The Way She Looks: What Not to Say

by Christopher Dickey

For an American-educated Lebanese woman who has been having an open affair with somebody else’s husband, the Question is part of a continuing game of seduction, “a very subtle sexual dance,” as she writes in an email from Beirut. “Do I exaggerate? If sexual desire still lives between them, then what he sees and what she hears still matters. If it does not, all you hear is silence, and then the opening click of the door.”

After a few long-term romances, a 20-something Parisian is of a similar mind. “What I’m looking for isn’t an objective judgment on the choice of my earrings, or the way a color complements my complexion,” she says. “What I’m really waiting for is the vague yet firm assurance that even if I were wearing a potato sack I would still be the one object of his desire and attention. In that singular moment when you’re about to leave the intimacy of your home, venture outside, and mingle with strangers, it’s a bit like reaffirming the trust you have in each other. In the question ‘how do I look?’ there’s a hint of the ‘how do we look?’ I can’t help but think that the day when your lover or husband gives you an objective answer about the way you look, something may be a bit broken.”

Perhaps. My bachelor friend, Dr. Barolo, thinks that “some women actually appreciate it when you tell them the truth.” He takes a deep breath of fermented grape. “But—you never know when that is,” he sighs. “When they ask you what they should wear, I used to tell them, ‘Wear what you want.’ Wrong. They want you to be the man, to take command.” Or do they? Husbands and lovers who try to be Pygmalion, pushing women to match some image of perfection, are just as intolerable as,well, any other sort of pig.

It means to be the key to weathering this little inquisition, and turning it into something positive, lies not so much in what you say as in proving that you see. There is a terrible invisibility that creeps into long-term partnerships, a corrosive obliviousness, and it’s especially dangerous for women. Many become like the shopper in Randall Jarrell’s heartbreaking poem “Next Day,” who is buying detergent in the supermarket, “Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,” then meditating on what is overlooked in life, including herself:

When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I’d wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car