May 2022 | Beauty

Sometimes I feel like I could be a wild thing.

A wild and womanly thing. 

All flowing and soft.

Green and pink, velvety and shining. 

Flowers growing around the hem of my dress and music streaming from my throat.

I would laugh and tell stories in warm candlelight.

I could weep sweetly and truly while broken things became new things. 

People would love me. Love to look at me and hear me. They would all be free, glad, and whole. 

I would know things. Things from times before, at the beginning. 

I wouldn’t be afraid of the night. 

Instead I would tend the flickering firelight and make beautiful sparkling things with the moon shining in my window.

I would be like living poetry.

A moving song.

A memory of heaven come to life. 

I would interrupt the grey world and then it would turn around. 

…back that is.

Where the garden is all around, the air smells like a high alpine wood, and every moment is iridescent and full of singing. 

I once heard a boy describe a girl as “unconventionally beautiful,” and I liked the phrase because I think that if I can be described as any kind of beautiful, it is probably the unconventional sort. I have my reasons for thinking this—a little because I don’t have nice skin, my face isn't symmetrical, and I was born with a receding hairline—but what really tips me off is the way in which people compliment me about my looks. They typically say it is as if it came as a surprise.

“I was looking at you from across the room last night when you were wearing that dark purple shirt of yours and I thought, ‘Wow, Amanda is actually very beautiful!” or “I realized today how lovely your smile is.”

In high school a teacher approached me in the hallway one day and said, “I’m not sure if you are aware this is happening, but I've noticed you are growing more and more beautiful!” I had recently joined her class and suspect that nothing about my appearance had changed—that it was probably her subconscious perspective of me merely picking up on something it had not before.

This subconscious mind-changing happens to a lot, I’m pretty sure, to everyone. Like when you’re attracted to someone and then upon having a conversation in which they are rude or inconsiderate or pretentious will wonder what on earth ever made you think they are good-looking because they’re clearly unsightly. Or like when a friend whom you never used to look at that way picks up a guitar and sings a song you know is special to them and surprises you because you had no idea they could play; then all of the sudden you’re having dreams where they are holding your hand and you don't pull away. 

So even physical attraction to the careful observer works probably a lot less like how Cosmo portrays it and a lot more like how Roald Dahl says in The Twits:

“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

I don’t think that this means we can or should all stop taking showers and only wear potato sacks and never get haircuts or put on jewelry. All I’m saying is that even if you’re stuck with features that don’t necessarily turn heads (or maybe that do, for reasons having nothing to do with conventional beauty) to rest assured that the people who count will eventually stop seeing you for what you look like anyway, and instead you will start to look like who you are. 

My brother once told me that I would be a lot prettier if I had a different nose. My older sister, offended on my behalf, scolded him then tried to reassure me that my nose was truly not that bad. The thing was I knew that he was being honest and so what he said did not bother me. In fact, it was kind of great to know that I had a lot of friends and sometimes boys asked me out, and that those things probably had more to do with me and less to do with what my nose looks like. 

But I’m not going to say that how you dress and style your make-up won’t make a difference in how people treat you and consequently how you feel about yourself, because it does. I swear I got better tips as a waitress on the days when I put more effort into my appearance.

Most self-aware girls, if they are being honest, will tell you that people treat them differently and pay more attention to them when they are wearing make-up and nice clothes than when they are not. And I imagine a lot of girls who start putting more time and effort into straightening their hair, hiding their pimples, and mastering eye-liner find that people notice and say more nice things about them and treat them like they deserve a lot of attention which in turn makes them feel confident. And then those two things—feeling confident about themselves and all of the time spent in the bathroom—become associated with each-other and form a dependent relationship.

I think this is often tragic because of everything I just explained about how great it is when you know that people like you despite how you look. I also think it is unnecessary because I have found that though the relationship between physical attractiveness and confidence might be a bit co-dependent, confidence is also an independently attractive quality; you can essentially trick people into thinking you are very good-looking just by acting like you are very good-looking. Matthew McConaughey did it. Therefore I theorize that if you can be confident about your unibrow, maybe eventually it will form its own sort of allure.

Attractiveness is a weird thing anyways, because sometimes it does not even make sense to us. I had one friend tell me that she is inexplicably attracted to men who are missing extremities. I asked her why and she said, “I don’t know. That’s why it’s inexplicable.” Duh. I later googled, “attraction to men missing limbs” and found out that this sort of thing can be labeled as a sexual disorder, but I do not think my friend is in need of psychiatric help. I think maybe there is just something appealing to her about someone who can overcome a difficult thing.

