The Daughters Homely
My parents were beautiful people. I mean…..beautiful. My mother resembled a young Katharine Hepburn, all cheekbones and auburn hair swept back from her face. A face so lovely, lipstick alone sufficed as makeup. My father was a strapping German with strong facial features and thick, wavy hair. Together they should have created darling children. Alas, a tragic misalignment of DNA yielded these two gems.
My older sister, Essie, now refers to herself in her childhood photos as Demon Seed. I’m not quite sure what to call Little Me. Jowls McClunky? And really, could those dresses be any shorter? We were two years apart but my mother enjoyed dressing us alike. Take a good look at those faces. Any similarities? Yes, both human females but that’s about it. Our matching outfits frequently prompted comments from strangers like, “Oh, how cute! Are they twins?”
What? No. And may I suggest a trip to the optometrist at your earliest convenience?
I’ll leave Essie out of the rest of this. She grew into her looks earlier than I did. Case in point: There was a gas station very close to our house. For a few years a friendly guy named Roger worked there. If memory serves, he was Ukrainian but who knows, I was 6. When we would stop by for gas, Roger would make idle chit-chat in his exotically accented English while the tank filled (this was years before self-serve was even a notion.) I recall the first time he commented on what a sweetheart Essie was and what a handsome boy I was. Yes. Boy. Did my mother correct Roger? Nope. Thanks, ma. (Keep in mind that Essie and I were dressed in MATCHING outfits.)
Essie thought this was hilarious and I was humiliated for about one thousand reasons. Maybe Roger himself needed a trip to the optometrist or perhaps he was ahead of his time as far as gender identity? I did have short hair. Essie was now pretty and I was still homely. We won’t even start on the budding foundation of abandonment issues this episode fostered between me and my mother.
I am not being self-deprecating. We all go through awkward phases. Unfortunately for me, mine seemed to stretch on endlessly. Having a wide face is one thing but coupling that with wide hair is another. I had thick, unruly hair in a time when creme rinse was supposed to fulfill your conditioning and moisturizing needs. Believe me, it did not. My mother’s cure for the situation was to “fix” my hair with thinning shears. The result was a puff ball on top, tapering down to thin, scraggly ends. However, that never seemed to deter her. She’d put me on a stool on the deck and thin away. I was safe from about November to April when it was too cold for the deck salon. I’ll give her an A for effort but an F for execution: the same unhappy results EVERY time.
Nefarious underpinnings: Essie now suspects that our mother deliberately sabotaged my transformation from a homely girl in order to secure her own spot on the pretty team. Foiled again.
