Eye of the beholder
by mollykl
If I could look like anyone, anyone, in the world, I would have to admit that I would not be politically correct or self-aware or any of that bullshit and say “myself.” I want to look like Keri Hilson.
I think she is, quite possibly, the most beautiful woman in the world. While on a day to day basis I’m relatively content with the way I look, if I had my druthers, I’d look like her. For those of you that don’t know me (um, do I have any readers that DON’T know me? Probably not…) I am a 42 year old, white-anglo-saxon-protestant-and-looks-it, 5’6, 160 lb, , mother of a 4-year-old, who has to color her grey roots every 4-6 weeks (but I do it every 8). There is NO WAY IN HELL that even with cosmetic surgery I am going to look like Keri Hilson in this lifetime.
So where do we get our standards for beauty? I don’t mean the standards that we hold as a society (and try and tell me we don’t have them as a society), I mean our personal standards. Why don’t I want to look like someone a little more in reach, i.e. white, brown hair, hazel eyes?
I think it’s partially exposure. In high school I was very aware that all of the popular girls were black and I, obviously, was never going to really fit in. Yeah, I had, again, the mouse brown hair cut really short and the pale skin with freckles. I knew I was never going to be one of the pretty popular girls, but damn I wished I could be. Corn rows were really popular – it was 1985- and all of the cheerleaders had them with yellow and blue beads (our school colors) – and here I was with the most spectacularly dull brown hair that was, due to an unfortunate perm, cropped very short. Throw in my glasses and braces and it’s a wonder I emerged with any self-esteem at all.
If the familiar shapes our notion of beauty, then how do we fit ourselves into that particular picture? And what if we can’t?
Bold Fortune 
I have thought about this a bit lately…having two little girls and the scary notion of beauty they are already picking up on. Not sure how to fit in, small mirrors and bad eyesight? The only way I could ever do it in school was to pretty much not care. I am sure I did deep down but I had 3 older brothers…”go ahead and make fun of the way I look” was the attitude I took and it worked.
My girls… A is 3 has wonderful red hair stright hair that any person would kill for…she wishes she had curly hair. L is 5 has brown curly hair and would love long blonde “Barbie” hair.
Maybe it is always wanting something else that shapes our standard of beauty that makes it always unattainable…your might have it all but you will always want something you don’t have.
Maybe we do want what we can’t, or don’t, have. When I was in college I had stick straight hair, and all I wanted was wavy. Now, thanks to the gray, I have wavy hair…and all I want is straight. Perhaps it’s just us, being human, that makes us want we we can’t have. Or, and here’s the positive spin, perhaps it’s just that we really appreciate what we aren’t.
I want to look like Keri Hilson too! (It is, although I am closer in skin tone, equally impossible for me too.)