In Defense of Imperfections
Embodiment in Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair
I’m waiting to board a plane to Aspen, CO. The crowd is full of people who like looking perfect. The women have fake -this and tweaked -that, they have shiny, plump, injectable skin and enhanced features. The men are accessories.
As I people watch, I’m finishing Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair.
The End of the Affair follows Maurice Bendrix in the aftermath of an affair with a woman named Sarah. His for love her has now soured into jealous hatred and (spoiler) he ends up hiring a private eye to to follow her around town. At one point, the detective obtains Sarah’s journal for Maurice. He opens it to read:
“It was very hot today and it dripped its rain. So I went into the dark church at the corner of Park Road to sit down for a while. Henry was at home and I didn’t want to see him…When I came in and sat down and looked round I realized it was a Roman church, full of plaster statues and bad, realistic art. I hated the statues, the crucifix, all the emphasis on the human body. I was trying to escape from the human body and all it needed. I thought I could believe in some kind of God that bore no relation to ourselves, something vague, amorphous, cosmic, to which I had promise something and which had given me something in return—stretching out of the vague into the concrete human life, like a powerful vapor moving among the chairs and walls. One day I too, would become part of that vapor—I would escape myself forever. Then I came into that dark church in Park Road and saw the bodies standing around me on all the altars—the hideous plaster statues with complacent faces, and I remembered that they believed in the resurrection of the body, the body I wanted destroyed forever. I had done so much injury with this body. How could I want to preserve any of it for eternity….
I thought, instead of my own body, of Maurice’s. I thought of certain lines life had put on his face as personal as a line of writing; I thought of a new scar on his shoulder that wouldn’t have been there if he hadn’t tried to protect another man’s body from a falling wall….that scar was as much part of his character as his jealousy. And so I thought, do I want that body to be vapor (mine yes, but his?), and I knew I wanted that scar to exist through all eternity. But could my vapor love that scar? Then I began to want my body that I hated, but only because it could love that scar. We can love with our minds, but can we only love with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can even love with our senseless nails; we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.”1
Sarah hates her body because it reminds her of lost love, of elusive perfection, of sin, of the complex suffering of human life. I understand this feeling. When I brush shoulders with women who have the means to “perfect” themselves in such a way, or when I make the unfortunate choice of looking at instagram2, the Devil tempts me with anxieties. If only my forehead didn’t move! If only you couldn’t tell that I’ve had two children. If my fur coat was Max Mara instead of from the thrift I would look a lot better…. I hope no one looks closely enough to see that I wanted to wear it before trying to mend some of the splitting seams. I’ve also struggled with acne ever since my second child was born— 18 months of humiliating imperfection. I’m tempted to detest my embodied reality.
But man-made perfection sedates us against our own bodies with anesthetic sleep. “Medical” cosmetic improvements offer an escape from ourselves and a false armor against suffering. They allows us to construct a little world around ourselves through wrinkle prevention and face lifts and implants. In this world, our bodies aren’t real. Our life is static. Our faces and parts don’t change with time and with relationships. Where there is no imperfection, there is no memory. We don’t belong to a certain time or place or person. We aren’t approaching anything, or loving anyone in their particularity.
I raise my right eyebrow a lot, just like my dad, and I can already tell where my “fine lines” and wrinkles will form on my face. I will probably have more children, and continue to experience “tear trough volume loss.” I will always buy old, second-hand clothes and furniture, so I’ll never look wealthy or perfectly curated. And women who I used to surpass in beauty will look preserved when my face is melted by life. I sympathize with Sarah’s hatred of her own body. In her diary, she spars with God, questioning like Job the pain of her own life. But it is an episode of Maurice’s pain and the resulting physical imperfection that recalls her to hope. The scar on his shoulder represents the embodied nature of personhood, of love.
In many cultures, furniture and textile artisans would include deliberate mistakes in their work. The belief is that perfection is only found in God, and that the human sort of beauty must be flawed. But there is an incarnational aspect to this as well. Physical imperfections are meant to recall our minds to Christ, to God in a human body. We know that our incarnate Lord suffered more than any other man, capable only in his divinity of bearing that marring torture of His passion. Our imperfect bodies, and even our imperfect work—the things that must be mended, healed, remade— are an invitation to long for heaven. As Sarah prays in the dark church, she looks up to the front:
“And of course on the altar there was a body too—such a familiar body, more familiar than Maurice’s, that it had never struck me before as a body with all the parts of a body, even the parts the loin cloth concealed.”3
I imagine that those who fall prey to the false promise of surgical, cosmetic, or styled perfection, fear their bodies. The idea of being with their body for an eternity is frightening. The risk of someone rejecting their body (and therefore themselves) is too painful. The temptation of Dorian Gray is too strong, the offer of preservation and then of disappearing like a vapor, comforting. And I too fall into the trap, of imagining what I could fix or preserve. And although I will never go under the needle or the knife on principle, I still slather on a dermatologist-recommended skincare routine, gua sha and tape my face, use red light therapy, look at clothes and shoes I can’t afford. Is that hypocrisy? Maybe, maybe the lines I draw are subjective and arbitrary. Maybe yours are too. Maybe you’ve sought the deceptive happiness of perfection to a destructive level.
When I’m tempted to want to look perfect, I think of the people that I love, especially my husband and my daughters. I would be devastated if they changed something about themselves. I imagine myself spending our family’s money on my own face. I imagine my daughters asking me when I’m sixty, mom, what did you do? Right now, the prospect of increasing physical imperfection tries to frighten me. But how could I look at my children and tell them that I changed everything about myself? Would that not make them think that I looked at them critically too, and that I think of my own daughters, “that nose is too big,” or “her figure is lacking,” or “she always looks frumpy,” and that my own husband is a side show to my medically constructed world of appearances? That I didn’t actually love them?
“Then I began to want my body that I hated, but only because it could love that scar.”
In 2025, I’m embracing “imperfection” by only shopping in-person. The constraint is therefore both my actual available time (not time-warp internet scroll time) and what is there available before me. To that end, I’m going to end each post with a few links of vintage things that have been languishing in my online wish lists and will sell anyways by the end of the year. Here’s hoping that shopping Embodied in my particular Time and Place will lead to authentic personal style.
I have the matching top to complete this vintage Prada set but, alas
Yohji Yamamoto vintage plaid skirt (wool!)
Slinky brown dress, this is my favorite silhouette but I have three other dresses like this
Graham Greene, The End of the Affair. pg. 134-135
It’s been permanent Bricked off of my devices. I could not recommend https://getbrick.app/ MORE.
Pg. 137