Listen now | Tonight! 7pm! ET! LIVE!!! I talk to the members of The Good Looking People—an organization for persons who have problems because they are too good looking. Seriously.
Here we are obsessing about our appearances again - measuring, comparing, assessing everything from the sizes and shapes of our breasts, hips, and bellies to the color of our skin, eyes, and hair to determine how close we come to the current (and ever changing) standard of beauty. Enough already!
You’re getting this reaction from me because I damn near died from an eating disorder that I developed as a result of believing I had to look a certain way to be loved. Never mind that my body carried me through some pretty gnarly abuse, endured twice a day workouts so I could try out for the Olympic swim team (no I didn’t make it), and carried me on foot to Mount Everest Base camp. No, none of that was ever enough because I never allowed myself to actually inhabit and enjoy my body. I was too busy doing what we’re trained to do as women - compare myself to others, worry about my weight, and believe that whether or not I would find love depended on how I looked.
Looking back, especially in light of what I am facing now in a body whose skin is wrinkled, hair is thinning, and waist is thickening, I feel a bit sad about all the time I wasted. Also grateful that my body has continued to carry me faithfully through this life despite all that I’ve put it through. So I am not going to answer that question about when I was the most devastating. It’s not a fair question because the way we measure beauty/devastation is so skewed. I prefer instead to think of Patrice who once wrote that she was raised to know and love herself. As a result she seems to enjoy and have fun creating, and may I say rocking, her own unique and devastating form of beauty. I wanna be Patrice when I grow up - lol.
I will say this about aging beauty, however. Until recently it simply never occurred to me that the fact that I have white hair (which I like) could have an impact on my ability to get a job. It wasn’t until I lost my “regular” job at the start of the pandemic, and subsequently applied to over 700 jobs without being hired that I began to wonder if my age had anything to do with the rejections.
Then a particularly opinionated and insistent advice columnist, who shall remain nameless, insisted I get a wig. A wig?! Well I eventually gave in, bought one, and changed all my profile pics to show the new and improved me with light brown hair. I have to admit it’s kind of cute, but I still don’t have a job, so the jury is still out on whether or not wigs can have an impact on one’s job prospects. And frankly being unemployed is getting to be a real drag. Shouldn’t the old saying, “beauty is as beauty does” apply here? I am a beautiful writer. Give me a job doggone it!
Finally, I’ve known several people who are very good looking and know it can be difficult. I will look forward to hearing some of their stories.
It’s way past my bedtime. See you tomorrow Conflab!
I am not young. I'm a bit apple shaped. When I had covid I lost most of my hair, including my eyebrows, eyelashes, about a third of my head hair and most of my body hair. Only some of it grew back. I was in a plane crash that caused facial injuries and I'm a little more lopsided than the average person. Well, more than a little.
When I was young, I was fabulous. I was considered a classic beauty and I had the popular physique of the day. No longer. And I'm still fabulous. I feel the same way about myself now as I did back in my heyday.
I've known about this group for people who think they have problems because they're so good-looking. Such egos. I even looked at their line-up of photos and the people were above average, but not knock-your-socks-off gorgeous.
I considered my youthful good looks to be an advantage. When I was in my 50s I was accused of using my Mata Hari skills in order to get good press because everyone knows that 24 year old reporters are lusting after middle-aged women. So having people accuse you of being a temptress when you're just doing your job well is a disadvantage
Now that I'm older and half bald, people don't pay attention to me when I go out and about. It's wonderful. I love being anonymous, not noticed, practically invisible. It's a special kind of freedom, but I've heard many women say they hate it.
I hope I relied on smarts and kindness, exceptional skills and listening to the hearts of others more than I ever relied on my looks. I still feel exactly the same as I did when I was 28. But I wish I still had eyelashes.
