Notes of a Recovering Perfectionist

“Perfectionism is not the path that leads us to our gifts and to our sense of purpose; it’s the hazardous detour.” This quote from American research professor and author Brené Brown is one I read often. Here’s another: “Not one person attributes their joy, success, or feelings of enough to being perfect.” Also Brené Brown. I believe this wholeheartedly, yet I still feel that we live in a culture where every external signifier is trying to convince me otherwise.

I was 16 when Naomi Wolf published The Beauty Myth, an uncompromising investigation into the coercion of women by images of female beauty and their pursuit of a “perfect” feminine ideal. My original, now sepia-toned copy is dusty and dog-eared from being read and reread by me and my sisters. You might expect the message inside the book to be as washed out as the image on the cover, but in fact, it has as much context today as it did 30 years ago, sadly. When I first read it there was no internet or Instagram. Celebrities did not feature on the covers of magazines (or in our daily lives really) and my friends and I never talked about our weight, size or shape. The only comparison we made with each other was an academic one. Which one of us achieved the highest grade was far more important than who was the thinnest or prettiest. Although I wasn’t yet a victim of the beauty myth, I still thought the book was the most eye-opening treatise on patriarchy and women’s position within it that I could ever imagine reading.

Perfectionism is like religion; whether you’re convinced by it or not, there’s comfort to be found there. Like a lot of women, my twenties became wholly subsumed with living up to the beauty myth; thin, blonde, stylish, owning the most on-trend item – these were the boxes I wanted to tick. These were the markers by which I defined my “success” and the basis of my self-esteem. Wolf’s words became a distant memory as I became a sucker for the stereotype. At the time I thought I was being my best self, but of course for each of us, our “best self” is a multi-faceted identity that is more than skin deep. How the fundamental message of The Beauty Myth remains just as relevant, if not more so, in 2020 than it did three decades ago is depressing. Despite the push for diversity and inclusion over the past couple of years, and the strong voices within the movement, which encourage women to strive to be real rather than manufactured looking, it feels more like a sidebar to the dominant narrative that women really are just the sum of their physical parts. In the introduction to The Beauty Myth, Wolf explains: “Recent research consistently shows that inside the majority of the West’s controlled, attractive, successful working women, there is a secret ‘underlife’ poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of ageing, and dread of lost control.” Does that sound like a quote from 30 years ago, or from today?

These days, I like to think of myself as a recovering perfectionist, one who is always on the verge of a relapse. It’s impossible not to be, because today the beauty myth has expanded to a lifestyle myth, with pressure on women not just to look perfect, but to be perfect professionals, mothers, wives, lovers, friends, daughters and homemakers. I know it seems a little pathetic and predictable to reference Instagram, but doesn’t the level of curation – from clothes to closets, canapés to cocktails – involved in some women’s lives make you feel like you’ve failed somewhere along the way? There are days when I think I must have made a series of bad choices over the years to be where I am today and not in a Home of the Year-worthy house with children wearing mini Veja trainers and a walk-in-wardrobe bigger than my bathroom. That’s not meant as a criticism of women with beautiful homes and beautifully dressed children, but it’s important to understand where the drive for a faultless-looking life comes from, and it’s not always from a good place.

Perfection, and perfectionism, is glamorised and admitted to by many with an air of superiority and smugness. There’s a pride associated with it that I think is misplaced, because really perfectionism is primarily about fear; fear of not measuring up, of not being accepted, of being an outsider.

Why did I succumb to the female cliché in my twenties? Because in the world of London glossy magazines, it made me feel accepted, which made me feel like I was good enough, when in fact I always doubted whether or not I was. According to an article in The New York Times, women only feel confident when they are perfect. We’ve all heard the anecdote that women will apply for a job if they are 100% qualified, while men will do so even if they are only 50% suitable. The article also suggests that this gendered attitude stems from the egalitarian environment of schools and colleges, where girls consistently outperform boys, compared with the non-meritocratic world of business. The goal posts suddenly shift and although rewards are not necessarily based on achievement or qualifications or suitability, women still believe that if they just try harder, as they did in school, they’ll get the recognition or promotion they deserve. It goes with the territory then that if they can just try harder to be thinner, prettier and fitter, they’ll be happier too.

But like the Dutch courage that comes with a couple of glasses of wine, the confidence that accompanies perfectionism is short-lived and ultimately harmful. According to Psychology Today, perfectionism is: “...an endless report card; it keeps people completely self-absorbed, engaged in perpetual self-evaluation – reaping relentless frustration and doomed to anxiety and depression.” Marilyn Monroe was a notorious perfectionist and experienced all of these symptoms. Madonna is a self-confessed perfectionist and certainly appears to tick the self-absorbed box. Apparently Beyoncé consulted with a life coach to help her deal with her perfectionism in 2013. In her documentary of the same year, Life is but a Dream, the singer/songwriter explained: “I don’t have to kill myself and be so hard on myself.” According to the American novelist David Foster Wallace, “Perfectionism is very dangerous. Because... if your fidelity to [it] is too high, you never do anything.” This reminds me of a former colleague of mine who always came to work wearing creased shirts. It fascinated me because she was an absolute perfectionist and I assumed a wrinkled shirt would distress her (it would me). Instead she told me that she refused to press any shirts because she would never achieve the level of ironed perfection that she’d want, or at least not in any kind of timeframe that would make it reasonable to wear one to work. Like Foster Wallace suggested, she’d rather not iron at all than iron something to a less than perfect standard.

It’s a quirky anecdote, I know, but the problem is that for many women this kind of paralysis can extend to far more important things than ironing. It can affect their creativity (Margaret Atwood once said if she waited for perfection she would never write a word), their ability to take necessary risks at work, their capacity to cope with ageing, the effects of childbirth, and to live their happiest, fullest life. The search for perfection is like a hamster wheel. It will eventually leave you exhausted and back where you started, because as Brené Brown explains, “Perfection is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimise the painful feelings of blame, judgement and shame [but] perfectionism actually sets us up to feel blame, judgement and shame, which then leads to more blame, judgement and shame: It’s my fault. I’m feeling this way because I’m not good enough.”

Isn’t it time then we stopped eulogising perfectionism? Instead, maybe we should follow the example of Brave Not Perfect author Reshma Saujani, who last year posted a series of personal defeats on Instagram with the hashtag #FailureFriday? I think for many of us that really would make for a happy Friday.

Marie Kelly, August 2020.

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