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an exhibition blog You Look Beautiful
October, 2013
You
look beautiful. My
daughter does not like to be complimented on her looks – exactly like
me when I was her age. She, like I used to, replies with a growl or a scream,
and a swift retreat. It took me until adulthood to know how to get out of these
situations without embarrassment or hostility. A
few weeks ago I tried to teach her my ÒoutÓ; a quick Òthank youÓ that should
end the matter. I told her she could talk Shakespearian if she wanted and
say, ÒWhy thank you, sir – or madam,Ó but she rejected it – blech. And
then I started to think about how it felt to be complimented at that age.
Many of these compliments were comments on my wearing properly feminine
clothing – following the rules. It would feel as if the person had
stopped me and handed me something odd that I didnÕt know what to do with. It
felt more like theyÕd stuck something sticky and unfamiliar on me –
their own pleasure -- and their smiles expected something of me – I had
no idea what – to take pleasure in their pleasure? And
so IÕd growl and get away, and try to wipe their pleasure off, as if it was a
piece of snot. They would be unhappy. They would be unhappy that I was
unhappy with their pleasure, and then I would be unhappy I made them unhappy,
butÉ I didnÕt start the whole mess. A compliment
supposed to be a gift and we are supposed to be grateful. Why arenÕt we? Why
am I not grateful? There
is the expression learn to take a
compliment. Why do we have to? Why
do we have to learn it? Because it
isnÕt natural or nice? Is it something nasty disguised as something nice? Why
are we supposed to take it? Is it
just us girls? ThereÕs also the expression
donÕt take it lying down. Knowing how to take it implies hardening yourself to some kind of nastiness or violence. What
is it? This ÒcomplimentÓ thing? My
daughter is beautiful. I find almost all children beautiful – their
youth, their skin, the economy of their form, their energy, their bloomingness. It gives me great pleasure to look at them,
to watch them run, scream, shout, and be.
Of
course, this has nothing to do with them, with who they are as human beings,
with what they love to do, and with the lives they lead. I get pleasure from
my perception of them – and probably my aging mommy hormones -- and
thatÕs what it is: my perception and my pleasure. In
a traditional compliment, the speaker (often a he) expresses his pleasure in your appearance, and you are
expected to take part in his or her pleasure of looking at you. You are
expected to be pleased, and grateful for the attention. Do boys get complimented
like this? My son does by me now and then, and he is embarrassed by it also. Why
are we supposed to give a shit about other peopleÕs pleasure? The
speaker claims a relationship of giving and receiving pleasure. The object of
his pleasure cannot beforehand decide whose pleasure she is exciting or supposed
to share. Sharing pleasure should be voluntary, and this is not, which is why
compliments are extra creepy if they comes cold from a total stranger, or
someone you arenÕt close to. Sharing pleasure oriented around our physical
beings is usually something we do with people we love and trust. Perhaps
much of the discomfort comes from the idea our self-concepts are based on
what is reflected back to us in the eyes of others. Perhaps we donÕt want
this to be true. We are being told who we are and what weÕre like, and weÕre
supposed to take it, be grateful,
and illuminated as to ourselves? And
often, compliments arenÕt very complimentary. How often is a girl told she is
admired because she is strong or smart or quick? How often does the comment
piece her apart? Does anyone consider Ònice assÓ a compliment? Compliments
are often just comments, and run the spectrum from nice to abusive. When
I was in high school I got more abuse. Though I didnÕt know it at the time,
the school I went to was regarded as a ÒroughÓ one. IÕm always surprised when
I hear that not all girls went through the pervasive misogyny and sexual
harassment that seemed to be common currency at my school. From about the age
of twelve I could expect, every day, to be called a range of expletives, from
Òfat slutÓ to Òfucking cuntÓ to Òcock-sucking whore.Ó Did
the wealth of harassment mar my ability to ÒtakeÓ comments? Did I regard
being noticed by others as a danger signal? How could I even attempt to believe
anything that was complimentary when I was barraged with much more that was
not? Did I need to push all of it as far away as I could because the evil
words had such a strong effect? Somehow,
I donÕt think so, because I can see my daughter reacting to compliments in
the same way I did, and IÕm pretty sure she hasnÕt gone through that kind of
harassment. But this is another story I have to tell her: that the speaker
hates women, just as some people hate Jews or blacks or gays. These words are
a form of violence that illuminates who the speaker is, not who their victim
is. Perhaps
itÕs also hard for me to take pleasure in my physical being because I was
raised with all that Christian shame and misogyny. I thought it was better to
be a spirit without a body. And
why do people, myself included, compliment others? What are we getting by
sharing our pleasure? Are we trying to communicate love? Are we trying to
tell others who they are? Boost their self-esteem? And
of course, a compliment is often just part of the male sexual strategy. Once
in a deserted tunnel in part of the London Underground, a strange man told me
what he thought of my waistline. I got away from him as quickly as possible.
