welcome to your brand new skin

It's long been a joke that, in a job interview, when asked "What's your greatest weakness?" the clever candidate responds with "Perfectionism 🥺👉👈" ostensibly side-stepping the question and segueing into how you're just too detail-oriented and care too much.

I guess that's a better answer than saying, "I get disillusioned by the incompetence and politicking of senior leadership, which disproportionately affects entry-level workers–who are the ones actually doing the work–negatively, and burnout having to sugarcoat and placate people more privileged and less capable than myself."

The thing is, perfectionism isn't actually a strength-couched-as-a-weakness. It's a survival technique that takes a great toll on a person, while leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by others. And, like so many other terms in popular use, it gets watered down and broadened in meaning, such as people describing themselves as perfectionists, when more accurately they're controlling–overlapping ideas but not exactly the same.

I reflected on my own perfectionist tendencies while reading the New Yorker article on the subject (shared with me twice within 72 hours), which details the work of Canadian researchers Gordon Flett and Paul Hewett. I didn't know there were multiple types of perfectionism:

they ultimately produced a model outlining three major types of perfectionism: self-oriented perfectionism (requiring perfection of oneself), other-oriented perfectionism (railing against the imperfections of others), and socially prescribed perfectionism (believing that others require one to be perfect)

Yet all three had played a part in my life. I had quit piano as a child because the stress of being perfect in recitals and Royal Conservatory of Music examinations drained all joy from the music. Often bullied for being weird and whimsical, I realized that excelling academically would draw positive attention (and hopefully protection) from authority figures. As a tutor, then, I was similarly but unreasonably hard on others.

My need to get everything correct was less excellence-based and more fear-based, tied to my (and, to be honest, others') concept of self-worth. The gut-wrenching thing is that it seemed to work, for a while, anyway: contouring myself to the requirements of the world brought me success, even if it came at a steep personal cost to my health and sense of self. It does not surprise me that the researchers believe young people are in an "epidemic of perfectionism," aligning with the acceleration of late-stage capitalism.

The pursuit of perfection is at the heart of Death Becomes Her, both the Broadway musical now playing and the 1992 film it is based on. Briefly, a magic potion gives its user youthfulness and agelessness, but with a mischievous twist: if you are killed, you continue on as a living corpse. Neither production focuses on it, but life would be an anxiety-ridden gilded cage, having to be shielded from any scenario that could cause death.

Watching the Death Becomes Her musical, I realized I didn't remember much about the film. I'd forgot how Ernest ended up with Madeline, the hospital sequence, the whole third act. The closest thing I had to a rewatch in the past two decades was watching on YouTube multiple times the clip of Meryl taking the potion ("NOWWWWWWW, a warning?!") and marvelling as it took effect.

This ends up being a good thing, because after the musical I decided to revisit the film and... it's kind of a dud. The film isn't really interested in the societal pressure on women to appear perfect, and the musical course-corrects a lot of the misogyny of the film, especially the ending. I tried not to read too much into a musical that is essentially a brand extension, given that it tries to skewer vanity, while featuring a cast of a dozen dancers right out of an Equinox ad.

The illusion is that all of this is effortless, but the older I get the more obvious the labour required. By coincidence, I saw Kumail Nanjiani in Oh, Mary! who has discussed the body dysmorphia that came after getting ripped for Eternals. And still, on the streets and in Central Park, I saw runners everywhere: men with Marvel-esque bodies that surely drew them a lot of attention, and perhaps that attention far outweighs the cost–or, maybe the cost is just so high it's better to not think about it even for a second.

In an "epidemic of perfectionism," I wonder what are the role of cautionary tales if we already know the danger and yet still feel like we have no choice? The subtext of Death Becomes Her the musical is that huge swaths of people–such as women, queer people, racialized people–are put under incredible scrutiny, and perfectionism is a false idol with costs far outstripping the benefits.

The New Yorker piece acknowledges this, without drawing a thick line to how capitalism and classism are exacerbating factors. This is evident when getting to the potential antidote to perfectionism: mattering.

But mattering isn’t just about being loved or having a sense of belonging; it’s about feeling essential and unreplaceable. As Flett puts it, “Feelings of mattering are often rooted in having someone recognize our distinctiveness.”

For me, the flattening that occurs under capitalism and classism, the transmutation into a cog or nameless servant, is exactly how we "anti-matter," to use Flett's phrasing. Marginalized groups tend toward perfectionism precisely because the system requires these groups to matter less so that they can be taken advantage of.

At the end of the Death Becomes Her musical, the two leads Helen and Madeline realize they need one another and are actually each other's person ("Alive Forever"). It's a realization that comes only after their attempts at vanity fall through, and, although it seems obvious, it also feels like a lesson we're learning over and over again. The difficult part, I think, is not only finding someone who cares for us when we're imperfect, but that we can trust will be there when we're in need.