beauty is in the eye of the ... knife?

i was reading some of the comments that i have made in other blogs and some of the comments that i have received on mine because of some of my posts. i don't want any of you to be mistaken in thinking that i am hyper-sensitive about my looks. equally as important to me, i don't want any of you to think that i am stating some of these things because i am begging for compliments. neither of those things are true, and the last one is staggeringly untrue.

to understand where i am coming from i may have to give you a little bit of background on me. now i know this sounds tedious and maybe a tad painful, but bear with me.

i grew up in orange county california, land of the beautiful blue eyed blonde goddesses. i was not one of those and my mother, in all of her infinite wisdom, detested that fact. as a right of passage for some of us growing up there, we were shown off to local plastic surgeons in order to have them appreciate what little natural beauty we had and to show us how to ACCENTUATE or CREATE the actual beauty we needed. to make a long story short, at the age of 16 i came home to face a floor length mirror of my flawed self ... done up in all its beauty with various markings from the doctor (and i use this term lightly). the bastard had actually DRAWN on me. pointed out in big bold strokes where my imperfections were and what to do about them. i had a deciphering guide with me to tell me what each of the marks meant. i remember being extremely upset about the whole process but because it made my mother so excited, i held my tears in. i looked at the mirror for so long i started to look like some sort of dressmakers doll or a voodoo item ... all dashes and lines and dots and slashes ... cut here/pin here/redesign HERE. i realized how absolutely horrid i was, a freak, an affront to all that was beautiful and good.

i sat there for the entire rest of the afternoon, mostly slumped onto the floor. it was a strange thing, to not be able to look away ... but i had to see what improvements this guy thought i needed so urgently that he was ready to throw out my already teetering teenage self confidence in order to make it right.

so i looked at my face first. now for those of you who know me, i look pretty much the same now as i have always looked , 'cept back then even though i was a teenier girl i had a rounder face - i guess it was still baby fat ... not rolls of it or anything, but it was definitely softer. so he had marked some sort of weird markings that the legend stated meant thinned which i took to mean "needs to be". my nose had more marks and i know from the discussion (one of the only things i remembered) that they meant a nosejob was in order ... something about thinning my nose and stuff. my freckles could be lightened or something like that, my beauty marks could be removed. my lips were fine because they are full, but my teeth needed braces (still do). there was some discussion about removing the asian flap on my eyes but i think i started to scream at that point.

i remember dialing the telephone. i remember talking to G and asking him to come over. i don't remember what else was said. he took me out of the house, with the markings on me still and over to his mother. she was so horrified that she scrubbed me clean and proceeded to pace the house with more anger than i had ever seen in one tiny woman. she furiously smoked as she dialed friend after friend, asking them what to do. exhausted, she finally sat down next to me and looked into my eyes. she asked me if i was happy with how i looked. i was unsure of what she wanted me to say. she brought me over to her mirror with her and proceeded to show me the things on my face that the doctor said were imperfections. somehow she was able to undo all that had been done that afternoon. i felt better about my physical self, not completely but enough.

and that about sums up how i still feel. i am certain of many things about myself - my humor, my intelligence, my compassion, my empathy ... less so about others - which are always physical and ever changing.

looks are just a crap shoot - a genetics roll of the dice. i know that when i look in the mirror, the imperfections i see are harsh sometimes, blurred others. i know that i am not deformed nor hideous ... i am not visibly scarred ... i am lucky.

how others perceive me superficially i cannot help; sometimes they see me with the hard eye of the doctor - other times the loving eye of someone elses' mother.

all i can do is remember that what matters is the real me ... the part that is never going to be too soft, too round, too spotty, too crooked, too imperfect.