Oh, my mother was jealous as h**l of me, and at least half of it was about looks.
She chainsmoked her way to an early grave. In her early 50s, she looked like she was 10 years older... My nsib smoked and drank and drugged her way to prematurely gray hair and menopause in her 40s...
I was a gawky, coltish kid, all elbows and knees, but when I hit 17, something amazing happened to me.
So of course Nmom found fault with whatever I wore, how I did my hair, and on and on and on... a flaw-picker extraordinaire. Luckily, there were swarms of young fellas around doing plenty to invalidate her criticisms. Also luckily, my dad complimented me enough, when I was little, and told me I was going to grow up to be a real beauty, and for whatever reason, I managed to hold on to belief in that throughout the gawky years.
At 52, I'm still tall, slender, 38-28-38, brown eyes, black brows, and copper blond curls down to my tailbone. A few pure white strands here and there, but that's it, and nary a crease on me, except where I smile. No makeup, never needed it, except for a touch of mascara now and then, and a little Vaseline to gloss the lips. No smoking ever, and not all that much alcohol, either.
I gotta admit, though, the looks had a tendency to draw Ns, all my adult life. I mostly got the kind of guy who decides based on my looks that I should be this, that, or the other, usually something with very little brainpower involved; then gets mad at me for being a scientist, intellectual, writer.
I'm much, much happier alone, sad though i am to say it.
Just a couple of weeks ago, a young man got out a sketchbook while I was sitting in a restaurant, reading, and started sketching my portrait. I felt ALARM! [Oh god not another Lookist...] but then remembered my age, figured out what his was likely to be, calmed down and let him sketch. [In Europe, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. Isn't that interesting? And in Europe, in my late 30s, I was constantly being asked out by very persistent 20-somethings - there were parks I simply didn't walk in, after the first six months I lived there.]
I thanked the young man as I was leaving, for a very unusual compliment, and he smiled at me so radiantly... . I wish I'd thought to ask him for a copy of his drawings, some of them were quite nice. Art student, I expect.
Weirdness: although my Nmom really hated me, and didn't have a single picture of me up in the house [my Nsib's face was all over the walls, though] - she had an obsession for cutting out pictures from magazines and catalogs of women she said looked just like me. She had the refrigerator covered in curly redheads, and not a single one of them was me. Any idea what that was about, anybody?
