had muscular yet slender arms... The negative self-talk goes on and on.
When this happens to me, I try to think of a resolution. Be it clothing items or bodily features, they are all just varieties of the human form, different manifestations of human beauty. A branch, after all, of the umbrella term “beauty”. Isn’t it the same as admiring the way leaves fall from the tree or the setting sun casts its glow on the mountains in the far distance? Isn’t human beauty, after all, subsumed under natural beauty? For we are all children of nature. Yes, there is vanity, gendered imbalance, and consumerism involved in the management
of appearances; but can we, in our appreciation of it, be restored to a simpler state, and adopt a more purifying lens that attempts to see beauty without distortion or comparison?
As someone who has always viewed thinness as a condition to work towards, I think this renewed appreciation for naturalness enables us to feel more at home in our own bodies, no matter what form it happens to take at the moment. Let us make peace with the cyclical nature of body shape in response to our environments and life stages. Know that in each and every stage, you embody a particular, transient version of you. With this attitude, I promise that one day, you will learn to develop a loving and appreciative eye towards every version of yourself you ever were and ever will be.