Tags
ageing, beauty, humour, losing your looks, models, samantha brick
I agree with Ms Brick (the most beautiful woman in the world other than moi, and thank you Lord for not giving ME that last name!) that we really should feel sorry for people who are too beautiful.
But not for the reasons she puts forward. Maybe the hardest thing about having beauty – any beauty, from a nice set of teeth to a body like Beyonce’s - is losing it. It’s hard to lose even a small part of one’s beauty, but the more beautiful you are, the harder it is to adjust to life without it. Your whole life has been built around the central truth of your essential gorgeousness. And then, gradually, through no fault of your own, that’s taken away from you.
IT’S NOT FAIR!!!
Why don’t people run up to you with flowers any more? Why do they look through you? Why isn’t your path through life as smooth as it used to be? Even I used to be prettier than I am now, and I feel a bit sad to think that whatever I once had is now fading to obscurity. How much worse would it be for someone who hasn’t had to use their brain and their charm (such as it is) to get ahead in the world, and now finds themselves wobbling on a crumbling pillar like a one-legged stork.
And the other hard thing about being beautiful is that once you’ve got it, it becomes central to how other people perceive you. You’re never allowed to forget it or transcend it. My beautiful niece wants to be a model. She’d be perfect for it. But once a model, people are going to be looking her up and down and saying things like, sweetheart, you’d look even better with bigger boobs, or a different nose, or a size zero dress size, and pretty soon she’ll feel compelled to be beautiful, rather than having it conferred on her like a divine privilege.
My child is beautiful too but I hope she’ll never be a model. I hope she’ll never be so beautiful that her character and intelligence aren’t far more beautiful than her face.
Also, I wish I’d really been born gorgeous so I could be drinking champagne with billionaires instead of blogging about beauty and other guff!
