The Sad Girl – Vintage Regular

I saw a picture a while back, and it made me sad.

It was a mural, actually; A black and white photograph blown up to larger-than-poster size. I saw it in a mall in my hometown, hanging up just outside some designer clothing store. In the foreground a man was sitting down. He was handsome; immaculately groomed, brilliantly dressed. He was looking smugly at the camera, with his hands clasped just underneath his chin. He looked worldly, rich, and powerful. 

Standing right behind him was a woman. She was physically beautiful, at least according to society’s standards; thin, blonde, somewhat large breasts. She was slouching in a sexually suggestive way, and was lazily holding a martini glass. Her mouth was wide open in what was probably a laugh, and her eyes were half-closed and vacant.

I felt sorry for her.

I only looked at the picture for a few seconds, not even stopping to stare at it. But the image and everything it said to me were burned into my mind. In this mural I saw so many things wrong with society that I’m not sure where to begin.

For starters, the picture was not of a man and a woman; it was a picture of a man and his property. This was a man primarily concerned with his status. He didn’t have to tell people he was a big deal. He used things to display his importance; his designer clothes, his manicured hands and perfect hair, his woman. Here is a man who objectified the people in his life in order to elevate his own status. He was primarily concerned with his appearance, and enveloped himself with things that improved it. The woman standing behind him was nothing more than a status symbol, and like all the rest of his property, he treated her accordingly. 

There’s something worse about this picture than the attitude of the man. The woman’s presence, her participation, her acceptance of everything this picture said to me, is much worse.

Her presence in this picture implies that she has subjugated her will to the man in the photo. She looks for happiness only within the scope of her relationship to the man. For her, the world she lives in is one that revolves around the man in the photo. She is not a woman unto herself, she is his woman. Her identity does not exist outside the scope of his identity. Her sense of self is defined through his eyes. She dresses the way he wants her to, carries herself the way he wants her to, and probably speaks the way he wants her to. She is not his companion or equal. She is only his girl. 

Her participation in the scene implies moral agreement with her objectification. This is how she describes herself, how she defines herself. Her identity begins and ends not so much with this man in particular, but with a man. Her individual identity vanished at some point in her past. She has lost the ability to define herself exclusively; that is, she cannot define herself without incorporating herself into someone else’s definition. What else is she if she is not some man’s woman? What else is there? I see a woman who asks herself such questions glibly, even mockingly. She cannot allow herself to see any answer to these questions that do not affirm herself as she currently is portrayed in the photo. I want very badly for her to know deep down that to define herself the way she has is fundamentally wrong, but I don’t believe she can do that anymore. Her eyes are vacant and empty.

Her acceptance of her status implies resignation of her objectification. If she ever saw herself as being something more than some man’s woman, that idea is gone from her mind. Any fire burning inside her that may have once told her that she could be more has been put out. She is no longer someone who can live for her own sake. Her ability to be a woman to admire, to look up to, is gone. There is nothing in her mind that communicates to anyone that she is or could ever be a peer. If she ever saw herself being a doctor or lawyer, politician or scientist, author or teacher, all she sees herself as now is some man’s woman. Her mind is gone, and her body is all that remains.

I don’t think much of the man. I don’t feel much either, except some mild contempt. He lives in a society that both encourages and forgives him for devaluing women. He is a symptom of the problem I have with this picture.

The woman makes me feel pity and resentment; pity at what she is reduced to and resentment at whatever reduced her to this. Was she molested as a child? Has she gone from one bad relationship to another? Did she have absent or apathetic parents? I see someone who has endured repeated attempts at putting her fire out. At some point in her past, she became too weak to resist, to hang on. She gave up, and her value system collapsed. Now all she is is some woman in a slinky black dress sipping a martini, doing a careful dance around the man in the photo, hoping desperately to be whatever he wants her to be from one moment to the next. She does this so that he will continue to give her value, to give her the worth. She can no longer give these things to herself. 

All this from a few seconds of staring at a photo designed to sell clothes. She is a sad girl, and she made me sad.