The coldest winter has hit the sunshine island, forcing me to slow down. That slowing gave me space to think about life, about the choices that led me here. And since my AuDHD brain is very good at jumping from one thought to the next, I landed on this one.
Scaffolding
Every building people admire often stands on labor they’re trained not to see.
But I did see it
It was a beautiful morning. We decided to walk toward Sacré Coeur when the city was still quiet—six in the morning, Paris before it performs for anyone. You stand there and you are astounded by its beauty. White, heavy, almost floating above everything else.
Magnificent
Opulent
The kind of beauty that slows your body down. The kind people photograph.
And yes, it is beautiful.
But as the awe settled, I found myself looking again. And then looking past it.
There is a strange moment that happens when you stand there long enough. Not just passing through, not just admiring, but staying. You’re caught between two worlds. One is the world of the finished thing—the monument, the symbol, the polished object meant to be admired. The other is the world behind it, and before it.
In that space, I move backward in time.
I imagine the years before machines made weight lighter and labor quieter. When building meant hands.
Sweat
Blood
Human bodies hauling, lifting, pulling.
Backs bent under stone. Muscles measuring the limits of endurance.
What we now call heritage was once exhaustion. It is beauty, but was once strain.
I’ve felt this before too—standing beneath the Eiffel Tower, looking up at all that elegance and suddenly seeing what once wrapped around it: scaffolding. The temporary skeleton. The structure that made the impossible possible and was then removed so the illusion could stand alone.
Scaffolding is never invited to the opening ceremony.
It doesn’t have opulence
It doesn’t glitter
It doesn’t curve beautifully
It exists to hold, not to be admired
What unsettles me is not only that work made by hands is still looked down upon—but that not all work done by hand is treated the same.
Some handwork is elevated, framed, protected. A painting. A sculpture. A certain kind of craft. It becomes art—elitist, valuable, museum-worthy. Other work done by hands remains what it has always been: necessary, physical, and quietly disregarded. Cleaning. Building. Maintaining. Holding things together so something else can shine.
The same body
The same hands
Radically different status
I think about this often when it comes to food. A chef trained in elite schools is celebrated for mastery, innovation, artistry. Years of education justify the value placed on their hands. And then there is the street vendor—someone who never had access to that education, but who spends the same hours over heat and repetition, refining taste through practice and risk. The labor is no less skilled. It is simply framed differently. One becomes culture. The other remains necessity.
I think of Pierre Bourdieu, and how taste is never neutral—how we are taught what counts as legitimate, refined, worthy of admiration. Education matters, yes. Skill matters. Discipline matters. But so does access. So does permission. So does who is allowed the time and safety to turn labor into prestige.
And this way of seeing did not stop at monuments or theory. I carried it into my own life.
I have spent countless hours learning and practicing—cakes, techniques, precision. I have invested time and money into getting better, into honoring the craft. And still, somewhere underneath, there was fear. Fear that skill alone would never be enough. Fear that without the right stamp, the right institution, the right credential, my hands would never be seen as credible.
So I wanted to further my education not only to learn, but to be legible. To be allowed into the category where effort is recognized, where work by hand is permitted to become something more than survival.
This is what scaffolding does to you when you see it clearly. It makes you aware of the quiet rules. Of how much labor is required not just to build something—but to have it acknowledged as valuable.
There are days when my hands do invisible work so other things can stand. Work that gives me quiet. Solitude. Time to think. Time to listen. Work that funds my voice, my writing, my press—my creative and political labor. This work is not who I am. But it is what holds what I am.
This is what scaffolding does.
It supports something that will one day be allowed to stand on its own. And when that happens, it will be quietly removed.
No plaque
No applause
No ceremony
The world doesn’t clap for scaffolding.
It only applauds the finished building.
But I have stood in that in-between space. I have felt the weight of what is carried and erased. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Some of us are trained to admire
Some of us are trained to build
And some of us, for reasons we don’t fully choose, are the ones who notice what holds everything else up.
Therese
ThereseChristensen 