What must it be like to be beautiful? How does it feel to walk into room and have every head turn to watch your passing? Is it completely annoying, almost like having a handicap that people constantly ask about or comment upon? Or do you simply grow accustomed to the admiring looks and feel that it is, quite simply, your due?
I've always wondered about this. Recently, I confessed to the man that I'm dating that I would like to be beautiful, just once. He was astounded that I would say such a thing - not because he didn't think I would be subject to such a 1950's way of looking at a woman's role in the world - but because, he said, I am beautiful. I started to cry, a little. He was honestly bewildered that I didn't think so, myself.
The thing is, I do think I'm beautiful. There are a hundred things about me that are unique and fantastic and enjoyable and incredible. The difficulty is that, based upon this kind of a definition, well, everyone is beautiful, correct? We all are, each in our own and individual ways, and that is as it should be. To our own families and friends and loved ones, we are indeed all possessors of beauty, on many different levels.
I guess that makes me kind of messed up for wanting, for a small while, to be beautiful outside, where everyone can see it, like a painting or a statue. I suppose this all comes from too many years of watching television and movies and reading fashion magazines. The women there all seem to set this impossible standard, and yet we all (don't we?) secretly (or not so secretly) wish to be like them, to hold the gazes of the multitudes, to bask in the warm glow of that admiration, to have people want to be you ...
Hunh. Now that I write that out, it seems a little creepy. And plus, I bet to look so picture-perfect, you have to spend a really ridiculous amount of time working on yourself - exercise, diet, hair and nail appointments, etc ... would I really choose to spend my time that way? Pampering and prepping myself, instead of spending time with the people I love and reading and riding my bike and a thousand other important things? Probably not. My brain can recognize the unappealing nature of taking that route. And to have people stare wherever you went? Try to talk to you? Copy your hairstyle, buy the clothes you like, try to emulate the least important part of you - your exterior?
Maybe I don't want to be thought beautiful, by anyone other than my soon-to-be husband. I'll let him be my sole admirer, as long as he lets me be his. Does it really matter what anyone else thinks? Nope, not so much.
