“Consciousness is a pitiful hostage of its flesh-envelope, whose surges, circuits and secret murmurings it cannot stay or speed”
Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1991, p7

My body entombs me.

The body is the source of the drive for gratification. Its appetites never cease. It is insatiable and cannot sustain itself. It requires maintenance through sport and exercise. It requires fuel. Under consumerism the old hostility towards its appetites has been modified. Still the object of discipline, we impose the aesthetic sensibilities of culture upon it, extracting compliance with the aid of cosmetics and depilatories, personal hygiene products stock the shelves with their anxiety-suppressing fragrances, from mouthwash to panty liners, unsightly hair removers, shaving the armpits.

The price we were forced to pay for participation in the male-dominated “higher” pursuits of contemplation, spirituality or artistic creation was celibacy, exclusion from the reproductive function (the lingering traces of the choice reflected in the single state of the professional, university-educated women who surround me), renunciation, cloistered withdrawal, the shaven head the symbolic rejection of feminine attributes, the shape-disguising uniform, the stifling of individuality, the severing of all human ties of friendship and mutual affection, the immersion in the divine achieved by means of total self-abnegation. Having denied the self the pleasure and pain of involvement, their remains moulder in the soil without even the residue of individuality implicit in the parentally-selected name (effaced by the generic appellation bestowed upon entry). It is better to experience than to shun experience.

I have never defined myself by looks (although my confidence has been severely undermined by being fat, although it is to an extent a conscious choice, the perfect alibi for failure in the atmosphere of increasing intolerance, I supply myself with a pretext for rejection to avoid confronting the possibility of a deeper underlying cause, my shortcomings situated on a purely physical level), normality a state of neglect. I remain inattentive to my body, quelling its longings, gorging myself to still my libido. A woman presents her body to herself as in a mirror: she is not permitted to inhabit it straightforwardly, but is trained to assess it, as it is constantly assessed by others. It does not exist for her own benefit alone, but is under scrutiny, a determinant of her life chances, her desirability. Restlessness is not a male monopoly, we are all mortal, encouraged never to be truly content in an economy driven by the imperative to succumb to impulse. It is the illusion of groundedness, of completeness I find so seductive. Freedom from the urge to extinguish the self in the other’s embrace. Fulfilment rendered contingent, reliant upon an outside agent, on acquiescence. This is where the fading and the sagging become sadly relevant. If we are prisoners of the fleshy casing, how much more are we prisoners of the meanings attached to it by our culture. So I am defined by a standard of beauty nevertheless, against my will, without my consent, in spite of my resistance. I cannot compete with those dark-haired girls with their melting eyes, willow figures, short skirts and lustrous tights. A moment of searing clarity, how perfect my conditioning! The response to my appearance I have ever brushed aside: at best an irrelevance, at worst a form of oppression. The casual indifference of youth. My defiance, once a matter of principle, becomes grotesque, comical as my market value diminishes beyond my control. My body encases me, I am walled in without water or sustenance. Dry mortar and darkness, the ferocious pangs of starvation eat away at my marrow as I slowly crumble.