Perfectionism is a Prison
thoughts on Beyoncé and the myth of effortlessness
Listen to a recording of this episode here.
Here’s something that won’t shock anyone here: I am a huge fan of Beyoncé. As I get older, celebrity culture feels increasingly bread and circuses, but I remain interested in the output of the Beyoncé camp. First and foremost, the work is excellent and I am nothing if not a woman of taste. (I’m a Taurus, remember?) Secondly, the babe fucking works – and if you’ve been around since the MTV Diary days then you know what I mean. I won’t pretend that Beyoncé’s choice to drop numerous documentaries about her process isn’t a business decision. But it’s still evident to me that Beyoncé is someone who values the process, the work that goes into consistently producing at such a high level.
When the performance of celebrity is best executed, there’s typically a sense of effortlessness involved. Nowadays, this is a bit harder to sell believably: with the internet, we’re all better versed on PR and pre-planned pap walks and photoshop and all the smoke and mirrors involved in Hollywood “magic.” But even still, there persists the myth that some of us just have “it,” the indefinable natural magnetism that makes someone a star, the thing that cannot be bought or taught – you either have it or you don’t. But this isn’t true. Or, at least, I don’t think it’s true in the way that most of us usually think about it. We all have “it” – most of us simply don’t do the work to fully cultivate it because we are too afraid of being seen trying, to be seen as imperfect, and so we never reach the levels of excellence we’re capable of.
Women, in particular, are bombarded with this messaging: consider how many times you’ve heard about “effortless beauty” or how to be “effortlessly chic” because some magazine editor coined the term like fifty years ago. You should be gorgeous and intelligent and look elegant (read: wealthy) and carry yourself with grace and it should all come naturally to you. Nothing should be challenging; no one should see you struggle. Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code spoke on this in her TED Talk, stating that young girls in the program would frequently turn in no code rather than imperfect code for their assignments. Upon looking at the history on the girls’ computers, instructors would see that a given student “tried,...came close, but…didn’t get it exactly right. But instead of showing the progress that she made, she’d rather show nothing at all. Perfection or bust.” Many of us are living our lives that way, trapped in the prison of perfection because to even make an attempt, to be seen trying would be…cringe? Embarrassing? I’m not sure, but it’s definitely something silly and inconsequential like that.
Something else that comes to mind is a series of scenes in the pilot episode of the The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the comedy series about a 1950s housewife turned standup comedian. In them, the titular Mrs. Maisel goes to bed with a full face of make-up and waits until her husband falls asleep before washing her face and doing her nighttime beauty routine. She then wakes up before him, puts her makeup back on, and feigns waking up with their alarm, preserving the illusion of the “effortless” beauty he loves so much. It’s an extreme example, but it drives home the point: people want to see the curls, not the head full of rollers. People want to consume engaging, dynamic content but will mock the process that goes into creating it – setting a tripod, walking past it to get a shot, then running back to get your stuff. People want to be history-making ball players, but call the guy who doesn’t leave the gym until he makes 100,000 shots over-eager and obsessive. They want the results without the process.
There’s a scene I think of often from Beyoncé’s Homecoming, the documentary about her Coachella performance, where she made history as the first Black woman to ever headline the festival in 2018. In it, she’s learning choreography in the early days of rehearsals, a few months postpartum after giving birth to twins. “No matter who you are, you get in here, and it’s real,” she says, talking to her choreographer. “That’s why people don’t like to rehearse. You gotta be humble. You gotta be willing to look awkward and you gotta study, be a student.” In short, you gotta do the work.
It would be easy for Beyoncé, at this point in her career – nearly thirty years in and still commanding the cultural conversation – to lean fully into the perception of effortless perfection, to say of course it’s easy – she’s Beyoncé. But in reality, there’s nothing easy about, for example, planning, executing, and rolling out a three act audio-visual project (though we have yet to lay eyes on the visuals…👀) that’s been in development for at least five years. That takes work. And I admire Beyoncé’s insistence in reminding us that (even if she collects a hefty bag while she does it) in a culture that loves to glorify success but degrade the hard work it takes to achieve the success. For some reason, in our appearance-obsessed culture, there’s something almost shameful about being seen hustling, about openly striving, about getting better over time. But of course this makes no sense: how do you arrive at a destination if you never go on a journey to get there?
If you’ve been reading for a while then you know I say this all the time: there’s only the work. That is, being willing to try and fuck up and iterate and tweak and improve until you hit your stride, until you figure it out. It will never be perfect – and what a relief.
And that’s all from me this week! Last Sunday, paid subscribers read Old Bitches Winning, some of my thoughts on turning thirty and leaving my twenties behind (Praise Him!). Here’s an excerpt:
My twenties often felt like a countdown to the end of my youth, to an unending flop era if I couldn’t figure out how to pop off before 30 claimed me as another one of its victims (that is, people lucky enough to not be dead.) I had to be a wunderkind, a phenom, a Forbes 30 under 30 awardee, otherwise what is the point? How else would everyone know how brilliant and fabulous and cool I am???? Of course, the point is to develop a sense of self that comes from within, not external validation from arbitrary status symbols – easy to write, but it also took me damn near ten years to get here, so it’s not as easy to grasp. But now that I’m 30 and not a Zadie Smith or a Zuckerberg or one of the other twenty-something geniuses, I don’t feel like a loser, like I anticipated at 22 or 25 or even 27 (at 27, I had yet to experience the near-kidnapping that encouraged me to get my mind in order – that would come the following year, lol). Instead, I feel a great sense of relief: the countdown is over, and finally, finally, I can just live.
Basically: I love it here. On the pod, I talked about becoming bffs with your future self and the block universe theory for all my girlies interested in quantum physics. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
I’m back next Sunday, per usual.
See you then,
Lola xx