Beauty

A few weeks ago, I got a haircut. I had been growing my hair out so that I could donate it for wigs for cancer patients, and it was finally the requisite 10 inches long. When my hair gets too long it starts to drive me crazy, but I’m not a fan of myself in super short hair. Fortunately the stylist was able to get the length needed while still leaving it longer around my face, so I don’t feel like I look weirdly unbalanced.

Before the cut, I asked to Kelsey take a “before” picture, which was kind of a big deal because I rarely have my picture taken voluntarily. When I see a photo of myself, I almost don’t recognize it as me. It’s weird, actually, that the camera sees me so differently than I see myself in the mirror.

In the “before” picture, I saw someone I hadn’t seen before, in film or in the mirror. This time I saw not myself, but my mother. Of course I knew we resembled each other, but in that photo there was no denying that time had deepened our similarities.

When she was alive, I thought my mother was beautiful, although I’m not sure I told her that. She would have denied it, anyway. She stressed about her weight and her wardrobe. I often gave her fashion advice, which she appreciated about as much as I appreciated her fashion advice to me. She hated her hair, and spent a lot of energy trying to make it something it was not. Instead of investing in a good cut that would work with her hair, she went to the beauty school for the cheapest cut she could get, and then would put in a hideous home perm. It’s ironic that when she died, chemo had taken all of her hair. We buried her in her wig. And she was still beautiful.

The only time I remember my mom telling me I was beautiful was when she would say, “You’re beautiful when you’re angry,” a way of dismissing both my looks and my feelings with one comment. I don’t even remember a time when she complimented an outfit, a hairstyle, or a choice of jewelry. Part of that was her own insecurity, and part of that was being of a generation that did not want to raise vain, spoiled children.

It took a lot of growing up for me to realize that human beauty comes in more than one slender, blue-eyed version.  Now I see external beauty in others, usually without even having to look for it. While I know that, especially in younger women, it’s critically important to recognize their brains and abilities, it’s not a bad thing to compliment their appearance. Because while I don’t want to be responsible for raising a generation of vain, spoiled children, I would like them to be self-assured and confident, and part of that is feeling good about one’s looks.

I try not to complain about my looks, but when Kelsey catches me at it, she reminds me that SHE thinks I’m beautiful. She says I am a bad example to her if I do not affirm my own beauty. I know she is right. And now that I see my mother’s face in mine, perhaps I can find a way to affirm her beauty that lives on in me.