Portrait of a Woman and Who Creates Her

“Stay still,” his eyes wander along the parting of her lips, gliding towards her flushed cheeks- a living cherub, they hailed her. “Don’t move,” he grumbled, his fingers lost at the tip of the brush, stroking the canvas. A slight twitch of her eye; her arm itches; her back, and neck ache. Stay still… A little to the right… Don’t move… These words spring back and forth in the room each day for hours. God forbid, she has been a still picture for months. She holds her breath—not a flinch, not even a sigh. Stay still… A little to the right…Don’t move… She follows what they say. Otherwise, the painting distorts.

Her stay is dictated by the ticking of the clock, or at least until her visage exhausts the artist’s eyes. She gets to rest, then. For a while. Before the artist undresses her being, each stroke of the brush is a true-enough façade of her beauty. Until the painting becomes just right; but, Perfect! would be better. Like any other art, her existence demands an audience. Her portrait is meant to be perceived as if her face falls short of proving the artwork’s truth. Her portrait awaits a two-page dictum from the senior critic, a declaration of its value—or lack, thereof. Days from now, houseguests would clamor in the living room, spectacles tracing every swatch and stroke. Is her bosom ample enough? Does she resemble? Are her hips childbearing? Jarring words about the portrait, or the painter, or the portrait and the painter. Questions she must know the answer to, but the answer must be what is already known; otherwise, scorn would be the reply. What they will not ask, though, is the hours she spent lifeless, freeing the brushstrokes and a stranger in a beret to dictate the idea of her. None demands her judgment (if she thinks the piece resembled her) for they will see it themselves. What they would acknowledge is the portrait, if her face had akin curves as the artist portrayed. She is not the artist’s muse; she was the draft. For there to have value, she has to be the maiden glassed in a golden frame, staring, but soulless. Her every breath, every lingering crowd is an ode to the maiden hung by the pillars of her home. When she fails to resemble the painting, the painting is still honored. But her existence, of who she once was, will be buried with the forgotten. A portrait traced after her face, but not her being, lives longer.

Will women be remembered?

Lying on a bed of tulips. A fate went ill. Death for the lover. Hearken back to the literature of senile years ago, women exist for pleasure, pride, and purpose; the frailty of their frame, and the quiver of their touch have felt so familiar—needed, even. Leaf a page from a dusted book, and she appears in the chapter where the unsung hero cries in hunger. Petals flowing on a stream, caress as light as a feather, luring eyes but a timid smile; she is the maiden whose hunger men feasted upon. To belong in a book meant for women to become fragile, a lost nymph, unbearing of an offspring, with none but manhood as their savior. Yet, rebellion from such a word, as in, becoming brave, is to make herself a man. To heed worthy of her kindled heart she fronts a rounded voice, a macho brute, a raging war. But a fragile maiden does not go to war; she weeps at the bedside after sending off her male lover to merit a name for himself. And even the disparity of worlds is an appease for men. To become weak is to be of man’s service, and to become brave is to serve as a man. A woman’s fate is inscribed on stone tablets, as everyone else around them reads the list.

A woman bold enough to defy has to become a warrior, otherwise, a nuisance. She becomes one who rebels, a distressed damsel whose purpose lies in defying orders of her father, for she is unfit for the having of a woman. A frail one has to serve, otherwise, useless. She smears her father's dignity, bearing a household name she fails to produce. Perhaps, you may admire the brave one, given society’s obsession with deviance, the dreadful grit no one aches to bear. Albeit, what you do not admire is the woman herself, but her gut. You do not see this woman and say, “You are brave.” You long for this woman to say, “Your bravery is admiring.” To some, you might pity the frail one, having to submit herself to a life she did not intend. Albeit you do not pity the woman herself, but her fate. You do not sigh at the sight of her in the corner of the room kneeling for offspring. You do not tell her, “Sorry for your purpose.” You tell her, “I’m sorry for not serving your fate.” And you tell their narratives as if women may only be defined in these dichotomies as if no woman exists beyond and between these worlds.

To get lost in the crowd, but not get lost in their way. To cruise with the flow, but not drown. To trace a single line for their entire life...

Starlets gaze at the mirror, not to adore their reflections, but to console themselves that her face is who they want to be seen as. Muses write poetry about loving and dying for a lover they cannot live without—but have always lived without her. Damsels never drive chariots but lay in the backseat of a coach. Women: always drawn in contrasting forms yet held up in familiar standards. Like a pound sterling balancing a bed of nails at the opposite scale, a calculated woman is just right. It means you are enough to coexist in a swarm of a crowd; where standing up is a sign of revolt, and making yourself small is submission. To be a woman is to place yourself in the middle—caught right in the middle of the line—as if, to stay still.

To wake up as a woman means a day without your lipstick smeared, shoulders slumped, or wobbling legs in heels. A walking picture-perfect picture without a sight of a flaw. To live in fear, yet to have courage. To live as weak, yet never vulnerable. To live in shadows, yet to stand out most subtly enough to declare your existence. To fight, yet also resist. To gaze at the line, you have to stay in, but never cross. To stay still in the picture, tilt a little to the left, a slight lean towards the right, but never move. Like a hue of ratioed tints and shadows, a stroke gentle but firm, a blank canvas only the artist may touch, an art waiting to be sung by only the greatest siren—the woman has to be just right.