When I was younger, I thought beauty was skinny. I thought beauty was white, blue eyed, blond or red hair ( I’ve always said if I ‘m coming back I want to come back as a redhead) and being slim, thin, skinny. Little flesh on bones, the kind of slimness that would catch the best looking guy in the room (who was also white).
I tried to emulate my idea of beauty ( Was it really my idea or had it been planted there by the media, by society as whole?) by starving myself, my wearing the latest fashions to show off my diminishing figure, to flirt and always try to appear attractive. I’d tell jokes, be a laugh and be so easy going on all fronts. I wanted to be loved so very much.
Could say I became a dumb blond in a black woman’s body as a means of getting someone to look at me, find me attractive, fall in love with me and be with me forever.
( Yes along with the idea of that beauty planted in my head by the media and literature, what also was planted was that a woman could only be whole when a man loved her. And once that happen they would life happily ever after. Isn’t that the fairy tale?)
I’m not sure when my idea of beauty started to shift. I mean I go educated, I started to see the cracks in the veneer of society and started to realise that as a black woman, as a fat black woman, I really didn’t have a place on the beauty pedestal. I just had my back to prop it up for others, those white chicks to climb upon and twirl( twerk?) on it. I know my hating on myself ran deep. Even when I saw the ugliness of humanity up close, I still held onto the idea that beauty was white, blue eyed and blond (and thin pink lips). Oh and slim, thin, skinny-arse- white.
In this season of my life ( would I call it middle aged? Mature? Autumn, yes I like that.) Moving into the Autumn season of my life, I feel as if I’ve got more of a personal handle on beauty. And it doesn’t included anyone whose white, blond and blue eyed. I’m not even sure if I’d put it on to a person or at least their outward appearances. As appearances can be deceptive (and Lord knows I’ve had my experiences of being deceived).
I think beauty’s effect is to cut deep.
I feel it in my gut these days and it’s a terrible beauty to feel. It’s about speaking my truth really against the odds. It’s about standing in my truth even though I know there are people out there who do not believe me and are hell bent on pulling me down and proving me down.
Beauty is about listening within and listening to the world around me. Nature that is not the man made exploitative, extractive, destructive, capitalist, imperialist, patriarchy white supremacy world, but the wild and fugitive spaces just over the ridge, mingling in the sand dunes and racing along the shoreline.
It’s being oh so small and insignificant but at the same time feeling so connected to the vast open universe. It’s a wild ride of willing to do the hard stuff but still standing back up after the defeat, breathing and taking a step forward.
Beauty is wading through the heavy darkness, defeated but still holding a light ready to help and support and serve others.
Beauty is that small pinky-purple flower ( maybe called Self-Heal ( Prunella vulgaris) ) growing through the backyard’s wall, bending and reaching towards the light and striving and thriving in spite of it’s cramped, meagre conditions. Still blooming. Still growing.
There are times that I’ve been hurt, deeply hurt by beauty. Not just an awe inspiring feeling when seeing a mountain rising out of a pale placid lake with it’s perfect reflection attached, that just brings tears to my eyes. But all that ache, that desire for more; for more justice, more kindness, more joy.
This is my season of autumn, the autumn season of my life, and by some people’s standards ( the mainstream, that white supremacy culture I’ve mentioned already) its doesn’t look pretty. But through my distilled, (like a fine amber single malt whiskey) over the years kind of beauty, beauty looks like a grasping for life with both hands, knowing that death is on the horizon for us all, but living anyway.
It’s sensing the changes, the leaves turning from green, to gold, orange, red and brown and not fighting it but luxuriating in the display. It’s the trees’ barks being stripped off and scars on display. Deep wounds oozing sap that we know will help the healing process. It’s a weathered soul, body and mind but still easy to smile.
For me beauty includes the struggles, the pain, the hard edged skin that I bite off the tips of my thumbs, the cracks in my skin that sing when I dive into the mountain snow run off lake.
Beauty is the claiming of myself in all my fucked up glory. Again and again.
It’s what I learned from my mother, to make a meal from nothing in the cupboards. It’s the harshness with the softness. The brutality with the tenderness. Deep calling to the deep.
It’s escaping through the bedroom window into the night’s velvet embrace. There’s beauty in the fall. In our destruction and in our decay. Just look at Autumn.