Snow White the Wicked Queen and Socrates: Musing on Beauty, Brains, Confidence, & Contests
redbird picked up on something I said in a locked follow-up to my guilty pleasures post.
The context is that one of my guiltiest pleasures, one of the character traints to which I am least happy to admit, is the pleasure I occasionally take from sometimes successfully using appearance and dress as a weapon. Sometimes I dress and present not just to look good (where looking good means giving myself and the beholder aesthetic pleasure), but also to make other people feel bad. It's not a nice thing, it's not a worthy thing, it's not something I'm proud of (hence the locked post), but it's something I do, and sometimes it gives me pleasure to do it. Hence the guilt.
redbird expressed an enviable self confidence. Those she loves like to look on her, and she's happy with that, which is great. It would be a happier world if everyone was comfortable in their own skin and body, and I really admire people who are, and who can express that.
So am I, most of the time.
Predictably, some people expressed bewilderment at the notion of feeling competitive with regard to appearance. Fair enough. I never said it made a lot of sense.
I had a bunch to say, in response to this, some of which made it into a comment. I've copied that comment here, with stuff that I cut because of the character limit, and because redbird's pad isn't the forum for me to ramble on about my own issues.
What follows is a bunch of very rambly musings on pretty, on how my appearance is part of my self-image, on competitiveness, and, oh, various other relevant things.
On the Nature of Gifts and Achievements
I don't think that pretty is a measure of any sort of value beyond that of the ability of the form I wear, and the way I wear it, to give pleasure to a large number of people (not everyone, not all the time, because everyone's aesthetic preferences are different). It's also not the same quality as strinking, beautiful, or attractive.
I wound up, through whatever combination of genetics, environment, and activity, with an appearance that a lot of people find appealing. That's a gift.
I also wound up, through whatever combination of genetics, environment, and I wot me not what all else, with an ability to learn languages pretty quickly, a love of language and learning, a reasonably decent ability to draw certain types of connection between ideas, and a cornucopia of other abilitities that I'll lump under "having an okay intellect" or "being fairly bright."* That's also a gift.
Pretty (also beautiful/striking/attractive/handsome) is a quality. It allows me to do something for people: to give the beholder pleasure. That's a nice thing to be able to do. That it's something I can do right now is nice (even though sometimes I work it for the wrong reasons). But it's something I lucked into, and something I can choose to enjoy, or deploy, or hide. It's not a reflection of my worth on any scale other than that of the ability to give some beholders aesthetic pleasure.
Intellect is also a quality. It allows me to do something for myself and for other people: to comprehend things, to draw connections, to make something of information and to gain knowledge. This is also a nice (and very useful) thing to be able to do, both for me and for other people. But it's also something I lucked into, and something I can choose to use, and the benefits of which I can choose to share or not.
Both the pretty and the brains are qualities I possess, and that I can use. They're neither good nor bad independent of context; their value can be understood in how I can use them to do thing, and in the uses to which I put them. The only value I've found in pretty is really subjectively assigned: I can't use it for anything if someone else doesn't validate it. Intellect, less so: I can apply my brains and abilities to cooking a meal, to understanding a language, to fixing a bicycle, to writing a blog post or an article-it's a much more useful and versatile tool.**
On Damping One's Own Horn
It's really difficult to write about knowing that people think I'm pretty without feeling completely out of line. Like I'm some stuck up sit-com princess. I hope I'm not.
It's also difficult to write about knowing that, by society's standards, I'm reasonably smart. I can write about being good at the kinds of dancing I do, or having found a really good way to communicate a difficult idea, but, somehow, it feels wrong to just say, matter-of-factly "Yeah, brains-wise, I do okay."
I find it interesting that I, and I suspect a lot of other people, have been trained to feel so uncomfortable about copping to our abilities or our gifts, even when we're aware of them, and can, in the privacy of our own thoughts, call them by name (or, more properly, attribute the correct adjective to them). Why is that?
