I was up late

[kyburg]

Hope she reads this.

mactavish, shadesong, varna, hell - anyone.

She's got the post locked down, how far I don't know, but I could see it.

chestercheeto - I think.

How is it we know the good ones? The ones who love us - without making us wish we were thinner, richer, something we were not...? Who don't even put appearance or conformity to a standard on the list?

I must have spent a hour on that comment.

"You're not tits and teeth, baby."

You don't know how little that will get you in this world. Work in Hollywood and pity the beautiful people. That's the high water mark for most of them, and they don't know it yet.

EDIT: Yup, the journal, she's a friends-only. And no email address listed - so nobody can send her a note to ask to be added. I'll be honest - I'm hoping she'll read this post and respond - she needs the perspective. Badly.

EDIT AGAIN: I really have something about copying posts out of friends-only journals, but I'm sorely tempted.

Comments

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

???

Not following....

[auntiesiannan.livejournal.com]

buh?

???

[silverkun.livejournal.com]

Right with these two, my dear.

Explaination, please?

-Silver

Well

[turandot.livejournal.com]

You must be referring to a locked post by a friend, I'd guess. I agree with the message about personal appearances: looks can't get you very far when they're the part of you that is most transitory.

Beauty fades, any tenuous standards of what looks good changes over time, what with them being tenuous. What is it we agree on from culture to culture, again? Symmetry of one's features, apparently. An even chin, symmetric limbs, a flawless smile. Yet some of the most beautiful people I know have none of those things, and they're still far more beautiful to me than most surgically enhanced plastic action figures (i.e.: actors, singers, models).

Tom Cruise wears braces (at his age) to straighten the slightly crooked smile that gained him fans; Demi Moore worked out to be as trim and as fit as can be to compete with women half her age, and yet she was at its most appealing when she was a regular sized, slightly pear shaped unknown. These beauty standards that the movie industry sells are such exaggerated caricatures of what beautiful should be that they border on the grotesque. You're right, it's nothing to aspire to.

[snobahr.livejournal.com]

Another point of view -- If all you are is tits and teeth, then you're nothing.

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

You're right about the tits and teeth.

How is it we know the good ones? Try this...

This evening, I feel incredibly fortunate. My love looked at me this afternoon and asked me about a picture I had shown him some weeks before, one taken when I was 21. He said that it showed the promise of beauty that I had now more than fulfilled, in his eyes.

I am 43. My hair is more than starting to grey; my eyes have the beginnings of crow's feet at the outer edges. I have a few wrinkles starting here and there, all of them smile lines.

And he thinks I'm more lovely now, as a mature woman, than I was at 21. Wow.

Yeah, I'm keeping this one. For many, many reasons.