There is the other side...Try having someone tell you, as an adult, that are beautiful when your Dad made it very clear your assets lay elsewhere. It lands like a mockery. I still laugh when I hear it from anyone referring to my exterior. I was told I didn't have to be pretty. In fact, it wasn't really an option for me. I could think like a man instead, carry a briefcase, and compete with the best of the boys, even end up bossing them around. That's what my Dad taught me about being pretty.
Um, yeah. My whole life would have been different. (Maybe I'd be CEO?) Not that my life is bad or anything, but good night! I spent so much agony over not being pretty enough or being too pretty or how to respond to strangers and bosses and such who felt compelled to comment on my degree of prettiness or how I was not smiling and I was so much prettier when I smiled etc.....you can bet I'll be talking this over with my daughter. For the next 20 years or so at least.
Steph, its so validating to hear you say this very true and obvious thing--and didn't almost all of us suffer? You can't tell it to look at me now. When I intersected with grunge in the 90s I was profoundly marked--saved--one might say? But I used to feel the need to look attractive to, oh, bus drivers, bus boys, winos, every.damn.man, any.one.crossing.my.path. I bent my full will to it.
Today I teach my daughter this: If you smell right to your partner, you will be attractive. If you don't, you won't. There is no transmuting this truth. You may think your hair matters or the shape of your chin-butt-arms-etc. But none of those things matter. Smell matters. (And personality, of course.) Do I lie?
At the pool yesterday, did you see Carolyn't t-shirt? A very ugly scrawled line drawing with this caption: "Not all unicorns are beautiful." Sing it!
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Wish someone had mentioned this to me earlier. Like, maybe 35 years ago would have been good.
ReplyDeleteThere is the other side...Try having someone tell you, as an adult, that are beautiful when your Dad made it very clear your assets lay elsewhere. It lands like a mockery. I still laugh when I hear it from anyone referring to my exterior. I was told I didn't have to be pretty. In fact, it wasn't really an option for me. I could think like a man instead, carry a briefcase, and compete with the best of the boys, even end up bossing them around. That's what my Dad taught me about being pretty.
ReplyDeleteCelia, yours is a rare point of view on this issue, especially coming from someone with your exterior.
ReplyDeleteSteph, SERIOUSLY! I was sort of stunned by this one.
Um, yeah. My whole life would have been different. (Maybe I'd be CEO?) Not that my life is bad or anything, but good night! I spent so much agony over not being pretty enough or being too pretty or how to respond to strangers and bosses and such who felt compelled to comment on my degree of prettiness or how I was not smiling and I was so much prettier when I smiled etc.....you can bet I'll be talking this over with my daughter. For the next 20 years or so at least.
ReplyDeleteSteph, its so validating to hear you say this very true and obvious thing--and didn't almost all of us suffer? You can't tell it to look at me now. When I intersected with grunge in the 90s I was profoundly marked--saved--one might say? But I used to feel the need to look attractive to, oh, bus drivers, bus boys, winos, every.damn.man, any.one.crossing.my.path. I bent my full will to it.
ReplyDeleteToday I teach my daughter this: If you smell right to your partner, you will be attractive. If you don't, you won't. There is no transmuting this truth. You may think your hair matters or the shape of your chin-butt-arms-etc. But none of those things matter. Smell matters. (And personality, of course.) Do I lie?
At the pool yesterday, did you see Carolyn't t-shirt? A very ugly scrawled line drawing with this caption: "Not all unicorns are beautiful." Sing it!