Everyone wants to look at pretty. Everyone wants to have pretty on their arm. Everyone wants to BE pretty. NOBODY wants the ugly duckling. NOBODY cares or is interested in the least. Pretty will get you everything from the benefit of the doubt to the better prom date to the job, all other things being equal. I know with absolute certainty that if I were a photogenic blonde, most if not all of my career in broadcasting would have been on television where they paid better and of course the exposure was FAR better. As is, my career was mostly in radio.
When my daughter was born - and was just simply pretty from the get-go, I was THRILLED!!! And relieved like I cannot even describe! Big blue eyes, blonde hair, perfect peaches-and-cream skin, heart shaped face, Cupid's bow mouth, ridiculous natural golden like-in-the-storybooks corkscrew curls - she looked like she belonged on an Ivory Soap box. I kept thinking - "THAT came outta ME????" She turned out to be smart and sensible and kind and a good judge of people, too. And - shame on me, when I found out I was pregnant with a girl, I prayed for that, based on my own experiences, being snubbed and stood up and laughed at and hiding under my hair and long bangs for most of my youth and going to the Senior Prom with a blind date who pretty much ditched me to hang with his friends. Didn't matter that my grades were always the best in class. Always had a weight problem, bad eyesight which meant thick glasses until my dad couldn't stand to look at that anymore and made me switch to contact lenses which hurt and never fit correctly and made me squint all the time, and a nose big enough to provide you shelter from a rainstorm. With a lifetime of shit like that behind me, I didn't even care if our daughter had ANY brains. I just wanted her to be pretty. So she wouldn't have to go through the shit I went through as a fat ugly kid and teenager. My first thought, when I first saw her (after "THANK YOU, SWEET DARLING GOD!!!!!"
, was - "she'll go farther. She'll probably make more money. And her life will be easier. And with far less heartbreak. Simply BECAUSE she's pretty." So far, that's how it's worked out, too. AND on top of that, she's never had a weight problem, either! O.M.G.!!!!! She was born with the proverbial brass ring.
Shitty, isn't it, the way things are? We're so damned superficial! In this world but especially in this country! Nothing but the world of appearances. It governs EVERYTHING.
My mother was hugely hung up on looks. HUGELY. My father, too, for that matter. She was always thinner than I was, and better dressed than I was, and super critical and sometimes downright hostile toward me that this was all I was. Always cared about her appearance almost obsessively. Dressed up to go to the grocery store. Didn't like that I cared little about my appearance but I wore a uniform in school and really didn't have much of an "appearance" to care about in the first place. Undoubtedly the root-source of the contentious love/hate relationship that was constant between us over the years. And I remember as a child, the time she told me this "joke": Two women in an elevator notice a little girl in there with them. One of the women turns to the other and in a loud whisper says "she's not very p-r-e-t-t-y." And the little girl (who's clearly heard this) blurts out "no, but I am VERY s-m-a-r-t."
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