Pretty

Prettiness is a virtue. Every little girl knows this. The highest praise is to be called pretty. To be told she has a pretty name, or a pretty dress, pretty hair or pretty face. Any other compliment is a consolation for not being really pretty. This attribute gives a girl approval and attention, and privilege. Had I been pretty, my father would have loved me, I would have had lots of friends, boyfriends, and happiness.

I was never pretty. Oh, I was sometimes told I had a pretty dress or a pretty name, but these were always strained and palpably false comments. I knew I was not pretty. I was sturdy, slim, smart, or strong. But I was not really pretty. When I was eight, my oldest brother married a very pretty girl, delicate with long sleek blonde hair. I felt such a clod around her. She gave me a load of her old clothes, and I was delighted- such stuff as I had never seen before. I couldn't believe she didn't want all those clothes anymore, it was beyond my poor girl's ken. I wore them all until I could not fit them anymore. I'm sure I looked dreadful in most of them.

I was told make-up made a girl pretty. Truth. I took a year of theater make-up. I did the full on glamour treatment on my face, layers of base and contouring. I could look gorgeous, but not without failing to look like myself. I saw the most strikingly lovely woman in the graduate theater program without make-up, she was perfectly ordinary. I could never wear make-up without putting on an hour's worth that would only have looked natural on stage. It would come in handy when I bellydanced many years later. I normally kept to a bit of liner and cover-up for my dark circles.

I wanted to be kissed so badly it hurt, from the time I was 10 on. But I wasn't pretty enough for that. I would be nearly 21 when I had my first real kiss, and I wasn't going to be picky. I married badly, because he liked me anyway. Despite not being pretty. And flat chested as well. He pressured me to wear more make-up.

One guy, Army time, fell in love with me. Acknowledged that I was not pretty, not the type of woman who would normally attract him, but he said I had "Something". I was heartened. More would find me attractive, though not pretty. I would fill my empty heart with a number, proof set out like geometry, that I was worthwhile, attractive, sexy, and fill the gap left by lack of pretty.

Then D calls me beautiful. Not just not pretty. Beautiful. He says it often enough, persistently enough, that I must believe him. Not pretty, that's for girls. I am too much, too strong and powerful, too like a force of nature to ever be pretty. He compared me to Zion and the raw red rock country of the southwest. Nothing as small and ephemeral as pretty. Nothing as easy as pretty.

I work with a woman whose highest praise for any female is pretty. She is most sad about girls who have damage that destroys their prettiness. "That poor girl who was in that fire, she used to be so pretty." I call her on this, on her sympathy for girls having nose jobs and boob jobs, her own wish to have some part of her face fixed, her preoccupation with losing weight. I take it on my harsh features and flat chested self- it's much better to like myself than have surgery to fix an imagined fault. She tries to force her compliment on me "You ARE pretty." No. I am not. I am not pretty. There is no virtue in pretty. It is an accident, a cultural whim, a transient phase. One that I have never possessed. One that I cannot now lose.

I never call a baby pretty. Wise child, bright eyes, strong grip, it takes observation to look beyond what most call cute, but it feels important to look for the real worth, under the veneer of pretty. Pretty women deserve the same- so I look beyond the prettiness, and look for the beauty. I do not begrudge them their advantage, but I do wonder what it costs.