As a teenage boy, I didn’t realize
The degree to which some girls, every day,
Turn themselves into works of art.
I only ever saw
The finished product, and I
Assumed girls looked the way they did
Having expended as little effort as I had.
(My sister was much older, and
Taught me nothing useful about girls.)
My father, however, did tell me,
By the time I was in college, that
It was possible, even if I was buying a date dinner,
That she had spent more on the evening than I had.
My father was, among many other things,
An artist, a painter –
He loved beauty, and
Understood it in ways I have yet to.
The creation of self is
An activity we all indulge in, every day;
Some of us more consciously than others.
Now, when I turn to look at you
On a day like this,
Your beauty is all the more striking,
Because I know it consists both
Of who you are
And you are choosing to become.
And it is miraculous
To me
Oh man. “Both who you are, and who you are choosing to become” really struck a cord for me. Have been thinking a lot about female beauty, and how much of it is us portraying what we want to be– since so much of it is from clothing, makeup, accessorizing. We’re “turning ourselves into works of art,” sometimes rather scary to think about!
It’s a powerful dynamic our choices create. It’s kind of like manners: a wonderful, kindly, and pro-social force viewed one way, and a terrible burden or even hypocrisy viewed another.