From Malena’s Point of View

January 25, 2017:

     “All I could do was cry and ask why all these things are happening to me.  I’m so indescribably tired of it.

      So, mama told me why.  She said, “You are beautiful.” 

      I guess I didn’t really know it.  I am so conscious of my inner self that I don’t think about the physical all that much.  And I forget that the physical is all they can see.  And, though I don’t like to admit it, I’ve wished many times that I were hideous, like a gorilla. But I think it’s best I’m not.  Because I am a lover of beauty, and if I were hideous, I would never have realized that beauty has negatives.  Beauty could easily become a never satisfied god to me.”      

     I was sixteen then.  Now I’m twenty-two, and I forgot all about this journal entry, until several weeks ago, when I watched the movie ‘Malena.’ I had heard about the movie for several years. I watched a lot of in-depth commentary before deciding to watch the film myself. (I know that most of my audience will find a lot of themes in the movie problematic. Keep in mind that the fact that I watched the movie doesn’t mean I agree with everything in it.) It was quite uncomfortable in spots, but, sadly, it is one of the most relatable movies I’ve ever watched.  

     'Malena' takes place in small-town Italy in the 1940s.  It's told from the perspective of a young boy who becomes obsessed with Malena and follows her, watching her every move.  Malena is beautiful, feminine, and mysterious.  She lives alone after her husband has gone to war.  Her beauty makes her the target of ugly rumors from men and jealous hatred from their wives.  She is friendless and unable to support herself during the war.  She is drug to court for sleeping with a married man (a rumor the man himself started), and later raped by the lawyer who defended her.  No one will hire her, so to survive, she turns to prostitution.  At the end of the war, angry townswomen drag Malena into the street, where they brutally beat her and cut off her hair.  The men watch and say nothing.  When her husband returns from the war, he finds that Malena has left town.  He goes after her, and a year later, they return to the village.  The movie ends with the women befriending Malena after they see she looks older, dresses plainer, and is no longer a threat to them.  

     I grew up in an environment similar to Malena’s.  Everyone knew everyone. We were very religious and traditional.  We dressed alike, thought alike, and prayed alike.  It wasn’t common to remark on someone’s beauty.  We believed it would make the person vain and prideful.  However, it wasn’t taboo to remark rudely about someone’s appearance.  Knocking people down a peg kept them humble, and it reminded them that looks weren’t everything.

     But looks were everything.  I’ve heard a lot of people talking about pretty privilege. (beautiful people getting better treatment, being more successful, and having more opportunities) I believe pretty privilege exists, but in the Mennonite church, beauty is a curse. The mere existence of beautiful women was a hard thing for a lot of Mennonites to come to terms with. We were taught that being plain is godly. We weren’t supposed to attract attention.  Our facial expressions were to be subdued and soft.  Our voices should be quiet and feminine. If we laughed, it must be daintily and politely. Our hair must always be neatly tucked away.  Our dresses were long and voluminous.  We made sure our hips didn’t sway when we walked. We were plain women, better than worldly women with their brazenly cut hair, blasphemous jeans, and clownish makeup. Those women led sad, unfulfilled lives because they dressed for the pleasure of men. We were happy, because we dressed for the purity of men.

     Plain women gave me the ultimate beauty secret: beauty comes from the inside.

       But what if beauty wasn’t always internal? Even as a child, I loved beautiful things, and I saw them all around me.  I loved the smells of sun-warmed dirt, my mother’s fresh bread, and sun-drenched roses.  I loved the sounds of mourning doves, violins, and my grandpa’s voice when he recited poetry.  I loved how soft fur and flannel felt on my skin.  I loved the taste of hot chocolate, vanilla pudding, and October apples. I loved watching sunsets, pine trees in the wind, and people laughing.  Most of all, I loved soaking up all those beautiful feelings, and using them to create something beautiful of my own. 

     I recognized beauty as an essential part of my creative life. I lived in an intricately imaginative and colorful internal world.  I believed that the women around me saw beauty like I did.  They spent hours in their beautiful gardens. They made dresses with pretty flowers.  They embroidered colorful squares for quilts. I believed they did these things because they enjoyed them.  I was in awe of them, because they were showing me how beauty was useful and necessary.  Beauty took care of their families and fed their souls. 

