On Glamor
“Glamor” means magic, derived from “grammar” (fr.); since in the Middle Ages scholars, i.e. grammarians, were “viewed with awe” by the vulgar (who couldn’t speak Latin); and learning was associated with wizardry and the occult.
“That old black magic that you do so well.”
Perhaps what grammar brings to language, beauticians bring to looks.
Rules of usage and syntax, correctness of style, a rhetoric of charms. Come-hither stares. Eye-liner, false lashes, lipstick, rouge, hair style and dye, straightened and white teeth, lean fitness, smooth skin. Try a makeover, you too can be a sorceress. Or sorcerer (though men are likelier to seem handsome or charismatic than glamorous).
Clearly grammar improved Eliza Doolittle’s social prospects.
Different religions extol plainness and distrust glamor’s sensory appeal.
A girlfriend once told me she took holidays to Puerto Rico where men loved her thick ankles as symbols of prosperity.
At six months, supposedly, babies recognize their mirror image as “I,” and are forever caught between hating and loving this “other.” Narcissus drowns in his image; Snow White’s Mom becomes murderous.
Beware the beauty myth warned Naomi Wolf in 1991, which enslaves women and requires them to captivate. In 1962, even Betty Friedan feared aging to look like her mother. There is no objective hierarchy of beauty, Wolf proclaimed. We can refuse the trap. “The next phase of … women together … depends … on what we decide to see when we look in the mirror.”
A recovering male gazer, I welcomed Wolf’s call for “beauty that is non-competitive, non-hierarchical, and non-violent.” For forgetting “to elicit admiration from strangers, and [finding] we don’t miss it”; for “[awaiting] our older faces with anticipation”; for regarding our bodies as precious; for admiring “radiance, light coming out of the face and body,” as opposed to the body spotlighted, “dimming the self.”
Only for Romeo doth guileless Juliet teach torches to burn bright. To others she seems ordinary. And yet, who can resist Cleopatra’s show? No more contrived and breathtaking entrance than hers at Cydnus to conquering Antony (as reported by Plutarch and echoed by Enobarbus). As a goddess of attires, cosmetics, stage props, and allure, her spectacle beggars description. Fancy outworks Nature. She makes defect perfection. Makes hungry where most she satisfies.
Cross-dressed Rosalind advises the shepherd’s cruel mistress that she’s not for all markets. Cross-dressed Viola detects vanity in Olivia’s mock inventory of charms. Shakespeare’s women (played by boys) see through others’ courtship tyrannies, if not their own.
Is a world less concerned with looks a better place?
One refreshing characteristic of Mike Leigh’s films are his “ordinary,” imperfect-looking actors.
And what about the naturally favored? Should they apologize for their appeal and strive to look commonplace, if not invisible?
My granddaughter’s quinceanera, then high school prom. My son’s new bride, Judy. My wife too, as a bride, and now as mother of the groom. Wedding pix. Not glamorous, but shining, looking our best, all glammed up.
Looking good, I compliment. Am not, my wife says, fishing. Are too, I insist. Can’t take my eyes off of you. You’re my favorite work of art.
As for poetry, well, long live vernacular. The language of real people. Forgo the makeup and jargon. Look in thy heart and write.