Letters to the Editor
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Give Backrubs to the Ancient
I am hugely attracted to old people with a sense of physical humor.
The first ladies who sported the garish reading glasses won my admiration. Likewise, people with canes who decorate them with plastic vines (well, I haven't seen that but I have plans).
Huge blatting laughter coming out of old bodies. That is very very beautiful. Old people tottering into a watering hole saying "Make way, make way, or I'll fall on you!" Haw.
I still have hopes of meeting an oldster who carries a hearing trumpet.
I've grown my hair out blinding white and am startled by the emotion in the compliments I get (most always from women). I always feel I've seen a spurt of steam from a well deep beneath the crust.
I think I'll grow it to my ass since that's "not allowed" and what was spray-on flourescent hair color invented for anyway?
Being playful about beauty, about "ugliness", about our uniquely personal selves is imo the most healing way to go. Also, read this and then rent the film:
http://www.davidroche.com/meet-david-roche/
Don't worry about your feelings. How could you help it in this culture? The good news is, you have decades to develop your inner life, and to love more people. You won't worry about your wrinkles on your deathbed.
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Here, Y'All
Read this from our old friend Annie:
http://www.davidroche.com/anne-lamott/
xo,
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Get over yourself already
Good grief. Stop staring at your damn navel! It never occured to you that you would age? That as you aged your appearance would change? How narcissistic. Ugh!
I'm 48 and I love women my age. They are so much more beautiful than those hard-edged 20-somethings. Women with curves, laugh lines, strong personalities, no drama (or less of it anyway)...I could go on.
Here's my point: you're entering the prime of your womanhood. For god's sake don't waste it on plastic surgery and self-pity. What a great time to be alive! Enjoy life and become more beautiful, not less so.
Or maybe you can't. In which case, go hack yourself up and pay dearly for the privilege. Then, when you're 53, you can write bemoaning your earlier decision. I'll keep an eye out for your letter....
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So make it worse
"I've always known that people admire me for my looks; I'd have to be blind and deaf not to perceive my effect on most men." (LW) This is what it feels to be a super hot woman.
So make it worse.
"Though I was never a beauty, I was attractive enough to get compliments and smiles of appreciation fairly often." (furry_leaves) This is what it feels to be an attractive woman.
So make it worse.
Now men are not flowing near you constantly, and you are not getting this ego fix all the time. But occasionally a man appears and you can accept him or reject him. Eventually you marry. This is what it feels to be an average woman.
So make it worse.
Now men are not touching you with a 3-yard stick. Maybe when you were younger and prettier you had some man interested in you (and maybe you married him), but now men see you like if you were other guy. This is what it feels to be an ugly (or old) woman.
So make it worse.
You are so desperate that you begin asking men out of the blue. To make things worse, most men reject you (some politely, other in an humiliating way).
Awful, isn't it? This is what it feels to be an average man.
So please stop complaining. You have had some thirty years of men salivating after you, while you reject it most of them (and some of them in a humiliating way, don't tell me you didn't that because I see it all the time from hot women). Now you are not the super hot woman and you are steadily sliding into attractive woman, and you will eventually become the average and ugly woman. So what? You are about to get married and you have got more attention during each day of these thirty years that most men in all their lifetime.
I don't understand how some women think they are entitled to special treatment only because they are female. They think they are entitled to get constant attention and compliments and have a group of men salivating after them only to reject them and boost their female ego (the fact that men are human beings and they hurt being rejected somewhat it is too much for their brain). When they lose this steady flow of men who they can trash, they become bitter.
So get a life! Stop being so narcissistic. You have a lot to be grateful. And please stop complaining.
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Funny
I lived as 'cute' all my life but as an adult the idea of my beauty came and went. Often I could get more involved with how my looks affected how people treated me and then I would go for periods of being less concerned. I did however always wish I were more sultry or exotic or sexy beautiful, like a Salma Hayek type and not so much the Melanie Griffith or oddly often Demi Moore I heard I resembled (Although several times I heard Liz Taylor and didn't know what to think). I fought to appear more interesting than the white girl I was. Punk rock helped. As I have aged and endured my body and face going through a few strange trips. Imagine a skinny girl who suddenly becomes a fat girl who then works crazy hard to be a body builder chick and then falls in love with a chubby chaser and gets soft again (He is 12 years younger, model gorgeous and treats me like a queen AND he loves older chubby chicks, yay for me). Parts are very nice still and yet others...yikes. I have thought hard about this process of being held worthy for all my talents and gifts, my mind and wit and skills. While still aware of the social negotiation of my looks and left stunned as that faded. Luckily for me I met someone who appreciates all of me just they way I am. I have never felt so comfortable in my own skin. Im 45, chubby, got a few wrinkles and far less cute but only now do I actually LOVE the way I look and feel. I feel it is in understanding who I am and embracing it happily that feel freer. Heres the great thing...everyone keeps telling me I look great lately. Even I keep thinkin, "damn your are cute". You truly are only as beautiful as you feel and really now isn't that the only person who matters in the end?