Katisha, a character in Gilbert and Sullivan's comical operetta The Mikado, is a tragic battleaxe of a woman and I thought of her at once this week as I read Charlotte Markey's piece "How To Love Your Body".
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Markey is a professor of psychology and health sciences. Her helpful piece has just bobbed up in the online Psyche magazine.
One of Markey's big and useful ideas is that if we horrify ourselves with what we see in our mirrors (this columnist's plight, for I am a weatherbeaten scarecrow of 75) we should learn "to practise body gratitude". She thinks we should learn to focus on the parts of our bodies that we still admire.
In the operetta Katisha famously does just that. "Yes, my face is unattractive!" she booms, "but I have a left shoulder blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist."
Katisha may even be the inspiration for the professor's piece in which she, the professor, urges: "When your critical inner voice starts to emerge with a thought such as, 'I wish my nose were smaller', reply to it with, 'I love my hair'."
Alas saying to myself "I love my hair!" is no longer an option for me since I have none left to love, (my baldness is one of my several sources of horror when I see my reflection), but the professor's point is well-taken.
And when and if we struggle to find any parts of our bodies that we find wondrously lovely to look at, the professor continues, it is time to "focus on functionality".
"Our bodies are much more than a facade; they serve vital functions that allow us to live our lives and experience our worlds. Focusing more on what a body does as opposed to just how it looks can be a useful step toward body positivity," she counsels.
"'Body functionality' is a term used to describe the many physical functions of our bodies: breathing, sleeping, walking, singing, dancing, engaging with other people and anything else a body can do. Although many people feel dissatisfied with their bodies or even 'at war' with them, our bodies aren't deliberately trying to hold us back from living our lives. One way to reorient ourselves toward our body's capabilities is through writing and reflection. In one study women were asked to write statements about 10 functions of their bodies and how those functions contributed to their wellbeing.
"Try concentrating on your own body functionality - and even making a list of the ways that your body serves you well."
This is very good advice, and I am already at work on my list. For example, thanking my now scrawny and unattractive legs for the ways in which they are my body's still sturdy and reliable pylons and pistons, for example supporting me and powering me as I dash to the supermarket to make panic purchases of toilet paper, enabling (when we are not in lockdown) my heroically long walks in the National Arboretum.
Meanwhile, though, my aged face is increasingly like Katisha's, and so I am grateful for the way in which these time's compulsory face-mask wearing enable one to cover up and to artificially prettify oneself.
With my city (Canberra, the federal capital metropolis of Australia) in COVID-19 lockdown and with mandatory mask-wearing required whenever one leaves home I am promiscuously shopping online for dandy face masks.
Shopping among the masks that use famous paintings by the Old Masters (thus enabling one's face to be an occasional gallery, enabling one to bring some culture to those one meets at the supermarket) I have come across and promptly bought a mask decorated with Caravaggio's sublime 1599 portrayal of Narcissus.
Caravaggio has captured the moment at which the misguided youth, the balance of his mind disturbed by throbbing pubescence, catches the first, love-at-first sight glimpse of his own reflection in the waters of the pond beside which he has knelt to drink.
The wonderful painting came to Canberra's Australian National Gallery in 2002 as part of the Titian to Tiepolo - Three Centuries of Italian Art blockbuster. Besotted by this particular painting I spent a great deal of time in front of it, admiring it, much nudged and jostled by stampeding bogans in a hurry to get their money's worth by spending a token uncomprehending 10 seconds with every thing in the show.
Even much-reduced in size to fit on my mask (in its oil on canvas flesh it measures 115.5cm by 97.5cm) the painting weaves a certain magic.
And carried away I find myself wondering what would have happened if Narcissus, in a time of pandemic and obeying the edict of the chief health officer of Boeotia (where according to Greek mythology the story takes place) that he wear a face mask, had not been met by so attractive a reflection).
What if, for plain baggy old face masks can make one look plain and even ugly, Narcissus had thought that what was staring up at him was the pond's most gargoyley fish?
What if, recoiling, he had got up and gone on his way (on his young and lovely and functional legs) to live a long and fulfilling life? Thus he would have been saved (by an unbecoming mask, by the pandemic's strange intervention) from the tragic crush that in the myth has him unable to tear himself away from his reflection and eventually, enfeebled, falling into the waters and drowning.
- Ian Warden is a regular columnist.