After a few days back in Los Angeles following a dozen on the East Coast — and after a few months of living in West Los Angeles again after thirteen years in Pasadena — I’m feeling once again twinges of discomfort about spending so much of my life in a place that, for all its merits, is so famously focused on looks.
Yesterday, I chatted with Meredith, who cuts my hair. Meredith is from Mississippi, and herself recently back from a trip to her hometown on the Gulf Coast. She asked me about my trip to the East, and I remarked “Everytime I leave Los Angeles, I feel as if I get better looking.” Meredith laughed loudly, and agreed; the stylist next to her and her client chimed in with their assents. What started was a four-way conversation among the two stylists and their clients (all non-natives) about the toll that living in L.A., particularly on the Westside, takes on one’s self-image.
I’ve always struggled with vanity and body issues; in previous posts, I’ve talked about my struggle with a serious eating disorder and exercise addiction. I’m much more content and self-accepting in my forties than I was in my twenties, and that is a blessing. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t, with disappointing regularity, find myself studying my figure in a mirror or assessing the fit of my clothes, wishing that I were as lean as I was when I was at my thinnest. (Never mind that my thinnest years, though they corresponded with very fast running times, were also in most respects my unhappiest.) Becoming a father has been a huge help; focusing on a child is an excellent distraction and an effective palliative for narcissism. (How awful would it be if it weren’t!) Yet there’s no denying that my desire to be thin has not yet left me. I’ve said it before: I’ve been blessed, thanks to therapy and hard work and grace, with great success in overcoming so many of my addictions. My body dysmorphia and my anxieties about weight, however, remain with me to a far greater degree than I would like to admit.
Here’s the thing: I don’t realize until I leave Los Angeles how much more comfortable in my own skin I feel in other places. In New York, I invariably feel less self-conscious, even on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, than I do here in Southern California. And when I’m in Europe — even in fashion-conscious places like Paris or Florence or Mayfair — I don’t feel that sense that I’m too old. To put it another way, I feel more visible virtually everywhere else. I’ve written before, and many other feminists have as well, about the ways in which aging women are made invisible. There’s no question that we erase “older” women from our gaze in a way that we don’t with men; I’m keenly conscious that my authority as a teacher, for example, only grows with age. But though middle-aged men (I am certainly middle-aged now) are far less often rendered invisible than their female peers, I’ve felt — perhaps because of my unfortunate character defect of vanity — the way in which I too am more likely to “disappear” as I grow older. At least, I feel this keenly when I’m in West L.A.
I’m not writing this post to fish for compliments. I’m certainly not writing to complain about how tough it is to be me. I’m a damned lucky man in virtually every imaginable respect. But this character defect that leads me to be unduly concerned with my own appearance, this anxiety about my weight and my attractiveness that, while blessedly diminished lingers with me still, this puerile self-absorption — this , this, this is exacerbated by place. I wouldn’t go back to my younger, presumably “hotter” days for all the tea in China; the anxiety was crippling and the narcissism repellant. But I will say, as I move more deeply into that long and ill-defined period known as mid-life, that there are many other places I would rather live than here.
You didn’t grow up on the Westside, did you Hugo? As someone who did, I can tell you that it tends to skew for a very long time what one expects that other people should look like and general perceptions of ideal form. Living away from there (even NorCal, much less other states), well, it does lead to a bit of culture shock.
No, grew up on the Monterey Peninsula; didn’t move to the Westside until I came to grad school at UCLA, aged 22, in 1989. But what you say jives with what I’ve heard from many a native.
Hmm… You know, I’ve wondered if this phenomenon can lead to something of a contrary trend. I’m speaking purely to individual experience, but I’ve found that what I find attractive very often extends beyond the purely physical, to the degree that nonphysical factors can play more of a role in whether I’ll find a woman attractive or not (in fact, I can find a woman who is highly attractive on a physical level quite repellent based on personality factors at times, to the point that I don’t even notice her physically). It might be a case of what is common becoming eventually unnoticeable. Who knows?
The only time I’ve been to Los Angeles, I didn’t notice people’s appearances being generally better than I’m used to, but the rate at which people stopped me on the street to comment on my appearance skyrocketed. I’d guess I’m normally stopped ~once a month by someone who wanted to comment on my appearance. When I was in LA (Err, Pasadena – I hope confusing these won’t offend) that must’ve happened at least once a day.
