Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of being a writer, one of the allures, is watching people and wondering about them. This to me is one of the appeals of reality television. I know many of my writer friends pooh-pooh my fascination with "Big brother", but I love the show. Can watch most reality shows with interest -- "The biggest loser" for example. What I love best is watching the social interactions between the housemates/contestants, and hearing them talk about their motivations and the things that move them. This is great stuff for writers to ponder. Some of the most powerful and moving television I've experienced has been on "Big brother". Who could forget Chrissie in season three, having overheard the cruel comments by someone working behind the scenes, and how the normally feisty, articulate woman was reduced to tears? Or in season five, David's coming out speech? Terribly moving. Terribly revealing. And brave.
Some of my friends say it's an act, that they're always aware of the cameras, but I don't believe this. Some are more aware than others (or so it seems to this observer), but it's clear that at times they all forget.
I don't watch any of these shows religiously. I just don't have time. Others I've enjoyed have been "Australian idol" and "American idol", "Race around the world", "Australian princess", one of those one-(Aussie)-bloke-eliminating-lots-of-prospective-girls shows and "Survivor" -- though I haven't seen much of this.
Two weeks ago, I interrupted my children watching "America's next top model", something that I never would have turned to on my own. A bunch of anorexic-looking spoilt princesses? Nope, not my style. But within a few minutes I was hooked. And of course most of them were not like this at all -- but the cattiness of one of the contestants! I couldn't wait for her to be voted off. Of course she lived to survive another week.
Last week was the final of the show. Finally, the bitchy one got her own, and off she went. But her comments after she'd been eliminated -- something along the lines off: "The judges got it wrong. I thought the best girl would win, but I didn't." Wow, I thought, what ego. And then she went on to say, "They mistook my confidence for aggressiveness." Really? Looked like more than confidence to me. Interesting that that's how she saw it.
Finally, we were down to the last two, and that "confidence" word was stuck in my head. I liked both finalists equally, but felt one deserved to win more than the other. The judges were torn, and ended up going the other way. They didn't chose the girl who I thought would win because they said she didn't have enough presence when she walked into the room. They showed her walking in again, and I studied her and her rival to see what the difference was. The winner looked confident. She came in smiling and met the gazes of the judges. The other girl looked shy -- she walked in with her gaze down (much like the early Princess Di), not making eye contact with the judges until she'd stopped walking, and then she gave them a dazzling smile. Her lack of "presence" seemed to me to be a lack of confidence.
There's a lesson in this for writers: a lesson about backing your own story and believing in it. The bitchy evictee shows that nothing can really wound you if you just believe in yourself and your work, and our runner-up shows that if you don't believe in yourself no-one else will either. An interesting viewing experience in the end: I'm glad I went along for the ride.
Showing posts with label people watching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people watching. Show all posts
05 February 2008
09 September 2007
To grey or not to grey
Being a writer means being a people watcher, or even more importantly a people thinker -- writers need to think about how real people behave, why they do the things they do. Real life motivations, carried through to characters, make character actions believable. The writer has to be a connoisseur of human behaviour, and sometimes this involves becoming more philosophical.
This week's TIME magazine has an article about whether people (or more specifically women) should dye their hair. Now, I've never coloured my hair. I've had it permed, but I've always liked the colour (if not the fineness, straightness and sparsity) so have never been tempted to dabble. Plus, I'm greying later in life than some of my friends, but I know the time of making a decision about this is fast approaching. I am now greying at the temples, but the rest of my hair is predominantly brown, with only occasional grey hairs.
The article talked about the two camps -- those who do and those who don't -- and how much emotion is tied up with this decision, that is emotion in terms of being judgemental of the other camp. According to the writer, feelings run as strongly as they do over whether mothers should work or not. Why do we feel like only the camp we belong to can be in the right? Why can't we respect the decision of others and know that it reflects a choice without necessarily saying anything further about them than they want to look this way or that? It doesn't necessarily mean they're heaping scorn on those who have chosen to do the opposite. (Maybe this is just the naive ramblings of someone who is too young to be a baby boomer, and too old to belong to Generation X.)
I have a friend in her seventies, with salt-and-pepper hair, and she was telling me proudly one day that she'd never dyed. But that decision is far easier for those of us who do grey later as she had. I wondered if her hair were white, whether we would be having the same conversation, whether she would feel the same measure of self-righteousness, and -- dare I say it? -- superiority. Perhaps we would. I wondered if I had greyed in my twenties, whether I would have even given the decision a second thought. I don't know. I do know my mother eventually let herself go grey, and I thought, good for her, but then my husband was surprised to find out some of her contemporaries who do dye were her age. "But they look so much younger," he said.
Why do we need to look younger? Why can't we look our age? The answer to that is seen in a society that does not value its old folk the way other societies do. Why is this? They have paid their dues and are veritable fonts of wisdom (at least compared to what they were earlier in life), and yet younger generations look past them, see them as nuisances if they seem them at all. That same friend has talked about how the older woman's legacy is becoming invisible. It's tragic, really. What a wasteful society we are!
