The Beauty Issue

Growing up I thought I was ugly. In fact it wasn’t until I was past the point in my adult life where beauty mattered terribly that I realized I wasn’t bad looking at all. I was reminded of this recently because I came across a small book my mother wrote as a child, probably as a school project. It was a little autobiography that she wrote at the age of eleven or so. We didn’t find it until after she died and one of my sisters made copies of it for all of us. It is quite charming.

In it she writes about her family and has pasted pictures, probably cut from women’s magazines, throughout. It is a sweet story but one of the things I am struck by is how she often describes women in her family as being beautiful and wishes she was like them. Rereading it I was struck by her lack of self-confidence in that area.

Growing up I always thought my mother was beautiful. I suppose most girls do. She was very tall and statuesque with pale, ivory skin and dark hair and eyes. I was blonde with tawny skin and pale eyes like my father’s and I always longed to be a dark, exotic looking beauty. Later, when I found out what being a blonde could do, I kept my hair as blonde as L’Oreal would let me keep it, but, in my secret life, I still long to look like Ava Gardner or Maureen O’Hara or my mother.

While thinking about these things I remembered my mother’s mother, my beloved Gram Werner, talking often about how homely she was as a kid. She had two older sisters who were beautiful, she said and five brothers who picked on her terribly and always told her she was ugly. So believing ourselves ugly is a family heritage that has been passed down through three generations, at least, in my family.

It seems strange to be thinking about these things at this stage of my life when I am well into my fifties and perfectly content to be this age but I can’t help but wonder what my life would have been like had I thought differently of myself and if I had been raised by women who thought differently of themselves. On the one hand I suspect I would have had a lot more confidence in romantic situations, on the other hand I wonder if I would have been as academically oriented as I have always been and as ambitious. I don’t know.

There is a lot of talk in the media about the culture of youth that we live in today. Youth and beauty are idolized and women particularly spend a great deal of their time, energy, and money trying to hold on to their youthful beauty. Since I never thought I had any, I never felt the need to cling to it. But I am aware that the desire to be beautiful is inherent in most women and something we don’t seem to outgrow. Partly, I think it is the incessant message of the media in this consumer culture of ours — buy more stuff and you will be okay — and partly I think it is inherent in the human psyche to long for things that we consider beautiful.

What is the point of beauty? It serves no real purpose, it doesn’t make us smarter or kinder or better in any way. In fact there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that beautiful people may be less kind and not as good as their less attractive fellows. Studies on bullying among girls shows that it is the beautiful girls who are the worst bullies. Girls who become aware that beauty gives them power sometimes use that power to persecute and torment plainer girls. Still we long for the beautiful.

I’m not sure I have any answers here or can contribute anything of value to the sum of knowledge but I am hopeful that as we grow as people our beliefs about what is beautiful will change. Mostly, I think it is about attention. We believe that if we are beautiful people will pay attention to us and that, sadly, is a reminder of our own fragility and our need to be seen. That is a gift we can give to each other — our attention. Pay attention, really pay attention. Ultimately being noticed and appreciated, if only for a little while, is what we crave. It is an easy gift to give.

Thanks for reading.