Jun 8, 2022·edited Jun 8, 2022Liked by E. Jean Carroll
I always had exceptional looks, save the mullet phase I went through from 5th grade to 7th. As a gorgeous baby, and a very cute little girl, people would regularly stop my mom to look at me. I would often get picked without asking to get free shoes to do shoe commercials, have my portrait made on stage at the mall, etc... My parents always down played my looks, and never pushed me into that stuff, but it often just came my way. My mom always said, "anyone can buy a pretty face. You have to be more than just pretty." My sister (who is totally gorgeous), is not as conventionally or as "perfectly" attractive as I, and that always caused some tension cuz even though my parents would not engage in it, I knew teachers, peers and others were always saying behind the scenes that I was "the pretty one" and my sister was " the smart one" in our family. To this day, I think that pidgeon holing has affected our relationship, and her own deeply ingrained insecurities and mine... Yes, some gals in Junior high and beyond would be mean to me on purpose, be threatened by me, and exclude me on account of my appearance. But, hey, that was just part of the package deal. I was and I am still more than willing to pay the piper. Cuz It doesn't suck being beautiful. Then the boys started sniffing around, and my dad said I was "way too pretty fer my own good." As a teen, I was allowed to do the "stand straight & look pretty" jobs a lot: Greet the shoppers when they enter the store, be the front person that asks for school donations, the smiling hostess at the restaurant, and a sexy ingenue magicians assistant. On account of my big butt, tiny waist, big naturally wig like wavy hair, bright green eyes, and silky southern accent, many folks would assume I was just a bimbo. But, I used that to my advantage, and, like Dolly Parton, I made self defecating (ha) jokes about myself, and my looks, and won folks over w the bimbo effect, whilst proving myself in other ways, and showing them my loyalty, depth, and substance behind my surface appeal. Being a dumb swan was at times much more disarming, and less threatening to others, than an acute razor sharp beaut. Everyone on the planet has natural talents and gifts, and everyone uses them. Besides, if we do not honor and use our gifts, then we will lose em... or we are doing disservice to honoring ourselves. So I used it to my advantage, then, and I still do now. I bat my eyelashes, and convince men to buy their wives and daughters and girlfriends something fun in my store. I do doe eyes, and I sweet talk landlords into not raising my rent. I sell my jewelry right offa my body, and show folks how to do their hair, using my own hair clips in my own long brown tresses, that are now greying naturally.
Anyone can be young and pretty, but to be old and beautiful is quite remarkable... I
think there must be something inadvertant fer something to be truly beautiful. There must be something spontaneous, and unplanned... A force of nature. A slight imperfection...Or the evidence and the embracing of time and the cycle of life, itself... A new rose bud is nice, but the gorgeous wide open bloom, fading, fleeting, the perilous withering of the petals slowly falling is the poetry....The wilting itself is so much more memorable. To be Young and pretty is common. But Lasting beauty is rare and quite astonishing.
It was definitely worth staying up late ⏰ to hear this and feel pretty damn good. I’m not a girly-girl, so what I like to see in the mirror is the person who lives here and says thank you to their parents for not forcing them to be a stale look at but see me with my look that searches those in appreciation. I’m recovering ❤️🩹 from a great loss yet I am finding a new freedom that feels like it started right here.
Older women frequently complain about being overlooked, BUT they do not pay attention to each other. Instead, they vie for attention from younger people or men. If we pay special attention to each other, we will have an abundance of interaction, friends, and companionship.
At the store, I saw an older woman, perhaps 70, being ignored by a young, male employee, so I butted in an answered her question and started a conversation with her about things in general. We were having such a good time chatting that the young guy kept looking over, wanting to be where the fun was happening. Neither of us paid him any mind, we just chatted as we shopped.
When my prep school classmates and I had an informal gathering in our local tavern, I saw another middle-aged woman by the bar by herself. I meandered over and invited her to snack with us, asking if she was waiting for someone or just hanging out. It turned out that she was nervously awaiting a blind date, so I dragged her over to our table, telling her she could keep an eye on the meeting place. Her date, who arrived rather late, saw her in the midst of a laughing group of our friends and was immediately drawn to her. I'm still curious how that date went.
Women have grown up to seek the attention of men and the young popular people that we once were or aspired to be. We have to pay attention to each other! If some young person doesn't like Gayle's partial lack of hair or Angela's lack of dye, then sc&$ them! But let us not fall prey to the same judgements!!