I can't be the only one who feels that she has to put a mute in should she ever feel inspired to blow her own horn.
Interestingly, the Voice was just remarking on someone with whom he is working on a project, and said something like "I know it's mean to say, but she's not really the sharpest, so I feel like I have to do a lot of this myself." Why is it meaner to say that someone's not very bright, or not very pretty, than to say, for example, that they can't jump very high, especially in contexts where being bright (or pretty) are relevant? It might be mean to say "she's not very bright, and therefore she's not worth working with," but that's not what he said. Admittedly, in most contexts, bright is more relevant than pretty. Why can't we be honest about our own attributes without being accused of vanity and haughtiness or of other people's qualities or lack thereof without being accused of meanness? Being smart, being physically attractive, being able to jump very high are qualities that tell you something about what a person can do and how they'll fare on certain scales, nothing more.
On Becoming Pretty
I grew up receiving the mixed message that beauty is (and should be) only skin deep, that one's intellect, integrity, ideas, and competence were what mattered, on the one hand, but that beauty was what sold product, beauty was good and virtuous and desirable, on the other. I, who was not, by any stretch, deemed attractive or desirable by my peers, embraced the notion that beauty was shallow, that I shouldn't take any pleasure in it, and that my brain and skills were what counted. Great! I could do stuff, and learn to be a good person, and it didn't matter that my teeth were crooked, that I wore glasses, that my legs were short and stumpy, that I was plump where the prevailing aesthetic was for thin. I didn't need to worry about shallow concerns like my own appearance.
Except, except, except ...noticed that in certain contexts, appearance did count for something. I noticed that even in arenas like choir, the pretty or cute kids were placed in the front rows. I noticed that my mother spent as much time critiquing my appearance as she did my grades or (mostly not-very-apparent) athletic abilities. As I left high school and uncomfortable adolescence behind, I noticed that some people responded favourably to my appearance. I I noticed that I took pleasure in the positive attention I garnered, even though I really wanted it to be from people I respected, and I took as much or more pleasure from how they responded to the things I had to say or to the way I wrote.
And, having grown into my body and skin, I'd have to be really unobservant not to notice the way people respond to how I look, or really stubborn in my own ... I don't know ... modesty or humility or perhaps just belief in my own mundanity to think that the random strangers who tell me I'm lovely to behold all had ulterior motives, or were simply being kind, or were all touched in the head. It's something that happens to me, and it happens more when I've made an effort with my appearance.
As I've grown more comfortable with my own appearance, so I've been able to use it more effectively: to dress for certain effects, to choose clothes that are comfortable and that work with my body, to enjoy both how I look and how people to respond to it. I've also grown comfortable with the notion that my physique changes: my weight fluctuates, the shape of my face changes. I've had wrinkles on my forehead since I was seventeen, at least, and I have lots of other little "flaws," some of which I'm okay with and some of which I wish would go away. I've become comfortable with changing my appearance, when I feel so inclined: with colouring my hair, or putting it up, or cutting it in a different way, with wearing glasses or contacts, shaving my legs or not, wearing pants or skirts. I've accepted that my hair will never behave the way I want it to, that I'll always have rogue hairs on my face, that if I decide to shave my legs, I have to do so daily (so I frequently don't at all), that this is the skin I have, and I'd better be happy in it. And I mostly am.
Approval
Something else I have to cop to is being a sponge for approval. I think that I'm less that way as I grow older and more comfortable in myself, but the younger me really craved approval, and was willing to accept it for whatever qualities I could pimp for that approval. This isn't to say that if someone had asked me to do something heinous for approval-to hurt another person, for example-that I'd have done it, but I've noted before how longing for affection and approval sometimes clouded my decision making and put me in situations that weren't, ultimately, very good for me. So if being articulate and smart, running the Classics club, debating well, singing well, or dressing well could garner me approval, then I would do those things, or at least weigh the idea against my own principles (I don't think anyone could have persuaded me to wear clothes I thought "slutty" (tube tops spring to mind. I don't I'd have worn a tube top if Cary Elwes (the stuff of my adolescent fantasies) had appeared in my room with a dark-green top and a winsome expression) or to sing music I thought artistically unworthy (bad choral arrangements of cutesy folk songs, for example), or to express admiration for books I didn't like (anything by Charlotte Bronte, for example), even as an attention-craving teenager. I did have some principles.
