To Own Things

Pamela Anderson, Berlin Syndrome, Miracle Balm crisis-- it's a dark one, kids!

Sad

Berlin Syndrome (2017) is a horrifying film, that depicts some of my worst fears and fears I imagine any woman might have. Weirdly, this made me some what immune to being actually scared while watching this. I was like, I already operate my life under the assumption that to be alone with any man ever is to play Russian roulette. To love a man. To let a handyman in to your flat. To get in an Uber. Maybe it felt weirdly liberating to have the fear be so completely realized in this film? Or confirming at least. Also, I lived briefly in Berlin as a naive twenty-something and had bad things happen to me there, so this film was additionally confirming in that respect. I have never seen a movie which portrayed Berlin so exactly as I remember it— big and empty and decaying with many public elements that read like an eighties shopping mall that never got updated, wandering through enormous dilapidated buildings with peeling walls to reach your friend’s flat. The weak, grey light. The graffiti. The gritty textures.

This film follows Claire, an Australian photographer backpacking alone for the first time ever who begins her journey in Berlin. She meets Andi, an intense, sexy tall German school teacher and they have a hot fling and then she wakes up in his flat one morning to find he’s locked her in and has double reinforced windows that can’t be broken. Andi locking her in wasn’t an accident, he has no intention of letting her out. And she’s not the first woman backpacking in Berlin alone he has done this to. This isn’t torture porn— it’s more broken and realistic and complex than that. I would describe this film as a survival thriller tinged with horror elements.

Teresa Palmer, the actress who plays Claire, gives an incredible performance, grappling with her situation, her imprisonment, her forced “romantic” relationship with her captor, over the long term. One moment that stuck with me was of Claire, who Andi has just made pose for a series of lingerie polaroids, weeping, saying to Andi that she doesn’t understand, that he could do anything he wanted to with his life. And the words sliding over Andi like teflon as he replies easily, “yes, but this is what I want to do.”

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Famous

Pamela, A Love Story (2023) is a documentary that brought me back to a question I’ve had for most of my adult life which is, what, really, is the benefit of being a beautiful woman? It’s like this thing we’re all supposed to devote our lives to, the societal apex of the feminine experience and our ultimate value, and like— what does it do tho? Like aside from make shopping easier. Do you know any beautiful woman whose life has been made easier or better by her beauty? Like maybe she’s made money from it, sure, Pam Anderson did, but like has it actually benefitted any woman in terms of personal fulfilment and happiness and love? Does it secure some ideal husband or future? The resounding answer I’ve come to every time is no. If anything it’s a crux. Everyone wants it or judges it and everyone thinks they’re entitled to it. Do people even see you underneath it? Do they care?

I kept thinking Anderson’s sons in this documentary looked some what haunted, skittish, unnerved. The sex tape scandal broke their family and I think broke them all as people in many ways. Anderson was told on a legal level that because she’d posed nude for money she had no right of ownership to private sexual images that were stolen from her home. She is so resoundingly traumatized by this event that she doesn’t seem to be able to interface with any information about it at all, stating that to this day they have no clue who stole the tape and why, when all that information was uncovered by a Rolling Stone investigative article in 2014. When one of her sons says he watched the Disney+ miniseries about her and Tommy Lee, Anderson basically has a panic attack as he tries to explain what he saw and ends the conversation. Along with her personal life, her career was ruined by this turn of events and she had no choice but to lean into being a joke as a career, a slutty clown, trying to eek out monetary support for causes she believed in if nothing else.

Anderson’s been married many, many times, been a victim of sexual and domestic violence, witnessed her parents volatile, highly sexual marriage and tried to replicate it. At one point she talks about how when she was married to Kid Rock, she found the relationship unsatisfying because of its dependability, she was unable to get high off romantic turbulence and went seeking rockier pastures. She mourns Tommy Lee, who went to jail for his violence toward her, as the lost love of her life. Anderson seems like a kind, gentle, funny, unhappy person who struggles for stability in her life and has been thoroughly punished for her beauty.

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Looking for a miracle

Right now I have a tub of £36 Miracle Balm from Jones Row in the shade “Miami Beach” sitting in my shopping cart on the Jones Row website. I learned of this balm from watching a recent Lisa Eldridge makeup tutorial on how to have greasy 90s slept-in-makeup. I have long been planning a return to makeup, which I used to love. I have done a number of things in preparation for this, turned a mirror in my bedroom into a makeup mirror, bought some nice Joseph Joseph organizers. But nothing seems to progress further from here, further from buying things and then thinking about them. I have had an eyelid infection for over a month which I carefully and dutifully clean twice a day with a tea tree solution my optician prescribed. I cannot wear makeup until it goes away and even then, should I? I have not worn contacts in a number of years because of other issues, though I have a box of them that I keep meaning to try out in order to aide myself in doing different makeup looks. But I don’t do this. I own several beautiful palettes of eyeshadow that I have never even opened. Also the seasons are turning and my sun allergy is strengthening. Hard to wear makeup when I have to coat myself in sun allergy protective sun screen in order to do so much as take the trash out.