He made an additional comment, annoyed that I didnÕt know how to take a
compliment – and annoyed I was repelled rather than attracted. I
could retrospectively take pleasure
in the compliment because I wasnÕt worried about being alone with a strange
man the deserted subway tunnel. Nothing bad was going to happen next, but I
didnÕt know it then. This
was, of course, a direct confrontation between subject and object, the
observer and the observed, the see-er and the seen. In
times and places of purdah, for a woman to ÒappearÓ was (is) culturally regarded
as a sexual tease, was her making the first moveÉ so whatever happened after
that was her fault. In the 17th century trial of Artemisia
GentileschiÕs rapist, (at which she
was tortured) she was accused by the rapistÕs defenders of being seen at a window in her fatherÕs
house. So she must have been a whore, there at the window to advertise her
waresÉ so the rapist was innocent, because women who sell themselves are
common property, and donÕt belong to their fathers anymore. That was the form
of the trial: GentileschiÕs father suing the rapist for damage to his
property. She was an object indeed. Once,
again in the London Underground, a man stared at me so blatantly, I got fed
up. Women are not supposed to notice -- supposed to pretend they donÕt see -- but IÕd started staring
back sometimes – as a kid, I was always good at staring contests -- and
this time I started making weird faces. He
looked away, of course, and pretended not to notice. Now
that was a pleasure I enjoyed. Learn
to take a compliment? Perhaps
my daughter, as a young female of the species, is rebelling against her first
encounters with being Ôthe observedÕ rather than Ôthe observerÕ in our
culture: the object rather than the human being. This
must be quite a shock when you are nine and you are the center of your universe
– the one who watches, feels,
and acts. But
a few days ago, I observed my daughter overhearing her teacher and I discuss
her progress and the work she was doing. She was listening to words like creative, working very hard, and smart. What
I saw on her face then was a wonderful secret smile – not a big smile,
you understand: nothing anyone else was supposed to see or appreciate -- but
a smile that only happened to show because it was glowing within, and
radiating all the way through her, building on what she knows about herself. And
that was the most beautiful thing. For more Revisionary go to
the Revisionary BlogrollÉ
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Toronto Globe and Mail, Jim Bartley: ÒirresistibleÓ Òbeastly goodÓ ÒBernice FriesenÕs art is finely
honed and gracefully wielded, her darkly beautiful images inseparable from
her thematic purpose.Ó ÒItÕs said of some novels that they
beg to be filmed. The pictures Friesen makes are a cinematographerÕs dream.Ó The Winnipeg Free Press, Ariel Gordon: Òimmensely pleasurableÓ Òwholly convincing leaps of the
imaginationÓ Òa great
successÓ Pages and Patches Devin Pacholik ÒFriesen is a master.Ó http://pagesandpatches.blogspot.ca/2012/03/book-of-beasts-bernice-friesen.html See Reviews: http://coteaubooks.com/index.php?p=Reviews
Book of Beasts Buy From Coteau
Books http://coteaubooks.com/index.php?p=Shop And The Book of Beasts is now in
French Translation from QuŽbec Amerique: Le Bestiaire
des anges Translated by Lori Saint-Martin and
Paul GagnŽ, 2011. http://www.quebec-amerique.com/livre-details.php?id=1225
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God was a little black-haired bastard named Charlie with
wet sheet skin, bleeding gums, and fists full of iron oxide pebbles which he
flung in JamesÕs face, each sting becoming a freckle. His mother told him it