The Femme Factor
Sometime as I was growing into my skin and noticing that I took pleasure in the pleasure people expressed in my appearance, I also found myself negotiating the reconciliation of my feminism and my love of things girly. I'm still working on that one, but I've decided that girly is a way of dressing that works for me, that I'm good at, and that should be irrelevant to whether people let me do things. The Femme thing and my feminism is a whole 'nother discussion, so I'm simply going to allude to it here, and come back to it later.
On Competitiveness
papersky remarked that she doesn't see human interaction as a form of competition. Lots of people picked up on the competition thing, which is a shame, and betrays an inaccuracy in how I wrote about the whole pretty-as-a-tool/weapon thing.
I'm well aware that competitiveness is a form of poor insecurity management. And competition happens for different stakes with different criteria. It may not be a good or sensible form of human interaction, but it's certainly a form. And beauty isn't the only game in town. It's perhaps the most visible one. So sometimes, when I'm feeling insecure, when I feel like I want some positive attention, I choose to compete in an arena in which I've had success before.
But the beauty arena? Hardly the only one that's open.
To say that only pretty women compete reveals, to my mind, a staggering amount of social good fortune: gatherings of people who are vying for "genius of the party" are every bit as unutterably dull as gatherings of beauty queens, to those who aren't in the running.
I've been at parties a lot of very bright, very well read, otherwise very interesting people were engaged in conversational jousting, all vying to display their brilliance, to appear better read, more informed, more outrageous than everyone else. I'm not talking the kinds of conversation where people try to trump each other's bad puns, though that's an obvious and harmless example of conversation as competition. I've been at gatherings where people felt they had to trump whatever intellectual achievement was cited, where if I mentioned Horace, someone else had to mention their latest reading of Homer, even though the topic had been lyric poetry and not ancient literature. I've been the only person willing to turn to my neighbour and say "I know someone just made a joke, and I'm afraid I must be terribly dull, because I don't get it," only to discover that my neighbour was also in the dark, but hadn't wanted to admit it, for fear of losing face. Faculty parties, certain fannish gatherings, some literary gatherings-anyplace where insecure people figured they could gain some props in an arena in which they could compete.
Sometimes I feel intellectually competitive too. Sometimes I want to feel smart. Sometimes I want to be noticed for the things I have to say. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was most desperate to have my intellect acknowledged just as I was coming to understand that people thought I was pretty. I was really frightened that if I got pegged as a pretty girl, people would also assume I'd nothing to say, and nobody would listen to me. These days, I figure if they're going to write me off because of my appearance, that's their problem, not mine. Sometimes I still trump my conversational partner's ace for nothing more than the sake of doing so.
Most times, I'm secure enough in my own self not to worry, to just go into a situation and be me and do the things I'm there to do, and enjoy what other people have to say and offer.
When I use my appearance as a tool, when I femme it up, and go into a room wanting to be one of the prettiest there, it's because something else is wrong, and I'm salving my wounds and my insecurity with other people's approval. On rare occasions, I also want to exacerbate someone else's ill feeling. I want to do it in a way that works well for me, that doesn't necessitate saying anything mean, or doing something more hurtful than looking good. These instances aren't entirely common, but they happen, and if I'm being honest about my behaviour, I have to admit to it.
Usually, competitiveness on either score means that I'm feeling insecure about something.
