What mask do you wear?

Tear it off, your face is glorious!

When I was very little, maybe two or three-years old, my mother dressed me up as a witch for Halloween, but I was too scared to wear the mask. Family lore tells me I couldn’t say “witch” and pronounced the word “switch,” thus the story has loosely been referred to as the “switch mask.” My older brother sported a plastic Jaws costume, mask and all, but in the photo snapped on my grandparent’s screened in front porch, the same porch where we sat during the day in white rattan rockers and ate egg salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off, my mask is off and my little face appears worried. Even then, I hated to pretend I was someone else.

But I enjoy dressing in costume, and after the “switch mask” Halloween, (vague memory of my brother chasing me with the switch mask and me running away in panic. Thanks for that, Cody) I grew to understand the suspension of disbelief involved in costume play and how it’s OK to dress up as someone else to pretend for recreation, for fun. And it IS fun. Last year I went all out and dressed up as Maleficent for two neighborhood parties. I enjoyed it so much that I later pondered whether I should get into cosplay as a hobby, daughter shrieked NO PLEASE DON’T, and that balloon deflated and splatted to the floor.

Still, I enjoyed being Maleficent for a few hours and I do like dressing up in costume, especially villains, especially sexy villains. As I get older and softer, my ability to pull this off is dwindling, and this year I skipped the neighborhood party and sat on my couch to read instead, not out of avoiding a sexy villain costume, I just had the urge to be alone, so that’s what I did. For a long time, I did things that didn’t agree with my consciousness, my desires, my inner self, and doing those things over and over for years and decades eventually caught up with me. The small act of saying no to a social event when you don’t feel like going can feel like a tiny revolution, a hard-earned staking of a flag in your own authenticity.

But the things I was doing that went against my inner self were bigger than attending parties. Throughout my life, my tendency to please and avoid led me to follow the crowd in ways that directly conflicted with my heart, my singular longing to question everything and seek answers as deeply as my ambition could take me. One would think TV news would be a terrific career choice for a young woman who enjoys asking questions, but those questions are only allowed to go so far. They exist in a specific framework, whether they are aimed at elected officials suspected of wrongdoing or newsroom managers in a tense editorial discussion. That framework tacitly endorses the systems of power in our nation—government, law enforcement, military, etc. and my own questions that strayed outside the framework, whether held internally or said out loud, were dismissed.

I remember begrudgingly wearing an American flag pin on my lapel while reporting on Bush’s 2003 “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq. My boss told all anchors in the newsroom to wear the pins, we were in San Diego after all, a true military town, home to the largest concentration of military in the world. We wore the pins to show support for the home team, but I felt like we were pushing propaganda, explicit support for a military campaign I already believed was based on lies.

I remember watching the flashing strobe lights over Baghdad on the screen, filmed from a distance to create a visual of a sanitized fireworks show and not large scale murder and destruction. I thought about something I had read, that women in war-torn countries experience break-through menstruation due to the sustained fight-or-flight stress. While sitting there wearing a pasted smile and flag pin, I didn’t just imagine the bloodshed from bombs and shrapnel, but how women’s bodies were being forced into self-bleeding from sheer terror. There’s no place for that in a newscast.

But I continued slogging away, for far longer than was healthy or smart. For 15 years beyond the flag pin and forced bleeding, I continued trading pieces of my truest self— my voice, my ideas, my opinions, even my physical appearance— to keep my seat on the anchor desk. The truth is, I liked making money and TV anchor jobs in decent-sized markets pay well. It’s been painful for me to reconcile that truth with the person I want to be, but it’s one of the answers I have come to when I interrogate myself about why I stayed so long in a job that made me miserable. Money took away immediate worries while my existential angst flourished. But I still bent myself into the image they wanted—thin, blond and heavily made up for the male gaze.

Talk about wearing a mask. This photo represents the apex of my striving to achieve the news barbie persona, the gold standard in TV news. I remember posting this headshot on Facebook after it was taken in 2012 and watching the compliments roll in like a ticker tape parade. Stunning! You look like a model! Your eyes look amazing! I love your long hair! DISCLAIMER: half the hair in this photo is blond weave that my stylist fastened to my real hair with adhesive. Also, I am wearing fake eyelashes.

But despite the obvious accoutrements and posing, I enjoyed the attention and felt satisfied with the positive reviews. For much of my career prior to this, I was falling short of hair, makeup and clothing expectations. No matter how much advice from TV news consultants I tried to put into practice, I still wound up with more advice, more instructions, more “constructive criticism” that I didn’t get it quite right.

As I continued scrolling through the Facebook comments on my new headshot, one gave me pause. They should make a Beth Shelburne barbie doll! I winced reading it. It came from a former neighbor, the older sister of a girl I was friends with when we were little. I’m sure she meant it as a compliment, but even at the top of the appearance food chain, it made me feel like a bottom feeder. I don’t want to be a barbie doll, I thought to myself. The achievement of finally nailing the news anchor physical ideal marked both the zenith and the nadir of my striving.

I see this photo now and feel compassion for myself and how hard I was working to be happy. I had landed a highly-sought-after anchor spot at the number one station in my hometown of Birmingham. I was making good money and doing some substantive reporting and had a family and home, so what the hell was wrong with me? Why was I constantly on-edge? Why did I dread work like the anxiety I experienced as a frequently sick child, knowing I’d have to choke down yet another sickly sweet spoonful of cough syrup? Was I just a glass-half-empty, grass-is-always-greener-on-the-other-side-of-the-fence ingrate? What was up with my longing to break free from my current situation? Why couldn’t I just be satisfied? Why did I feel so empty and wretched?

It wasn’t just that my Gen X self was reckoning with the sell-out reality of adhering to someone else’s physical standards. There was something else I was only beginning to recognize in traditional media—a buy-in that is baked-in, an explicit sanctioning of conventional standards, a rah-rah attitude about the community, state or nation that stymies critical thought. A TV news anchor, specifically a woman, functions as a sort-of homecoming queen for whatever place she serves, and that includes not only the market but also the company. She is the Queen Bee, right there under the lights, telling you how it is but also showing you how to be. In local news, at least at all the stations I worked for, that telling and showing is done in a highly specific and stylized way and straying from that, in looks or presentation or delivery or God forbid, in your own words, can get you fired or at the very least, written up (see my previous substack “What the fuck, America?”). Self expression outside the accepted binary is not tenable.

Anyone who knows me well knows I am not and never was a homecoming queen. I resent authority and have been called, affectionately, a “pain-in-the-ass” as well as a peculiar woman. Part of my evolution to a happier, more authentic life is knowing this about myself, accepting it, even loving it. But I had to wear a bunch of masks before I could tear them off and reveal my true self to my own self. I no longer resent the mistakes, or all the time spent wearing those masks because I agree with writer Mary Karr—”being lost is a prelude to finding new paths.” With my unmasked self I am exploring my own moral culpability in this world, the conflicting truths we all hold and how the masks we wear are also lies we tell ourselves about the self we think we should hide. So I may wear a mask or a costume this Halloween, but just for a while. Long term use is not recommended.