“The photographer’s point of view is reflected in his choice of subject. The painter’s point of view is recreated by the marks he makes on the canvas or paper. But although each image embodies a point of view, our perception or appreciation of an image also depends on our own point of view.”
— John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Hold hands and live out insecurities
The closest thing we have to seeing is the coordinated movement of our hands. The coordination between my hands and my eyesight has been a source of admiration since my days as a Kathak dancer. However, this almost perfect relationship was disrupted when these very hands became the object of my insecurities. In this way, my hands were also the source of a fragile self-image.
This happened during a date with a man who held my hands and exclaimed, “You have such small hands.” I dismissed the comment at first. However, a lot of time has passed since then and I have looked at my hands differently since then. The way I see my own, already embodied hands, may now be shaped by the way this man held them. Borrowing from English writer and art critic John Berger’s idea of a “point of view”, I would argue that his way of seeing my hands is a product of a normative heterosexual romantic discourse in which the idea of a “perfect” body has permeated even the simplest notions of infatuation.
The coordination between my hands and my eyesight has been a source of admiration since my days as a Kathak dancer. Photo credit: Special agreement
In her 1993 book, American scholar Judith Butler argues that the body or gender cannot simply be viewed as a given, stable fact. Instead, it must be understood as something that emerges through discourse and materiality and is interpreted through the lens of gendered construction. The flesh of the hands may be the same across genders, but their shape, size, texture and color are read through the gender binary.
Hand color, calluses, short nails, rough texture, and bumps and spots are often viewed as signs of an undisciplined female body – a body that has not conformed to the contours of femininity. But romance, which promises an eternal and compassionate space of acceptance, brings with it its own power hierarchies: femininity must be disciplined, aestheticized and reworked. In this sense, femininity and therefore embodied hands do not precede romanticism. Rather, it arises through romance as a regulatory ideal that one must internalize in order to be considered an object of romantic desire.
The fear of maintaining this ideal drove me to look for ways to “fix” my supposedly flawed hands and led me to enter the market for skin “repair” mechanisms. This ultimately led me to fear the prospect of romantic relationships and view dating as a humiliation ritual.
The material politics and social history of femininity
Our hands cannot be reduced to the tasks they perform. I see my hands as a reflection of my father’s hands, similar in texture and shape – hands that have survived a history of generational poverty and societal backlash. However, what I cannot perceive through these hands alone is the significance of femininity that they hold in the absence of my entire body. Femininity requires the entire body to be legible to the patriarchy. Once these hands are detached from the face – the site of identity and social categorization – they become independent of it. This raises the question: How is it that hands, isolated from the body, are seen as gendered?
What marks my hands as female is the presence of a ring – an already gendered object that reinforces the ideals of femininity. Look closely, and the ring’s association with femininity is reflected in its sleek, delicate design, revealing how cultural capital itself is imbued with gendered meanings that ultimately shape the way hands are perceived.
What marks my hands as feminine is the presence of a ring. Photo credit: Special agreement
In this pursuit of normativity, however, something begins to falter: the existence of my non-normative hands, with their unmanicured nails, wider palms, and short fingers. As Australian scientist Elizabeth Grosz argues in her 1994 book Fleeting bodiesThe body is adapted to cultural requirements through habitual patterns of movement and personal care. The appropriation of hands cannot therefore be reduced to a simple subject-object relationship between ring and hand. Rather, the ring functions as an external extension of the body – a material signifier that inscribes meaning into the hands.
This appropriation then arises through the interaction of several organic and inorganic bodies that are jointly involved in the production and stabilization of gender-specific corporeality.
Touch, intimacy and feelings
This physicality of the hands goes beyond the material. It is the haptic experience of the hands, felt through the skin, that defines the boundary between the self and the world. In my previous relationships, I have always found the feeling of holding hands to be the purest form of somatic romance. Therefore, my date with the above-mentioned man became a disturbing experience, with my hands constantly trying to understand the sensations they were receiving from him.
For the longest time, my hands tightened and grasped in longing grasps to release my physical fear. In such moments I experienced the touch of the self. Although this feeling did not reflect the charged tension of his touch, holding my hands together brought with it a realization: touch, especially intimate and compassionate touch, transcends the normativity imposed on the hands.
This insight shows how the aesthetics of our hands adapt patriarchal beauty standardscome into conflict with the actual touch sensations that hands are supposed to convey between two bodies. Such touch goes beyond material appearance and instead connects with the affective realm of the mind.
The expression of desire is rarely external; Instead, it is internally structured. Photo credit: Special agreement
My encounter with the politics of touch deepened as touch became the first boundary through which I came to know myself. Freud argued that the ego is primarily a physical ego, arising from physical sensations. In this sense, touch shapes our relationships and the hierarchies within them. When you touch yourself, you are undoubtedly both the source and the recipient of the sensation. So what confirms our boundaries and our existence does not have to come from someone else. If the ego is based on physical sensations, self-touch confirms that one’s existence does not need to be confirmed exclusively from outside. Therefore, in attempting to experience my own hands as I could in a heteronormative relationship, I found in this physical engagement the ability to produce my own evidence of being.
It is true that touching yourself through hands may not recreate the feeling of physical difference – the excitement, tension, closeness and exchange that can only be experienced in the presence of another. But through this simple exchange with my own hands, I found my answer: The expression of desire is rarely external; Instead, it is internally structured.
Female bodies, in particular, are often taught to understand desire as something that needs to be expressed by another person through sight, touch, or recognition. Desire is conceptualized as external and dependent on recognition. Finding sensation, even a muted form of intimacy, within one’s own body dispels the idea that we must wait for fulfillment through the touch of others.
References
Berger, J. (1972). Ways of Seeing: Based on the BBC television series. Penguin books.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” Psychology Press.
Grosz, E. (1994). Fleeting Bodies: Towards a Bodily Feminism (p. 138). Indiana University Press.
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. International Psychoanalytic Publishing House (Vienna); WW Norton & Company.