Welcome to Letters From the Knot. This is a free (broadly) weekly newsletter, primarily built as an outlet for a fiction writing project I’m working on. On the weeks I’m not publishing fiction, though, I’ll be sending something a bit more freeform and personal. This is one of those.
Last week I decided it was time to visit the dentist, that most disdainful and patronising of quasi-public servants. I went, ostensibly, just for a check up. I breezed in, made small talk, and let him to poke around before I revealed my true reason for coming: vanity. I had decided that my disposable income had finally caught up with my desire for an ice white smile.
As he pulled his little hook out of my mouth, I popped the question. ‘So I’ve been wondering about getting my teeth whitened,’ I said. ‘It would be good to know what the process would b...’
He cut me off. ‘I think that’s a conversation for another time,’ he said. ‘We should probably sort out all of the fillings you need first.’
A chastening moment, to make a decision informed by vanity only to be told that, actually, you don’t even have the basics sorted. No point painting your house when the foundations are crumbling.
I have a strained relationship with vanity. When I think about how I look, I’ve tended to go down a bit of a rabbit hole that I’m sure will be familiar to many. I want to look nice because it makes me feel nice. It makes me feel nice, in part, because other people react differently towards me when I make an effort or change something about my appearance. Feeling nice makes me feel confident, which makes me more engaging, which starts a kind of virtuous circle.
The logical conclusion, perhaps, would be to keep going in this pursuit of the superficial, where the returns seem so obvious. But there’s that nagging voice in my head, the voice that says I shouldn’t be worrying about what other people think at all. I should be happy in myself, content with how I look, positive about my body. I shouldn’t be throwing away money trying to achieve someone else's idea of beauty, an idea of beauty largely manufactured by the same people who are telling me to buy all this shit, an idea of beauty that (in the mainstream at least) is patriarchally informed and only serves to reinforce rigid ideas around gender and wealth.
This is why I always feel paralysed when it comes to how I look. It’s surely less embarrassing to make no effort at all than it is to try to look nice and fail in some way? Better to be boring than vain. Surely. These are the reasons that I’ve never really dressed that well. As a child, with two older brothers, I think I must have survived mainly on hand-me-downs. I’ve tried to think about how I dressed as a teenager but I have almost no memory at all apart from the odd band t-shirt. In photos from the time, I’m this floppy-haired, red-faced misfit in big boxy jeans and shapeless grey jumpers, looking like a crudely-drawn cartoon character (see photo above).
When I started university, my influences were mixed. A lot of my friends were sort of hipsters, at least in 2008 terms (skinny jeans, American Apparel hoodies, flat peak caps), but the rest of them were English Literature students, effortlessly dressed down, perhaps demonstrating that they were operating on a higher plane, oblivious to the superficial. Unsure of myself, I went for a sort of chimeric mess somewhere in the middle. Trying a bit hard but not too hard. Picking and choosing weird little flourishes here and there, easily swayed by the suggestions of others because I had absolutely no clue when left to my own devices. This cluelessness peaked when, at the suggestion of a girlfriend of the time, I went to a nightclub with straightened hair and a flat cap. Mercifully, no photos exist of this event, my nadir.
But things have started to change in latter years. Since lockdown, especially, my relationship with my body and my looks is improving. I’m less paralysed, more willing to try new things. I’m still not the flashiest dresser, but I’m at least trying to make an effort to dress in a way that makes me feel good. I’m letting go. I’ve grown my hair, had my ear pierced, I’m getting a tattoo. Fuck it. A friend once imparted a useful bit of wisdom about this. You should try to think of your body as a sort of vehicle, or mechanism. Your body is not you, it’s a device to facilitate new experiences.
My improving relationship with my looks, then, is partly because I’ve sought better counsel in latter years. My partner recently expressed it well by pointing out that making an effort with your looks is not about looking good, necessarily, or conforming to external beauty standards, but about feeling yourself. It’s a form of outward expression. And if, like me, you have a job that requires you to mask most of the time, that’s a liberating bit of mental gymnastics.
It remains a complicated knot to untangle. It feels impossible to do anything without, in some way, giving in to vanity. Any haircut, any creative endeavour. For most of us, every act is intended in some way to appeal to the gaze of others, or as a way to get validation. But then, we’re social animals. Why not reframe vanity as expression, as a form of community? Is it such a bad thing to try and feel comfortable in your own skin?
But then who am I to say I'm squeamish about vanity? There’s nothing more vain, after all, than publishing a newsletter and using the entire thing to talk about yourself week after week.
Cultural indigestion
Watching - Finished The Gallows Pole this week and the only major criticism I can think of is that it was too short. There were a handful of scenes where it threatened to become a bit Peaky Blinders, but I think that can be forgiven considering how well executed everything else was. It’s so nice to see a period drama where the characters actually have a sense of humour. So often, shows like are painfully po-faced or, where there are gags, they always feel like they’re for the benefit of the audience. I want more shows where the characters make each other laugh!
Playing - Still Zelda, and it’s still great, but I can absolutely do without the plot. It’s quite jarring spending ages in blissful peace exploring this enticing wilderness, only then to get sucked into a talking bird’s half-baked coming of age story for two hours.