was God whoÕd given him the freckles, and it was true because he couldnÕt
remember having freckles before Charlie started throwing stones. If freckles
were so bad, at least they werenÕt his fault. He convinced himself they were
caused by wounds, like the blood he saw on JesusÕ side, flowing down the
plaster of his motherÕs crucifix like bubbled spit. It was easier to look at
JesusÕ blood than at his own, and after he realized freckles were ugly --
except on his beautiful mother -- it wasnÕt easy to look at himself at all. Skinny, big ears, red hair messed like the knots of hay
sticking out of a cowÕs mouth. These were the things he heard about himself
after he got into the habit of listening, when being seen and not heard
became too boring. He told himself he didnÕt care, began scratching his face.
Get rid of the spots. Even if his mother said she liked them, that they were
delicious, especially when she was a dog, and licked them off his nose -- see
the freckles on her tongue? They tasted salty, she said, were delicate and
crunchy like little potato crisps. Sometimes he was a dog, too, and so he
scratched anyway. And then his father told him to stop that scratching, sit
still, and he would, almost, until every adult eye was averted, and then his
hand would strike like the tongue of a frog, and he would stuff another jaffa cake in his mouth. Everything was alive to him. Not just the neighbor's cat
and his grandfather's King-Charles' spaniel, not just the ladybirds and
dragonflies and earthworms, but the turnips wincing as they were pulled from
the ground in his mother's garden. He made little playful screams whenever
his mother tore lettuce apart for a salad, said ouch, ouch, when she
chopped onions, misinterpreting her tears as sympathy for the poor
vegetables. He refused to eat the tiniest grape from the vine, even though his
father told him it would perish anyway. He kept it in a little baby-food jar
in the fridge, and took it out to hold it in the palm of his hand and pet it
like a kitten. His first word, as a baby, had been meow, and he
was a cat-sneak behind doors and beneath the tablecloth. His grandfather
called his father a senseless dreamer -- that acting, way back then,
for GodÕs sake -- who should never have married a child who was such a harpy,
whatever that meant. It seemed to mean an Irish woman who wore her red hair
too loose, her blouses too tight, and who didnÕt care what she said in polite
company -- and Oxford was nothing if not polite in the late 1950Õs.... Awards -Fiction Award, Saskatchewan
Book Awards
-Globe and MailÕs top 100 and top 5 first fictions
-Longlisted, Rogers Writers Trust of Canada
Fiction Prize |
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Prairie
Fire, Tom Schmidt: Òreads
like a freight train bearing down on youÓ Òferocious feminist verse that chews
up the patriarchs of western civilization from Freud to Plato to
the Pope and spits them out.Ó CV2,
Tanis MacDonald: Òintelligent
and hilariousÓ Ònot for anyone who wishes to keep
their dogma chained up in their mental backyard.Ó Wireweed: ÒsplendidÓ ÒFriesen
is a stand-up comicÓ Òuproariously,
ribaldly funnyÓ Òshe
has merged with the goddess KaliÓ |
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Canadian Author: from ÒBernice
Friesen, Winner of the Vicky Metcalf Award for Best Young Adult Short Story
in Canada:Ó ÒBernice Friesen calls it luck, but
anyone whoÕs read her work could only call it talent.Ó Òclear, pared down, yet richly
expressive prose.Ó http://www.canauthors.org/awards/metcalf.html Quill and Quire, Maria
Campbell: ÒI thoroughly enjoyed and applaudÓ Òthere are no cheap shots here, no
easy observations, nothing that appears in uncrystallized
form.Ó ÒFriesen writes with the confidence
