The Price of Beauty

On the one hand, this photo says it all. On the other, it doesn't even come close to capturing the way I feel when confronted by a mirror. Affronted. The word is affronted. Walking down the streets most days, I half-expect people to turn on their heels and flee—to run for their lives from my untame-able hair, my ever-pursed lips, that indent in my brow that screams, I'm thinking. On my best days I'm wearing two-inch heels, no higher. I'm toting a no-name bag, wearing some little bought-it-on-sale number. Bought it on sale, then put it away, then pulled it out of the closet three years past its fad date. Please please please don't get me wrong: I know how to dress when I have to. But most of the time, I'm just me, and me is the girl-now-a-woman who stands on most every conversation's margin, hoping to be noticed not for what dangles from my ears, but for what I have to say.

Being a writer, like I'm sometimes a writer, my whole lack of beauty thing shouldn't, in theory, matter. But the fact is, it does. Young female readers, according to a Sunday NY Times story, want their characters endowed with fashion sense and beauty knowledge. They want nouns accessorized with brands; they want the lips through which their characters speak drawn on with the most mod-possible lipwear. Once one of my friends was reading one of my books and called just slightly disgruntled. I need to know what kind of pants this girl is wearing, my friend said. Because, I swear to you, Beth, she can't be wearing trousers. I can't read this if this girl is wearing trousers.

Well. That's it, then. That's it for me. I thought I'd chosen a career that let me get away with being me—that girl with her head in the sky and her nose in a flower, that woman with her brow pressed against the window glass, wearing some torn-up old T-shirt and wishing for a conversation with the moon. Beauty counts. Everywhere it does. And I can't even keep the smoky-eye thing straight.