Beauty

I do not spend a lot on my appearance. I’m forty-nine years old. I look my age. My hair is frizzy and has grey in it. I had it blown out once and could barely tolerate the attention. The next day I took a shower and the frizz returned. No one told me that $40 could disappear in an instant in your morning shower. I don’t get my nails done. My hands are a mess. I pick at my fingers. When I worry about my work, it shows on my fingertips. My mother told me that lovely fingers are important. That you speak with your hands. That people judge you by your nails. I wonder what my judges say about my ratty fingers. I can never seem to have all ten digits at the same nail length. Once I tried hard to maintain them, to see if it would make a difference. But invariably one or the other would break and I would have to start the process all over again. It was distracting. I can’t be bothered. I have stopped. And my neck sags in a way that makes me angry with gravity. And my eyebrows are full. And I have a stomach that wasn’t flat before I had children and now has given up hope. And I can’t seem to wear high heels for anything longer than a few hours at a stretch. I am a short woman who wears flat shoes. People have to bend over to talk to me. They look like ostriches or giraffes. I look like a baby bird stretching out my neck to meet them.

I recently read an article about women who spend $1 – $2,000 dollars a month on their appearance. I do not have $1,000 to $2,000 per month to spend on my appearance and even if I did I am not sure that I would. But I know many women who do. I see them at the grocery store. I see them in fancy cars. I see them pushing food around their plates at restaurants. They make me feel self conscious when I order dessert.

I am upset with these women. I assume they are as well educated as the next person. That she reads the paper and watches TV. I am upset that she has become so seemingly vacuous. That her appearance seems to be her main concern while we live in a world where our food supply may be tainted, where people are bombing each other with their bodies as weapons, where poor people and people of color factor jail time into their life’s journeys. Somehow none of this seems to matter to this woman. To her, it is all about hair and eyebrows and nails. I am furious with her. I have been furious with her for a while. She makes me feel ugly and poor. Part of my fury is personal. She seems so preoccupied, which I seem to take personally. In fairness to her I must admit I am also preoccupied, we are all preoccupied with something I suppose. I am also obsessed with her. Maybe as obsessed with her as she is with herself.

This woman drives me crazy. She makes me feel inadequate but also superior. I pity her her high maintenance, even as I envy her her beauty. She and I have a complicated relationship. I imagine she hardly notices me, as she is looking down her long straightened nose. She might see me as a garden gnome, she might laugh haughtily at me, she might think I’m slovenly, she might feel superior. I am not sure. I am not sure what she sees or what she thinks. And I must admit I have never asked her. It is the same with the woman under the veil. I don’t know that much about her either, but I think about her all the time too. Armies of women, hidden behind walls of cloth and cosmetics. Hidden from each other and the world.

On the heels of the $2,000 a month (every month – this is a regular thing) woman article, I read another article asking if America is ready for a trophy wife in the White House. This one came with pictures of said wife, looking as if she were out for the night with her father and her child. My stomach knots. I am obsolete. I can no longer find myself in the news. People like me are not newsworthy. We disappear. I assume there are quite a few of us. I wonder why we have kept our mouths shut. This is a free country right? I don’t feel free, I feel invisible. Like the women under veils. We could be powerful force but are irrelevant. How has it happened that we are irrelevant? Looking like me has become an embarrassment. A social liability. As the American lifespan increases I face the second half of my life feeling as if there is no place for me in it.

Some of the 2K a month women are single, perhaps hoping it is not too late to find a mate. Some are married to attractive men who may or may not have roving eyes. I wonder if their men miss the face they fell in love with. I wonder who these women see when they look in the mirror. All the faces end up looking the same to me. Like those veils. They hide the woman inside.