of someone who knows sheÕs taken full advantage of hindsight, yet her
narratives read as thought theyÕve been written from Ôthe inside,Õ from the
confines of a high schoolÕs narrow halls.Ó Purchase
from Thistledown Press: http://www.thistledownpress.com/cgi-bin/thistle/thistle.cgi?function=dispbook&bkid=59&nf= |
It sits on my desk in a sour cream container, in a nest of
white and pink Kleenex. On it is a happy face, slightly screwy, and a
squiggle of yellow marker on top for hair. The assignment is to carry an egg
around for a week, pretending itÕs your kid. Dad could hardly believe it when
I told him Mrs. Bowman makes the Family Life class do this every year. He
told me to do what I want - even scramble it and lose the ten marks if it
would make me feel better. I donÕt know why IÕm taking this stupid class
anyway. Just because StephanieÕs here and everyone else is
doing it, I guess. Ò...and at this point, the sperm meets the egg.Ó Mrs. BowmanÕs flabby cheeks get redder and splotchy.
Reproduction embarrasses her almost as much as it embarrasses Stephanie.
StephanieÕs only 16 like me, so itÕs forgivable. Mrs. Bowman has three kids,
so itÕs not. ÒCan you imagine Mrs. B. having sex?Ó I whisper, and point
out Mrs. B.Õs bulgy panty line. Stephanie once told me I was the funniest
person in the world. SheÕs weird with jokes. She laughs the hardest at the
dirty ones, but wonÕt tell them ; she absorbs them but then wonÕt let them
escape. ÒShh, Lori,Ó Stephanie always
blushes when she laughs. ÒOur next topic is motherhood, the most important part of
the Home Economics course,Ó Mrs. Bowman says, right after she skims over the
pregnancy handouts with us. SheÕd been sick, so we were way behind in our
notes. I think she got sick on purpose, just so she could skip over the sex
part. I squash the new heading under the scrawled notes on my
last page, and wish I hadnÕt been late for class so I could have gotten paper
from my locker. IÕd seen Stephanie, Lill and Faith
whispering at the locked door, and when IÕd got there, theyÕd stopped, guilty
looks on their faces, especially Stephanie. At first IÕd thought they were
talking about me, but Mrs. Bowman was walking right behind me jangling her
keys, so I couldnÕt be sure.... Awards:
The
Vicky Metcalf Award for Best Young Adult Short Story in Canada.
(Title Story, The Seasons Are Horses, won, from the Book of the same
name) |
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Press Kit
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BERNICE FRIESEN was born in Rosthern,
Sask. The life of her grandmotherÕs family has been
published in The Mulberry Tree by Victor Carl Friesen and Anna Friesen.
She trained as a printmaker at the University of
Saskatchewan, ending up with a B.F.A in visual art and a B.Ed. by 1990. She
took creative writing courses with Elizabeth Brewster, Guy Vanderhaegue and Tim Lilburn, and attended the Banff
Writing Studio. She has been an art studio lab assistant, art gallery
educator, and has taught Sage Hill Writing Experience for teens, and Fiction Freefall through the Saskatoon Writers Coop. Her writing and art has been published in Canada and
Europe, and has twice been short-listed for the CBC Radio Literary Awards.
Her writing has been included in two League of Canadian Poets winners anthologies, and Best Short Stories, 2002,
(Oberon). She has lived in England, New Zealand and British
Columbia, has taught herself to read French and Italian, and is currently
trying to understand quantum physics. Blame her for the art and design of
this website. She is the girl at the blackboard.
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View
the Shaw Cable interview of Bernice Friesen at |
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