Thing is, I know that the appearance-thing is a pretty specific scale. If I'm going into a room where everyone's focussed on how well people can do the Cakewalk, and I'm pretty but can't Cakewalk, then nobody's going to really notice me. Likewise, online, nobody can see what I'm wearing, and nobody really cares. When I'm with my friends, they aren't going to like me any better because I'm wearing lip gloss. Similarly, the people I've managed to offend aren't going to spontaneously forgive me because I look good in pink. And being pretty isn't enough to make someone love me or want me. If it were, would I really want that person's love or devotion? Knowing that it would last only until the next pretty girl came along? Appearance is irrelevant to many contexts and won't win most of the battles that count. So to an extent, in a weird, twisty, perhaps she doth protest too much way, when I'm dressing to impress, I am doing it for myself.
On Comfort
Mostly I'm comfortable and cheerful knowing that I am neither a beauty for the ages nor a genius of staggering proportions, nor the most enjoyable person in the world with whom to spend time. I have certain gifts, and I'm lucky to have them, and mostly, but not always, I try to use them in ways that do some good-that bring people pleasure, or get a job done, or share a skill, or tease understanding out of something obscure
I'm hoping that I have something to offer the world and the people I love besides a pretty face and a decent figure (and nice hair). I'm hoping that as I age and grow into my skin, I'll like myself well enough and be happy enough with what I can do to not feel
I take a lot of pleasure from wit, intellect, charm, the ability to sing, play an instrument, or dance, and good nature.The people I most admire look like themselves, and I admire them regardless of their looks. I don't choose my friends, lovers, or co-workers based on appearance, though I'll cop to not wanting to spend time with people who don't understand the value of good personal hygiene. I look at the people I love and I see people on whom I like to gaze. My heart does that happy "there's my love!" dance. When I'm in the presence of people of wit, grace, intellect, and charm, I'm generally happy to admire everyone's good qualities.
It also thrills me when people I respect voice approval or respect for something I've said. When one of my TCI posts was linked as a Particle on Making Light, I was pleased beyond utterance. When someone praises my dancing or my singing or my writing, when, recently an editor whom I esteem greatly said that I was one of two people she would trust with the task of writing about another recently deceased fellow editor, those measures of other people's approval have made me happy-happier than the approving glances do, because I still believe that what I do is more important than how I look.
But pretty is something I am, right now, and have been, and it's real in the way people who don't already know me respond to me. It took me a while to believe that. It took me longer to stop feeling ashamed at being pleased about that. And it's taken me longer still to be able to begin to articulate how I feel about it.
Neither Snow White nor the Wicked Queen
I'm not, I hope, going to turn into some Wicked Queen, afraid of and hostile towards anyone younger and prettier. In general, I take a lot of pleasure (non creepy, I hope) out of watching youth and beauty: there's often an unselfconscious grace and loveliness there that I know I'll never have again. And that's fine. It's their time for that. I had mine, even though I didn't know I was pretty then. And I don't think there's anything wrong, or especially shallow, in admiring beauty, as long as one recognizes it for what it is and doesn't go thinking that beauty represents anything else.
As I age, the prettiness I wear will probably not age with me. I won't have this appearance, I'll have a different appearance, and I'll probably learn to work that the best I can, not in the sense of wanting the same kind of attention I received when I was nineteen, or now, but in the sense of choosing clothes that move well, that flatter, that make me feel happy when I wear them.
As I age, I'll also be less able to dance to the extent that I do now. Loss of stamina is almost inevitable. Loss of flexibility is less so, but still something to deal with. I already need to spend a lot more time stretching and strengthening my muscles than I used to, in order to move comfortably.
It's not like pretty is all I have going for me. It's not like it's the only tool in my toolkit. It's not how I earn my living, how I make friends, how I gain dance partners. It's not the only thing my lovers see in me.
* For purposes of this post, I'm lumping most intelligences-verbal, spatial, analytical/mathematical, musical/artistic, inter-personal, intra-persona, all the things one's brain can do to help one understand and do things-under "intellect." It's a convenient catch-all. We can have a cheeful discussion of learning styles and multiple intelligences some other time, okay?