The first boy I really liked, I would get weak around because of how attracted I was to him. One time we danced and he held both my hands. When the song was over and he let go it felt like balloons were under my hands and they were floating and this was a physical reaction and I could not help it. My body was just responding. He is decently handsome now, but when I look back at pictures of him at the time he had these sharp facial features he hadn’t really grown into and ears that stuck out and he is generally small, like he could fit in clothes for a husky ten-year-old. But no one else gave me balloon-hands when I danced with them.

A friend of mine just minutes ago called me and said, “I’m apartment searching. And I’m having an ugly day.” Before I could even ask why, she continued and said, “I think it’s because I’m on my period and I feel all bloated. And at the apartments I just looked at, all the men were muscular and tan and all of the women looked like super-models. And here’s me—short, frizzy big hair, and adult acne.” 

Then I told her I’m writing an essay about beauty and read her the first few paragraphs. She said she felt better, and that all supermodels look the same which is really very boring. She said that all people need to be able to better understand beauty, so they can believe they are beautiful even if it is not in the conventional way. We should put more stock in that. Then I told her that her eyes were exquisite—and I wasn’t just saying it to make her feel better—and she told me that I had a smokin’ bod and that she wasn’t just saying that to compliment me back. She said I could trust her opinion since we’ve been friends for so long. 

We’ve come a long way. I remember one time in middle school she told me that no boys would ever date me unless I stopped dressing like I did. I found this insulting because I had no intention of throwing out my cargo pants or baggy t-shirts that nearly reached my knees. I liked how I was dressing and figured any boy worth my attention would have to like it too. 

But eventually I started wearing more clothes that fit me and doing different things with my hair anyway. I didn’t dye my hair until I was in college, and now it’s like I can’t stop. Mostly I think this is out of boredom, not insecurity. Recently though a friend made a comment about “all the girls who die their hair because they are trying too hard,” and I had to self-examine because I have gone from light auburn to dark red to black to blonde within the five months we’ve been friends. So later I asked him, 

“Do you think I’m trying too hard?” and he said that, no, he was only saying that as commentary and that he is actually a sucker for crazy-color hair. That made me feel better, but sometimes I still wonder... It can be hard to tell the difference in motivation between trying to fit a typified image and merely expressing oneself. Maybe the difference doesn’t even matter. They both are different versions of trying to look good. Is one more vain than the other?

There is a blurry line between vanity and a lot of choices—including personal hygiene—and people draw it in different places. I’m sure to the ladies who get their nails done every week, my nails are not just unkempt, but downright unsanitary. But any change made to our physical appearance can be interpreted as vanity, really. Tattoos, braces, piercings, growing a goatee... How we choose to "beautify ourselves” to certain standards could say a lot about how we think of our own beauty—or it could simply be self-expression or common routine. But I’ll digress here and ask—who is creating these standards anyway? Why is a mole in the right spot called a “beauty mark” but a big hairy mole in the wrong place repulsive? Who is it out there deciding it’s “gross” when women don’t shave their armpits when there’s absolutely nothing unhygienic about it?

 I once read a blog post about a woman who decided to stop shaving altogether. She said people call her a “big hairy hypocrite” because she still wears make-up sometimes and they say if she were a true feminist she would not bend to any societal rules about beauty. She simply explains to these people that when she wears make-up she feels as if she has a choice, and so she does it out of freedom and not requirement. It is not the same with not shaving because when people see an unshaven armpit or leg on any female they automatically think, “Ew, she needs to shave.” This woman is standing up for how unfair that is, which I think is cool. 

A friend and former roommate showed me that blog. She has gotten very good at distinguishing between bending to expectations of “beauty” because you feel like you have to and looking nice because you want to. We have plenty of discussions about this, but I remember particularly when she came home from Christmas break and told me about how both of her brothers sat her down and talked to her about how she could dress nicer and take more time on her hair every once in a while and that would not be a bad thing. 

At first she was offended because why should she have to? And then after further questioning and thinking she realized they did not mean to insult her looks, but they wanted her to know that she did not have to look grubby any more than she did not have to look nice. We talked about how dressing purposefully unfashionably is just as much of a reaction to society as taking care to dress nicely. We are still being controlled by the image of beauty expected of us if that image is causing us to do something in opposition. 

We want to be free of that too. So now my friend tries to “dress most like herself,” which I think is an improvement—not because she looks a whole lot different, but because now I get to enjoy these creative new ways she wears her hair and these earrings and blouses I never saw before. And I can tell she is having fun with it—like in an artistic way, not in a prove-yourself kind of way. 

