Tuesday, March 27, 2007
I have been badly used by many men. I have been well and truly loved by a few. Well, maybe even several. I've been lucky.
Of those men who loved me, whom I could believe, none ever told me I was beautiful. Obie said I had beautiful eyes. Guy told me I had a beautiful mind. Jay said I had a beautiful soul. I took it all with a grain of salt because they loved me, and their feelings had little to do with beauty. There were others who loved me, but never mentioned beauty of any kind. They didn't have to.
In my youth I had a fantastic body, if you could overlook the powerful legs, but I dressed in clothes that were too big for me, because the body brought me nothing but grief. As far as my face went, I would allow myself "cute", but I never went even so far as "pretty". My nose was too big, my teeth too yellow and crooked, and my skin too marred and scarred for beauty. Not to mention the thick glasses. I came nowhere near the accepted pattern. These days I still don't think of myself as pretty, but I do think I look pretty darn good for my age.
At the reception Sunday evening, The Rabbi, on his visiting rounds through the tables, crouched next to my chair and said, "You've changed, but you're still beautiful."
In college we were just pinochle buddies and friends. There was no boy-girl relationship. I respected his faith and general good-person-ness, and he respected my mind, but when I wrote my autobiography for Daughter, in the college section, I never mentioned him, because there was nothing that stood out as "a story". BUT, he is the only guy to ever tell me that I was beautiful, in a "this is a fact" way. It was just an offhand comment one day, but I remember it, because no one had ever before said it and meant it. Or since. Not anyone I could believe, anyway. It's unlikely he remembers. (By then, my mother had convinced me I looked like "something the cat dragged in", and I had no reason to doubt her.)
When he crouched next to my chair on Sunday and said I was still beautiful, I responded that the first step in looking beautiful is to believe you're beautiful. He thought about it a minute, and agreed.
So, I had diner with Roman this evening. I told him the above, that The Rabbi was the only man to ever tell me I was beautiful, as part of another story, and Roman got agitated. He insisted that he also had told me I was beautiful. I said no, never. In fact, I told him, he once said to me "I think you think you look better than you really do."
He was aghast. He insisted he never said that. That he couldn't have said it because "it's not the kind of thing I would ever say!" But he did, and I told him I remember his exact words, because they hurt so much. He still insisted he never said it, because he does think I'm beautiful. He said he'd always thought I was beautiful.
I didn't know that.
To tell the truth, I'm not sure how to take it, because he really did say the other, an offhand comment in his kitchen one morning. Maybe I took it wrong. Maybe he was referring to something I was wearing, that I didn't look good in it.
On the other hand, sometimes I think he has a split personality or something.
It's obvious I'm going to have to learn to say "What do you mean by that?" around him, because so often what I hear is not what he meant. Like the time he told me my hair looked dry, and I felt bad and started using oil treatments, and it turned out that he meant my hair was always fluffy, never oily or stringy looking, and he liked that.
I'm too quick to hear criticism.
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3 comments:
i have self-image problems from not fitting into the general idea of beauty. my mom always quantified my looks as "you WOULD be cuter than so-and-so's daughter if ..." never a "you are beautiful"
i am more comfortable in my skin nowadays, but if i had some support in my youth, i think i wouldn't have been so insecure.
Same here. None of them men in my life have told me I was beautiful. This just reinforced everything that was said to me in my childhood about my looks. My grandfather told me I was built for comfort, not speed, when I was no more than 10 years old.
I actually had to make my fella say I looked nice when we went to a formal dinner.
So I'm there with ya, sister. And I absolutely believe now that beauty is also about how you project yourself.
Becs - from our short meeting, I'd say you project yourself as strong, confident, and decisive. I have decided that's how you are. So oh yes, projection works.
Ally - My mother never complimented me or my sister on anything, not once, on appearance, skills, talents, or accomplishment. What we remember was cats dragging stuff in, dog's breakfasts, sacks tied in the middle, and "you can do better". Our mother was objectively very beautiful, at a time when beauty was all a woman had, and I think now that she saw us as unwelcome competition, a reminder that she was getting older.
Both - I think sometimes men see a relationship as a power struggle, and telling you that you are beautiful is a threat to the power balance. Like if you believe you're beautiful, you might start thinking you can do better than him.
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