When it comes to beauty, why must women compete?
I have just returned from what is perhaps the sexiest event on the planet: the Cannes Film Festival, otherwise known as 10 days of aesthetic excess that makes Old Hollywood seem new again. It’s a worldwide amalgam of beauty and fame that leaves other glamorous events in its wake.
I’m someone who thinks In Touch magazine is better suited as toilet paper, yet I have to admit I was completely taken in by the magnificent maelstrom. You spend your days walking along a strip well-trodden by supermodels, movie stars, and those icons we label the Sexiest People in the World. A simple glimpse of Angelina and Brad through the mass of paparazzi made my heart race, and I claimed to have had a “conversation” with Natalie Portman because I yelled her name and she turned her head in my direction.
After relaying my experience excitedly to a fellow party-goer recently, I was caught off guard by her response. “You must have been so intimidated,” she said. “Intimidated?” I asked. Then, realizing that her comment might have sounded like an insult, she quickly tried to recover. “Well, I mean, you probably weren’t intimidated because, I mean, well you’re ...” she stammered. “Not as beautiful as those people,” I interrupted, sparing her further embarrassment. “No, that doesn’t bother me at all.”
What bothered my friends and me, in fact, was the feigned air of superiority put on by so many of the women at the festival, their lips pouted and chins pointed in the air. Their eyes would travel up and down our dresses, but they wouldn’t dare tell us how nice we looked. Those women were mere mortals foolishly trying not to be outdone by the gods. My girls and I, on the other hand, thrilled at the opportunity to wear party dresses at noon and have our photos taken on the red carpet. We weren’t trying to be Angelina; we were just happy being ourselves in her world.
Why is the female species like this? We’re so prone to competition over everything from high heels to hairdos that we can’t even acknowledge one another’s beauty without framing it around our own perceived non-beauty or lesser beauty. (Note that for the purposes of this column, the word “beauty” pertains only to physical attributes, not extraneous factors that people might consider “beautiful.”) It’s ridiculous. And to be honest, it’s one of the things that actually makes me feel lucky to be gay. I don’t possess any of that inherent jealousy of other women’s appearances because I’m always motivated by the inherent desire to bed them.
I’d like to say the rest of the gay community thinks the same way, but they’re often worse than the straight women. Compliments in the lesbian world are harder to come by than ink-free skin. It’s as if commenting on someone’s beauty is a direct affront, reducing her to some male-created heterosexual norm that lesbians have spent years trying to avoid through drawn-out arm-wrestling competitions.
I’ve often been asked if beauty creates an element of competition in a relationship that involves not one but two women. The answer is no. Women are difficult for many reasons, but beauty is rarely the characteristic that makes me want to stuff a rag in their mouths and leave them for dead. Actually, I’ve always considered myself lucky to date beautiful women, thankful for the compliments people deliver to them, rather than becoming sulky and childish: “Why didn’t he tell me I’m beautiful?”
Think about it: when is the last time you told another woman she was beautiful? Not your sister or a good friend, but a total stranger. And not in the I-love-your-shoes sense, but in a sort of humbled, holy-crap-you’ve-been-blessed-by-the-gods type of way. It’s awesome. It’s a compliment devoid of the same potentially lecherous intent were a man to deliver the same comment. And it seems to carry more weight because it’s coming from another woman — one who likely frets over crow’s feet and laugh lines and sagging tits the way we all do.
We do ourselves a huge disservice with our catty jealousy. And with it, we also reveal such a gross lack of self-confidence that we in fact make ourselves as unattractive as we worried we were.
After coolly defending my position on beauty to the random party-goer, she shyly conceded. “Well, you’re probably right,” she said. “I guess this is just my own stuff.”
Yes, it is. Please don’t make it mine. We have plenty of people working hard at that already. We certainly don’t need any more help.
Jeannie Greeley is a freelance writer who had a run-in with the very un-beautiful Nick Nolte in Cannes. She can be reached at jeannieg@comcast.net.