Jun 8, 2022·edited Jun 8, 2022Liked by E. Jean Carroll
I have always thought of myself as someone who is smart, tries really hard at everything, enthusiastic, and has style. But I never thought of myself as good-looking in the traditional sense — which objectively isn’t true. (Yup—I won a small genetic lottery and I refused to cash the cheque. Gawd, writing this makes me feel like such a jerk!) I clung to this idea of myself as a Betty in a world of Veronicas my whole life, out of insecurity and distrust. I guess I was trying to hedge against having my good luck smite me.
Did my looks give me advantages? Not that I ever believed, but maybe that was me self-handicapping. I just worked harder and tried harder — and never got over feeling like an outsider.
A boyfriend when I was 20 told me I’d be a knockout at 40, which devastated me at the time, of course. But he was right—that’s when I grew into my face. Did I start to believe it though? Only when I saw my features reflected in my daughters, who are everything lovely, inside and out.
I hit my real beauty stride at 40, because I finally felt in possession of myself. I’ve lost it during covid, but I’m working to reclaim it. As our Jena reminds us in her comment today, beauty is as beauty fucking does. (I’ve ad-libbed a word in there. That’s beauty for ya.)
Jun 8, 2022·edited Jun 8, 2022Liked by E. Jean Carroll
I was an awkward child. Weird hair, funky teeth, pale skin, and skinny as a rail. The perpetual new kid and a smarty pants teacher's favorite. Too loud, too weird, too precocious. I was bullied a lot and it was painful. I found solace in books and nature, making one or two good friends among the other awkward children. I didn't feel unattractive, until other people told me that I was. I didn't let them take away my joy. When I was in my late teens, the ugly ducking morphed into a swan of a sort. I got braces, figured out how to manage my hair, embraced my pale skin, and found my tribe once I joined the theater kids and started performing. People started to tell me I was beautiful. Was I ugly or beautiful? I look back at photos of younger me and wish I could tell myself how fabulous I was. That's the thing about the rearview mirror...
I discovered as I got older that many of the prettiest people were either riddled with insecurity or suffering from overblown egos. Sometimes pretty people became pretty ugly once you looked past the surface sheen. Though I have known many people who were beautiful inside and out, and many people who became unfathomably beautiful to me because of who they were, not how they looked. We're all consciousness residing in meat suits, E. Jean. Being pretty isn't a talent or a skill, and what the collective we decides is 'beautiful' is constantly changing.
At 58, pretty isn't really interesting to me anymore. I love make-up and dress-up and changing my hair, but that's for me. What other people think about my appearance is irrelevant. Like it or leave it, that's up to them.
I owe my success to tenacity, hard work, and a bit of talent that I've worked hard to cultivate. I've failed as much as I've succeeded, but none of this is real and none of us gets out of here alive. I like me, the good, the bad, the ugly, it's just a meat suit.
Here goes, when I was a little girl, I was told by my mother to stay out of grandmom's attic. But up there was glamour. Up there was another world exploding with WWII treasures. Up there, under a sheet, was a seductive vanity with drawers jammed full of 1940 Coty lipsticks, Dorothy Gray powder puffs, and Lanvin My Sin perfume bottles. Heavens, eleven children were raised in this house, and more than half were girls!
Plop down I would, pop off the lipstick tops, sniff them one-by-one. Around and around my bow shaped lips went the vibrant reds. Instantly I became the beautiful actress Loretta Young swishing down a curbed banister bedecked in taffeta or satin and marabou and a drop-dead-movie-star-smile.
Also, down the street lived an old, widowed woman with – looking back – an exciting history from what her trash contained. On the curb she would put out stashes of old glass beaded jewelry, scalloped leather gloves, and pink and champagne-colored chemise dresses. Guess which little girl got to the curb first and dragged those clothes home in a little red wagon! Ah, so avant-garde. Then, all the little girls would come to MJ’s to play dress-up, plan a talent show and make ten cents a head!
My entire life I just loved being a female and all the perks that went with it. Every time my older cousin put me in her big sister’s stilettos and told me to practice walking, I further realized that being a girl, being a woman had something magical about it. I didn't see my looks as separate from my identity any more than I saw other little girls’ looks split off from theirs. Our looks are part of who we are. As we embrace them we feel loved and deeply so.
The world is more accepting now of all kinds of beauty and all kinds of women. I think it’s wonderful because I think we women are wonderful. I love being a woman. I love my cherry-lipped smile.
