And here I am in a playsuit that I particularly like, as it combines a strict tuxedo collar with the ease of a bare leg. It’s a super structured piece with 80’s shoulder pads and a masculine/feminine sort of charm that I love.
Speaking of masculine/feminine, I would like to broach the theme of the witch. Reading journalist Mona Chollet’s “Witches” had a real effect on me. She is one of the only people writing anything intelligent on women and she manages to synthesize a great sum on information that may well have been known to those who are interested in women’s roles in society but she does so in a luminous way.
In a nutshell, women of this time experience social pressure in three areas: singledom, maternity and age. If you happen to be single, nulliparous and/or old, you represent a social anomaly and will be subconsciously or consciously associated with the image of witches of the past.
These ancestral witches were often women who lived outside the village, were single and, as time passed, became very experienced women. These women rejected social norms and often shared or practiced their wisdom, knowledge of plants or their perception of energy flows to support the wellbeing of others, as healers and bonesetters.
The term later acquired a more negative connotation, downgrading the white witches to the status of necessarily nefarious magicians. They were burnt and eradicated.
Nowadays, we do not speak of witches anymore. The issue has become more social. In our occidental societies, women are no longer taken to be burnt at the stake but the social anomaly represented by women who do not desire marriage nor kids or by women who have reached a certain age cause a phenomenon of rejection, making these women invisible or problematic.
Social anomalies because the states of singledom, non-maternity and old-age go against our animal be all and end all, also known as the perpetuation of the species.
Social anomalies because these states also question the smallest common denominator of the occidental model of social organization, which is historically catholic and patriarchal, according to which we have been living for centuries, which is the nuclear family made up of a couple and their children.
All behavior that impacts the serene existence of the aforementioned family nucleus destined to perpetuate the species and the dominant social structure obviously constitutes a threat, which is de facto rejected.
A women who thrives whilst single is confronted with a plethora of questions (and one above all: “have you found a guy?”), as she becomes the source of incomprehension and concern for her emotional wellbeing or even her sexual orientation.
A woman living out her desire to not have children is the source of as much concern for the general public, who will hold the impression that a life without children must be incomplete. The fact that tubal ligations demands are rarely accepted before women reach an advanced age are a perfect example of this.
Grey hair appear to be even more disturbing. If some societies have infinite respect for their elder women, occidental societies reject them, because they concentrate all the different abnormal strands of behavior frowned upon by our peculiar social model. Indeed, they no longer possess sexual desirability or reproductive youth – they cannot even have children – and they are no longer the malleable women wanted for a patriarchal couple. The woman who refuses to dye her hair and embraces her greying hair could not find a better way of telling society that she couldn’t care less about the public’s general opinion, which, if I believe Sophie Fontanel’s book “Une Apparition” (“An Appearance”, which relates her experience as she stops dyeing her hair), is one of immediate and absolute rejection.
A woman who doesn’t want to marry, have kids or dye her hair must live outside of the social mold and therefore becomes the modern witch.
Did anyone say witch? Fine then, that’s what I am.
November 2, 2019
Louis Vuitton playsuit – Gucci heels – Bohm Paris earrings
