How to come correct
This week’s question comes to us from Charles Pearson:
Is it weird that video meeting tools offer appearance retouching effects? Are we that consumed with smoothing out wrinkles and moles?
No. It’s fine.
Today is my grandmother’s birthday, so we’re gonna talk about my grandmother. My grandmother lived in a small village in Portugal, and spent the majority of her life under a fascist regime. In the interest of time, I’ll tell you one story that sums her up.
My grandmother raised four kids. She gave birth to one—my father. The other three were collected through various family mishaps and shenanigans, which I don’t have time to explain. But one of them was my grandfather’s daughter from a previous marriage. I’ve never met her, but apparently she was stunning. She’s maybe seventeen in this story. She comes home crying one afternoon. My grandmother asks her what’s wrong and she tells her that a man said something to her that upset her. It was sexual in nature. My grandmother changes into her going-out clothes, fixes her face, fixes her hair, puts on her nice coat and the two of them go out looking for the man who upset my aunt. They find him in the town square, which isn’t surprising because this “man” was a young beat cop. My grandmother walks up to him, tears the badge off his coat, slaps him, and then walks to the police station and reports him.
My grandmother was justice, my grandmother was vengeance, my grandmother was kindness, my grandmother was all those things. But the part of that story that most personifies my grandmother was that she took the time to fix her face. Because there was no way she was going to slap a cop if she didn’t look her best.
My parents immigrated to the United States when I was two years old. But my grandmother insisted I spend my summers with her. So every year, until I was in high school, I’d fly over and spend a couple of months with her in the same town where she slapped that cop. Anytime we went out, whether it was to go to the market, or the cafe, or church (she insisted, saying no wasn’t an option), she would go through the same routine. She’d change from her apron, housecoat, and sandals into a going out dress. She’d fix her face. She’d fix her hair. This all took about an hour and if you think I ever dared complain, let me remind you this woman slapped a cop.
My grandmother didn’t go outside unless she was correct.
Looking back on this, I understand things I didn’t understand as a child. My grandparents weren’t people of means. In fact, they were poor. They grew up in a small podunk town deep inside a small country that was in the grip of fascism, and they did what they could to get by. They took in kids who needed to be cared for. They paid their bills. They put food on the table, which was often a chicken or a rabbit from the backyard. And when I spent summers with them their house was so full of love that there wasn’t room or time for lacking anything.
I also understand that my grandmother’s mode of resistance was fixing her face. She had no status other than the status she conferred upon herself. The minute she walked out the door, you saw someone important. Someone who carried herself with great authority. Someone who you didn’t dare fuck with.
If my grandmother had rushed out the door that afternoon my aunt was harassed by the cop in her housecoat and apron, things would’ve gone very differently. She would’ve been seen as someone with low status. Someone who’d probably spent the morning cleaning bedpans and defeathering a chicken in the kitchen sink. People like that don’t get to slap cops. So she put on her face. She fixed her hair. She stood up straight. She walked up to him. She ripped the badge off his coat. She reared back. She slapped a cop. Then she reported his ass. And no one dared to cross her because she didn’t look like someone you should cross.
My grandmother’s method of resistance was granting herself the status she needed to survive. My grandmother understood that survival meant playing a role. She understood that there were people society listened to, and people that society ignored. She understood the power of simulation. She understood that there’s who we are, and who we need to be perceived as to accomplish certain things.
(Small aside: My summer visit in 1974 came two months after the fascists were ousted from power. My grandmother, who never went to the airport, greeted me from her living room window waving a small Portuguese flag. It was the first time I’d ever seen a Portuguese flag inside her home.)
When I log onto Zoom, or one of its cousins, I don’t use any of the imaging retouching effects. It doesn’t occur to me, because it’s never had to occur to me. I am a white man working in a white man’s field under a white man’s government. I have the privilege of looking like shit (I do clean myself up) and being taken seriously. This isn’t something I want, but it’s something I get regardless. I doubt people do backchannel chats on how I look during the call, or after the call. But rest assured that happens for other people on those calls. I know this because I’ve seen it happen after in-person meetings. We comment on the body of a recent mother, or a co-worker who’s gained (or lost) weight. We comment on people’s hair. (At least on Zoom we can’t ask to touch it.) We talk about the bags under people’s eyes. We debate who looks like they had a “rough night.” (Pro tip: it’s usually the recent mothers.) We talk about outfits. We use words like “unprofessional” and phrases like “not putting in any effort.”
Also, let’s be honest. We’re not on Zoom because we’re working. I’m not even sure what we do anymore can be called work. It’s a simulation of work. We get on Zoom and report on whether targets, projections, and KPIs (whatever the good godfuck those are) have been met, we move things around a spreadsheet. We shuffle the chairs on the Titanic. We make proclamations about how much hot air we’ll be moving from one location to another location. We get and give updates on how close we are to achieving a breakthrough which is always right around the corner. We fire up some slop generator to come up with our next response. And just for kicks, we’ll do a complete reorg every couple of weeks. All while Chad and Todd backchannel about Cheryl’s cleavage.
None of this is real (except the harassment), so why bring your real self to it?
We’re all just projecting the selves that work best in the simulation until we can end the call, take a piss, and finish the egg sandwich we made three Zoom calls ago that’s sitting half-eaten on the kitchen counter.
When my grandmother got home, the going outside outfit would come off and get hung back in the closet. Back into rotation. She’d put the housecoat back on. The apron. The slippers. She’d make a plate of crackers and cheese, or bread and butter, and we’d spend the afternoon watching bawdy Brazilian soap operas on TV, which we both loved.
She saved her real self for the people she loved, and who loved her back.
🙋 Got a question? Ask it. I might just answer it.
🙏 Why is Peter Thiel going on about the Antichrist? What’s it got to do with “the rapture”? Sacha Judd explains it all.
📺 You’ve probably already seen it, but just in case you haven’t… Jimmy Kimmel’s return monologue is worth watching.
🍉 Please donate to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.
🏳️⚧️ Please donate to Trans Lifeline.