What do I imagine the Miracle Balm will bring me? What do I imagine any of it will bring me? There is a hope, I suppose, it will become the thing to spur me on, motivate me. Out of nothingness into somethingness via products. But I also feel that I am turning into a collector of sorts, I just want to be in proximity to the beautiful things. I want to feel their weight in my hand. When I see a person in an incredible outfit or look the first thing I feel is a spike of jealousy— I am a long time lover of fashion, but have no way of participating in it any more. I honestly cannot remember the last time I wore anything but a huge sweatshirt and leggings. I have turned from a participant into a sort of theorist, the only way I can keep a hand in. I remember once, before I was sick, I had a shaved head and wore a powder blue halter dress with pink orchids embroidered on it, strappy wooden platforms, flesh tone fishnets. I carried a parasol. I used to buy theatrical makeup in bright crayons of color and paint shapes over my eye before going out for the night.

I don’t want to be a body acceptance fashion blogger. I want to be myself, the self buried under illness. I want to be free from any kind of struggle. I don’t want to fight up stream. I don’t want to be defiant in the ways one must be when ones body doesn’t conform to societal and feminine norms. I want to be defiant in ways I choose. But choice is a privilege of the well. Fashion is a privilege of the well. Makeup is a privilege of the well. I don’t want to lasso a moving target and then make an Instagram account about how brave I am and inspire people. I have no interest in inspiring people. I want to slip out of my constraints and go to a mall and try on and buy whatever I want and then put it on my body without thinking about it and go do anything I want. I don’t want to think about it anymore. I am so tired of thinking about it.

Here’s an example. I have an allergy to a chemical that is used to vulcanize rubber (try not to glaze over at the mere sound of this), it is sometimes used and sometimes not. This means, among many things, I have to find out what shoe companies use this chemical so I can buy shoes. I have to ask shoe companies to contact the people they source their rubber from. Most never respond to me or tell me they won’t release that information. So I only shop for shoes from the companies who will tell me: Nike, Ugg and Birkenstock. Every once in awhile if I really love a shoe, I’ll just buy it and roll the dice. I have a pair of beautiful Doc Martins I have only worn once. However, recently, because of bone problems, I have been told by my podiatrist that I should really only wear special running shoes. And I have to admit, when I wear the special running shoes, I am in far less pain. So I now don’t even wear shoes I pick for myself from the three companies I can shop from, but just ugly fucking running shoes that were selected for me.

My ability to physically express myself is whittled and whittled. I do what I can, I get my nails done. I can pick any color I want, any glitter, any finish, just like any one can. A small personhood. I think trying to explain a life of chronic illness to well people is a bit like being a person who makes balloon animals. You get out your helium and balloons and you make someone a balloon giraffe. They watch, they hold the giraffe and examine it. They’re interested. But then you make a hippo, a dog, a monkey, a frog, a bear, a cat, a pig, a squirrel, a pony, a koala. You hand these over. They’re not interested anymore. It’s too much to hold, too many colors, too many squiggly shapes, too much squeaking, they get it— you make balloon animals. They could handle one, they can’t handle the whole animal kingdom. They want to pop them, walk away from you, privately assess that you must be insane or hungry for attention. You can be sick with one thing only. You can have one trauma. You can have one period of bad luck. And then you have to get better. You have to work hard and get better and be better forever. And you have to do it like this to assure people that what has happened to you will never happen to them and if it did, there would be a way out of it. And if you remain, sick or sad or broken (or all three!), it’s because you are not trying as hard as they would try. It’s because you’re a quitter. An accepter. Not willing to fight for it.

The Miracle Balm, the expensive eyeshadow palettes, maybe it’s a way to pretend I’m normal for the space of time it takes to select, purchase and ship these items to my house. When I’m confronted with the reality of it, I have to own up, today I am too tired to get off my couch, I woke up tired, I always wake up tired, I am not doing a smokey eye. But then why not send them back? Why waste the money? Because even someone like me can own pretty things, right? Capitalism, our equalizer, we are all the same in the light of our lord shopping. We are all the same behind the credit card numbers. When the alters are taken one by one, you pray to the ones that remain. And that one’s a mighty big one, it takes advantage of the sick, certainly, as it takes advantage of everything, was designed to do just that, but it is the most embedded. Embedded like a bullet. Embedded like an axe, hacking a tree apart. It’s me, alone, at 1:45am lit by my laptop screen, looking at lipstick, the fantasy of which allows me a moment to dream—one day again being a self that no longer exists.

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