"to wrest control of her own image"

art & self & beauty

[Image: The author sells her clothes on Depop, and I’m looking at a vintage coat. Gorgeous black wool coat, very warm, excellent condition, white fox fur collar. There’s a small flaw on one button (see pic). (I’m 5’4” and wear small.) The author models the coat, standing in the corner of a room. The wall behind her to the left (her left) is white and roughly plastered, and behind to her right is a black paneled door, its silver nob molded to resemble a spider web. The author faces forward. Her face is cut off just above the chin, below the lips; her hands are in her pockets.]

[Image: In the next frame, the author has turned her body 90 degrees counterclockwise, giving me a side view of the coat. She has taken a step back, or moved the camera, or maybe simply tilted her chin down towards her chest and now I see her mouth and her nose below the bridge. The buttons on the coat are black, encased in silver around the perimeter, five buttons down the front, one on each pocket, one on the outer wrists of each sleeve.]

[Image: The author turns her back to me, showing off the vent extending from the center of the coat’s half belt, down to the hem. Her ponytail emerges from the tuft of fur.]

[Image: The author is gone. The coat is displayed on a hanger against a wall, where it shares a nail with the small blue painting hung behind it. The image is underexposed, losing detail in the blacks. The pockets vanish into the dark abyss of fabric, save for the buttons, their silver outlines calling out their placement where the author’s hips (or potentially my hips) would be.]

[Image: The author’s hand opens the coat for a closeup. A glimpse of black silk lining. Embroidered in black thread with white piping, the initials J E A, with a flourish. Above the letters, a white silk label reading WIN__MANS (where I have placed a “__” is where the label bends over itself to the perspective of the camera—the author hides the full brand name from me), is zig-zag-stitched into place with thin black thread.]

[Image: The author slips the 4 fingers of her left hand into the right pocket of the coat for another closeup. Her thumb reaches upward.]

[Image: a blurry close-up of one button, scratched in the center to reveal a tiny patch of pink beneath the black. I add the listing to my favorites.]

I love the way the algorithm notes the extent of my engagement and proceeds to show me more of that thing. For this reason, I always over-engage. I’ll like and heart and fave a post, bookmark, DM it to myself, and screenshot it; I download it directly to my phone. All of the ways to plead with the organizational brain of the internet, please show me more like this, please flood my field of vision with a world like this. If I am what I consume, please feed me this—

[Image: the two women in the West Village taking fit check/OOTDs for tiktok who went viral last summer for each being caught in the background of the other’s video before they realized the presence of the other, turning around to wave hello, and everyone in the comments wrote “HI BARBIE!”]

—until I’m exhausted and prickling with shame at my over-indulgence. I asked for and then received every angle of this moment, as well as every bit of analysis, every proclamation: this is the beauty of female friendship/I love women.

The author sends me a Special Offer for the coat on depop. $20 off the current price.

[Image: Marina Abramovic forcefully brushes her hair with one brush in each hand. The camera is zoomed in so close that when she tips her head back, most of the act itself—the brush, her hands, and the top of her hair—falls just out of frame. On YouTube, I watch a video of this video, which has been projected on the wall of a London gallery and recorded by a visitor. The visitor pans away, past another person, to a large framed photograph on the adjacent wall. The video is reflected in the glass. Abramovic’s reflection repeats the statements Art must be beautiful. The artist must be beautiful. The visitor pans through the rest of the exhibition, more photographs on walls, objects arranged across a table with a bright white table cloth, another projected video, and finally back to the original. Abramovic is brushing her hair slowly now, folding it over the top of her head to one side, across her forehead, then back from the temples, then over to the other side. She winces and picks up the pace.]