I once read this article about cosmetic plastic surgery that interviewed all of these people about why they had it done. These people claimed a similar thing as my friend. They said that they were doing it because they did not feel like themselves and needed to change their outsides to match their insides. This article tried to use these interviews to make the point that cosmetic surgery is good for people’s self-esteem. I don’t think face-lifts and nose-jobs are a morally reprehensible choice, but I struggle to think societal increase in these procedures is a sign of a healthy social ecosystem. Maybe because it is risky and permanent, it seems to me more likely to be motivated by pressure to conform than freedom to express.

What I really wish for people is a new source of belonging that doesn’t require a certain pre-determined appearance in order to feel accepted—even by oneself. If everyone paid more attention to people for who they are there would be no need for plastic surgery or that article for that matter, because what people look for as transformative or healing in cosmetic surgery might be better strived for internally. There are plenty of other pressing issues that we can spend creative time, energy, and resources on fixing. Despite the premise that cosmetic surgery is socially justifiable in order to gain acceptance, happiness, and improved mental health, I hope more for a world where how we treat each other has much less to do with our appearance.

Every year at the University I graduated from they throw a ball, and everyone wears suits and nice dresses—usually recycled prom clothes (or if you’re me, the dress your best friend from high school bought from goodwill when she dressed up as Cruella Devil for Halloween.) My last semester I went with a large group of friends and at the end of the night we were all very sweaty and disheveled from dancing for hours. As we walked back to our cars it was snowing these slow plump flakes, melting the make-up off our faces and wilting our hair-sprayed crowns. We sang and laughed and talked and RAN on the bridge. We slid into each-other and down the slope and Travis went back to do it again and Matt gave me a piggy back ride so my feet wouldn’t freeze and Allison and Kristina were smiling and enjoying this all in their quieter way and Brad was saying awkward Brad things and Allicia was laughing her fabulous laugh. I was thinking, “My friends are extremely beautiful,” and I really thought we must be the most beautiful bunch out of everyone that attended the ball and maybe the most beautiful people on the planet. But now I think that they probably looked that way to me because I love them, and love makes people beautiful, and loving them made me feel beautiful too.

It might be good to put more emphasis on original beauty by paying attention to all that makes a person, and finding what is uniquely lovable. We could start complimenting people on the brightness of their smiles or commenting on the warmness of their handshakes or maybe telling someone how those red shoes they wear every day look very “you.” We could make it a point to tell someone they are beautiful when they are doing something beautiful. Then maybe people’s sense of self-worth wouldn’t be tied in so deeply to the kind of beauty that they have to counter-productively wreck themselves to achieve. Then maybe being confident would become synonymous with being yourself.

You broke a coffee mug that you liked. The little ceramic cup slipped from your hand while unloading the dishwasher. Maybe you were shelving the dishes a little too fast. Your sadness was sweet in its simplicity, a pure and immediate emotion.

The kitchen floor is always a little wet for some reason. You navigate tiny puddles and ceramic shards in your socks, listening to the old radio that sits on the refrigerator. Its silver antenna is a relic. You sweep up the broken pieces while someone interviews someone famous about their new ideas. The famous are always trying to bring you along on their mid-life crisis, every breakdown a chance to carry new tablets down the mountain. You let them talk; it’s all they have.

But secretly, in your mind’s debate, you’ve got the tablets and they’re rock solid. You say, make no mistake: beauty demands a witness. But sometimes that witness is you. Wow, you’re really dunking on JV today. You dump the pieces from the dustpan to the trash, and mourn them once more in a fleeting moment of wholeheartedness.

Beauty is found right at the meeting of order and chaos, it seems. 

Right where all the potential meaning is brought into a pattern that can be understood. 

Beauty is a blow against the enemy.

It heals. 

It hushes.

It outshines the sheeny metal machine of domination. 

It tells the truth.

It invites.

Beauty reminds us of deep truth. Deep love. Deep home. Deep wonder.

It breaks through the ash and through the structures we have built around ourselves. 

Beauty reminds us of who we are. What the world once was.

Beauty evokes and does not provoke. 

Reminding us of meaning and glory and secrets and pleasure. 

The hidden things are whispered about in beautiful things. 

Amanda Pollet is two people:

Receptive, open, quick to learn,

But rest assured with fervor equal

To judge, or one might say, discern.

This sculpted sunbathed demigoddess

In slothful sprawling posture oddest

Now pulling covers over head

Puts dawning arguments to bed.

A nonconformist malcontented

But no iconoclast; I’ll prove

Amanda in her multitudes

With antiquated films we’ve rented.

Nostalgia for Heath Ledger’s day

Eviscerates McConaughey.