MARK: An unbroken series of successful gestures

“The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.”-Daniel Webster

Conclusions are the easiest part of any essay. I love writing conclusions because it’s where you can make grand sweeping statements. All the technical maneuvers of the body are left behind and you can make that final point you’ve been striving to make for pages and pages, sentence after sentence. I’ve been here for four years and just like the essays I write I find the conclusion has been the most fun to work through. That brings me to the conclusion of this column that I’ve been writing every single week. I’ve made my jokes, maybe a few observational insights, perhaps some accurate descriptions of life as someone who struggles with their weight in a culture that is obsessed with health, appearance, and identity. While I’ve spoken mostly about my own experiences it’s been part of a larger point.

‘Fat Boy in a Skinny World’ was inspired by an idea I’ve been going over in my mind for a while now. For about two years, I’ve tried to refine this idea and get a better grasp on it as I observe the world through my subjective and limited point of view. Everyday I see it in practice and that tells me many people understand it intuitively but don’t necessarily know how to articulate it. It’s so basic that the casual observer most likely notices it and labels it insignificant. I am not the casual observer.

Now I might be labeled a materialist, but superficiality and materialism are not pejorative in my mind. The basic thesis of this column was the following: Who we are is an amalgamation of what we choose to show others. What we look like, what we say, what we wear, what music we listen to, what activities we engage in, what we put online; these combined make up who we truly are. Some would have us believe that this isn’t the whole story — that this is merely a fragment and who we are lies beneath the masks we wear out in public — the suit is the businessman’s armor he wears to conceal his real self. Somehow what we do in the world has been labeled a performance to masks those things we want to keep hidden about ourselves. But it’s the opposite. Our secrets are our lies and our masks are our true selves. The reason I talked about being overweight is because it is my view that being overweight brings a heightened awareness of self-image.

What I say, what I wear, are all meticulously considered in order to manipulate the ways in which others see me. Does that make me a phony? Does that mean I’m lying about who I am? Not in my view. I am on those things that I choose to share with others. If you’re looking for someone’s deep, unseen essence, as if that is who they truly are, you are not going to find it — if it even exists at all. There is no deep mystery to who someone is. That person wearing a Greek life sweat shirt and tights, sitting across from you on the T tells you their story without ever having to open their mouth.

Kurt Vonnegut has a quote in Mother Night, “We are who we pretend to be. So we must be careful what we pretend to be.” While my sixteen-year-old angsty self read that and shook his fist at the world, I now find the idea of pretending to be overly optimistic. No one’s pretending, there is no secret behind our superficial layer. We are our masks and nothing more.

We like to think we don’t care about how someone looks, like it doesn’t matter. We pretend that what really matters is who they are underneath. But I’m saying, that we shouldn’t care about what’s underneath, nor should we pretend to care. I feel a bit like Gordon Gecko at the end of ‘Wall Street,’ but I have to say this, appearance is all that matters. What you choose to show the world of yourself is all that anyone needs to know — it’s all they’ll ever see anyway.

So revel in the materialism. Stress and harp over how your hair looks and how much weight you’ve gained over the holidays. We do not have some secret self we lock away for no one else to see. This has been the point to my ramblings, my comedic jests and witty remarks: to illustrate the idea that appearances are everything and the illusion is believing there is something hidden behind the world. If anyone knows this, it’s a fat boy living in a skinny world.

Sandor Mark is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at smark@bu.edu.