All This Useless Beauty
I'm not beautiful and that’s fine. Really, it is — I prefer it that way. Note that, when I say this, I am not attempting to solicit pity; I am being declarative, not self-deprecating. Please do not take this as an opportunity to tell me I am, in fact, stunning, and that you would, in spite of it all, fuck me. OK, sure, you'd fuck me, but is it my job to have people collectively want to fuck me? No.
No, I am the sort of woman someone I met ten years ago will cold email, declaring they have written a feature and, while doing so, pictured me as the lead. They will then send along the character description, and said description will read “female Paul Giamatti.” I will be slightly offended by this but I will nevertheless “get” it.
When I was younger, I would have been aghast. When I was younger, I thought my lack of traditional attractiveness was the bane of my existence. I came of age in an era in which low rise jeans were en vogue and eyebrows were overplucked into commas. I, however, was a husky child with a propensity for wearing t-shirts as enormous as my brows, which a floating bit of supercilium-riding bone I was born with only accentuated. I was not made for those times.
When I was 16, Ms. Magazine ran an essay I had written; over a decade would pass until I once again saw my name in print. A photographer drove to my hometown and met me in the McDonald’s parking lot; I led him to the orchard in which I lived to take the picture that would run with the piece. I didn’t tell my mother.
When the magazine arrived, I was more horrified by my appearance than enthused by the fact I had been published. To me, I looked feral (and not in a hot, Jodie Foster as “Nell” kind of way). To me, I not only looked like I lived in a field, but that I had emerged from one. No wonder no one wanted to fuck, let alone date, me.
Side Note: Years later, an art publication ran mid-performance photographs of me that were so vile, so horrific, they made me wonder, is it possible to look infertile? I have since found peace with the fact that every photographer of live comedy is your enemy, every tagged photo a neg designed to make you question the existence of a loving, existing, God.
As an adult, I covered my shame, slathering my face in pore-choking concealer and foundation and blush and mascara and eyebrow pencil and lipstick on a daily basis. Not only would I live in it, I’d sleep in it, terrified by the prospect of my true visage being seen by another’s in the unforgiving light of day.
But when time ceased ticking and people started dying and we could no longer leave our homes, I stopped, and the worst possible thing that could happen did, that being nothing. I have not worn it since and my life has not only not gotten worse, it’s become tolerable. Funny, that. I have since ceased caring about the degree to which my adult acne is discernible, yet I have remained a clotheshorse.
During my vanity obsessed youth, clothing always mitigated the damage that was my perceived lack of genetic gifts. If I couldn’t be beautiful, I could at least fantasize about dressing as such. I’d pour over issues of Harpers Bazaar at the library during lunch period, coveting pieces by Jil Sander and Helmut Lang (Christ, even my dreams were black and formless). When I was an adult, I told myself, I’d look the part, and that would cure all that ailed me.
I understand the power of clothing. It can give you agency, confidence, validation. As a woman, this security is hard to come by. This fact is problematic, this fact is depressing, but this fact is true. It is the great equalizer; it is the armor both ogresses and princesses swath themselves in when preparing for the grand battle that is Leaning In.
We all buy cloth to fill the void. But it’s just gonna get thrown into a pile before it’s thrown into another pile. I’ve lived long enough, at this point, to know what has lasting worth. I still cannot, and probably never will, afford Jil Sander, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t learned how to game textiles to my advantage. This is how I win.
Side Note: Why are the living environments of hot chicks always invariably filthy? Their beds are surrounded by piles; sometimes, the bed is the pile.
Is it because they know their sexual partners will allow anything on account of their hotness? This is, of course, the easiest explanation one could conjure — I prefer to assume the more subtle explanation, that being the fact that they’re so consumed with the ever-present, existential terror that is being desirable solely for the temporary perfection of their human form and not their, y’know, intelligence and personality. Some of the greatest minds I have ever encountered have been wedged within the skulls of people who possess perfect bone structure; their dating histories, however, have all been a trail of tears. In contrast, the greatest romantic relationships I, a short woman with a skin condition, have ever been a party to were a direct result of the other party’s fascination with my mind, not my golden ratio. In this regard, I am lucky. I have only come to realize the power of this now, as a woman pushing the rock up the hill that is my 40s.
Side Note to the Side Note: When I was a child, I loathed attractive women because, in my undeveloped mind, they were the enemy — with time has come wisdom, however, and the realization that the lives of those who possess abject attractiveness are circles of hell anyone with any semblance of sense would prefer to avoid.
And now, a Tale of Terror: A friend of a friend, whose beauty is monetizable, once matched with Jeremy “I Ate So Much Fish I Can’t Speed the Plow” Piven on Raya and scheduled a date with him at a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf — he, naturally, was late, and she, naturally, waited. Beauty is a currency, to be sure, but one that can only be exchanged for shit that sucks.
Side Note to the Side Note to the Side Note: I have noticed a recent trend in comedy in which the audience is expected to be challenged and horrified by an otherwise classically attractive woman pouring blood on her bare breasts or queefing the alphabet. But if you are a woman and you get work in the entertainment industry, you are not unattractive; rather, the opposite. I kindly request you not pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
Side Note ad Nauseum: By saying this, I am not denigrating these performers’ “art,” I am mostly criticizing them because they are more successful than me.
The other day I found myself sitting on the cold metal bench of a Crossroads, listening to ironic N*Sync as it blasted over the PA, waiting for my number to be called. No one around me experienced this music in its heyday; no one around me remembered 9/11. In this moment, I saw the women who were tasked with determining the salability of my unwanted clothing as they really are, that being children. When I was younger, I feared their judgment — when I was younger, I desired their power. They were the ultimate arbiters of cool, the gatekeepers to a queendom of stylistic legitimacy I could only aspire to.
I stared at one as she fluttered behind the counter, thick plastic clip in her strawberry dyed ‘90s version of the ‘60s version of a Mia Farrow haircut, sporting a translucent slip dress over another, darker, slip dress. So much effort, so little payoff (one can hardly exist on minimum wage). I felt emboldened by the fact that she could no longer judge me, she could no longer hurt me. She makes a pittance and she spends it all on shit that’ll eventually be shoved, unfolded, into a IKEA bag and unilaterally rejected for something equally disposable but temporarily covetable and then frustratedly shoved into a trough of “donated” clothing that will invariably be dumped directly into a landfill. My bag, not that you asked, was picked clean by her coworker; when you got that good good, the tote is light when you place it back on your shoulder.
I contain multitudes — lest you think my mind is solely filled with irrelevant, feminine nonsense, know that I can talk your goddamned ear off about how jewel tones are classless and about how underrated Killdozer is. You invariably have no interest in either subject but this does nothing to curb my enthusiasm for them.
And so, I still care about clothing. Not as a trend, not as a status symbol, but as a beautiful object that can transform you into something you are not. It may mean nothing to you, but it’s something to me.