Falling Short of Beauty: Thoughts on Vanity

Women do crazy things for beauty. That's no secret, although we'd like to think it was.

I recently began and subsequently finished a book by famous chick flick creator Nora Ephron, who is also responsible for such films as: When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail. The book was called: I Feel Bad About My Neck. Let me just say, the book made me feel bad about my neck, which I think was perhaps not the point.

While funny and of course, expertly written, the book was 120 pages of embarrassing admissions of the secret things women do to become beautiful and stay beautiful; waxing, plucking, crimping, dieting, wrapping, pinning, stretching. The whole time I was reading, I could feel my self esteem slipping further and further into submission. Yes you're right, if I let them, my eyebrows would become tangled shrubberies casting shadows over my tired eyes. Yes, I too currently have eight bottles of shampoo in my shower, none of which do their job. Yes, I, like so many other American women, am guilty of devoting hours and days and weeks to an obsession over my physical appearance. I kept reading and I kept waiting for the epiphany in the story, but it never really came. 

Of course, I enjoyed the book, and surely Ephron is a brilliant, award winning author, but as such, she didn't offer much support for the strong, intellectual, and most importantly beautiful demographic that she was writing to; the modern American woman. After all of the success she has encountered as a sort of feminist writer, is this the most confidence she can muster?

The whole thing really made me think about self esteem and beauty and what it means to be a woman today. Let me preface this by saying, I do not consider myself a feminist, and I by no means advocate hairy armpits, baggy pants or going bra-less, but I do have a problem with fake hair, fake nails, fake tans, fake boobs, fake teeth....at what point does the word fake define you?

At the time I finished this book I will admit that I was enrolled at a monthly tanning salon, had more than $200 worth of makeup in my bathroom drawer, yes, eight shampoos in my shower and still spent hours of every day feeling as though I was falling short of beauty, somehow. 

I thought back on the times in my life that I felt most beautiful and recalled moments, smiling in the sun, sweaty after running six miles on a hot blacktop in August. It's where I met my husband. My legs were muscular, my cheeks were flushed pink, my hair was in a knot on top of my head and my dimples were on display. I wasn't wearing makeup or tight jeans, I was just how God made me and I felt probably even more beautiful than I would feel on my wedding day, years later.
Well I was seventeen, and it's been a few years since then, only a few, though. Could I get back to that moment, back to my most basic beautiful self? 

I've been thinking about that girl on the black top a lot lately. Somewhere along the road to womanhood, I lost that purity but I have to believe that being a woman in America amounts to more than maturing into a bitter, older version of our most insecure selves. Am I to believe that if I am successful enough to make millions of dollars writing hit films and best selling novels, I will, in the twilight of my life, still feel embarrassed by my natural self?

So I threw away some shampoo and canceled my contract at the tanning salon. It's a meager start, but underneath the orange paint, I am starting to recognize myself again and yes, she is pasty, but she is real.

Are you Called to Create?

One of my favorite authors, Don Miller (Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What) wrote recently on his website about the characteristics of a creator. He suggested that the following were true:

 1. A Creator loves what they do.
 2. A Creator knows how to do what they do.
 3. A Creator does what they do.

These facts seemed pretty obvious but when I compared them to how I was living my life as a "creator," I realized that I fell a bit short. I felt the need to examine these three facts in the context of my day to day life.

1. Do I love what I do?
   - I do love writing as a process of self discovery, which is why I enjoy writing narrative non-fiction, the most. Yes, the simple answer is: I do love writing, but I think that so much of the time, I sit down to the computer seeking the instant gratification of reaching the end, perhaps because I am seeking closure in the story that is actively happening in my own life. It is a complicated, dependent kind of affair.

2. Do I know how to do what I do?
  - Sometimes I really feel like the answer to that question is: NO WAY! I wonder, really struggle to understand how a person can ever finish a book. Taking a look at the NewYorkTimes BestSeller List, I ask myself, how is it that Paris Hilton can complete a book , but I haven't the foggiest idea how to even begin Chapter One?
   I am easily overwhelmed by the enormity of completing a project, but the question asks: Do I know how to do what I do? Not: Do I know how to make money doing what I do? So, I must remind myself, that - Yes, I do know how to write. I did spend $40,000 and four years of my misguided youth earning a degree to prove that fact. And I got A's.

3. Do I do what I ....do?
  -Well I certainly don't get paid to do what I do. Not yet, anyway. But that is not the question, I suppose. I get a little caught up in this question because I feel like if you are passionate about something, it shouldn't feel like work. I am learning that this is the very wrong attitude to have, especially when it comes to writing a book.
  On occasion, I feel inspired to "do what I do." It will hit me suddenly, often when I am driving in my car, and something poetic will just come to me - sense from nothing at all. I sit and write for maybe thirty minutes, maybe three hours, and usually end up deleting eighty percent of what I came up with or editing it down to five or six sentences.  Slow but it's something.
  Other times, I will feel obligated to put something down on the page. I will think about Paris Hilton sitting in front of her laptop with a thesaurus and a cappuccino, typing paragraph after paragraph of best selling bubble gum, and I will feel the need to contribute another few paragraphs to my "portfolio." So, I drive to the library and sit amongst the other daytime dreamers and sometimes I strike gold, but a lot of the time I start a new open ended vignette that I will very likely never return to.


Why is this important?
I think it's important to analyze the motivations behind our creative urges because at the heart of them, I think that they can be inspired by a desire to worship and praise a greater beauty or they can be inspired by a desire to pursue our own, selfish glory. So often it's the latter, at least in my case, and this is where I get caught up in insecurity, anxiety and doubt. As someone who feels called to create, I must keep in mind my ultimate motivations. What do I seek to achieve and why?

Are you called to create? How would you answer these three questions for your life's calling?