Routines and Rituals: More than Meets the Eye

Written by Nick Ferrara

Aster Phillips has journeyed quite far. Three years ago, after peeling himself from the sheets of a dormitory bed that he used as a hiding place for numerous objects — clorox wipes, gardening tools and eyeshadow singles — he may have chosen to begin his day with the St. Ives Apricot Scrub. Loaded with citric shards, dermatologists have claimed this product has comparable effects to scraping one’s face against a brick wall.

Like many budding professionals of the 2020s, Phillips fell victim to the sheltering qualities of the pandemic. Relegated to a $6,000 dorm room with faulty air conditioning and granted no social circle beyond that of a Zoom University breakout room, these conditions became a recipe for poor mental health. As he grappled with bipolar disorder and gender dysphoria, the necessity of self-maintenance would often evade his memory.

Even showering once daily can become an arduous task for someone who has no choice but to allocate all their energy to improving their emotional wellbeing, rendering subscription to a daily routine impossible.

“Your functioning has to do with your mental health in a way. I think that there is a correlation there,” Phillips says. “If you’re at least washing your face once a day, you’re at least functioning.” Furthermore, as he quickly realized that his body did little to affirm his newfound gender identity, motivating himself to care for that body became all the more difficult.

While joking about being eager to find methods of curbing the havoc that newly-growing facial hair can wreak on one’s complexion, he says, “When you’re comfortable with your body and you feel like yourself, you want to take care of the body that you’re in.”

For Phillips, a change in his daily routine represented a much greater change in his life — one towards happiness, inner peace and physical affirmation. The way in which one cares for themselves provides a window inwards, and in his case, it was a symbol of progress and newfound excitement for the future.

“I’ll be getting these babies off within a year,” he laughs, gesturing toward his breasts. “That is going to feel even more affirming for me, and that will motivate me to take care of myself ten times more.”

Both recovery and transitioning are an ongoing process for Phillips. Nevertheless, he continues to amaze himself both in his progress and in the way his lifestyle has changed.

“I was very low-functioning before I transitioned, and I was very mentally ill for a long time,” he continues.

Fortunately for Phillips, he would soon venture to a headspace where the grass was much greener. Finding a new therapist and investing in hormone replacement therapy changed both his life and his cosmetic regimen. With steadily improving body image due to a new sense of affirmation, he discovered within himself motivation to perform selfcare, finding peace in a strict skincare ritual and discarding old products that did more harm than good.

Written by Ginger Lyons

We see it all over social media. We pose to show off our “good side” in spectacular lighting, while hiding our other side. We use our gua sha tools, pushing the edges of our face down to look even. We contour, making sure our left side looks the same as the right. Even down to the middle part of our hair. What do all of these things have in common? Deep down, this obsession with evenness and balance in our appearance is our belief that to look “attractive” is to look symmetrical.

Symmetry Through History

The ancient Greeks emphasized that symmetry is attractive through their art and architecture. This began with Vitruvius, writer and architect, who emphasized the importance of mathematics and proportion in architecture, ultimately leading to symmetrical buildings. Later, Leonardo DaVinci utilized Vitruvius’ writing to create the “Vitruvian Man,” a depiction of “ideal” human proportion and balance.

However, artists from the 20th and 21st centuries have tried to move away from this idea that humans are rational and balanced beings.

Furthermore, these unachievable goals sometimes make us do more extreme things in order to fix these “irregularities” or imperfections that we see in ourselves. “I think symmetry is an artificial thing, and so when you set artificial standards for beauty, people are going to do artificial things to themselves,” says Ziolkowski.

Symmetry in Nature

While that is true for some things, when it comes to human faces, it doesn’t seem to apply. “There is a lot of symmetry in nature,” says Ziolkowski. “But that could be more functional than about beauty.”

Moreover, these artists recognized that humans are not rational beings, which strayed away from former western ideology. Instead, they began to focus their art on the irrational nature of humans.

Dr. Aaron Ziolkowski, professor of Modern Contemporary Art at Penn State, says, “There are these really old ideas that art is about perfecting the world. It is about taking the best parts of different things and combining them together and that gives you perfection … But even that concept should make it sound like Frankenstein. It's not actual bodies we're talking about, it's always about ideals and concepts, and so art is kind of divorced from reality, which is partly why it's appealing.”

Beauty Standards

These “ideals and concepts” that Ziolkowski refers to are taking over beauty standards in the modern day. While some concepts have been around for a long time, a lot of them are now playing a part in modern makeup, skin care and plastic surgery. With gua sha-ing, contouring or cosmetic surgery, people still, sometimes even unconsciously, strive for that perfectly symmetrical face. Symmetry compels us and inherently draws us in. “You go in closer and try to find irregularities, I think that's part of it,” says Ziolkowski.

Ziolkowski is referring to how things in nature use symmetry for different purposes than humans. Plants and animals in nature frequently use their symmetry for survival, which makes placing this idea on human beauty standards bizarre. Unlike living beings in nature, humans do not survive because they have symmetrical faces. But in reality, maybe asymmetry is what helps humans survive socially.

As an example, Ziolkowski explains the Starbucks logo, which was first designed to be completely symmetrical. “So, they added this tiny little change … and that actually optically balances it out. Sometimes things look more ‘perfect’ or ‘balanced’ if they're not perfectly symmetrical.” While some of us may be wired to search for those with perfectly symmetrical figures or faces, it is our irregularities that help us stand out. So next time you find yourself cursing your bent nose, crooked smile or mismatched eyebrows, remember that none of us are symmetrical.