THE UGLIES

Dear World:

It’s AMy. Something’s on my mind.

What I want to talk about today is Beauty.

The price of beauty. 

The cost of cultivating perfect.

I am here to talk about what we do to our children on planet earth.

The Survivors.

We tell them that if you are beautiful, you are worth more.

I don’t care if you have red, yellow, green, brown, tan, pink, or raspberry skin.

If you are beautiful, you are worth more.

You will get better jobs. Statistically you will make more money. You may even get free things and better grades. Maybe, if you are pretty enough, you will be famous.

We all know this.

Sure, some of that attention must suck.

Guys always looking at you or hounding you for a date. Girls always whispering and giggling around you  -- or slipping anonymous notes in your locker.

But you are still worth more in our eyes.  Worth.  More.

We all know you didn’t have to do anything. You didn’t have to draw in your teeth in the morning make sure your smile was symmetrical, and line up your eyes so they sit perfectly under your brow.

God did that. Congratulations! You won the looks lottery.

You are lucky.

The rest of us want to be lucky, too.

But sometimes we are not.

We spend a lot of time wishing that we had been just a little bit luckier. Then God would have given us what you have. Looks.

And we start to doubt ourselves. Maybe since we weren’t as lucky as you, God doesn’t really love us much either.

Maybe He has cheated us in other ways. Maybe we aren’t as nice as you, or as good as you. If we were, God would have given us a better prize – a better face and a better body – like you.

But He didn’t. Maybe the way we look is our punishment for not being a good person.

Now we have to suffer. Our looks are our punishment for not being good enough.

Do you ever feel that way?

I feel that way every day of my life.

I grew up with two Cinderellas. And I was the ugly “stepsister.”

Think about that fairytale turned around. Two beauties against one ugly.

The odds were rough. I kept looking for and praying to my fairy godmother to swipe her magic wand across my face and make me pretty, too.

I would study magazines, like Seventeen, and try to learn the tricks about how to concoct the magic potion that would make me beautiful, but all I could find was a recipe for paint.

“But Amy, you are wholesome looking,” my mother would tell me after telling my sister Sue how beautiful she was and I had asked Mom whether I was beautiful, too.

“You better be nice, because you sure aren’t pretty,” my grandmother had told my own mother when she was a girl.

Even my grandmother was the considered the “plain one” compared with her two younger sibling beauties.

The chalice of pain was passed down -- diluted, perhaps -- by each generation

But the poison was brewed and festered in the culture in which it grew  -- the early 1900s, the 1940s, the 1970s, and now…

All of our children are beautiful.

But is the ugly still inside of us?  What is our responsibility to teach our children about the eye of the beholder and of seeing with the heart?

What about the depressed ones? The sick ones? The old ones? The Bent? The Tired? The Fat? The Broken? Must they simply learn to cultivate a kick-ass personality, or a stellar sense of humor, or be really, really smart. Or do drugs. Or drop out. Or just learn how pray and be nice? Are we still that Darwinian?

We already know this. We are the losers. All of us.

We may have lost the looks lottery. Or the mega-ball one. Perhaps we lost the happy, serotonin-fueled, Type-B, shake it off, atta-boy lottery. Maybe we are not the good lookers. Or the sweet talkers. Or the easy-going, strollers-pushing, trust-fund baby mamas. Maybe we are all just The Ugly Ones.

The ones that cry themselves to sleep; with muscles and heartaches; with money and no passion; with children but no partner; who hide their sexuality, or bank account, or illness, or immigration status, or feelings, or purpose, or who they truly are.

Maybe our parents aren’t able see who we are.

Maybe they do see us  -- and want us to be completely different.

Perhaps we longer allow ourselves to see or know, who we truly are.

We may even be the ones who HAVE IT ALL, but feel empty inside.

Maybe we have it all and don’t feel empty inside. And feel guilty about it.

Everyone says: “Everything is fine.”

But everything isn’t fine. Nothing is ok.

And that’s OK.

Love,

AMy 

P.S. --  My grandmother – the “plain one” – left me with a bit of wisdom in her old age. She lived to be 100 years old and grew more beautiful with age. She told me in her golden years: “Pick your [partner] wisely. Looks will fade, but kindness lasts forever.”

Smart cookie.

(Photo credits: All by Melissa Hernandez Havrilesky; taken on-site at the Huntington Beach Aquarium)