Anyway, let us start with silliness. The first piece in “The Feminisms” is about my most regular political statement:
In both my written correspondence from readers of The Times, and in the online comments on the website, there are three observations I receive on a reassuringly regular basis.
The first is, “When oh when will Ms. Moran stop harping on about her ‘Poor me’ working-class background?” (When the revolution comes! Amiright, comrades?)
The second is, “I have documents which prove beyond doubt that the Queen is a lizard-Jew” (in the interests of politeness I’ve tried to stay open-minded here, guys, but have to say—I might be out on this one).
As for the third recurrent complaint, I document a selection of them, faithfully, here: “Ms. Moron—why do you persistently allow yourself to be photographed pulling faces? Grimacing adds nothing. On the rare occasions I’ve seen you straight-faced, your features have looked . . . perfectly adequate.” “Any chance we could see what you look like when you’re not desperately gurning?” “My dear, your ‘wacky young me’ persona was grating at the age of twenty-three—now pushing thirty-nine, you look like someone’s drunk mother, having a stroke. Stop it. It is profoundly unattractive. Why do you persist in it?”
Well, I am glad you asked! For you see, to the untrained eye, it may very well appear as if I do spend most of my photo shoots pulling a “silly” face, in which I look like a lollygagger, half-wit, or clown.
In actuality, however, this is my cleverest face. My brainiest face. That bog-eyed rictus—which appears to be little more than a homage to the standard expression of, say, Rod Hull, of Rod Hull & Emu fame, on posters for pantomimes in the late 1980s—is, in actuality, a devastatingly realized piece of cultural critique. It is one of my most political statements. It’s where I am being the change I would wish to see.
You see, something happens to women like me when they have a picture taken while trying to look calm, attractive, and authoritative: they lose. This isn’t a blame issue. The simple fact is that my genetic legacy does not look good “in repose”—doing that calm, emotionless expression women are supposed to do when having their picture taken for a magazine or newspaper.
If you want to do a “serenely impassive” face, you have to have the kind of cheekbones you can hang your coat—and, indeed, metaphorically, your entire life—off. People like that look fine when they stay still. They look good asleep. They’ll look good dead. Indeed, if they have an open-casket funeral, they’ll probably still be able to pull someone by the end of the ceremony. Hot people be hot.
I, by way of contrast, have a fleshy Irish peasant’s face—half potato, half thumb. I know, from decades of experience, that if I’m not moving this facial shit around as much as possible—essentially juggling my features, possibly as they’re on fire, almost certainly while screaming—my default look is “sullen maid-of-all-work being forced to resentfully scrub out the dunny, on her half-day.”
And I do not wish to represent myself this way—only in dour bone, and podge. No. I want to work my face. I want to project how I feel on the inside: like a Muppet being fired out of a cannon into a large pie. On Christmas Day. I want to look alive.
This is why I “pull” those faces. Faces that are, in actuality, just what I look like, all day—rather than the real “pulled” faces, studiedly sultry or lofty, of most photos.
As unlikely as it seems, it is my intent to look like a scruffy thirty-nine-year-old Muppet, or a clown—because I would rather cut off my head than try to look attractive in a photo. I don’t want to enter that competition—for that’s what it is, when a woman dresses, and poses, like that. She gets rated. Rated against all the other women posing like that, and doing those things with her face. Pitched against Merle Oberon and Carol Vorderman, and thingy from the Kardashians.
I, on the other hand, want to be in a different category altogether—the category with Rik Mayall, and Daffy Duck, and Bill Murray in it. Where you look at their faces, and it doesn’t occur to you to comment on their jowls, or their wrinkles, or their animated yellow bill. You don’t think, “Oh, they’re fatter than last month,” or “They think they’re it,” or “Bad choice of yellow dungarees.” You just think, “They look like they’re having fun.”
And that’s all I want to look like. Like I’m having fun. And that I would help you carry your buggy up a flight of stairs, if you needed it.
I’m not trying to project some sexy authoritativeness at the world. I am being amused by the world, instead. I’m not transmitting. I’m receiving.
So, yes. To everyone who has ever written to me about my “silly” face, I want you to know that this is actually my best face, and I wrote this entire column looking like Les Dawson.
Because I want to. Because it makes me happy.