I hate it.
I hate those flawlessly skinned, beautifully coiffeured , perfectly manicured " made-in-Chelsea," types.
I hate those homes where every piece of furniture is matched and completely co-ordinated without a scrap of clutter in sight.
I hate graffitiless streets where all the flowers in the symmetrical window boxes grow to exactly the same height.
I hate perfectly rolled, velvet green lawns and spotlessly shiny cars.
Perfection makes me feel uncomfortable.
Perfection reminds me of all the things I'm not.
I've wondered if it's jealousy.
Standing next to someone with seemingly perfect looks or an apparently perfect life can make you feel like an extremely flawed and inadequate failure.
But I don't think that it's jealousy ( well not just jealousy) that fuels my dislike of perfection.
For a start, perfect people are usually self-adulatingly boring.
Our tortoise has more character than some of the best looking people I know.
It seems somehow that there is a natural pay-off: looks for personality.
Perhaps it's just that perfect people don't need to bother with be interesting, they get attention anyway. Or perhaps it's that they spend so much time and money working on their physical perfection, that they don't actually have anything else to talk about.
How tiring must it be to constantly worry that someone might find a flaw, a spot a crack in your perfect veneer?
Perhaps it's not surprising they don't have time to learn things or listen to people.
I don't trust physical perfection. It's a dangerous aspiration for our teenagers in a world that is already full of unrealistic demands and frightening challenges.
Why dye your hair blonde when it's rich and brown, why straighten your wild curls?
Perfection is about conformity not standing out.
Perfection is about following not leading, about external not internal beauty.
Perfection is dangerous.
I have sat in glossy, magazine-perfect houses.
Surfaces are shiny and clear, furniture is clean and matching and sparse, Ffoorboards are stripped and varnished to a burnished smoothness. Not a pen out of place. Not a piece of un-filed paper in sight. Not an ounce of character to be seen..
They are soulless and impersonal and exhausting to be in.
I find myself constantly worrying about where to put my glass, what to do about the crumbs that have fallen on the dust-free floors.
I worry that the kids might touch something, might leave an unwanted fingerprint.
" Don't touch anything," I say,
" Don't move.
Don't play with anything.
Don't be you, just for half an hour."
They are not homes, thoee perfect houses.
They are frightening.
They are airless vacuums of " don'ts," and " stops," and "not- being."
I find myself leaving them and taking big gulps of polluted air while the children run, screaming and free towards the messy car.
Give me mismatched furniture and food-stained floors.
Give me random pieces of meaningful ( to someone ) clutter and rickety old chairs and tables.
Perfection is stressful.
It's the same when you wander through the streets of idyllic country villages or picture-perfect towns and cities.
There's something about the empty walls that make me want to rush out and buy a can of spray paint ( and then find someone who is artistic and knows how to use it)
It must be hard to be "different," in a place that is externally so perfect.
You must permanently feel like an unwanted and unnecessary outsider who will never fit in.
There are no down-and-outs sleeping in the doorways or unkempt teenagers shouting to each other in the parks in those places..
Where are they?
Where is the space for individuality in such a perfect world?
Those places have an expectation of calm and order that could so easily break the spirt and make you feel trapped.
Perfection controls us.
And it starts so young.
Children are no longer given a bucket of lego and told to make whatever they want which means that whatever they make is just right.
Instead, lego comes in kits with a picture of what the finished product should look like on the box, a perfect model of a spaceship or a dinosaur or a city.
Before they start piecing together the tiny blocks of bumpy coloured plastic, children are already worrying that their model won't look like it does on the box, won't look perfect.
Perfection is setting us all up for failure.
And the other thing about perfection, is that once it is achieved, there is nowhere else to go.
You look perfect or live in the perfect house or town or city....then what do you do?
Wait for a perfect crisis?
Perhaps that's why perfectly beautiful people are often boring. They've got nothing left to aim for or talk about.
They have attained perfection, their world is complete.
And that;s a dangerous feeling to have.
I remember, when I was doing my teacher training, one of my tutors said:
" If you ever think you have taught the perfect lesson, you have to give up teaching."
And she's right.
There is always something we could do better or differently.
And if we don't think there is, we have become a bad teacher.
If you believe that how you look or live or what you do is perfect, you have become complacent and complacency prevents progress.
Give me imperfect lego models and lessons that need improvement.
Give me imperfection in all it's real life glory.
Because at least I know that tomorrow I might do better.
It was in a tiny jewellery store in the crazlyy, colourful chaotic " Las Ramblas" in Barcelona that I found the ring I had always dreamed of finding.
It wasn't perfectly round, it wasn't shiny, no part was the same thickness or width in any part. The perfectly imperfect ring.
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| A tower of perfectly imperfect rings by ginnypuzeydesigns.co.uk |
!0 years on, I still wear it ( and the matching one my jewellery- maker friend made me for my birthday)
And every time I feel the threat of perfection looming, I touch it to remind myself that it is not perfection we should be aiming for.
Instead we should be using our imperfections to make the world a better place.
And don't worry about what other people think.
Perfection is subjective, overrated and usually unattainable.
We have far more important things to worry about than how others perceive us and whether we are almost-perfect-enough.
So here's to driving battered second-hand cars so you don't have to worry when they get scratched.
Here's to wearing old, comfortable clothes and living in messy houses.
Here's to bad-hair-days and slobbing-in-pyjama-days.
Here's to graffitied walls and mismatched window-boxes.
Here's to believing that being interesting is more important than being perfect.
Here's to reminding ourselves that perfection is boring and characterless and that our flaws are what make us human ( especially when you've run out of spot-coverer).
Here's to remembering that it is our imperfections that keep the world turning.
Here's to forgetting about aspirations of perfection and striving instead to be brave and different and true-to-ourselves.
Here's to imperfect jewellery and wild curly hair.
Here's to making the world a perfectly imperfect place to be.