** Except that society still places different values on different abilities: just ask anyone who went through school with poor analytical/mathematical and or linguistic skills, but discovered later in life that they had amazing mechanical skills.
The context is that one of my guiltiest pleasures, one of the character traints to which I am least happy to admit, is the pleasure I occasionally take from sometimes successfully using appearance and dress as a weapon. Sometimes I dress and present not just to look good (where looking good means giving myself and the beholder aesthetic pleasure), but also to make other people feel bad. It's not a nice thing, it's not a worthy thing, it's not something I'm proud of (hence the locked post), but it's something I do, and sometimes it gives me pleasure to do it. Hence the guilt.
redbird expressed an enviable self confidence. Those she loves like to look on her, and she's happy with that, which is great. It would be a happier world if everyone was comfortable in their own skin and body, and I really admire people who are, and who can express that.
So am I, most of the time.
Predictably, some people expressed bewilderment at the notion of feeling competitive with regard to appearance. Fair enough. I never said it made a lot of sense.
I had a bunch to say, in response to this, some of which made it into a comment. I've copied that comment here, with stuff that I cut because of the character limit, and because redbird's pad isn't the forum for me to ramble on about my own issues.
What follows is a bunch of very rambly musings on pretty, on how my appearance is part of my self-image, on competitiveness, and, oh, various other relevant things.
On the Nature of Gifts and Achievements
I don't think that pretty is a measure of any sort of value beyond that of the ability of the form I wear, and the way I wear it, to give pleasure to a large number of people (not everyone, not all the time, because everyone's aesthetic preferences are different). It's also not the same quality as strinking, beautiful, or attractive.
I wound up, through whatever combination of genetics, environment, and activity, with an appearance that a lot of people find appealing. That's a gift.
I also wound up, through whatever combination of genetics, environment, and I wot me not what all else, with an ability to learn languages pretty quickly, a love of language and learning, a reasonably decent ability to draw certain types of connection between ideas, and a cornucopia of other abilitities that I'll lump under "having an okay intellect" or "being fairly bright."* That's also a gift.
Pretty (also beautiful/striking/attractive/handsome) is a quality. It allows me to do something for people: to give the beholder pleasure. That's a nice thing to be able to do. That it's something I can do right now is nice (even though sometimes I work it for the wrong reasons). But it's something I lucked into, and something I can choose to enjoy, or deploy, or hide. It's not a reflection of my worth on any scale other than that of the ability to give some beholders aesthetic pleasure.
Intellect is also a quality. It allows me to do something for myself and for other people: to comprehend things, to draw connections, to make something of information and to gain knowledge. This is also a nice (and very useful) thing to be able to do, both for me and for other people. But it's also something I lucked into, and something I can choose to use, and the benefits of which I can choose to share or not.
Both the pretty and the brains are qualities I possess, and that I can use. They're neither good nor bad independent of context; their value can be understood in how I can use them to do thing, and in the uses to which I put them. The only value I've found in pretty is really subjectively assigned: I can't use it for anything if someone else doesn't validate it. Intellect, less so: I can apply my brains and abilities to cooking a meal, to understanding a language, to fixing a bicycle, to writing a blog post or an article-it's a much more useful and versatile tool.**
On Damping One's Own Horn
It's really difficult to write about knowing that people think I'm pretty without feeling completely out of line. Like I'm some stuck up sit-com princess. I hope I'm not.
It's also difficult to write about knowing that, by society's standards, I'm reasonably smart. I can write about being good at the kinds of dancing I do, or having found a really good way to communicate a difficult idea, but, somehow, it feels wrong to just say, matter-of-factly "Yeah, brains-wise, I do okay."
I find it interesting that I, and I suspect a lot of other people, have been trained to feel so uncomfortable about copping to our abilities or our gifts, even when we're aware of them, and can, in the privacy of our own thoughts, call them by name (or, more properly, attribute the correct adjective to them). Why is that?
I can't be the only one who feels that she has to put a mute in should she ever feel inspired to blow her own horn.