Part of the article's drive was the perceptions that people had of grey-haired versus "normal"-coloured hair people, and whether it's easier or harder to take people with grey hair seriously. Of course they polled a group of people and gave them pictures of several people with coloured and photoshopped-grey hair. These photos included Hiliary Clinton, Arnold Schwarznegger, Barack Obama, a TV news anchor and others. Questions included whether they looked more intelligent, more attractive, more trustworthy and more distinguished. The men fared marginally better than the women, but often respondents didn't have a preference. Rather interestingly, and she was as surprised with this as I was, the reporter put a photo of herself with coloured hair on an online dating service and a few months later another one of herself with grey hair, and got three times as many hits with the grey hair. She speculated that maybe men saw her as more honest, and honesty was what most of us want in a relationship.
One fascinating point was that some people dye so they can match their image with their self-image of who they really are -- in other words, as the article points out, that to look more real, we become more fake. It's a delicious irony, really, and perhaps tells us something important about all kinds of people, not just those of us greying.
We do, as a society, value beauty, and God help those of us not imbued with it. On the Books and Writing blog, Sherryl talks about the qualities of the perfect writer, and one is that they must be photogenic. She's right of course, and while we may rue it, it's a simple fact of life in a celebrity-worshipping world where even actresses have their bellies photoshopped flat. Something else the perfect writer needs is a big personality, and for many of us that means having the self-confidence to feel good in our skin and our hair; in other words, it's feeling good about how we look. (Another irony is that it doesn't really matter how others perceive us as much as it does how we think others perceive us. It's all about us. Perhaps it always is.)
Will I colour or won't I? I can't say with any honesty at this stage. Perhaps like my older friend the decision will be determined by just how grey I go, but whichever way I go I'm determined to respect the wishes of others to colour their hair or not, entirely as they see fit.
This week's TIME magazine has an article about whether people (or more specifically women) should dye their hair. Now, I've never coloured my hair. I've had it permed, but I've always liked the colour (if not the fineness, straightness and sparsity) so have never been tempted to dabble. Plus, I'm greying later in life than some of my friends, but I know the time of making a decision about this is fast approaching. I am now greying at the temples, but the rest of my hair is predominantly brown, with only occasional grey hairs.
The article talked about the two camps -- those who do and those who don't -- and how much emotion is tied up with this decision, that is emotion in terms of being judgemental of the other camp. According to the writer, feelings run as strongly as they do over whether mothers should work or not. Why do we feel like only the camp we belong to can be in the right? Why can't we respect the decision of others and know that it reflects a choice without necessarily saying anything further about them than they want to look this way or that? It doesn't necessarily mean they're heaping scorn on those who have chosen to do the opposite. (Maybe this is just the naive ramblings of someone who is too young to be a baby boomer, and too old to belong to Generation X.)
I have a friend in her seventies, with salt-and-pepper hair, and she was telling me proudly one day that she'd never dyed. But that decision is far easier for those of us who do grey later as she had. I wondered if her hair were white, whether we would be having the same conversation, whether she would feel the same measure of self-righteousness, and -- dare I say it? -- superiority. Perhaps we would. I wondered if I had greyed in my twenties, whether I would have even given the decision a second thought. I don't know. I do know my mother eventually let herself go grey, and I thought, good for her, but then my husband was surprised to find out some of her contemporaries who do dye were her age. "But they look so much younger," he said.
Why do we need to look younger? Why can't we look our age? The answer to that is seen in a society that does not value its old folk the way other societies do. Why is this? They have paid their dues and are veritable fonts of wisdom (at least compared to what they were earlier in life), and yet younger generations look past them, see them as nuisances if they seem them at all. That same friend has talked about how the older woman's legacy is becoming invisible. It's tragic, really. What a wasteful society we are!
Part of the article's drive was the perceptions that people had of grey-haired versus "normal"-coloured hair people, and whether it's easier or harder to take people with grey hair seriously. Of course they polled a group of people and gave them pictures of several people with coloured and photoshopped-grey hair. These photos included Hiliary Clinton, Arnold Schwarznegger, Barack Obama, a TV news anchor and others. Questions included whether they looked more intelligent, more attractive, more trustworthy and more distinguished. The men fared marginally better than the women, but often respondents didn't have a preference. Rather interestingly, and she was as surprised with this as I was, the reporter put a photo of herself with coloured hair on an online dating service and a few months later another one of herself with grey hair, and got three times as many hits with the grey hair. She speculated that maybe men saw her as more honest, and honesty was what most of us want in a relationship.
One fascinating point was that some people dye so they can match their image with their self-image of who they really are -- in other words, as the article points out, that to look more real, we become more fake. It's a delicious irony, really, and perhaps tells us something important about all kinds of people, not just those of us greying.
We do, as a society, value beauty, and God help those of us not imbued with it. On the Books and Writing blog, Sherryl talks about the qualities of the perfect writer, and one is that they must be photogenic. She's right of course, and while we may rue it, it's a simple fact of life in a celebrity-worshipping world where even actresses have their bellies photoshopped flat. Something else the perfect writer needs is a big personality, and for many of us that means having the self-confidence to feel good in our skin and our hair; in other words, it's feeling good about how we look. (Another irony is that it doesn't really matter how others perceive us as much as it does how we think others perceive us. It's all about us. Perhaps it always is.)
Will I colour or won't I? I can't say with any honesty at this stage. Perhaps like my older friend the decision will be determined by just how grey I go, but whichever way I go I'm determined to respect the wishes of others to colour their hair or not, entirely as they see fit.
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