Sometime a while back I came to terms with the fact that I would never be Club Girl pretty.
You know. Girls in videos. Girls who go dancing. With the fabulous long hair and the amazing smoky make-up and the jeans that fit perfectly and the back in a halter top that makes you want to run your finger down her spine. Never gonna be that chick. Not gonna happen.
I can’t grow my hair out. My hair refuses. It gets to my shoulders and stops. By then, it’s so heavy and thicket-y and not-behave-y that I’m ready to shave my head myself with Mr. A’s beard clippers. I’m learning to put on eyeliner competently but I have been searching in vain for red lipstick that doesn’t make me look like a little kid playing dress up for like 20 fucking years.
No matter how much blush/cheek stain/makeup “mousse”/whatever the fuck I slather on, by 2 p.m. I look pale again. As for the jeans and the halter, I do sit-ups and walk everywhere but I like booze and burritos and I’m broad-shouldered which even when I was extremely thin made me look like a linebacker in certain outfits. So fuck it, really, I’m never going to be Club Girl pretty.
I’m never going to be Competent Professional Lawyer pretty, either. I see these women on the train. Suits that fit beautifully, walking effortlessly in high heels, not a hair out of place, nails perfectly manicured, giant sunglasses and a shiny phone. I’m a mess getting out the door in the morning, glasses and shoes and scarf flying everywhere, stuff hanging half-out of my bag which right now at this moment contains a dozen sugar packets and a syringe case I brought home ferret meds in. I don’t so much get into the car as fling myself inside it and hope the pull drags everything I need behind me.
I’m not ever going to be these chicks. This isn’t me asking for affirmation, or even me badmouthing those girls, I’m sure they have problems and their kind of pretty doesn’t suck just because it isn’t achievable for me. This is me saying it took me a long damn time to come to terms with the idea thatthere are different kinds of pretty:
But instead of telling overly enhanced actresses the reason they’re
being passed over for parts (and therefore stopping the cycle of
unending alterations in its tracks), executives seem to be snickering
behind these poor women’s backs. They are purposely not telling women
with too much plastic surgery that that is the reason they aren’t being
cast. Yet still they have no problem telling a newspaper that they
think that “everyone either looks like a drag queen or a stripper.”
This is an instance when being kind to someone’s face is really the
cruelest thing you can do.Look, Hollywood, you created this monster. This is your doing. You
can’t just stuff it back into a box so simply. And you can’t pass value
judgments on these women who were only doing what they thought you
wanted in the first place without some serious soul searching. What is
beautiful shouldn’t be based on the latest trend or the emergence of
high-definition TV or anything but actual beauty. Is it good that
you’re finally tired of the silicon and stretched faces? Yes. Is it
your fault they exist in the first place? Big fat yes.Gabourey Sidibe – beautiful.Meryl Streep – beautiful.America Ferrera – beautiful.Amanda Seyfried – beautiful. All different, all beautiful. Beauty isn’t a trend, it just is. Get it together, Hollywood.
There’s a picture of Helen Mirren in a corset at that link. I’m just saying. (Holy God.)
Different kinds of pretty, and one’s not better than another. Which is not something I think we tell girls, really, which is a bummer, because while I’m mostly okay now with not looking like I just stepped off the TV screen, my 15-year-old self might have liked hearing it a hell of a lot.
A.
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