Patriarchy in the Rearview Mirror

I have portrayed Offred looking in the mirror at Jezebel’s. In my drawing she is looking at herself in the mirror in the room’s bathroom. We don’t see the front of her face in this drawing, we only see what she sees in the mirror. She looks disheveled and pale, and her makeup is running, as she describes in the book. (insert quote). Her hair is all over the place and the lingerie she is wearing is falling off of her shoulders due to how ill fitting it is. I made the bodysuit super sparkly or glittery because Atwood describes the look of it in detail, and Offred mentions what she is wearing a few times throughout the night.

I also made the background of the drawing all blue or white. The blue represents the sadness that Offred feels. That is only my interpretation because her feelings are sometimes unclear in the writing, but when I read I get a general melancholy feeling from our narrator. The emotion might not be sadness, but could be insecurity or longing, which are sad feelings to me.

The items that are dark blue (the washcloth, the soap bar, and the clock) are all items that Offred does not have access to inn Gilead, or at least not clear access. She points out the bar of soap and the washcloth, but she does not say that there is a clock in the bathroom. I added the clock because the commander is waiting outside for her to finish freshening up. Time is also an interesting concept in Gilead. “Time here is measured by bells, as once in nunneries” (8). Even when she is away from Gilead, there is still someone expecting her, someone waiting for her arrival.

I wanted to draw this scene because I think it is one of the most important and unique scenes in the book so far. There are no mirrors in the bathroom in Gilead because they don’t want people to be able to look at themselves, avoiding vanity from anyone. This is the first time that Offred gets a good look at herself since “the time before.” All she can do when she looks in the mirror is see her flaws and imperfections. Her makeup is smudged, her clothes don’t fit right, she’s got stray hairs flying everywhere. Gilead has taught her to cover up her imperfections, and to completely hide them so that she appears as a perfect doll for men to play with.

This idea rings so true to my life and my feminine experience. The patriarchy has somehow drilled into my brain that if I don’t have a button nose, if I don’t have a flat stomach, etc. then I am not good enough, or that lacking those qualities makes me less feminine, or less of a woman. Saying that outright sounds sort of insane, or cliche, but those are real insecurities that I have felt. It doesn’t really matter how much I try to unlearn this way of thinking, it stays with me.

So now put yourself in Offred’s shoes– you are living in a world just like ours, where white men have more privilege than anyone else, and where your mother is protesting every other day to have basic human rights for women. Then suddenly, you are pushed into a world where you cannot own anything of your own, and all you really have is your body, and if it betrays you, you are ostracized and sent to basically be a slave in the Colonies. I would probably be pointing out my flaws too.