On the varying definitions of "attractive"

Last Sunday in church I watched my good friend cuddling her little granddaughter and thought, “How rich she is!”

The child, around two, alternated between admiring my friend’s earrings and rubbing her cheek against my friend’s cheek.

My friend is a handsome woman of a certain age. She is not young, thin, rich or famous. Some people might look at her and miss her beauty. It was obvious that her granddaughter is not among these.

I recall my own grandmother’s soft, soft cheeks. I used to love to kiss her cheek, patterned with her life’s experience, and inhale her signature Miss Dior perfume. I thought she was absolutely beautiful, though at 88 she would have laughed at the idea. 

Why is it that as a society we’ve become so enamored of  a youthful image of beauty that we can’t find it elsewhere?

It’s been beaten to death in the same media that perpetuates the problem – what’s in, what sells, is youth and beauty. The result is a society of people who don’t feel “pretty” if they don’t conform with this image, popular since the 1960s when then 16-year-old British model Twiggy slid over from England and through the narrow cracks of our fashion industry with her slender, teen-aged body and became the new “face” (and body) of America, representing the new freedom of the 1960s. Before that, “normal” sized people had been, well, the norm.

 

Hey, it’s not Twiggy’s fault. If the market wasn’t prime for such an image, it wouldn’t have worked. And it’s been at work ever since, with greater and greater consequences.

I’m not putting down “thin” people. I know it’s as difficult to be too thin as to be too fat. (Not from personal experience, alas.) And I don’t want to become one of those jerks who puts down those more slender than I.

But there’s a happy medium. You know what it is. Go online to one of the many sites that give average healthy weights for various ages, heights and sexes. I, for example, at my height, age and sex, should weigh somewhere between “It’s none-of-your-business” and “Not-gonna-tell-in-this-lifetime, buddy,” pounds. I’m a skitch over. But working on it! If you want to lose a few, follow my sage advice below.

My advice? Don’t supersize your food, folks. My grandmother (with the soft cheeks!) always said, “A bargain’s only a bargain if you would have bought it in the first place.”

Well, unless you’re going to divvie up that supersized meal to feed four people, it’s not something you would have bought in the first place at regular rates. Come on! You don’t even feel good after you eat that much! Your stomach aches, admit it. But once it’s in your hands, you’ll be darned if you aren’t going to, “Make it fit!”

Seriously. Gross.

Here’s more unsolicited, no doubt unwelcome advice. Walk somewhere if you’re lucky enough to have feet that work; do something besides lying on the couch snarfing down Mt. Dew and Funions; and cut down the chances of an early death from sloth. I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on t.v. But EVERYBODY knows this stuff. Yet, we are still a very, very fat society in general.

Ok. Now let’s say for the sake of argument, that you’re happy with who you are. Maybe you’re Miss America! More likely, you’re Mr. or Ms. Middle American – average, and fine with that.

Yeah you!

Either way, the beauty that really matters is the beauty that can most easily be detected by a two-year-old child as she rubs her cheek against yours.

Am I saying I don’t want to be considered attractive?

Of course not! What I’m saying is that I hope I’m learning that there are many ways to be considered attractive, and that there’s a distinct possibility that this may change and evolve throughout the course of a normal lifespan.

I’m not trying to attract 20-year-old boys any more. Thank. God.

I’m not even putting a lot of effort into being attractive to men in my own age group.

What I want is to be attractive to myself. And to my friends. And to my family. And, eventually, to my grandchildren.

I’ll have to choose great earrings, and dab on some “purdy perfume.” And let my cheeks get soft and textured. After all, beauty isn’t really in the eye of the beholder. It’s in the heart.