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.