Entries

Beauty

I knew that I was getting sick last week because I had a Sickie Dream: the kind of dream I only have when I’m about to spend a week coughing and blowing my nose.

I dreamed that I was seventeen and I went to the senior prom – something I would not do in real life, unless the prize was a brand new election and Eeevil Stephen Harper on a deserted island with no one to talk to but George W. Bush, and Jack Layton as the new Prime Minister of Canada – anyway, to the senior prom of a school I did not attend as an actual teenager, and about half an hour into the dance I realized I’d forgotten where I’d put my combat boots when I took them off (because though my mind saw fit to take off sixteen years of my life and send me to the SENIOR PROM, apparently dressing me in something other than the clothes I wear every day: pants, a shirt, and combat boots would be stretching the realms of possibility) so I’d forgotten where I’d put my combat boots, and I spent the rest of the dream in what felt like real time searching for the fucking things, sifting through endless piles of pink spike heels. Finally, as the sky was beginning to turn pink, I found my boots next to a group of teenagers that included geeky David from the latest season of the tv show The Amazing Race saying -

David The environment, the environment is -

Random Girl You think you can just solve the world’s problem’s by -

David No! What I’m saying is that podcasting is the only hope for the earth! You have to replace books entirely with podcasting.

Random Girl Look, I’m just not comfortable bearing the weight of millions of people who can no longer read books.

David I see what you’re saying, but if everyone made a podcast, then the onus wouldn’t fall on you to provide the content.

Studies that conclude that “babies prefer pretty people” and “ugly children get neglected” make me absolutely furious.

Let’s just put aside the absurdity of making conclusions like this for a moment, and concentrate on what makes someone ugly.

In 1988, I was watching L.A. Law with my mom and Harry Hamlin came on the screen. “Ew,” said my mom. “He has a steak face,” single-handedly ruining L.A. Law for me forever, and beautifully describing a malady that effects a large portion of white, male celebrities: looking like someone has stapled a steak to their faces.

And this is what I think when people sigh over men like Brad Pitt, George Clooney, or Matthew McConaughey: Ew. Steak face.

And this is a little off topic, but can I just mention here that when Scarlett Johansson said the following: “One of the best things for a woman to hear is that she is sexy,” I just wanted to strike that comment off the television and the newspapers and the web, because there are not only teenage girls who now believe that it’s true, there are teenage boys who will now do their best to compliment their girlfriends with the “best thing for her to hear”. GAH!

Listen. Here are some of the best things for a woman to hear:

“You’re one of the smartest people I know.”

“Thank you so much for helping me. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“You made me laugh so hard, I about peed my pants.”

Anyway. Steak faces.

Look, I’m not immune to superficial prettiness. I wanted to go live in the twenties with Mary Stuart Masterson just like the rest of you after seeing Fried Green Tomatoes. And yeah, I’ll watch Shallow Grave for the seventh time, just so I can see Christopher Eccleston swan around a gorgeous London flat in his glasses. (Glasses are my kryptonite. Todd prefers to wear contact lenses. I don’t care. He wears glasses.)

But the idea of beauty is different in every culture. So when they parade a long stream of “pretty” and “ugly” people past a group of babies and guage their reaction, who are the babies? Who are the people? As I grow older, and plastic surgery gets progressively more affordable, I spend much of my time in the movie theatre looking through my fingers at the scary, scary actors on the screen, with gigantic breasts and cartoon-parody swollen lips and skin stretched so thinly so that light reflects off of it like it’s molded plastic (which of course, it often is). Were these the people the babies reacted favorably to? Here’s my guess: the babies reacted favorably because the other people in the room reacted favorably. I mean, jesus, when I went wandering around Toronto with my friend Mia, it was like an episode of National Geographic. Men and women fell all over themselves getting close to her, talking to her, wanting her attention. Of course a baby would pick up on that kind of positive atmosphere. To imply that beauty is a trait that a baby knows from birth is patently absurd.

And the study that says ugly children are neglected more often than their pretty siblings? When’s the last time you met a parent who thought their child was anything less than a transcendant example of loveliness? All children are stunningly beautiful to their parents. It’s Mother Nature’s way of assuring they DON’T GET EATEN BY THEIR PARENTS.

Ugliness is Pat Robertson’s thin lipped mouth, spreading hate across America. Ugliness is Stephen Harper’s dead eyes as he tells Canada he’s going to overturn the gay marriage law. Ugliness is every ignorant, racist, bullying person in the world who hurts someone else and doesn’t give a damn.

And beauty? It’s in the way a father holds his toddler when she falls off the slide. It’s in the way Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to the environment, democracy and peace.

It’s in the laugh lines.