PRETTY IS AS PRETTY DOES

My eyes always glaze over when visiting my favorite used bookstore. So many books! So little time! Naturally, I wasn’t paying attention as I rounded a corner and almost ran my shopping cart into two young women approaching from the opposite direction. First, I apologized, and then I stared. I had never, in all my years, seen two bodies totally covered from head to toe with colorful tattoos. As far as I could see, there was no skin space left untouched.

I pointed behind me and said, “The tattoo books are that way.” “Thanks,” said one of the young girls. “How did you know that’s what we were looking for?” “I’m psychic,” I replied. “That’s awesome!” said the other girl. She was the one with the tarantula on her exposed cleavage. I walked away wondering how far down that hairy spider would slip as gravity beckoned in coming years.

Obviously, perceptions of beauty differ. Judge Judy got it right when she said, “Beauty fades---dumb is forever.”

My mother was a very beautiful woman. She was the whole package with jet-black hair, a patrician nose, sapphire blue eyes and flawless alabaster skin. As she aged, her hair evolved into a white wavy cloud, but people still commented on her beauty. However, she began to worry about the “laugh lines” around her eyes. A friend told her that dabbing a moistened rectal suppository on those wrinkles would make them disappear. One morning, as he walked into the bathroom, my father discovered this ritual, and commented, “Dear, I think you are putting that stick in the wrong place.”

I don’t know who said that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but he must have qualified it with “Love is blind.” Mother always said, “If you want to be beautiful, you must suffer.” She might have been right, because I understand that a full body wax is like being flailed but not quartered.

In Saul Bellow’s book, Ravelstein, Ravelstein says, “Young women are burdened by glamour maintenance.” A friend of mine in the fashion industry once told me that models that look like twigs are sometimes so hungry that they will eat Kleenex.

I have seen young women, pursuing beauty, with more holes in their heads than they were born with. Nostrils, ears, cheeks, lips and tongues are pierced and studded. The most memorable was a belly button hammered shut with a spike—wide and long enough to hang a slab of beef.

Several years ago, I received a gift of a neck message aboard a cruise liner. Naturally, the masseuse wanted to sell me some of the expensive beauty products aboard ship, so she asked me, “If there is one part of your body you’d like to change, what would that be?” I thought for a few moments and answered, “Honey, I have had these body parts for 60 years. By now, I am pretty used to them. I don’t think I want to change a thing.”  Jean Kerr said it best: “I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want---an adorable pancreas?”

Esther Blumenfeld (a smile is the best face lift)