Why is it so hard to accept the party is over?

What SZA's song 'Drew Barrymore' made me think about beauty

I was invited to take part in Inua Ellams’s latest R.A.P. Party at the Wellcome Collection, where he asked writers to share a short piece of prose on the theme of beauty to coincide with their current exhibition The Cult of Beauty. Inua asks writers to use inspiration from hip-hop culture, picking songs to link their pieces to. I chose SZA’s swoony song ‘Drew Barrymore’:

I sometimes think of my personal beauty as a party that’s over, a party I went to but was too self-conscious to enjoy. Like a vapour, it is only in its aftermath that I can sense it was there.

When I was a teen, I remember I looked in the mirror for a long time one day and became absolutely captivated by my face. I saw something I felt was the very truest me, the loveliest me, but an hour or so later I looked in the mirror again and whatever I’d seen before was gone. In the weeks that followed, I kept going back to check, as though I’d not looked hard enough – and if I conducted a thorough inquiry, I’d find this version of myself again, one where every feature was arranged in absolute harmony.

It messed with my head. Maybe it was simply that the quality of the light had drawn self-regard out of me. But what I’d felt wasn’t confidence or vanity, it was something else, something abstract like happiness, fear, or grief. Some objective truth had been communicated to me; it was a kind of wisdom that I lost as soon as it was granted. Beauty was a sensation that comes and goes, it is sensed, not seen.

I’ve fallen into every beauty trap that it’s possible to fall into. I’ve taken the shame of my body into therapists’ offices, into toilet cubicles because I didn’t think I deserved to have eaten, I’ve fixated so hard on other people’s perceived perfection that I’ve barely seen them, I’ve bought elixirs, electronics, regimes enough to ravage my bank statements. This June I turn 46 and I feel it’s time to abandon the ideals of physical beauty. My hair will continue to go grey; my fat body will lose some of its coherence, my skin will grow frail and pleat. The self-negs I have routinely directed at myself I’m sorry I’m not more [         ], I’m sorry I’m not more [             ], I’m sorry I don’t [         ], are beginning to lose their urgency; I am intentionally complicating my relationship with beauty and part of that is a refusal to allow beauty to be held to its most simplistic interpretations. I can’t continue to love myself down, full of I’m sorrys for my body & self-esteem as though both those parts of me are screeching emblems of moral failure. It’s true that I am a lot. But being a lot isn’t good or bad, it just is. My face is expressive, its swift to share my inner world. My hair is long enough that my niece and nephew like to play with it and put it in plaits. My body is soft and warm, when my cats come to settle onto my hip or lap, I ask them am I nice and warm for you, baby? And when someone I love needs a hug, its beautiful to know I’m warm enough to comfort them.

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If you’re in London maybe you’ll be up for coming to this event I’m doing at Waterstones in Crouch End this Thursday. Sheena Patel – author of I’M A FAN – is interviewing me. I love her. I think it will be very fun! Tickets are available here.