This poem really is a slam. Please consider watching this live performance on my youtube channel:

 

I feel the gaze of the man I love as I cover myself in chemicals.

His head behind mine in the mirror, still sitting in the still-warm bed

He’s going to be late if he doesn’t get a move on.

 

He watches as I paint my face

Foundation, concealer, powder, and a spray to hold it all in place

Perhaps today is a day for eye shadow, eye liner, mascara, eyebrow definer...

I feel his disapproving look

He says I don’t need all this muck

As has every man I’ve ever had

But somehow we never manage to believe them, do we?

After all, the women that our screens and magazines sell to us, and our men, as beauty

How often do they appear au naturel?

 

Not ten minutes ago this man opened his eyes next to mine

He sees my skin in its post-sleep virginity

Before I get up, get dressed up, get made-up and dolled up

As I do every day, except perhaps Sunday when there is only him to see me.

He has seen all my permutations of nakedness

In health and in sickness

All my transformations, deformations and various sizes of dress.

He stood by my when my body inflated as the baby inside gestated

He’s been places no other would go

He’s twice watched me push a life out from down below

I think it’s safe to say he doesn’t give a f*** what my eyebrows look like

In the pre-dawn of a working weekday.

 

And in five minutes we will go our separate ways

Not to really see each other again until our heads meet once more on the pillow

Once more undressed and cleansed

And ready to do it all again tomorrow.

 

And the thought occurs to me:

If I’m not doing this for the man I love, who am I doing it for?

For my colleagues, with whom I exchange greetings,

And emails, and meetings and no small amount of stress

But hopefully not judgements about face and dress?

 

For my students?

They don’t really see “me”

For them it’s just a game

I’m just part of the furniture

I’m lucky if they remember my name

A tool in the construction of their own futures

And that’s the way it should be.

 

For the people in the street?

For the folk one doesn’t really meet?

When was the last time you noticed, let alone cared, what a stranger was wearing?

Who would dare to be caught staring, or even risk meeting the gaze of another

Who looks up long enough from their phone-fed bubble

Or out beyond their own cares and troubles

To observe the dress,

or the distress,

or the unhappiness,

of an unknown sister or brother?

 

So for whom? For me?

Is this make-up

Like the childhood game of dressing up?

The pleasure and comfort of pretending, of playing a role

- A princess, a pirate, a cowboy, a working mother who has everything under control.

Is this inane quest to match some idealised, stylised notion of beauty

A way of avoiding my inner reality?

Let’s ignore my mind, my body, my soul, my heart

And try a surface, sticking-plaster approach to stop things falling apart.

It’s so much easier to fuss about our skin

Than to know, and to show, the beauty we have within.

 

I feel the gaze of the man I love

And I see, I know, that he loves me

I could leave all these beauty products to rot on the shelf

If only I could find a way to learn to love myself.