[Image: YOUNG VICTORIAN • PHOTOGRAPHY. The author sells a sepia-toned photograph, shown laid against the warm wood of a desk. A woman in a dark wool coat with a fur collar. I stop because I think it might be the same coat, until I realize this one also has fur cuffs at the sleeves, which the coat for sale does not. I find more differences. This woman’s coat does not have any visible buttons, nor apparent pockets; the woman’s hands hang by her sides, and the right side of her coat is pulled across the left, and fastened in place with a silver brooch, round and molded, resembling a spider web. Writing Prompt Photograph. Black and white. I will send you a personally selected photograph from my collection. You will write a story inspired by an image. Or not. The app lets me know this listing is in one person’s bag.]

Last fall, I put on a pair of black twill shorts over opaque black tights. Then I layered thigh-high socks and boots that hit halfway over the knee. A slate gray racerback silk tank underneath a cropped sweater. When I asked Phil what he thought of my outfit he said Oh yeah! very 2009, or like, 2012; one of those years, you know what I mean. And I told him yes, that’s what I was going for. For a few days, I recorded my own fit check videos before I left for work, propping my cell phone up against the second-from-the-top stair of my stoop. Nearly 10 months later and I still haven’t posted them. 

ARTFORUM: “Can I be both image and image-maker?” Carolee asked when she made her momentous “Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions for Camera” in 1963, in which she attempted to “bring the canvas to life with dynamic brushwork, investing it with both substance and motion.” She decided to become part of her paintings, to wrest control of her own image, to pose herself against the history of the representation of women. “Of course you can do it / don’t you dare,” Carolee concluded. 

[Image: VINTAGE • JEWELRY. Small gold engraved “Julie” locket. The author asks me, Are You Julie? Do you want to be?]

[Image: On Instagram, an artist pulls clips of audio from movies, interviews with celebrities, writers, philosophers, more famous artists, and expertly mimes their speech. I watch her move her lips in perfect time to the pre-recorded sound as she goes about the task in front of her. Often appearing to be just-out-of-the-shower, wearing her robe, her hair still damp, round glasses sitting halfway down her nose as she reads the paper. She kneads a loaf of bread, brushing her hair away from her face with the back of her dough-caked hand; she sips her coffee; she puts on makeup, reads the newspaper, or holds a cordless landline phone to her ear; she pops a grape into her mouth, peels a banana, flips through mail, puts on an orange coat, or knits a scarf. She shakes a whipped cream canister, about to squirt it into her mouth when the clip cuts off and returns to the beginning. This trying-on of language, complete with predetermined pacing, tone, and interjected laughter. The translation in her mirroring is composed and casual, her tasks, her body language, the specific choices she makes within her constraints, the framework of the audio. Absorbed into the single constant of her steady, certain action. I wonder if this multi-tasking aids her seamless dubbing, if the division of her attention removes the risk of overthinking her performance. Anything that needs the whole brain at first, the artist says in an online interview, and then, as if by magic, uses almost none of it, is all I care about. She glances just off screen at the recipient of her puppeteers’ words. Her oeuvre of lip syncs as an annotated bibliography, note-taking like a commonplace book, jotted down in the handwriting of her performance, pearls to live together on the necklace of her instagram feed. This is how we engage with media, how it seeps into our psyche. When you’re young—watching movies or TV, or simply observing other people, how they present themselves and live their lives—you know yourself to be amorphous to a particular degree. Somewhat unfixed. You look for a mold to shape yourself within while you figure out the rest, until the mold can be removed.]

Late at night on TikTok (on any given night) I’m directed toward earnest teenagers on Live, playing guitar cross-legged in their beds. Tonight, the girl with soft shoulder length hair in a grown-out strawberry blonde is halfway through a Phoebe Bridgers song. When the song concludes she asks for requests from the comments, and agrees to play anything by Adrienne Lenker. At first, I misunderstand; I think the comment is requesting any song. The girl self-narrates as she looks up the tabs and lyrics on her laptop just off screen. She starts and stops her way through playing like rush hour traffic on the FDR. 

My notifications tell me: An item you saved just sold. This Writing Prompt Ph… has been snapped up. Don’t worry - we’ve found alternatives for you. Tap and scroll to see what we spotted.