Beauty

I don’t have a lot of memories of my mother doing things like sitting at a vanity with pots of makeup, turning herself into a different person. I do not have an abundance of recollections of anyone but perhaps my grandmothers doing anything more than powder their faces or curl their eyelashes in the morning. My family was accustomed to “pretty” and all that entailed without much effort.

I found out when I was in my mid-teens that my mother had been approached (apparently) on more than one occasion to turn her two daughters into models because we were “such cute kids.” She politely refused every time.

I was used to being told by my grandmothers what a pretty child I was and how I was their “golden girl” with my burnished hair, something between blonde and brown and too bright to be merely a dirty brown. I reveled in their praise and delighted in the attention.

When I started to hit puberty, I realized how much I was being compared to my sister and resented her for it. I knew how perfect her skin was and how fine boned her features while I remained thicker and wider than she. I knew how it felt to have a line drawn between two targets for the singular purpose of seeing how one stacked up to the other.

When my sister began to deteriorate I did not care. I was glad that someone who so often stole a spotlight I wanted for myself would see a downfall that I had no part in. I didn’t care until she began to hurt me and I couldn’t reconcile the hurt young woman I saw before myself and the loving protectress I had known as a child.

When people stopped comparing me to the person I was not, I found it a gift. Seeing the person who so clearly resented me shoved through my ribs like a wall through a car. I wanted to be loved and the only person who had done that unconditionally hated who I was, and she stayed away to keep that hate at bay.

The point in which I moved into the adult sphere was when I realized in college how thoroughly I was overlooked or undervalued based on whatever a person saw in my face or my body. Once they knew my mind as well, that would rarely change in a way more significant than leaving me feeling better about myself for a week at most.

The point at which I conflated my worth between my body and my mind happened slowly and entirely until the two are indistinguishable. How can I say that someone will still love me if I don’t look like I always have? How can I assure that someone will notice my intelligence if they don’t glimpse my eyes out of the corner of their own?

At which point do the body and the mind converge?

At which point do they split?

At which point do I choose which part of myself to invest in and at which point do I let the other go?