Here we are obsessing about our appearances again - measuring, comparing, assessing everything from the sizes and shapes of our breasts, hips, and bellies to the color of our skin, eyes, and hair to determine how close we come to the current (and ever changing) standard of beauty. Enough already!
You’re getting this reaction from me because I damn near died from an eating disorder that I developed as a result of believing I had to look a certain way to be loved. Never mind that my body carried me through some pretty gnarly abuse, endured twice a day workouts so I could try out for the Olympic swim team (no I didn’t make it), and carried me on foot to Mount Everest Base camp. No, none of that was ever enough because I never allowed myself to actually inhabit and enjoy my body. I was too busy doing what we’re trained to do as women - compare myself to others, worry about my weight, and believe that whether or not I would find love depended on how I looked.
Looking back, especially in light of what I am facing now in a body whose skin is wrinkled, hair is thinning, and waist is thickening, I feel a bit sad about all the time I wasted. Also grateful that my body has continued to carry me faithfully through this life despite all that I’ve put it through. So I am not going to answer that question about when I was the most devastating. It’s not a fair question because the way we measure beauty/devastation is so skewed. I prefer instead to think of Patrice who once wrote that she was raised to know and love herself. As a result she seems to enjoy and have fun creating, and may I say rocking, her own unique and devastating form of beauty. I wanna be Patrice when I grow up - lol.
I will say this about aging beauty, however. Until recently it simply never occurred to me that the fact that I have white hair (which I like) could have an impact on my ability to get a job. It wasn’t until I lost my “regular” job at the start of the pandemic, and subsequently applied to over 700 jobs without being hired that I began to wonder if my age had anything to do with the rejections.
Then a particularly opinionated and insistent advice columnist, who shall remain nameless, insisted I get a wig. A wig?! Well I eventually gave in, bought one, and changed all my profile pics to show the new and improved me with light brown hair. I have to admit it’s kind of cute, but I still don’t have a job, so the jury is still out on whether or not wigs can have an impact on one’s job prospects. And frankly being unemployed is getting to be a real drag. Shouldn’t the old saying, “beauty is as beauty does” apply here? I am a beautiful writer. Give me a job doggone it!
Finally, I’ve known several people who are very good looking and know it can be difficult. I will look forward to hearing some of their stories.
It’s way past my bedtime. See you tomorrow Conflab!
I am not young. I'm a bit apple shaped. When I had covid I lost most of my hair, including my eyebrows, eyelashes, about a third of my head hair and most of my body hair. Only some of it grew back. I was in a plane crash that caused facial injuries and I'm a little more lopsided than the average person. Well, more than a little.
When I was young, I was fabulous. I was considered a classic beauty and I had the popular physique of the day. No longer. And I'm still fabulous. I feel the same way about myself now as I did back in my heyday.
I've known about this group for people who think they have problems because they're so good-looking. Such egos. I even looked at their line-up of photos and the people were above average, but not knock-your-socks-off gorgeous.
I considered my youthful good looks to be an advantage. When I was in my 50s I was accused of using my Mata Hari skills in order to get good press because everyone knows that 24 year old reporters are lusting after middle-aged women. So having people accuse you of being a temptress when you're just doing your job well is a disadvantage
Now that I'm older and half bald, people don't pay attention to me when I go out and about. It's wonderful. I love being anonymous, not noticed, practically invisible. It's a special kind of freedom, but I've heard many women say they hate it.
I hope I relied on smarts and kindness, exceptional skills and listening to the hearts of others more than I ever relied on my looks. I still feel exactly the same as I did when I was 28. But I wish I still had eyelashes.
Am I too good looking? No.
Fortunately, I'm *exactly* good looking enough.
