I want to be perfect in every endeavour I undertake and in myself. I know that it's impossible, but to me, mediocrity seems a fate worse than death. I'm involved in many acting and public speaking activities, and while I do very well, I'm not as good as I could be. I've been in Forensics (public speaking with different sub-categories. I do Poetry Reading) and I've yet to get a gold medal at state. I've always missed it by a single point, garnering me a silver medal, but not the gold. Forensics season has started up again and we had our first meet last Monday. Out of 25 points I scored a 22 a 25 and a 22 in each of the rounds, respectively. This isn't bad, in fact, I did a lot better than some of the others. But I was still disappointed. I realize that Forensics is very subjective in nature and that I'm probably striving for an impossibility (of having perfect scores all the time) but I like to think that I'm good at what I do. Poetry is my schtick. I read it, write it, perform it, live it. And I'm not exceeding as well as I want to at it, and no matter what I do, I cannot please everyone all the time. What one judge loved, the other hated. It's literally driving me insane, to the point where I can't stop thinking about it.
This experience has made me wonder where my drive for perfection comes from. Part of it from my own motivation and drive that's just a part of my personality. The vast majority of it, however, was instilled in me by society. Society, in this instance, includes pretty much anyone outside of my own being. My parents don't really care one way or the other, as far as my being perfect goes. Well, they'd like to see perfect grades, attitude, and tidiness, but that's a little different. I want to please everyone. I want to make my coaches proud and I want to be able to say, "There was absolutely nothing wrong with that performance. It was flawless." I feel the same way about my body. I'm 5'3" and I'm chubby. People say I'm cute and all that, but I want to be thin, tall, and beautiful. I'm not. My hair never behaves, my teeth are slightly crooked (even after braces,) I have freckles, fat thighs and a gut. I could lose weight, and I have. But the other stuff, I can't fix.
And so I have a complex. Being an actress I couldn't not have one. My dreams aren't very big- I would be ecstatic if I could land a decent job at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Second City or Neo-Futurists. Respected and recognized by people in the know, and a lot of talent scouts are at the Second City, but I don't need to go any farther than that. I just want people to like me for my talents. However, I am under the assumption that I could not make it because of my physical short-comings. No matter how much weight I could lose (short of anorexia) I will never be thin. I'll never be tall. I can't make myself beautiful.
And why should I have to be those things if I'm a good actress? I'm not saying I'm awesome, I'm not, but I'm not terrible, either. It's because society has decided that it's neccessary for an actress to be those things, if she wants the lead, or, to be more specific, "pretty-girl" roles. Yeah, I'd be pumped if I got the part of the chubby loser in a movie, but I think it'd start to wear on me if that's the only role I could get. I'm capable of embodying several different characters. I don't want to be limited because of societal decrees on what beauty is.
Hell, society does it to everyone, not just actors. If people want to be considered beautiful, they have to fit the proverbial bill. It's so close-minded. Two of the most beautiful women I ever saw were pictured in my Sociology text book. They were identical twins. They had almost raven hair with just a shade of reddish brown that gave it a certain luster. They had dark arched eyebrows over blue-green eyes that were fringed with long, dark lashes. They had lips that were naturally the color between coral and cherries. They had the creamiest, whitest, skin that was free of blemishes. And they were easily 350 pounds a piece. Despite their beauty, I had to recognize that they were probably overlooked because of their weight. How is that fair? If they weighed 110 pounds instead of 350 would society then consider them perfect? I wouldn't. They were much more gorgeous and majestic in their obesity than they could ever be thin. They challenged what's accepted, and I think they were the more regal and wonderful for it. I respected them, just from looking at a photograph. And I hated myself, because I knew I could never be like them. I knew I could never be secure enough in myself to be beautiful in spite of my so-called imperfections.
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I do forensics, too. Do you compete in the NFL? I agree with the rest of your blog, but it's not like I haven't heard it before. In the beginning, though, what you were saying about the judges, I just had to comment because it's so true. It's subjective: you can have five equally match speakers in a panel and have a different outcome every time. That's why it's so important to be satisfied with your performance, because ultimately one can't be perfect, and one might not be recognized for one's talent and skill.
Of course it's nothing you haven't heard before! I never said I was original! : ) Just what I'm feeling is all.
No, I don't compete in NFL. It just annoys the hell out of me when I give what I consider to be an awesome performance and they don't agree. It gets incredible frustrating. I was short one point of a gold last year, and do you know why that point was taken off? Because I used personal pronouns in my introduction and transitions. I'm pretty sure, that in the last five years, I have never heard or read anything that states you shouldn't use personal pronouns! I was on the brink of tears, because virtually all of my friends got golds that year. Not only did I feel terribly left out, because thirteen out of twenty three on the team got golds, but it felt like I deserved it for that performance. If I felt as if I hadn't deserved it, it wouldn't have bothered me that much. For instance, at sub-district, one of the twenty-twos I got, I was completely fine with because I messed up my intro and ended up rushing a bit. It's just, when you do the best you can, and your best is worth the gold because you've been drilling those damn poems since fall (I'm very anal and I practice a lot...) and you know what you're doing.... *exasperated sigh*