pretty girls

I see them on the streets & the subways. The pretty girls. The really pretty ones. I don’t know where they come from or what they’re made of. Sometimes, I think they’re another species. Other times, I think I am. Either way, I know one thing for sure — we are not the same species of female.

I watch the girl sitting opposite me on the 7 train and try to figure out how it is that when given two eyes, one nose, one mouth, the regular number of teeth, etc.  – when she came down the assembly line it all came out perfect, the kind of pretty that makes everyone look — men, women and children.  Fairy princess pretty. Seriously. I look around the train watch as people constantly steal glances at her. She is that kind of pretty. I have the requisite number of hands and feet, the right amount of toes, the proper amount of eyes and a nose of reasonable proportion. But somehow, if you put us side by side, I look like a Mr. Potato Head with curly hair, and she looks like one of the suitcase girls on “Deal or no Deal”.

I’m not downgrading myself. Most days I’m pretty happy with the way I look. But when confronted with one of the pretty girls I see no more genetic similarity between she and I then I do between myself and a Mongolian marmot. I struggled with self-awareness for years. I used to go to those four for a buck black & white photo booths and then sit for hours – hours I’m telling you – staring at my picture over a cocktail (several cocktails) trying to figure out how what I saw in the mirror, what other people saw and what I thought I looked like were all related, if at all. By the time I figured it all out, enough time had passed –years — and I looked completely different and had to start all over again.

Some days it’s not the pretty girls on the subway I see, but some hot boy & I’m giving him the eye.  I catch my reflection in the subway window over his shoulder and I’m shocked that it’s not a 20 year old jodi looking back at me, but a considerably older one. No wonder he’s not returning my googly eyes. (Of course, it could have something to do with the fact that I say things like “googly eyes”, but how would he know that?!).  Honestly, I have no idea what I look like to other people, I barely know what I look like to me.

People make a judgment about me from a distance. I’m a person who seems self assured & self sufficient, who’s outspoken & direct, a person who’s developed such a good “armor” of protection that people who don’t know me are sometimes afraid to approach me and talk. The ones who do know me assume I can handle anything that comes along. A very few know who I am behind the game.  I wonder if any of this part of life is easier for the pretty girls…