I always had exceptional looks, save the mullet phase I went through from 5th grade to 7th. As a gorgeous baby, and a very cute little girl, people would regularly stop my mom to look at me. I would often get picked without asking to get free shoes to do shoe commercials, have my portrait made on stage at the mall, etc... My parents always down played my looks, and never pushed me into that stuff, but it often just came my way. My mom always said, "anyone can buy a pretty face. You have to be more than just pretty." My sister (who is totally gorgeous), is not as conventionally or as "perfectly" attractive as I, and that always caused some tension cuz even though my parents would not engage in it, I knew teachers, peers and others were always saying behind the scenes that I was "the pretty one" and my sister was " the smart one" in our family. To this day, I think that pidgeon holing has affected our relationship, and her own deeply ingrained insecurities and mine... Yes, some gals in Junior high and beyond would be mean to me on purpose, be threatened by me, and exclude me on account of my appearance. But, hey, that was just part of the package deal. I was and I am still more than willing to pay the piper. Cuz It doesn't suck being beautiful. Then the boys started sniffing around, and my dad said I was "way too pretty fer my own good." As a teen, I was allowed to do the "stand straight & look pretty" jobs a lot: Greet the shoppers when they enter the store, be the front person that asks for school donations, the smiling hostess at the restaurant, and a sexy ingenue magicians assistant. On account of my big butt, tiny waist, big naturally wig like wavy hair, bright green eyes, and silky southern accent, many folks would assume I was just a bimbo. But, I used that to my advantage, and, like Dolly Parton, I made self defecating (ha) jokes about myself, and my looks, and won folks over w the bimbo effect, whilst proving myself in other ways, and showing them my loyalty, depth, and substance behind my surface appeal. Being a dumb swan was at times much more disarming, and less threatening to others, than an acute razor sharp beaut. Everyone on the planet has natural talents and gifts, and everyone uses them. Besides, if we do not honor and use our gifts, then we will lose em... or we are doing disservice to honoring ourselves. So I used it to my advantage, then, and I still do now. I bat my eyelashes, and convince men to buy their wives and daughters and girlfriends something fun in my store. I do doe eyes, and I sweet talk landlords into not raising my rent. I sell my jewelry right offa my body, and show folks how to do their hair, using my own hair clips in my own long brown tresses, that are now greying naturally.
Anyone can be young and pretty, but to be old and beautiful is quite remarkable... I
think there must be something inadvertant fer something to be truly beautiful. There must be something spontaneous, and unplanned... A force of nature. A slight imperfection...Or the evidence and the embracing of time and the cycle of life, itself... A new rose bud is nice, but the gorgeous wide open bloom, fading, fleeting, the perilous withering of the petals slowly falling is the poetry....The wilting itself is so much more memorable. To be Young and pretty is common. But Lasting beauty is rare and quite astonishing.
I look good even though I am physically disabled. I don't care that I am 45.
E Jean, you look good for your age. 😀
It was definitely worth staying up late ⏰ to hear this and feel pretty damn good. I’m not a girly-girl, so what I like to see in the mirror is the person who lives here and says thank you to their parents for not forcing them to be a stale look at but see me with my look that searches those in appreciation. I’m recovering ❤️🩹 from a great loss yet I am finding a new freedom that feels like it started right here.
E. Jean, you always make me smile!
You are amazing, E. Jean! That’s why I’m here!
Older women frequently complain about being overlooked, BUT they do not pay attention to each other. Instead, they vie for attention from younger people or men. If we pay special attention to each other, we will have an abundance of interaction, friends, and companionship.
At the store, I saw an older woman, perhaps 70, being ignored by a young, male employee, so I butted in an answered her question and started a conversation with her about things in general. We were having such a good time chatting that the young guy kept looking over, wanting to be where the fun was happening. Neither of us paid him any mind, we just chatted as we shopped.
When my prep school classmates and I had an informal gathering in our local tavern, I saw another middle-aged woman by the bar by herself. I meandered over and invited her to snack with us, asking if she was waiting for someone or just hanging out. It turned out that she was nervously awaiting a blind date, so I dragged her over to our table, telling her she could keep an eye on the meeting place. Her date, who arrived rather late, saw her in the midst of a laughing group of our friends and was immediately drawn to her. I'm still curious how that date went.
Women have grown up to seek the attention of men and the young popular people that we once were or aspired to be. We have to pay attention to each other! If some young person doesn't like Gayle's partial lack of hair or Angela's lack of dye, then sc&$ them! But let us not fall prey to the same judgements!!
I have always thought of myself as someone who is smart, tries really hard at everything, enthusiastic, and has style. But I never thought of myself as good-looking in the traditional sense — which objectively isn’t true. (Yup—I won a small genetic lottery and I refused to cash the cheque. Gawd, writing this makes me feel like such a jerk!) I clung to this idea of myself as a Betty in a world of Veronicas my whole life, out of insecurity and distrust. I guess I was trying to hedge against having my good luck smite me.
