On Beauty

When I was younger, I had a friend named Georgina.

Georgina was very beautiful but was also (annoyingly) very depressed about her own physical attractiveness.

With no hint of irony, she would sigh to me over our bottles of beer "Oh Catherine, you could never understand. Nobody takes me seriously. Men never want to befriend me, they are only interested in getting me into bed. Other women are jealous of me and think I am out to steal their boyfriends. It is very lonely being beautiful."

I watched her flick her shiny hair back, away from her perfect face.

I took sneaky glances out of the corner of my eye at her long, thin limbs and her tiny waist.

I wondered what it would be like to inhabit a body like Georgina's. I still do.

As my friend so kindly implied, I don't have much to offer in the way of physical attractiveness.

But I always took consolation that losing the little I did have, with time, wouldn't worry me.

As Mr. Dylan says "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose."

But I suppose I underestimated my own vanity. 

Because when those few small claims I had to physical beauty left me, it still hurt. Just a little. 

Which seems ridiculous in light of the some of the other things that I have lost in recent years.

***

My husband and I were walking down a busy London street. 

I was pushing Jessica in the buggy and moaning on about how much I wanted to go to the Whole Foods Market and La Pain Quoti.dien on Kensing.ton High Street. Not that I'm obsessed with stuffing my face or anything. Well, maybe a little.

My husband was nodding and kind of grunting in response, as he often does whilst I rabbit on, when suddenly his face was transformed. A look of interest kindled in his eyes. His nose stuck out a little more, like a dog pointing at its prey. For a brief instant, I believed that I had managed to convey my excitement over our proximity to high quality baked goods adequately and that he too was salivating over potential food purchases.

But, with a flicker of tawny hair and jiggling breasts, I soon saw the real reason for his sudden perkiness. 

An attractive young girl running for the bus. With all the vitality and glow of youth travelling in her wake.

My initial thought was, as it is with many things these days due to that pesky shard of troll-mirror that got stuck in my eye at some point in August 2008, Georgina. Everything and anything can be refracted through that interfering piece of glass and be turned into something to do with either birth or death. 

Funny that.

Oh my heart. My poor old sore and weary heart.

My Georgina.

She will never grow up and be beautiful and run for the bus. Unaware of her own jiggly beauty. Unaware of the stares from the eyes of all those lecherous older men who should know better. 

Her hair will never be long and tawny. 

It will simply never be.

She will never have the glow or beauty of youth although she will always be young. 

And isn't it strange how there is no room in my imaginings for a spotty Georgina? Or a fat Georgina? 

Or a painfully shy Georgina who would rather die than wobble about so alluringly on a public road?

Although she would have been no less perfect in the eyes of her mother for that. But death imparts a certain, strange perfection. Or perhaps I thought that, by giving her the same name as my beautiful friend, I could gift beauty to her. Like a fairy godmother.

***

I remembered the one fabulous meltdown I had when Jessica was in the special care nursery. When she was on the intensive care ward I had numerous messy and public melt downs but in special care, just the one.

When Jessica was transported back to the hospital in which she was born, the doctor who delivered her was there to greet us. She cried. I cried.

We talked about that morning. When the girls were born. We talked about Jessica and what the future might hold. We discussed potential issues. 

One of these was an umbilical hernia - a protrusion of body tissues through a weakness or hole in other body tissues - in this case, around her tummy button. 

The doctor, who had resuscitated Jessica as a 1lb 7oz newborn, suggested that Jessica might want to consider re-constructive surgery when she was older. To ensure that her navel looked pretty in a bikini.

And suddenly the fact that Jessica would grow up. 

Would care what her navel looked like. 

Might choose to wear a bikini. 

Suddenly all of these facts seemed absolutely overwhelmingly, unbearably luxurious. 

To sit and worry about her tummy button of all things.

Not death.

Not brain damage.

Not blindness.

Not leaky kidneys.

And the thought that Jessica might one day wear a bikini and want to flaunt a pretty tummy button.

That brought me to my knees. In that little side ward, with that young doctor looking at me so earnestly and talking about this re-construction as though it mattered. It absolutely ruined me.

I wonder if she might have an inkling as to why that particular discussion made me fall to bits so.

***

Anyhow. 

Back to my husband gawking at the pretty, running girl.

He says "What was that? Sorry, I got distracted" and smiles sheepishly.

I raise my eyebrows.

He says "It makes the world go round you know."

I raise my eyebrows again.

But I feel sorry for him.

I feel sorry for us.

Because I suspect that he will never look at me in that way again.

He did. 

When I was eighteen. Thinner. Prettier. Younger. Less creased up and bunched up. Less angry. Less bitter. Less sad.

Even when I was older, he could still look at me that way. 

I don't think he saw the heaviness that the years weighed upon my limbs or the sag that slowly pulled me down. Because he could still conjure the eighteen year old me from his memory and disguise myself inside her

Because he could remember the young woman that I once was.

I don't look at people that way any longer.

Wondering what it would be like to take them to bed.

I'm surprised he still has the heart. Or the other necessary equipment.

But, as he says, it makes the world go round.

My husband must have married me because, at the root of the matter, he found me a little attractive.

Biologically speaking. A fair prospect for reproduction.

Except, as we all know, appearances can be deceiving.

I have sets of matching lingerie.

I have a bag full of make up.

Perfume. 

High heeled shoes.

They all sit unworn, unopened. Fossilised since the girls were born.

I could wear them, put them on, bat my eyelashes at my husband but . .  .they all feel like false advertising.

The artifice, that they always were, suddenly seems tawdry and desperate.

I can't bring myself to even try.

Because I can talk the talk but I can't walk the walk.

Much as I might want to.

Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day
That I have worn a visor and could tell
A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear,
Such as would please: 'tis gone, 'tis gone, 'tis gone.'

I can't give him anything. 

Not even a come hither look.

All that is on offer within this reproductive system is death, illness, despair or a vast indifference.

Take your pick. 

Of your Freudian dichotomy I can offer you, hmmm let me see . . . neither. 

No child. 

And nothing of interest either. Nothing to amuse.

And because I can't resist a little music.

'This song is for the soil
That's toxic clear down to the bedrock
Where no thing of consequence can grow
Drop your seeds there, let them go
Let them go.'