The Many Masks We Wear
As we arrive at the time of year when we choose a new mask to wear for a night of fun and revelry on Halloween, I’m wondering how many masks we are already wearing.
The daily mask of makeup as we begin each day reshaping what we confront in the mirror.
The social media filters over our physical image, and the carefully curated words we use to manufacture how we are seen by the outside world.
The mask of socially sanctioned behaviours we use to cover up our vulnerabilities, our securities, and quirkier aspects of our personalities for fear of judgement and being rejected by those we want to fit in with.
The use of our emotions as masks as we push through the day, ‘happy, happy, happy’ so the sadness beneath can’t catch up. Or the alternative option of meeting the people around us with anger to push them back, so they never get close enough to see the hurt and fear that fuel it.
There are so many masks, so many faces and versions of ourselves we show depending on who we are with and how safe we feel. I wonder though, is there a moment when we stand stripped bare with nothing acting as a barrier between our truth and the world outside.
Is there a person who you can be present with in that vulnerability?
Can you be with yourself in that moment of full exposure?
Do you ever try?
There was a famous live performance art installation by Marina Abramovic in her 2010 MoMA retrospective called ‘The Artist is Present’ in which she shared a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her for days on end. By being fully present with each person, sitting eyes locked, gazing at each other, it’s almost as though the longer they look the deeper they saw, past the masks, the protective layers, down into the truth of each other. To a wordless, honest place. Tears often fell and then as the experience passed they embrace, finding no way to verbalise the connection they have made. A part of me wonders do we keep our masks in place even with those closest to us because on some level we fear a connection that deep.
Do we fear being truly known?
And then comes the other side and the question, ‘are all the masks we wear bad?’
The instinctual response is that wearing a mask is a negative, self-loathing thing to do. It immediately brings to mind the need to hide and protect, but what if, as with most things, it is not the action but the intention behind it which is of most importance?
The act of putting on make-up, for example, is not inherently bad. A symbol of internalised misogyny as the person tries to ‘perfect’ themselves to be more acceptable to the external gaze. It can be self-expression. It can be a fun celebration of aspects of your character and personality you wish to show to the world. It can be an opportunity to make a deliberate choice about who you want to be, an empowered self-representation.
After all, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the first gaze we experience each day is our own in the mirror, the judgement on what lies beneath the mask is in our eyes alone.
So, as we choose the costumes we want to wear at the end of this month, perhaps we could give a little time to exploring the representations we put out of ourselves every day.
What are they and where do they come from?
Can you create a mask for yourself that is as fun to wear as the one you are buying for Halloween?
Can you offer yourself whatever level of protection you feel safest with while experimenting with a mask that shows rather than hides the wonderful being that you are?
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Unmaking Fears".