Did my looks give me advantages? Not that I ever believed, but maybe that was me self-handicapping. I just worked harder and tried harder — and never got over feeling like an outsider.
A boyfriend when I was 20 told me I’d be a knockout at 40, which devastated me at the time, of course. But he was right—that’s when I grew into my face. Did I start to believe it though? Only when I saw my features reflected in my daughters, who are everything lovely, inside and out.
Best looking? 28
I hit my real beauty stride at 40, because I finally felt in possession of myself. I’ve lost it during covid, but I’m working to reclaim it. As our Jena reminds us in her comment today, beauty is as beauty fucking does. (I’ve ad-libbed a word in there. That’s beauty for ya.)
I spent my youth pissed off that men always looked at me. Now that I am "invisible" because I'm 67, it pisses me off that they don't.
I was an awkward child. Weird hair, funky teeth, pale skin, and skinny as a rail. The perpetual new kid and a smarty pants teacher's favorite. Too loud, too weird, too precocious. I was bullied a lot and it was painful. I found solace in books and nature, making one or two good friends among the other awkward children. I didn't feel unattractive, until other people told me that I was. I didn't let them take away my joy. When I was in my late teens, the ugly ducking morphed into a swan of a sort. I got braces, figured out how to manage my hair, embraced my pale skin, and found my tribe once I joined the theater kids and started performing. People started to tell me I was beautiful. Was I ugly or beautiful? I look back at photos of younger me and wish I could tell myself how fabulous I was. That's the thing about the rearview mirror...
I discovered as I got older that many of the prettiest people were either riddled with insecurity or suffering from overblown egos. Sometimes pretty people became pretty ugly once you looked past the surface sheen. Though I have known many people who were beautiful inside and out, and many people who became unfathomably beautiful to me because of who they were, not how they looked. We're all consciousness residing in meat suits, E. Jean. Being pretty isn't a talent or a skill, and what the collective we decides is 'beautiful' is constantly changing.
At 58, pretty isn't really interesting to me anymore. I love make-up and dress-up and changing my hair, but that's for me. What other people think about my appearance is irrelevant. Like it or leave it, that's up to them.
I owe my success to tenacity, hard work, and a bit of talent that I've worked hard to cultivate. I've failed as much as I've succeeded, but none of this is real and none of us gets out of here alive. I like me, the good, the bad, the ugly, it's just a meat suit.
Cheers,
Madge
Not something that mattered to me.
Gosh these stories are wonderful.
Here goes, when I was a little girl, I was told by my mother to stay out of grandmom's attic. But up there was glamour. Up there was another world exploding with WWII treasures. Up there, under a sheet, was a seductive vanity with drawers jammed full of 1940 Coty lipsticks, Dorothy Gray powder puffs, and Lanvin My Sin perfume bottles. Heavens, eleven children were raised in this house, and more than half were girls!
Plop down I would, pop off the lipstick tops, sniff them one-by-one. Around and around my bow shaped lips went the vibrant reds. Instantly I became the beautiful actress Loretta Young swishing down a curbed banister bedecked in taffeta or satin and marabou and a drop-dead-movie-star-smile.
Also, down the street lived an old, widowed woman with – looking back – an exciting history from what her trash contained. On the curb she would put out stashes of old glass beaded jewelry, scalloped leather gloves, and pink and champagne-colored chemise dresses. Guess which little girl got to the curb first and dragged those clothes home in a little red wagon! Ah, so avant-garde. Then, all the little girls would come to MJ’s to play dress-up, plan a talent show and make ten cents a head!
My entire life I just loved being a female and all the perks that went with it. Every time my older cousin put me in her big sister’s stilettos and told me to practice walking, I further realized that being a girl, being a woman had something magical about it. I didn't see my looks as separate from my identity any more than I saw other little girls’ looks split off from theirs. Our looks are part of who we are. As we embrace them we feel loved and deeply so.
The world is more accepting now of all kinds of beauty and all kinds of women. I think it’s wonderful because I think we women are wonderful. I love being a woman. I love my cherry-lipped smile.