Friday, September 2, 2016

The Science of Beauty

Mike and I took Teddy to the dog park this afternoon. Oh, the happiness of that place bubbles over and dogs grin as they chase and wag and leap. Joy runs in globs of saliva and in joints loosened by play. It shows up in smeared mud across backsides.

When I'm at the dog park, I get caught up in all the joy. Teddy introduces me to people, people with dogs, young people, old people, kids, and even good looking people who might not ordinarily be seen talking to a ...

A what?

Well, my looks are not in favor in this culture. I once spoke to a big ugly woman who had just returned from Africa. There, she was a beauty. She told me that the culture reveres large women. Incredible. She said it was hard to come back to being ugly again.

I always feel a little bit more beautiful because of Teddy. He's sleek, silky, and very friendly. That makes up for a lot of my medical ugliness.

Yes, I said medical ugliness. I'm frumpy and don't have good hair any more. It's an autoimmune issue. It's not that bad, really, not having good hair. I try to remember that it's superficial, not relevant to what I'm trying to accomplish in my life, but I still struggle with it. Vanity versus medical ugliness. Damn.

Ugliness is just a measure of DNA regularity anyway. Did you ever hear about that? The most beautiful people are seen as beautiful because their features are so incredibly normal. Average. Typical. Standard. Ordinary.

That's not how you usually think of beauty, is it?

So all of those kids in high school, the ones struggling to fit in, those staring across the lunch room at a boy who will never know their name .... They're just looking at the most ordinary of ordinary boys.

Ha! Gorgeous is simply a matter of being normal and who really wants to be normal anyway?

I guess I still do. At least my dog is normal.

Thank you for listening, jb

No comments:

Post a Comment