     I didn’t notice their sad, tired faces.  I didn’t notice how their hands were rough and calloused from hours of manual labor.  I didn’t notice how they sacrificed their dreams over and over again, so that their husbands and children could have home grown food, handmade clothes, and colorful quilts.  I didn’t notice how often they got sick. I didn’t notice how they never had time to take care of themselves. I just wanted to be like them, because I thought they were living their dreams.

     I thought the men who preached about inner beauty loved the beauty of these plain women.  I thought these women went to bed at night feeling safe and loved.  I thought their husbands told them how beautiful they were.  I thought that they chose men who protected them and loved them—who would defend them.  I thought these men were trustworthy, kind, and faithful.  

I didn’t realize why inner beauty was so important until I began to grow up. Inner beauty was important because outer beauty was dangerous. Inner beauty and outer beauty were diametrically opposed warriors.

I knew I wasn’t beautiful outwardly, so, like other girls my age, I learned how to be inwardly beautiful. I behaved calmly and quietly. I made sure to pay attention and take notes in church services. I knew how to calm a crying child. I learned how to do beautiful things, too, like make perfect bread, sew a feminine dress, and grow a garden. I wanted to leave beauty wherever my fingerprints landed, whether it was a dress, a childhood, or a painting. My friends had told me I was fat, and the boys didn’t like how I dressed, and while that hurt me deeply, I believed that inner beauty was much more important.

While my friends made sure to let me know the boys didn’t like me, fellow church members began expressing their concerns about me. My dresses were a bit too ‘immodest.’ I was a little ‘boy-crazy.’ Of all the ways to be ugly, being a flirt was the worst. I felt hideous. I tried even harder to do the right things. I changed my dresses. I changed my hair. I became quieter and more withdrawn. I never spoke to boys or men. I walked with my eyes straight ahead to avoid the eyes of the men who watched me. I lived in silent confusion. Why was I, the one who had never had outward beauty, playing the part of a temptress? How could I tempt, when I had nothing that was tempting?

I lived in this hellish cognitive dissonance for several years, until I turned sixteen. I had returned from a youth function in tears. I didn’t feel safe, and I was a panic-stricken mess. Sobbing, I asked my mom what I could do to make men stop staring at me and then complaining about my ‘lack of modesty.’

“I don’t think you can do anything that you haven’t tried already,” she admitted. “I don’t think it’s because of your clothes, and it’s not because you’re a flirt. You’re beautiful.”

I stared at her in silence. Was my sin being beautiful?

Could people be hated just because they were beautiful? The question blew my mind. Then, I thought of the sermons I had heard recently, amid the chaos of our church splintering apart. At the time, I was being blamed for the church split. One sermon had been preached by my abuser’s father. He had urged fathers not to let their daughters wear tight dresses that were made for ‘looking and not wearing.’ He preached about the evils of ‘decorative, loopy neck scarves.’ He had said it was a terrible thing when a Christian man had to look away from a woman in his own church. It was serious not only for the person who lusted, he said, but the person who provoked the lust. The Sunday after that, another man had stood before the church and stated that he didn’t want the pulpit to ‘become his place for voicing his opinions about the current church issues.’ Then, he talked about a woman in the Bible who was beautiful, and then he’d said that extra beautiful women needed to be extra modest. Beautiful women, he said, were more prone to danger.

I remembered the men who complained about my ‘immodesty,’ and how, after they complained, their wives hated me. Mothers of boys near my age were concerned about my ‘boy-craziness.’ I was told not to smile at the boys, because if I did, the boys would think I liked them. My peers told me my figure distracted men and made it hard for them to have pure thoughts. I was told the sexual harassment I had faced was my fault, because of my tight dresses and ‘bold actions.’ No one could say exactly what my bold actions were when I asked them what they meant, but they stuck to the story. My hairstyle wasn’t ‘fit for a daughter of the King.’ Men and boys ogled me whenever I dared appear in public. My circle of friends was dwindling, because most of the women and girls wouldn’t speak to me anymore. The friends I did have made sure to let me know that I was showing a ‘rebellious spirit’ and they wanted to help me ‘find joy in submission.’