Interestingly, the Voice was just remarking on someone with whom he is working on a project, and said something like "I know it's mean to say, but she's not really the sharpest, so I feel like I have to do a lot of this myself." Why is it meaner to say that someone's not very bright, or not very pretty, than to say, for example, that they can't jump very high, especially in contexts where being bright (or pretty) are relevant? It might be mean to say "she's not very bright, and therefore she's not worth working with," but that's not what he said. Admittedly, in most contexts, bright is more relevant than pretty. Why can't we be honest about our own attributes without being accused of vanity and haughtiness or of other people's qualities or lack thereof without being accused of meanness? Being smart, being physically attractive, being able to jump very high are qualities that tell you something about what a person can do and how they'll fare on certain scales, nothing more.
On Becoming Pretty
I grew up receiving the mixed message that beauty is (and should be) only skin deep, that one's intellect, integrity, ideas, and competence were what mattered, on the one hand, but that beauty was what sold product, beauty was good and virtuous and desirable, on the other. I, who was not, by any stretch, deemed attractive or desirable by my peers, embraced the notion that beauty was shallow, that I shouldn't take any pleasure in it, and that my brain and skills were what counted. Great! I could do stuff, and learn to be a good person, and it didn't matter that my teeth were crooked, that I wore glasses, that my legs were short and stumpy, that I was plump where the prevailing aesthetic was for thin. I didn't need to worry about shallow concerns like my own appearance.
Except, except, except ...noticed that in certain contexts, appearance did count for something. I noticed that even in arenas like choir, the pretty or cute kids were placed in the front rows. I noticed that my mother spent as much time critiquing my appearance as she did my grades or (mostly not-very-apparent) athletic abilities. As I left high school and uncomfortable adolescence behind, I noticed that some people responded favourably to my appearance. I I noticed that I took pleasure in the positive attention I garnered, even though I really wanted it to be from people I respected, and I took as much or more pleasure from how they responded to the things I had to say or to the way I wrote.
And, having grown into my body and skin, I'd have to be really unobservant not to notice the way people respond to how I look, or really stubborn in my own ... I don't know ... modesty or humility or perhaps just belief in my own mundanity to think that the random strangers who tell me I'm lovely to behold all had ulterior motives, or were simply being kind, or were all touched in the head. It's something that happens to me, and it happens more when I've made an effort with my appearance.
As I've grown more comfortable with my own appearance, so I've been able to use it more effectively: to dress for certain effects, to choose clothes that are comfortable and that work with my body, to enjoy both how I look and how people to respond to it. I've also grown comfortable with the notion that my physique changes: my weight fluctuates, the shape of my face changes. I've had wrinkles on my forehead since I was seventeen, at least, and I have lots of other little "flaws," some of which I'm okay with and some of which I wish would go away. I've become comfortable with changing my appearance, when I feel so inclined: with colouring my hair, or putting it up, or cutting it in a different way, with wearing glasses or contacts, shaving my legs or not, wearing pants or skirts. I've accepted that my hair will never behave the way I want it to, that I'll always have rogue hairs on my face, that if I decide to shave my legs, I have to do so daily (so I frequently don't at all), that this is the skin I have, and I'd better be happy in it. And I mostly am.
Approval
Something else I have to cop to is being a sponge for approval. I think that I'm less that way as I grow older and more comfortable in myself, but the younger me really craved approval, and was willing to accept it for whatever qualities I could pimp for that approval. This isn't to say that if someone had asked me to do something heinous for approval-to hurt another person, for example-that I'd have done it, but I've noted before how longing for affection and approval sometimes clouded my decision making and put me in situations that weren't, ultimately, very good for me. So if being articulate and smart, running the Classics club, debating well, singing well, or dressing well could garner me approval, then I would do those things, or at least weigh the idea against my own principles (I don't think anyone could have persuaded me to wear clothes I thought "slutty" (tube tops spring to mind. I don't I'd have worn a tube top if Cary Elwes (the stuff of my adolescent fantasies) had appeared in my room with a dark-green top and a winsome expression) or to sing music I thought artistically unworthy (bad choral arrangements of cutesy folk songs, for example), or to express admiration for books I didn't like (anything by Charlotte Bronte, for example), even as an attention-craving teenager. I did have some principles.