When I got relocated from northern California to southern, I also got placed in a cubicle among people in marketing and sales until space could be found for me with the techies in my actual working group. So, my first impression was that southern California was way more appearance conscious than northern California. Once I got moved back to the nerds where I belonged, that impression ameliorated some; nerds anywhere are still mostly nerdy. I could probably even be comfortable working in Hollywood, as long as I was one of the people doing the computer graphics, and not one of the people who actually have to look nice.
The other places that I’ve noticed are similarly focused on appearance are Las Vegas and South Florida.
Lynn, that reminds me of Grant Imahara in Mythbusters; he’s a geek on TV, and the Mythbusters producer had to fight against him being severely made over; even then, he still has contacts and veneers.
One of the reasons I dislike SoCal.
Las Vegas is somewhere I really dislike so I do try and avoid going.
We do go to South Florida fairly often, and I don’t find the body fascism — even on Ocean Avenue in South Beach — to be as bad as in Los Angeles. But Miami is probably second only to Los Angeles in terms of the problem!
1. I think New York is full of some of the most gorgeous people I’ve ever seen.
2. Don’t fall into the trap of blaming L.A. for certain problems.
3. A better method to fight against the narcissism may have been not giving this any airtime.
4. YOU ARE SVELTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1. It’s good to know you’re human (not that all humans have body dysmorphia).
2. What about Orange County? I’ve spent a lot of time there, and my goodness, the focus on body image is toxic.
Hillary, I’d say the phenomenon that Hugo is talking about goes all the way down to San Diego.
Yes, I think it runs through coastal Southern California from Santa Barbara County to the Mexican border. I don’t feel liberated from that anxiety when I’m in, say Laguna Beach or La Jolla; I do feel it when I’m in Boston or Fresno or any other damn place.
I’ve certainly felt this way. Most people wouldn’t assume this about Texas, but Texas is extremely vain as well. However, it is nothing compared to California in my opinion. I feel like a troll any time I’m in the southern part of the state.
I think the place I’ve felt the most at ease is Iowa City, Iowa.
Texas may be vain, but it’s so far from west LA in terms of people who spend inordinate amounts of time and money pursuing the narrow beauty ideal. i get off the plane at austin bergstrom (to say nothing of DFW or houston) and am overwhelmed with the staggering numbers of people who are very far from the spray-tanned skeletal botox crowd. i was always thin, but in the past six years that i’ve lived in LA, i’ve taken to qualifying that with “thin but not LA-thin.”
the focus on appearance in so-cal generally is pervasive, but in defense of my city, i’ll point out that the more time you spend east of say, la brea, the more you at least get away from the looks-obsession with ONE particular type. at least we mix it up on the east side!
Some parts of Greater Phoenix are very looks-obsessed, with Scottsdale being about the worst. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a cosmetic surgery clinic there and trophy wives and girlfriends are very similar in appearance to their LA counterparts.
Donna, used to live in Phoenix. You got that about right.
I live in a pretty rural area, and I always feel shabby when I go to a city, like my clothes are old and looking beat-up. It really bugs me how I feel like I need my clothes to look fairly new. I don’t want to buy stuff just because the stuff I have isn’t new.
I live in a large city on the East Coast but was born in the Midwest. I’ve noticed, when visiting relatives in my hometown, how much more fit people are where I currently live. Maybe it’s driving vs. walking culture, maybe it’s the food culture (very meat and potatoes where I come from). I don’t know what the difference is, but it’s there.
I lived in Orange County for 12 years. Living there made me feel so bad about myself. I recently moved to Arizona. There is much less of an emphasis how people should look here. I feel so much better now.
Nav, I think it’s partly the food culture, as a fellow native of the Midwest. Every time I have to go back on business it’s tough to find something that isn’t meat + starch with optional side of deep-fry.
And not to say that people were anything but nice when I’ve been in LA and OC, but geeziz, you people are obsessed with looks. An East Bay native friend of mine who moved to LA told me “My welcome-to-the-neighborhood free coupons were for tanning salons, nail parlors and discounts on breast implants.”
Hi I came across your article by chance, I was browsing for New Designer Fashion when I found your blog, I must say your site is very interesting I just love the theme, its astounding!. I’m in a bit of a rush right now to completely read your webpage but I have favorited it and also signed up for your RSS feeds. I will be back in a day or two. Thanks for a great site.