I realized that the people who preached inward beauty to me didn’t have much inward beauty. They weren’t the peaceful, loving, grace-filled people I saw in my childhood. The women whose husbands complained about me didn’t go to bed at night feeling safe and loved. Instead, they felt betrayed by their husbands and threatened by the other women. The men who preached about inner beauty objectified beautiful women simply for existing. The feminine clothes of beautiful women were the topics of debate at men’s meetings and dinner tables. They had convinced themselves that physical beauty was a sign of inner impurity.

I wasn’t even a grown woman. I was sixteen.

But I grew into a woman. I grew into a woman who couldn’t recognize herself in photos, or in the mirror. I felt broken and utterly alone. I gradually lost contact with all my friends, either because I was betrayed, or I feared betrayal. I developed debilitating social anxiety. I feared being seen. I tried to mask my social anxiety with poise and dignity but was told I was unapproachable and intimidating. In 2020, I stopped going to church, and focused on regaining a sense of who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.

I isolated myself for two years. During those two years of isolation, I began to heal. I realized that I truly wanted creativity to be a way of life for me. I started designing and sewing my own clothes again. I took up gardening. I made the decision to launch my art business in January of 2023. My art was by far my most important creative outlet. I wanted to tell my story with my art. It was something I was excited and passionate about. That passion took me out of my fear, and I began feeling more confident.

This new-found confidence led to me going out in public more. I no longer dressed in Mennonite clothes, so I looked forward to the invisibility that would give me. I couldn’t wait to blend into a crowd of shoppers and be unnoticed and forgettable. However, to my surprise and dismay, I found myself encountering stares wherever I went. It didn’t stop with staring. Several times, I was followed in stores by men. I began feeling odd twinges of déjà vu as I experimented with darker colors, baggier outlines, and chunky work boots.

At the same time, I faced similar challenges online. For two months, I was hit on an average of once a day. Being hit on by strangers wasn’t the hardest part. The hardest part was the men who faked interest in my profession and my story.  They would read my blog posts and send me kind, respectful feedback. They followed me on social media and supported my art-related content.  After a few weeks, their engagement would gradually drop, until they only engaged in content where I showed my face.  Then, one day, they’d hit on me, usually asking for nude photos.  A lot of these men were married or in relationships. And it hit me like a punch in the stomach.  These men never cared about my work.  It was just a game to them, and they thought that I might send them photos in exchange for some flattery.

The feeling of déjà vu intensified the more I tried to change myself to blend into society. The feeling puzzled me. Why did it feel like I was repeating a pattern?

About ten months into the year, I watched the movie ‘Malena,’ and I remembered my old journal entry. Then, things started to make sense. I was repeating a pattern. I had always believed that I could control whether or not I was noticed. I had been taught that if people noticed me, I could change something about my appearance, and it would stop. I had been taught that men wouldn’t hurt me if I looked a certain way. I had been taught that my beauty was a threat to other women and their families. I had been taught to fear beauty, and the power it held.

That fear had held me back. It slowed my journey of self-acceptance. I realized that if I didn’t stop fearing my beauty, I would never learn to accept it either. I had made myself small because of people’s reactions to me. I realized that if I didn’t learn to use beauty and creativity in a wise way, I would never accomplish my goals. The child I once was needed to know that her love of beauty was a rich and profound way of seeing life. She needed to know that the secrets of inner beauty she’d been taught never left her, but that they were different than she once thought. Inner beauty meant much more than being plain, quiet, and obedient.

Inner beauty is also self-acceptance. It is knowing when to be loud. It is the courage to be different. It’s letting go of old patterns and learning new ones. It is knowing when to break the rules. It’s taking care of your mind and body without guilt. It’s learning how to make new friends. It’s stopping the cycles that pit women against each other. It’s kindness to women like Malena.

Because we’ve all been Malena at some point in our lives.