The Femme Factor
Sometime as I was growing into my skin and noticing that I took pleasure in the pleasure people expressed in my appearance, I also found myself negotiating the reconciliation of my feminism and my love of things girly. I'm still working on that one, but I've decided that girly is a way of dressing that works for me, that I'm good at, and that should be irrelevant to whether people let me do things. The Femme thing and my feminism is a whole 'nother discussion, so I'm simply going to allude to it here, and come back to it later.
On Competitiveness
papersky remarked that she doesn't see human interaction as a form of competition. Lots of people picked up on the competition thing, which is a shame, and betrays an inaccuracy in how I wrote about the whole pretty-as-a-tool/weapon thing.
I'm well aware that competitiveness is a form of poor insecurity management. And competition happens for different stakes with different criteria. It may not be a good or sensible form of human interaction, but it's certainly a form. And beauty isn't the only game in town. It's perhaps the most visible one. So sometimes, when I'm feeling insecure, when I feel like I want some positive attention, I choose to compete in an arena in which I've had success before.
But the beauty arena? Hardly the only one that's open.
To say that only pretty women compete reveals, to my mind, a staggering amount of social good fortune: gatherings of people who are vying for "genius of the party" are every bit as unutterably dull as gatherings of beauty queens, to those who aren't in the running.
I've been at parties a lot of very bright, very well read, otherwise very interesting people were engaged in conversational jousting, all vying to display their brilliance, to appear better read, more informed, more outrageous than everyone else. I'm not talking the kinds of conversation where people try to trump each other's bad puns, though that's an obvious and harmless example of conversation as competition. I've been at gatherings where people felt they had to trump whatever intellectual achievement was cited, where if I mentioned Horace, someone else had to mention their latest reading of Homer, even though the topic had been lyric poetry and not ancient literature. I've been the only person willing to turn to my neighbour and say "I know someone just made a joke, and I'm afraid I must be terribly dull, because I don't get it," only to discover that my neighbour was also in the dark, but hadn't wanted to admit it, for fear of losing face. Faculty parties, certain fannish gatherings, some literary gatherings-anyplace where insecure people figured they could gain some props in an arena in which they could compete.
Sometimes I feel intellectually competitive too. Sometimes I want to feel smart. Sometimes I want to be noticed for the things I have to say. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was most desperate to have my intellect acknowledged just as I was coming to understand that people thought I was pretty. I was really frightened that if I got pegged as a pretty girl, people would also assume I'd nothing to say, and nobody would listen to me. These days, I figure if they're going to write me off because of my appearance, that's their problem, not mine. Sometimes I still trump my conversational partner's ace for nothing more than the sake of doing so.
Most times, I'm secure enough in my own self not to worry, to just go into a situation and be me and do the things I'm there to do, and enjoy what other people have to say and offer.
When I use my appearance as a tool, when I femme it up, and go into a room wanting to be one of the prettiest there, it's because something else is wrong, and I'm salving my wounds and my insecurity with other people's approval. On rare occasions, I also want to exacerbate someone else's ill feeling. I want to do it in a way that works well for me, that doesn't necessitate saying anything mean, or doing something more hurtful than looking good. These instances aren't entirely common, but they happen, and if I'm being honest about my behaviour, I have to admit to it.
Usually, competitiveness on either score means that I'm feeling insecure about something.
