Kitty Corner: ‘Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt’

Just the other week, I was applying my standard daily eyeliner when I noticed some fine lines emanating from the corners of my eyes when I smiled.

Assuming I’ll make it to 75, this discovery immediately sent me spiraling into a full-blown quarter-life crisis. Before I knew it, I was wading through 20 tabs on my computer touting the benefits of rosehip oil in minimizing the appearance of crow’s feet. For God’s sake, I’m 18, not 38. I thought I was excused from worrying about collagen and skin elasticity until my mid-20s, at least.

This obsessive compulsion over a particular physical trait, has, I’ve noticed, become a recurring pattern of behavior over the years. Out of the blue, I’ll discern some deficiency with my [insert specific attribute here], scour decades-old forums and sketchy exercise websites in the hopes of finding a miraculous overnight remedy, cry about it in front of the bathroom mirror, and then, in a month, return to the same oblivious indifference that I possessed before all the fuss began. That is, until the cycle commences all over again.

I’m sure that 15 years of classical ballet haven’t helped; if anything, it’s only exacerbated the neurosis. Staring at yourself in the mirror for 10 hours a week, scrutinizing every lump and bump and drawing unflattering comparisons to the gazelle-like girls around you, isn’t exactly conducive to a healthy self-image.

Of course, body insecurity is nothing new to my particular demographic. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single teenage girl who hasn’t shouldered the burden hoisted on her by movies and magazines to be pretty, be thin, be flawless.

But my itchy discomfort in my own skin goes beyond pure self-esteem issues. I recently came to the realization that all of my contributions will always be accompanied by a caveat. There is no way to separate the pure, crystal clarity of thought and theory, to screen out all the messy bodily functions that come attached to ownership of a consciousness.

Existence precedes essence; the mind and the body are mutually inclusive. My cognitive system and my somatic system can never be sundered. Consequently, whatever contributions I have to offer, my philosophical musings, my conceptual reasoning, are first passed through the filter of my perceived attractiveness. My rounded nose, my monolid eyes — they are a blight upon the sterile sanctity of abstraction.

Believe me, if I were capable of transcending my tangibility, sloughing off my body like the skin of a snake and existing solely as a sentient entity manifesting in a glimmer of sunlight, the whisper of a current, I would do it in a heartbeat. I mean, in a second, because I wouldn’t have a heartbeat anymore.

But I can’t, so I’ll settle for the next best thing. Nowadays, I largely disregard my body — an annoying but necessary fact of existence — like taxes or traffic on the 10. I live in a blissful state of willful ignorance, punctured, on occasion, by a sharp pinprick of the old insecurity. But these instances are few and far between, and for the most part I go on living sans souci, the architecture of my flesh and sinews a mere afterthought.

In the meantime, my crisis over my crow’s feet has diminished, but not disappeared completely. But what am I supposed to do — stop smiling? I think I’d rather invest in a bulk order of rosehip oil.

Kitty Guo is a sophomore majoring in journalism and computational linguistics.  She is also the lifestyle editor of the Daily Trojan. Her column, “Kitty Corner,” runs every other Wednesday.