Thing is, I know that the appearance-thing is a pretty specific scale. If I'm going into a room where everyone's focussed on how well people can do the Cakewalk, and I'm pretty but can't Cakewalk, then nobody's going to really notice me. Likewise, online, nobody can see what I'm wearing, and nobody really cares. When I'm with my friends, they aren't going to like me any better because I'm wearing lip gloss. Similarly, the people I've managed to offend aren't going to spontaneously forgive me because I look good in pink. And being pretty isn't enough to make someone love me or want me. If it were, would I really want that person's love or devotion? Knowing that it would last only until the next pretty girl came along? Appearance is irrelevant to many contexts and won't win most of the battles that count. So to an extent, in a weird, twisty, perhaps she doth protest too much way, when I'm dressing to impress, I am doing it for myself.
On Comfort
Mostly I'm comfortable and cheerful knowing that I am neither a beauty for the ages nor a genius of staggering proportions, nor the most enjoyable person in the world with whom to spend time. I have certain gifts, and I'm lucky to have them, and mostly, but not always, I try to use them in ways that do some good-that bring people pleasure, or get a job done, or share a skill, or tease understanding out of something obscure
I'm hoping that I have something to offer the world and the people I love besides a pretty face and a decent figure (and nice hair). I'm hoping that as I age and grow into my skin, I'll like myself well enough and be happy enough with what I can do to not feel
I take a lot of pleasure from wit, intellect, charm, the ability to sing, play an instrument, or dance, and good nature.The people I most admire look like themselves, and I admire them regardless of their looks. I don't choose my friends, lovers, or co-workers based on appearance, though I'll cop to not wanting to spend time with people who don't understand the value of good personal hygiene. I look at the people I love and I see people on whom I like to gaze. My heart does that happy "there's my love!" dance. When I'm in the presence of people of wit, grace, intellect, and charm, I'm generally happy to admire everyone's good qualities.
It also thrills me when people I respect voice approval or respect for something I've said. When one of my TCI posts was linked as a Particle on Making Light, I was pleased beyond utterance. When someone praises my dancing or my singing or my writing, when, recently an editor whom I esteem greatly said that I was one of two people she would trust with the task of writing about another recently deceased fellow editor, those measures of other people's approval have made me happy-happier than the approving glances do, because I still believe that what I do is more important than how I look.
But pretty is something I am, right now, and have been, and it's real in the way people who don't already know me respond to me. It took me a while to believe that. It took me longer to stop feeling ashamed at being pleased about that. And it's taken me longer still to be able to begin to articulate how I feel about it.
Neither Snow White nor the Wicked Queen
I'm not, I hope, going to turn into some Wicked Queen, afraid of and hostile towards anyone younger and prettier. In general, I take a lot of pleasure (non creepy, I hope) out of watching youth and beauty: there's often an unselfconscious grace and loveliness there that I know I'll never have again. And that's fine. It's their time for that. I had mine, even though I didn't know I was pretty then. And I don't think there's anything wrong, or especially shallow, in admiring beauty, as long as one recognizes it for what it is and doesn't go thinking that beauty represents anything else.
As I age, the prettiness I wear will probably not age with me. I won't have this appearance, I'll have a different appearance, and I'll probably learn to work that the best I can, not in the sense of wanting the same kind of attention I received when I was nineteen, or now, but in the sense of choosing clothes that move well, that flatter, that make me feel happy when I wear them.
As I age, I'll also be less able to dance to the extent that I do now. Loss of stamina is almost inevitable. Loss of flexibility is less so, but still something to deal with. I already need to spend a lot more time stretching and strengthening my muscles than I used to, in order to move comfortably.
It's not like pretty is all I have going for me. It's not like it's the only tool in my toolkit. It's not how I earn my living, how I make friends, how I gain dance partners. It's not the only thing my lovers see in me.
* For purposes of this post, I'm lumping most intelligences-verbal, spatial, analytical/mathematical, musical/artistic, inter-personal, intra-persona, all the things one's brain can do to help one understand and do things-under "intellect." It's a convenient catch-all. We can have a cheeful discussion of learning styles and multiple intelligences some other time, okay?
** Except that society still places different values on different abilities: just ask anyone who went through school with poor analytical/mathematical and or linguistic skills, but discovered later in life that they had amazing mechanical skills.